In Memoriam of William Entenmann III, the Grandson of the Founder of Entenmann's Bakery

I want to tell you about William Entenmann III, the grandson of the founder of Entenmann's Bakery, but before I do so, I need to tell you a bit about my family and me so that you can understand how we came to know one another many years ago.

On the day of my birth, my incredibly strong parents were at the most vulernable point of their lives. Since their marriage six years earlier, my mother had stayed at home to have and raise my older siblings, and my father had worked for a series of companies that had closed their doors. Money was tight. Opportunities were few and far between. Family support was non-existent. In fact, at the time of my birth, my father was working for a company far away, and when my mother went into labor, she had to turn to neighbors for help.

A few days later, my father headed for the hospital after work to bring us home, but his car broke down along the way. He had only enough money in his pocket for one cab ride. So, instead of taking a cab to the hospital, he walked miles to get there because he knew he'd need the money to take my mother and me home. But when he got to the hospital, the administrators refused to release me because my father didn't have enough money to the pay the bill. They took a promissory note from my father in exchange for me.

During the early years of my childhood, my parents' situation didn't change, except that they had to struggle even harder with yet another child to feed (and another debt to pay). During these years, trying to better our lives, my father would put on a suit every so often and go over to Entenmann's Bakery (for those of you who've heard of Entenmann's, you'll immediately visualize the white box with the fancy blue writing). Entenmann's was one of the best employers on Long Island, New York. But the waiting list for a job was impossibly long. My father would put his name on the list and come home without much hope. It was a dream, and like most dreams, it was unobtainable.

So, we went on from day to day.

I can remember my mother outside in cold weather with no stockings (women wore dresses in those days) because she couldn't afford to buy a pair. I can remember her pushing us to the supermarket in one of those huge 1950's baby carriages because she didn't have a car. I can remember her collecting other people's returnable bottles for money to buy a gallon of milk. I can remember her dressing us in thrift store clothes. I can remember all of this and so much more.

Once I went to school, she was free to work outside the home, but she'd have to race to get home from her job as a domestic so that I wouldn't be alone for too long after coming home from kindergarten. By this time, she had an old car. She kept a figurine of Mary, the Blessed Mother, on the dashboard and would pray to her whenever the car wouldn't start. But my mother never despaired because, even though she was a poor Irish immigrant, she believed she could have the American Dream, if she only worked hard enough.

Then, one day, my mother heard that Mr. & Mrs. William Entenmann III needed a domestic. By this point, my father had just turned 39, and at that time, Entenmann's had a cutoff age of 40 for certain positions. But my mother's need was more immediate. She needed to pay the tuition for us in Catholic school (education, something she'd never had, was everything to her). So she walked up to the Entenmann's door, rang the bell, and asked Mrs. Entenmann for the job. My mother is devout. Just as the Blessed Mother had always heard her prayer for the car to start, she now heard her prayer for deliverance from desperation. Mrs. Entenmann, a very gracious and lovely woman, asked her to start the following Tuesday morning.

As Christmas of 1968 approached, Mrs. Entenmann told my mother they'd like to host a party for about 200 guests, and asked whether she should hire additional help. My mother said she could handle the party on her own, but needed Mrs. Entenmann's help to get my father a job at the company. Later in the evening, Mrs. Entenmann turned to her brother-in-law, Robert Entenmann (who did the hiring at the company), and said, "Mary would like for her husband to work for the company."

As an aside, read about the amazing Martha Entenmann (the mother of Charles, Robert, and William Entenmann) HERE.

Three months later, my father got a call from Entenmann's to come for an interview. On went that suit (probably the only suit he owned at the time) and off went he. I can remember when he returned home. He was speechless. It was as if he'd won the lottery. He'd been a son born to an Irish-English immigrant father in New York City during the 1920's, a child who'd starved during the Great Depression, a 12 year-old boy who'd worked hard manual labor to feed his many siblings, a 16 year-old boy whose mother had signed him into the U.S. Army during the 1940's, and a man who'd wanted only for his children not to starve as he had. No one had ever given him anything, but now, someone had given him a chance.

The Entenmann Family changed all our lives.

Because of them, my parents realized the American Dream.

Today, my older sister is an ear, nose and throat surgeon, my brother (an Ivy League graduate) is with a company in Manhattan, and I'm an attorney and author. If not for the Entenmann Family, who and where would we be now? I know that, without the Entenmann's, I wouldn't have gone to the Academy of St. Joseph (for more on this, click HERE), learned to read French and ride a horse, lived in a mansion on the south shore of Long Island, gone away to college to study with the Black Mountain poets, met my husband, gone on to law school, etc. Yes, I wouldn't have become who I became.

Let me tell you why I've written about this now after so many years. A couple of days ago, my mother (who currently lives in Florida) heard from an old friend on Long Island that William Entenmann III passed away earlier this year on New Year's Day. When she told me, it brought back a slew of memories from my youth—sun, sand, ocean... and those white boxes with the fancy blue writing. And I teared up in memory of all that William Entenmann III had done for my family...and me.

His obituary can be found HERE and HERE.

I have my own personal story about William Entenmann III that I'd like to share with you.

One day, when I was about seven years old, I was sitting on Willie Entenmann's dock as he came along. He pulled a line of fish from the Great South Bay and laid it on the dock. I stood up to have a look. The fish puffed up, then flattened, then puffed up again. I laughed with great delight in the sight. Having come from nothing, anything was everything to me. He asked me, "Haven't you ever seen puffer fish before?" I shook my head as I looked at him with eyes probably as big as moons. He laughed and took my hand. We walked up the dock toward his house. Along the way, he asked, "What's your favorite treat?" I said, "Chocolate chip cookies."

Months later, my father came home from work with an Entenmann's box. He told me that Willie Entenmann had given it to him for me. It was a box of chocolate chip cookies. Not the flat box of small chewy chocolate chip cookies you might know from the supermarket, but what I call the "all butter loaf pound cake box" with a tray of large crisp chocolate chip cookies (they were standing up like record albums in a rack, for those of you who remember the days of record albums). The cookies were beyond delicious, but unfortunately, as the company would discover, they'd break during delivery to the stores. This would've been around 1970. Anyway, they disappeared from production, then reappeared in the form as you know them today. Since their reintroduction in 1974, Entenmann’s has sold more than 620 million chocolate chip cookies.

I didn't see Willie Entenmann much during the 1970's, but when my parents realized the American Dream in the late 1970's, we moved to Ocean Avenue. Mr. & Mrs. Entenmann lived on a street off a street off the end of Ocean Avenue. We had a ton of yard work at Ocean Avenue. Gardening was my love, though. I was outside all the time. And whenever I was out cutting the front lawn, and Willie Entenmann drove past in his old Cadillac, he'd honk and wave at me. I didn't think anything of it during those days, but now, in retrospect, I think it's amazing he remembered me—the little girl who loved chocolate chip cookies.

After college, I moved away from Long Island, first to go to college in Western New York, then to law school in Boston, and later to practice law in Washington, D.C. During the past twenty-five years, whenever I've seen those white boxes with their fancy blue writing, I've thought of the Entenmann Family. So, yesterday, when I saw a box of Entenmann's chocolate chip cookies, I couldn't help but cry in memory of William Entenmann III—the man who made chocolate chip cookies for me.

Rest in Peace, William Entenmann