ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 3, 1997 TAG: 9703030130
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LE ROY, N.Y.
SOURCE: BEN DOBBIN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
In March 1897, a young carpenter trying to make his fortune in patent medicines mixed fruit flavoring into gelatin and began selling the sweet concoction door to door. His wife christened it Jell-O.
Thus was born 20th-century America's most ubiquitous dessert, a wobbly standby at church potlucks, school cafeterias and summer camps as far back as anyone can recall.
Within a decade, Jell-O was a million-dollar business, but not for its inventor. Pearle Bixby Wait was still building houses and hoping to strike it rich with a homemade laxative, cough syrup or foot remedy.
Those initial door-to-door sales had never picked up, so Wait had sold the Jell-O trademark in 1899 to the wealthiest man in town for $450. When he died in 1915 at age 44, his widow had to take in sewing jobs and boarders to feed the family.
``I often say to our kids, `Just think, we could be rich and unhappy and living in the Bahamas!''' exclaims his granddaughter, Martha Lapp Tabone, 55, an elementary school teacher in this town of 8,500 in rural western New York.
``It would have been nice '' she added, any hint of wistfulness dispelled by a burst of laughter.
Jell-O left here in 1964, taking along many of its 330 employees to a new home in Dover, Del., and leaving a bitter aftertaste that lingered for years.
Now its 100th birthday has sprung hopes of a modest payback.
Latter-day owner Kraft Foods, which boasts $1 billion in annual Jell-O sales, recently donated $50,000 to convert an unoccupied, century-old stone building behind the Le Roy Historical Society into a Jell-O museum.
It will highlight Jell-O's versatility, artful marketing and enduring popularity - 13 boxes of ``America's Most Famous Dessert'' are sold every second in the United States.
Wait's simple idea of adding raspberry, strawberry, lemon and orange flavors to gelatin - animal tissue reduced to a fibrous protein called collagen - wasn't an instant hit for the second owner, Orator Woodward.
A few months after the affluent entrepreneur began churning out Wait's formula at his Genesee Pure Foods factory, he tried to hock the trademark to his plant supervisor for $35.
That offer was rejected, so Woodward tried a marketing gimmick still in use today: He gave away thousands of Jell-O molds and recipes at fairs, church socials and picnics.
Bowls of Jell-O were handed out to immigrants passing through Ellis Island and a cute 4-year-old Jell-O Girl was featured in magazine ads.
Although it has endured more than its share of denigration - one writer labeled it ``that inland jellyfish of many hues'' - Jell-O's staying power seems to hinge greatly on its ability to find new forms in salads, yogurts, snacks and alcoholic drinks.
The Jell-O exhibit will tour nationwide after Labor Day, then settle next year in Le Roy, 25 miles southwest of Rochester. Among its attractions: an interactive kitchen for youngsters, playbacks of Jack Benny's Jell-O commercials in the 1930s, EEG printouts of brain waves and their resemblance to electrical waves produced by Jell-O when wiggled.
Jell-O isn't Le Roy's only claim to fame: the first stringless string bean was developed here in 1887.
LENGTH: Medium: 64 linesby CNB