The original Gerber baby, Ann Turner Cook, celebrated her 91st birthday this Monday. A sketch of Ann when she was just four months old became one of the most recognizable logos in the world today.
In 1928, the Fremont Canning Company decided to hold a contest to find a face for its new baby food campaign, Gerber Strained Foods. Many drawings and paintings were submitted, with many submissions being elaborate baby portraits.
Dorothy Hope Smith of Westport, Connecticut was an artist who specialized in children’s drawings. Her next-door neighbors had a four-month-old daughter (Ann Turner Cook) who she sketched a charcoal drawing of and submitted it to the Fremont Canning Company.
Smith told the judges that if they selected her drawing as the winner, she would finish it professionally. To her surprise, her drawing won, but the judges wanted no changes to be made to the sketch.
In 1928, the “Gerber Baby” was introduced to help identify their new product, with it making its first appearance in a “Good Housekeeping” magazine. Over the next few months, the Gerber Baby gained national recognition and eventually became internationally recognized as the symbol for baby food.
The symbol became so popular that Fremont Canning Company made it their official trademark in 1931 before eventually changing their name to Gerber Products Company in 1941.
Ann Turner Cook grew up went on to study education and English journalism and earned a master’s degree in English Education. She taught at a variety of elementary and junior high schools in Florida after college before eventually teaching literature and creative writing at Hillsborough High School in Tampa.
After retiring from teaching, Cook wrote a series of mystery novels set on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Happy Birthday, Ann!