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Sweetest Day
By Dean Norman
In 1922 a committee of 12 candy makers in Cleveland, Ohio, declared the third Saturday in October to be Sweetest Day.
In the 1950s my wife remembers volunteering to pack an assortment of candies in little boxes to be given to orphan children on Sweetest Day. Maureen was a grade school kid then. The candy was given by the Tower Candy Company. She was told that Tower Candy Company began Sweetest Day before the committee made it a special day in Cleveland. It has now spread to many places across the U.S.
Some people don’t like Sweetest Day. They think the greeting card companies made it up to sell more cards. They didn’t. Blame the candy companies if you feel pressured to buy more candy.
When Maureen’s parents were dating in the 1940s, they didn’t see each other often because Bob was working in a defense industry in New York state, and Rose lived in Cleveland. So Bob had a deal with a Cleveland florist to send a rose to Rose every Saturday. What a romantic guy and girl, huh? On a third Saturday in October, which as everyone knows is Sweetest Day, Rose wondered what special gift Bob might send. She wondered for most of the day, and finally realized that nothing special was coming.
She called Bob and said, “Why haven’t you sent me something special for Sweetest Day?”
“Because I thought you are German. Not Swedish.”
Well, not everyone knew that the third Saturday in October was Sweetest Day. Bob didn’t know. He didn’t know that particular Saturday was Swedish Day, either. Because it wasn’t. Rose knew every holiday.
They married and celebrated all the holidays for 62 years. The sweetest thing they did was raise two daughters, one of which is my sweetie today.
— Dean Norman
Dean Norman is a cartoonist and humor writer, whose work has appeared in greeting cards,The New Yorker, MAD Magazine, The Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine and The Kansas City Star. He's also written comedy for cartoon shows and written and illustrated children's books. He illustrated a cartoon book for Cleveland Metroparks, Cleveland Metroparks Adventures.