Folks knew not to ask Vivian White for her lemon pound cake recipe. She guarded it with zeal.
But, if you needed one for, say, a graduation party, she’d bake you one. No charge.
Around the holidays, to stay ahead of demand, she baked in bulk.
“She just loved making those cakes, and seeing people taste them and be like ‘Oh, my goodness!'” said her daughter, Deidra White Cope.
Mrs. White once was awoken in the night by a friend with a short-notice cake request, which she honored by turning on the lights in the kitchen of her Chatham home and getting to work. Kindness was her currency, family said.
Mrs. White died Sept. 22 from natural causes. She was 92.
In 1951, when she was 19, Mrs. White moved from rural Arkansas to Chicago — one of the millions of rural Blacks who fled the South and Jim Crow laws to find better job opportunities elsewhere in what’s known as the Great Migration.
She was born Oct. 12, 1932, and was delivered by her grandmother, who served as a midwife in their rural community.
Mrs. White grew up alongside her seven siblings, her parents, Arthur and AnneBelle Davis, who were field workers, and her grandfather, who’d been enslaved until age 7.
In Chicago she found lodging in Bronzeville and worked at a textiles factory, where she met her future husband, Thomas White. They loved going to nightclubs on the South Side.
On sweltering summer nights, Mrs. White would take a pillow and a blanket and sleep under the night sky in Washington Park.
She went with a friend to see the body of Emmett Till in 1955 when his open casket was on display at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ on South State Street.
“She told me it was the worst thing she’d ever seen in her life, and how people were crying and passing out,” said White Cope, former news planning manager at WBBM-TV, who noted her mother was a news junkie who always wanted to know the backstory of items on the evening newscast.
Mrs. White had a firsthand view of many historic events.
She could reminisce about the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated; watching homes and businesses go down so the Dan Ryan Expressway could go up; and digging out after the epic blizzard of 1967 that dumped nearly 2 feet of snow on Chicago.
Mrs. White settled in Chatham and worked for nearly three decades as a dietary supervisor at the old Cook County Hospital, where she helped prepare meals that were served to patients.
“What I remember most about her is kindness over cruelty, support over criticism. Those are the things she instilled in me,” said her nephew, retired Army Col. Cortez Dial, who counted Mrs. White as a second mother after his mother died.
“In a world of uncertainty, those things are critical to be able to live with yourself and know who you are under all circumstances,” Dial said. “Her life philosophy was: There’s no substitute for preparation, stay calm in the face of adversity and always look for the brighter side.”
Backyard barbecues, block parties and looking out for each other’s kids marked her years in Chatham.
“Voting for Barack Obama was a milestone she could never have imagined growing up like she did,” said her daughter.
“She never met Obama, but he was very much in her heart. She saved a lot of Obama memorabilia because she was just very proud,” she said.
One cherished item was a Barack Obama Christmas ornament.
“She just loved Christmas; she was the Christmas queen. We have crates and crates of decorations going back to my childhood,” said her daughter.
“She loved people,” her daughter said. “And people would just open up to her. She always knew people’s stories because they just felt comfortable enough to share things with her.”
White Cope’s husband, Larry Cope, a graphic designer by trade, got back into creating personal art and putting it on exhibit because Mrs. White saw him sketching as the two waited for one of her physical therapy appointments and asked “Why are you creating art no one will ever see?
“She was just a really supportive person. I have her to thank for that,” said Cope, who created a label for Mrs. White’s lemon pound cake that read “Vivian’s pound cake.”
Services have been held.