A little history . . .” Sweetest Day, observed on the 3rd Saturday in the month of October has its origin in Cleveland in 1922, during the Great Depression. At present the holiday is primarily celebrated in the Midwestern U.S. states of Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Ohio. About 60 years ago, Herbert Birch Kingston, a Cleveland man and a candy store employee felt that the city’s orphans and shut-ins were often being overlooked and neglected. To instill in them a sense of being cared for, he distributed small gifts and candy to those who had fallen on hard times, with the help of his friends and neighbors, on a Saturday in October. Other Clevelanders soon followed suit, and the celebration came to be known as the “Sweetest Day”. On the first Sweetest Day, movie star Ann Pennington presented 2,200 Cleveland newspaper boys with boxes of candy to express gratitude for the service they render to the public. Theda Bara, another popular movie star distributed 10,000 boxes of candy to the people in Cleveland hospitals and also offered candy to all those who came to watch her film in a local theater. “
Happy Sweetest Day!
Ann Pennington
Theda Bara
Gunsmoke and Knitting 