Ann Turner Cook was an outstanding mystery writer and English instructor. Numerous individuals may be unaware that her initial claim to fame has nothing to do with her writing or teaching skills. It includes a photograph of her face when she was a newborn.

She is the internationally renowned Gerber Baby. Since 1928, when it won a brand contest, her sketch has been on the brand’s infant food jars and other items, spanning nearly nine decades.

Fox reports that the charcoal drawing created by Ann’s family friend Dorothy Hope Smith in 1931 became Gerber’s official trademark.

 

The classic sketch depicts a little Ann with wide-eyed innocence and her mouth open in surprise and wonder.

Although the artist said she would convert the sketch into a more full work of art if she won the contest, the judges were so enamored with the sketch that they insisted it become the brand’s official logo.

 

The rest is now past. People all over the world have learned to recognize and like this adorable baby face seen on Gerber products and in all of their current advertising.

Who is Ann Turner Cook’s Father Leslie Turner?

More than three decades ago, a syndicated comic strip writer-artist called Les Turner published Captain Easy’s exploits.

Turner grew up in Wichita Falls, Texas, where he attended high school and began drawing while still a child. He was born in Cisco, Texas. A. C. Swinburne, the architect and builder of multiple courthouses in West Texas, was his grandpa.

 

When Turner was a freshman at Southern Methodist University, he began making money with his work after serving in the U.S. Army for a short time near the close of World War I.

He took a one-term leave of absence from college in order to attend the Chicago Academy of Art. During the summer months while attending SMU, Turner and a group of college friends would embark on cross-country road trips.

He worked in a Dallas engraving company after graduating from SMU in 1922 with a degree in English, which he used to edit the school’s 1922 yearbook.

He sold a cartoon to Judge while working from Dallas as a freelancer.

A few years after his marriage to Silverton, Texas native Bethel Burson, he began working as an illustrator for various publications including Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal and Boys’ Life in New York City.

Henry Shute’s “Plupy” stories, which he illustrated for The Saturday Evening Post, took him two years to break into the market.

 

Ann, Joy, and Toby were Turner’s daughters. As a model for the Gerber Baby branded artwork by Turner family neighbor and artist Dorothy Hope Smith, Ann Turner Cook became a household name.

The Brandy O’Bannon mystery novels, including Trace Their Shadows and Shadow over Cedar Key, were written by Cook while he taught literature and creative writing at the University of Tampa for 26 years.