Serving Up Recognition For The 'Cream of Wheat' Brother
Frank L. White died on February 15, 1938, his grave bearing only a tiny concrete marker with no name.
This week, a granite gravestone was placed at his burial site bearing his name and an etching taken from the man depicted on the Cream of Wheat box.
Jesse Lasorda, a family researcher, started the campaign to put the marker and etching on White's grave in Leslie, Michigan.
Lasorda discovered that White was born about 1867 in Barbados, came to the U.S. in 1875 and became a citizen in 1890.
When White died, the local newspaper described him as a ''famous chef'' who ''posed for an advertisement of a well-known breakfast food.''
White lived in Leslie, and the story of his posing for the Cream of Wheat picture was known in the city of 2,000 located between Jackson and Lansing and about 70 miles west of Detroit.
While the man depicted in the 1900 photographed did not have his name recorded, he was employed at a Chicago restaurant. White was a Black chef, traveled a lot, was about the right age as the Cheshire cat smiling brother on the box.
Given that White told neighbors he was the Cream of Wheat model, it's a safe bet that this lasting image of excellence in culinary art likely belongs to him.
CHICAGO SUN TIMES