The team at Made By Mary has been beyond fortunate to receive so much positive coverage of our efforts and mission. We didn’t think that the WGN news story could be topped but then realized that an article would soon be published in the Daily Herald’s “Community In Action” section on Monday, January 28th– in every edition across Chicagoland!
As our luck would have it, a major snow and cold storm hit Chicago the night before the story would be released and I was worried about getting safely to Continental Bakery to snag multiple copies. Husband to the rescue! He left for work early Monday morning and picked up a copy of the Daily Herald at the Mount Prospect train station. We were so excited to see the first picture of the paper come in – albeit a little fuzzy – Made By Mary was on the FRONT PAGE! We were thrilled! I figured the column must have been directly below the picture and couldn’t wait to read a copy myself.
A minute or two later the second picture popped up on our phones at home ….we stood in awe of the full page spread on the cover of the Neighbor section of the Daily Herald. There were beautiful color images of me and the girls, their aprons made by Woodiesigns, the cupcakes Mary and our neighbor, Jeanne, made for the Veterans Day service at Dryden Elementary School, our logo and the website by Kredo Design and, of course, Kelly’s cards. What an honor! We never imagined that something as simplistic as the mission of Made By Mary – to bring compassion and kindness while minimizing loneliness through baking – would be celebrated by so many people in Mount Prospect and across Chicagoland as they were now reading the article too!
Well before we saw how wonderful the article was, the Made By Mary team coordinated a few of our bakers to make something special that we could drop off at the Daily Herald office located on Algonquin Road in Arlington Heights as a thank you for covering the story. The roads were less than stellar Monday morning after an overnight snowfall but the energy from the article made me excited to slowly navigate over! The women at the front desk were thrilled to receive the treats and bring them up to the newsroom. Later, after posting the picture of the delivered treats on Facebook, Melynda Shamie, a Daily Herald employee wrote, “I just had a s’mores cupcake, and wow. It was so delicious! Thank you so, so much for dropping off the treats; what a great surprise on a dreary day.” Mission accomplished.
The Made By Mary team wasn’t done with our Daily Herald adventure just yet! In conversations I had with the article’s author, Eileen Daday, I learned that between the time we initially were interviewed and the time the article was published, her mother had suddenly passed away. She had been consumed with the details of her services and, of course, the emotional exhaustion that comes from saying goodbye to your mom. We were happy to make a personal Made By Mary delivery to Eileen and included a quote from Pulitzer Prize winning author Thorton Wilder, “The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude”. We were sorry to hear about your mom, Eileen. We are thankful, however, that her passing provided us an opportunity to serve you. We are so immensely thankful for all that you did to bring light to our mission at Made By Mary.
Enjoy the article published in the Daily Herald’s “Community In Action” section!
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