Page 12 - SUSQUEHANNA TIMES
Honorable Lion tells how to befriend a dog
Paul Raber is Lion of the Year
“I never expected this,”
said Paul Raber the day
after the Marietta Lions
Club presented him with
the Lion of the Year award.
The plaque was given
him by president Dennis
Shumaker and secretary
Jim Price at the Thursday
night meeting.
Several of his fellow
Lions visited Paul Raber on
Wednesday, and asked if
he was coming to the
meeting. When Paul told
them he didn’t think so,
they began trying to talk
him into it. ‘‘One fellow
wouldn’t leave until I pro-
mised to come,’’ Paul says.
Even though he didn’t
expect the award, Paul
admitted to the Susque-
hanna Times that he had
worked hard on Lions Club
projects this year.
“After all, it’s a club to
benefit the public. We
work to help people,
especially the blind,”’ Paul
noted.
Paul Raber is Marietta’s
Dog Officer. After we took
his picture, we asked how
his job was going.
**Fine,’” he replied.
“I’ve only got one stray
here, and I think I've found
a home for him. I'd rather
find a dog a good home
than take an animal to the
shelter.”’
Paul told us the secret of
being a dog officer and
staying healthy: “Don’t let
them [the dogs] know
you're afraid,’’ he said.
“Then you'll be safe.”
We asked him how to
demonstrate lack of fear to
a dog.
‘““Walk straight toward
them,’’ Paul replied, ‘‘and
hold your hand out with the
palm up. If you hold your
palm down, the dog thinks
you might hit him.”
Paul admitted to us that
his strategy isn’t foolproof,
and showed us scars from
an English sheepdog.
‘“That breed, and the
Doberman pinscher, are
the least predictable dogs.
They can lick your hand
one minute and be at your
throat the next,’ he said.
Generally, though, Paul
gets good results with his
technique. After he quickly
made friends with one
snarling canine, a man told
him, ‘I've lived next door
to that beast for ten years,
and I wouldn’t dare do
what you just did!”’
@®
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B Ig cake: The first two pastry chefs at LBJ’s daughter’s wedding
died suddenly, but Eric survived to bake the 600 Ib. fruitcake.
he baked the grandest cake we’ve ever seen for Charlie Groff and his bride.
When Charlie Groff got
married last week, he
apparently wanted a very
fine wedding cake —he
called in Eric Devon Crane.
Eric Devon Crane is a
pastry chef for the famous
Greenbrier Hotel in White
Sulphur Springs, West
Virginia. Mr. Crane, in
addition to being a friend
of Charlie Groff (who
works summers at the
Greenbrier), is one of the
world’s top cake creators.
Eric Crane travels all
over the country baking
and icing elaborate cakes.
His cakes have been eaten
in the White House (he
baked one for Linda Bird
Johnson's wedding), and
he can handle any job —he
once made a 600 Ib. fruit-
cake, for instance.
‘“It took six big men to
carry it,”’ he says of that
prodigious fruitcake. ‘It
was raining all week, and
we had to keep shoring the
cake up with extra boards
as it absorbed moisture.’’
A quiet, modest man
with a West Virginia drawl,
Eric Devon Crane works
entirely by hand, using
pieces of paper rolled up
and stuffed with icing. “I
just make a cone, trim the
end to the proper shape,
and fill it up,” he explains.
He disdains to use the
metal tubes used by most
housewives. The only
mechanical devices he uses
are batter and icing mixers.
Working with paper, he
achieves incredible results.
When we first saw the
RRR se Ee
Newly-weds Cynthia and Charlie Groff pose with the
fabulous cake made by Charlie’s friend, Eric Crane.
It’s smaller than the one Eric made for Linda Bird
Johnson’s wedding, which weighed 350 Ibs.
laced icing on Charlie
Groff’s wedding cake, we
thought it was dipped
string, because it was so
thin and regular. Eric
Devon Crane also creates
miniature sculptures in
icing, again using only
paper cones.
The Groff cake, he told
us, took him only ten
hours to make.
Mr. Crane’s wedding
cake for Linda Bird
Johnson was smaller than
his giant fruitcake, weigh-
ing in at only 350 lbs. But
it was a tough job.
In the first place, he was
a bit uneasy about doing it
at all. The two pastry chefs
who had been working on
the cake before him had
both died —within a space
Last week,
of two weeks. He admits
that this spooked him a bit,
but, as he says, ‘‘It had to
be done.’’
Eric survived baking the
five-section cake in West
Virginia, but found the
icing a tough job. After the
sections had been brought
to the White House, one to
a truck, the cake was set
up in the East Room.
Working six feet off the
floor on a scaffolding, Eric
had to ‘‘do every trick in
the book, except to stand
on my head’ to ice the
cake. ‘“‘And then, they had
the Marine Band practicing
at the other end of the
room,’ he says.
Eric worked on the icing
from 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM
the day before the Linda
Eric Devon Crane, top pastry chef from West Vir-
ginia, demonstrates his icing technique. The object in
his hand is a rolled piece of paper, filled with icing,
which is the only tool Mr. Crane uses to create...
Lion of the Year Paul Raber poses with his plaque,
presented to him last week by the Lions.
Bird got married. ‘‘They’d
set up the icing mixer in
the basement. It was really
an ordeal. I kept tripping
over the TV cables on the
floor.” he relates.
Eric didn’t see the lady
he was baking for, or the
president, but he did pass
Lady Bird and Captain
Robb (Linda Bird’s groom)
in the hallway.
It was while icing the
presidential cake that Eric
met Mr. Haller, who is the
resident White House chef.
He visits Mr. Haller about
every two years. Mr. Haller
told Eric that the Johnsons
were hard to cook for,
because they always had
more guests at an affair
than originally planned. If
Mr. Haller was told to
prepare for 200 people, he
always ended up having to
feed 300. According to Mr.
Haller, though, the Nixons
were very precise, and
never let people crash their
parties.
Eric Crane has been
a pastry chef for 18 years.
In that time he has seen
wedding fashions change.
[continued on page 7]
...this exquisite sugary fairyland. Mr. Crane some-
times works with ‘‘pastiage,”’ or ‘‘gum paste,”’ a rigid
mixture of sugar, egg whites, cream of tartar, gum
powder, and corn starch, which he casts in a plaster
mold. Other chef/artists work in wax or ice. :