A fitting end

It has taken almost 70 years but June 13 2007, Frank L White, the man widely believed to be the smiling chef on the Cream of Wheat boxes finally received a fitting gravemarker. White died in 1938 and since that time, only a small concrete marker with no name has marked his final resting place.

Jesse Lasorda, a family researcher from Lansing MI, started the campaign to put the granite marker bearing White's name and an etching taken from the man depicted on the Cream of Wheat box. White lived the last 20 years of his life in the city of Leslie MI, population 2,000, and when he died Feb 15 1938, the Leslie-Republican described him as a "famous chef" who had "posed for an advertisement of a well-known breakfast food."

"Everyone deserves a headstone," Lasorda told the Lansing State Journal.

Through his research, Lasorda found that White was born in about 1867 in Barbados, came to the United States in 1875 and became a U S citizen in 1890. The chef depicted on the box was photographed around 1900 while working in a Chicago restaurant and his name was not recorded officially. White was a chef, traveled a lot and was about the right age as the model. He also told his neighbors that he was the Cream of Wheat model and the story of his posing for the picture was widely known in Leslie MI as reported at the time of his death.

Lasorda's research and campaign has led to a very fitting monument to a man who is a well known part of our history.