Everybody Deserves a Headstone

A man widely believed to be the mdoel for the smiling chef on Cream of Wheat boxes finally has a known identity and a grave marker bearing his name.

On Wednesday, a granite gravestone marker was placed at his burial site. It bears his name and an etching taken from the man depicted on the Cream of Wheat box.

Jesse Lasorda, a family researcher from Lansing, started the campaign to put the marker and etching on White's grave.

Frank L. White, the nameless face that everyone knew for decades since 1900 by his appearance on the box, died in 1938 and until this week, his grave in Woodlawn Cemetery bore only a tiny concrete marker with no name -- the popular icon, known everywhere, by everyone who eats breakfast and yet, the forgotten...

"Everyone deserves a headstone," Lasorda told the Lansing State Journal. He 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 on February 15, 1938, the Leslie Local Republican described him as a "famous chef" who "posed for an adverstisement of a well-known breakfast food."

White lived in Leslie for about the last 20 years of his life, and the story of his posing for the Cream of Wheat picture was known in the city of 2000 located between Jackson and Lansing and about 70 miles west of Detroit.

White was photographed about 1900 while working in a Chicago restaurant. His name was not recorded. White was a chef, travelled a lot, was about the right age and told neighbors that he was the Cream of Wheat model, the Jackson Citizen Patriot said.

Long owned by Kraft Foods Inc., the Cream of Wheat brand was sold this year to B&G Foods Inc.