Marguerite Ashlock, TV Personality

by Diane Findlay

Thanks to Larry Hertel for sending in this article from the September 8, 1999 issue of the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Long before I knew Marguerite as one of several “elders” in the Cedar Rapids Bahá’í community in the mid 1970s, she had a career as host of a daily television show on WMT-TV titled “Home Fare,” offering helpful tips and advice to homemakers. The show aired from the mid-’50s to the mid-’60s and published a monthly newsletter for subscribers. What a great way to be of service! She also wrote a weekly nutrition column for the Gazette. The article above includes a fun anecdote about Marguerite’s influence. It may be hard to read, so I’ll quote it here:

“Once she used a can of baking-powder biscuits to make little sticky buns and ‘a whole bunch of little doo-dads.’ The local grocery store called the station, asking that they cease advertising the product. Viewers had gone out during the program to buy their own baking-powder biscuits and the store had sold out.”