Columnist's Cronkite connection takes the cake

Nearly 35 years ago, I opened a specialty-order cake business in New York City called Creative Cakes. I baked layers of my grandmother's chocolate cake recipe and created pop art using colorful buttercream frosting.

Many of my cakes were ordered from the wonderful folks at Jerry Della Femina's advertising agency, where I'd worked right out of college. (They wanted to keep me in business!)

Many other cakes were designed for performers on Broadway and journalists at New York magazine, People magazine, Rolling Stone, ABC, NBC and CBS.

When I heard from my son, Jeff, that Walter Cronkite had died at age 92, it brought back some memories.

Back in 1976, I had decorated a large Styrofoam shape of the United States using traditional techniques in red, white and blue frosting, ordered by CBS for use in Cronkite's bicentennial publicity photo. That "cake" was designed to hold 200 blazing candles in celebration of America's birthday.

That publicity photo has hung in our kitchen since before Jeff was born. Otherwise, how would a 26-year-old know Walter Cronkite's death would have special meaning to his mom?

At any rate, when I went to turn off the kitchen light about 9 p.m. on July 17, that publicity shot of Cronkite - hanging with photos of a dozen other cakes of varying sizes and shapes - practically jumped off the wall.

Mindful that the Daily Herald seeks local connections to national news whenever possible, I hurriedly removed the photo and scanned it. By 9:15, I'd e-mailed it to the night news desk, as well as to DuPage County editors Jim Davis and Bob Smith.

I wasn't sure the large file would pass through the Daily Herald's spam controls, but it got through to Davis. I knew because I instantly received an automatic reply that he was out of the office on Friday.

So I forgot about it until nearly midnight.

That's when I found a reply sent at 9:27 p.m.

"I'm the news editor in charge at night here at the Daily Herald," Neil Holdway e-mailed. "I'm interested in using your photo inside the paper, particularly noting that the cake was decorated by you while in New York City in 1976 (right?). This was a publicity shot CBS handed out that year?"

"Yes," I answered, "The photo was CBS/Walter Cronkite's publicity shot for America's bicentennial in 1976. I lived and worked in NYC at the time."

Early Saturday I saw Cronkite's publicity photo on page 8.

And we headed to the annual Mitchell Family Reunion in Wabash, Ind.

Sunday I found my inbox filled with e-mails from surprised folks who had seen the photo, either sent from me or pictured in the Daily Herald.

"Thanks for getting in touch with the desk last night," Davis had e-mailed Saturday. "Your photo was a really nice addition in today's paper (always looking for that local angle!) And I didn't know you were a baker in your previous life. Very cool -"

So, to use the words of another former commentator, here's the rest of the story:

While I was working my way up to copywriter at Della Femina, Travisano and Partners, I became the self-appointed birthday baker at the boutique ad agency on Madison Avenue.

If you decorate cakes, you know how folks often say, "You oughta go into business."

So in 1974, I opened a cupcake-size shop on New York's East 74th Street, where I shaped, sculpted and decorated thousands of original designs.

And while I carried around pictures of my cakes, my girlfriends showed off adorable photos of their children.

After our first child was born in 1979, I quickly discovered I enjoyed the creativity that came from motherhood much more than the business of designing novelty cakes.

I opted to stay home, devote most of my time to our three children and occasionally decorate cakes.

Funny thing is, the day the Welcome Wagon Lady called upon me after our move to Naperville in 1993, I was in the middle of decorating a big cake in the shape of a golf bag with clubs for my cousin's husband, Dave Krumwiede.

But that's another story.