Ann Turner Cook Dies at 95; Her Face Sold Baby Food by the Billions

The lengthy anonymity of the Gerber child additionally ensured that there was no less than one pretender to the throne. Within the Nineteen Forties, one household sued the corporate, claiming that its youngster was the infant on the label. Testifying in courtroom, Ms. Smith disclosed her mannequin’s identification, and the go well with was determined in Gerber’s favor.

Ms. Cook dinner, who had been conscious of her position since early childhood, stored her personal counsel. After transferring together with her household to Orlando, Fla., within the late Thirties, she earned a bachelor’s diploma in English from Southern Methodist College in Dallas, adopted by a grasp’s within the subject from the College of South Florida. She taught junior excessive and highschool English, changing into the division chairwoman of Hillsborough Excessive College in Tampa, Fla.

As a younger trainer, Ms. Cook dinner, afraid of the beautiful model of disdain at which adolescents excel, selected by no means to reveal her childish identification. Solely within the late Seventies, with Gerber’s commemoration of the drawing’s fiftieth anniversary, did she publicly reveal herself as its topic. Her college students, she later stated, have been intrigued.

Ms. Cook dinner’s husband, James Cook dinner, a criminologist who was a significant with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Workplace in Tampa, died in 2004. Her survivors embody three daughters, Jan Cook dinner, Carol Legarreta and Kathy Cook dinner; a son, Clifford; eight grandchildren; and 9 great-grandchildren.

After retiring from instructing, Ms. Cook dinner wrote a sequence of self-published crime novels. She grew amiably reconciled to life because the Gerber child, granting interviews and showing on the tv quiz present “To Inform the Reality.”

Bogart was a small lingering irritant, however he might be borne.

Ms. Cook dinner’s long-ago likeness stays a cultural touchstone to today. Lately, Gerber, now a subsidiary of Nestlé, has held an annual infants’ photograph contest, awarding a grand prize of $25,000 and utilizing the winner in its promoting.

As soon as she recognized herself because the Gerber child — and because the mom of 4 besides — Ms. Cook dinner left herself open to a query that she needed to reply cagily. She gave simply such a solution when The Globe and Mail, the Canadian newspaper, put the query to her in a 1987 interview:

Did she feed her personal kids Gerber child meals?

There was a slight pause.

“Not completely,” Ms. Cook dinner replied.