Rosezena Gunn began cooking when she was 14 by helping her mother in Cincinnati and has been cooking ever since.
Now she serves up home cooking every day--not just for her family, but for everyone at Mama Rose restaurant on South College Street in the Eagle's Crossing Shopping Center near Walmart.
"It was always a dream of mine to have a restaurant," said "Mama Rose" Gunn. "I used to tell my pastor that it was a dream that I had that wouldn't die."
Gunn's first foray into the restaurant business was in 2010 when her son and daughter-in-law asked her to cook in the restaurant they had opened on Opelika Road, Mother Rose. But when they transferred for their jobs with the military six months later, the restaurant closed.
Gunn's passion for cooking and baking continued, however, and about a month ago she opened her own restaurant.
"Even when I didn't have the restaurant, I cooked every day," Gunn said. "My joy is really just feeding people and seeing people eat."
Gunn was born in Selma and moved to Auburn in 1989, but not until she had traveled around the country and overseas with her military husband, whom she married in 1967.
"I never did have a steady job until after he retired," Gunn said.
She would bake for the people who lived in their same building, and she worked in the military commissary when they lived in Germany.
After her husband retired in 1983, Gunn worked at Food World, Walmart and Sam's Club until she became a cook at Mother Rose.
"I've always worked in customer service," Gunn said. "I've always liked to intermingle with the customers."
Beginning work in the restaurant was a natural transition for Gunn.
"I wasn't really nervous about it," she said. "I do catering all the time ... I feed from 150 up to 300-something people, sometimes 400-something people."
Now she cooks for the public, serving an all-you-can-eat buffet of meat and vegetables plates.
Gunn's priority is still the customer service aspect. She calls food her ministry.
"A lot of people, they think about their parents when they go into a restaurant and they have different foods, and it just brings back a lot of memories for them," Gunn said. "So it's just a ministry that I like to do, just to feed people--and I love for them to eat.
"I believe if you talk to people and you treat them right, and you have that faith in God, God will work things out."
God had a hand, Gunn said, in helping her and her husband start the restaurant. A church they worship with in Columbus donated the chairs, and a friend in the restaurant supply business got them a discounted rate on booth seating.
But not everyone was initially as supportive. Gunn said her children weren't thrilled when she came up with the idea to open Mama Rose.
"At first everybody was kind of hesitant," Gunn said. "'Are you sure, at 65, you want to open up a restaurant? You should be maybe joining a senior citizen group.'
"I said, 'No, this is my dream,' ... Now, they see how much joy it brings to me, so they're all for it."
Gunn said she tries to make her customers feel just like her children, and she tells them to make themselves at home.
"I always come by and talk to them and ask them if everything is OK, if the food's OK, and thank them for coming," Gunn said. "The customer service is a lot in a business ... You have to come out and greet your customers and let them know who you are and let them know that you appreciate them coming out. They could have went to any restaurant, but they chose to come here."
"I just try to treat people like I want to be treated."
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