Deaths: Charles Sanna and His Swiss Miss Cocoa Mix-- Part 1: Built Submarines in WW II

CHARLES SANNA  (1917-2019)

From the April 5, 2019, Chicago Tribune  "He poured genius into Swiss Miss cocoa mix" by
Harrison Smith, Washington Post.

And, he was a builder of submarines during World War II and invented towering spray dryers.  But, he was best-known for his Swiss Miss cocoa mix.  I sure had a lot of that while growing up.

"Fiddling at his kitchen stove in the late 1950s, standing over a pot of creamer, sugar, cocoa and vanilla, Charles Sanna... was on the verge of a culinary breakthrough."

At the time, he was chief engineer at Sanna Dairies, a Wisconsin business founded by his father, an Italian immigrant who sold his own mozzarella and ricotta.  During the Korean War they had supplied the U.S. military with powdered sweetened whole milk coffee creamer.

To avoid penalties written into Army contracts for failing to make enough creamer, the company had overproduced the creamer and now had warehouses full of the stuff

Something  needed to be done with it and Charles decided to do something about it.