FROM SHORTCAKE TO SHORTSTOP

FROM SHORTCAKE TO SHORTSTOP Two people died last week whose lives had a profound effect on women. Both fashioned ground-breaking results; one more impactful than the other. Each significant though in their own way. Ronald Howes Sr. was 83 when he died in Cincinnati. He was an inventor whose products ranged from defense weaponry to electrostatic printers. As recently as last month, he still was tending to details related to his latest invention for the Defense Department. But Howes will best be remembered for his creation of the Easy Bake Oven in 1963 for Kenner products (now owned by Hasbro Toys)

He drew the inspiration for the product from a Kenner salesman who had just made a trip to New York City. Upon returning to headquarters in Cincinnati, the salesman wondered whether Kenner could develop a toy version of the chestnut roasters seen on New York City street corners. With that remark, the proverbial light bulb went on in his head.

Much of his experimentation was conducted in his own kitchen before he and other Kenner engineers finally settled on the concept that made the idea both safe and practical by deciding to use a light bulb to heat the oven. The original Easy-Bake Oven was designed to resemble a conventional oven; today's Easy-Bake Ovens resemble microwaves. Because one cannot see through the front door of the microwave Easy Bake, I don’t think the new version is as much fun as the one I grew up with. Watching the cake rise was certainly a major part of the excitement and anticipation.

More than twenty millions ovens have been sold in the past 47 years and the oven was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2006.

New Jersey Judge Sylvia Pressler died at age 73 of lymphoma. Judge Pressler was an especially prolific jurist, the author of hundreds of opinions in her 31 years on the bench. In 1995, she extended the legal rights of gay couples in a ruling that allowed a woman to adopt her partner’s 3-year-old twins. “They function together as a family,” Judge Pressler wrote of the two women, who had lived together for 14 years. “The twins are, by reason of upbringing, daily lives and ties of mutual affection, the children of both Mary and Hannah, and no court order granting or denying the adoption will change that.” Some states still do not allow gay couples to adopt; so Pressler’s ruling 15 years ago was ground-breaking.

As pioneering as that ruling was, she was best known for her decision in the Little League case, which she made before she was elevated to the bench. This was in 1973, when discrimination cases in New Jersey were heard by the Division of Civil Rights before government-appointed examiners, of which Sylvia Pressler, then a lawyer, was one.

According to her obituary in the New York Times, 38 years ago, "a 12-year-old girl, Maria Pepe, had played three games for a Hoboken Little League team before national Little League officials learned of her participation and threatened to revoke the local league’s charter if she continued to play. The National Organization for Women brought suit on behalf of the girl and all others in New Jersey. Ms. Pressler’s ruling in favor of them was upheld by the New Jersey Appellate Court, and in 1974 Little League Baseball agreed to allow girls to play on its teams and to start a softball division especially for girls. ‘The institution of Little League is as American as the hot dog and apple pie,’ she wrote in her ruling. ‘There is no reason why that part of Americana should be withheld from girls.’ ”

Baseball is as American as apple pie, Pressler wrote. Maybe the pie was cooked in an Easy Bake oven.