Palmer D. Zottola

Palmer Domenic Zottola of Grants Pass died peacefully at his home Monday night April 22.

He was born to Palmerino and Teresa Zottola on December 17, 1926, in Newman, California, where his father and his uncle Ernest Zottola ran a cheese-making business. In 1939 the brothers relocated to Grants Pass where Palmer spent most of the rest of his life working and raising a family.

In 1943 he graduated from Grants Pass High School. After attending Oregon State University for about six months, he returned to Grants Pass to work a milk processing plant with his father. In 1945 he joined the United States Army and served in Korea.

When he came home upon his discharge in 1947, he went back to work with his father, and together they started Zottola’s Dairy Products, making ice cream and producing fluid milk products, a business they sold to Arden Farms in 1957. Palmer managed the milk plant for Arden Farms until he bought Valley of the Rogue Dairy on April 1, 1970.

Over the next thirty-four years, with the help of his sons Andrew, Tony, and Robert, he built Valley of the Rogue into a business known throughout southern Oregon for its quality products, products which annually won awards and recognition from the state dairy industry. In July 2004 he sold Valley of the Rogue to Umpqua Dairy of Roseburg.

In June 1951, he married Mildred McEuen, whom he met while she was an usherette at the Rogue Theater. They made their home and raised their family in Grants Pass; they were married almost 68 years.

Palmer Zottola was a lifelong member of St Anne’s Catholic parish, where he sang in the choir for nearly six decades, and he was part of the local Lions Club, working many shifts on the grill at the county fair and Boatnik food stands cooking Lion Burgers. He was also a member of the Knights of Columbus, having twice served as their president.

He was a good man and a good father. He was hard-working, indefatigable, and dependable; devoted to his family and his church; kind, generous, and loving. And he was a stalwart fan of both Grants Pass and North Valley high school Football.

Palmer is survived by his wife, Mildred, sons Martin, Andrew (Debbie), and Tony (Penny), and his daughter Mikki Zottola Baguio (Joe); his brother Ernie (Diana) of Junction City, and Marsha Zottola of Cook, Minnesota. He was preceded in death by his daughter Verna Zottola Scott (Randy), and his son Robert (Susan), his mother and father, and his brother Ed (Marsha) and his sister Teresa and her husband Richard. He is survived also by fourteen grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

A funeral mass will be at 1:30 p.m., Saturday, May 4, 2019 at St. Anne Catholic Church in Grants Pass.

In lieu of flowers Mildred asks that donations be made to St Anne Catholic School or Providence Hospice.