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For many years, Patricia Tanner was an artist, but she didn’t work in paints, clay or stone. She used cake, frosting and sometimes flowers for her creations.
“I wish I knew how many wedding cakes I’ve made, but I have no idea,” said Tanner, who is now retired and living in the Knights of Columbus Towers.
A professional cake decorator for many years, she said she started playing with frosting around 1963.
“I’d make 10 roses and throw nine of them back in the bowl because I wasn’t satisfied with them,” Tanner said. “If you had told me I would make a living decorating cakes, I would have thought you were crazy.”
She made her first wedding cake in 1966 for her godmother.
“I didn’t know that you needed to support the layers of the cake,” Tanner said. “I just stacked the layers, and they didn’t crack.”
When she made her first wedding cake for money, she was living in a trailer and the weather was very hot.
“One of the roses slid off the cake, so I took it over to the mother of the groom’s house, and we stood that cake in front of her air conditioner,” Tanner said. “I think this was in June or July of 1978. The girl who was supposed to cut the cake didn’t do it, so I had to. After I’d spent eight hours decorating that cake, it was hard for me to cut it.”
After she’d been out of school for 21 years, Tanner enrolled at Pittsburg State University and graduated with a degree in graphic arts.
“I’m glad I did that, because it proved to me that I could do something,” she said. “I worked in a printing place for about 1 1/2 years, then went to full-time cake decorating out of my home from 1985 until 1992, when I went to work for Walmart.”
She had also done flowers for many weddings and applied for a floral position at the new Walmart Supercenter, but was hired as head cake decorator. She did that until 1996 when she broke her pelvis.
“I spent three years in a wheelchair, but I’ve had my knee replaced and lost a lot of weight, and I’m getting around much better now,” Tanner said.
She no longer does cakes professionally, but cherishes a scrapbook filled with photos of the wedding cakes and other special occasion cakes she has made, and also fondly remembers letters and cards she’s received.
For many years, Patricia Tanner was an artist, but she didn’t work in paints, clay or stone. She used cake, frosting and sometimes flowers for her creations.
“I wish I knew how many wedding cakes I’ve made, but I have no idea,” said Tanner, who is now retired and living in the Knights of Columbus Towers.
A professional cake decorator for many years, she said she started playing with frosting around 1963.
“I’d make 10 roses and throw nine of them back in the bowl because I wasn’t satisfied with them,” Tanner said. “If you had told me I would make a living decorating cakes, I would have thought you were crazy.”
She made her first wedding cake in 1966 for her godmother.
“I didn’t know that you needed to support the layers of the cake,” Tanner said. “I just stacked the layers, and they didn’t crack.”
When she made her first wedding cake for money, she was living in a trailer and the weather was very hot.
“One of the roses slid off the cake, so I took it over to the mother of the groom’s house, and we stood that cake in front of her air conditioner,” Tanner said. “I think this was in June or July of 1978. The girl who was supposed to cut the cake didn’t do it, so I had to. After I’d spent eight hours decorating that cake, it was hard for me to cut it.”
After she’d been out of school for 21 years, Tanner enrolled at Pittsburg State University and graduated with a degree in graphic arts.
“I’m glad I did that, because it proved to me that I could do something,” she said. “I worked in a printing place for about 1 1/2 years, then went to full-time cake decorating out of my home from 1985 until 1992, when I went to work for Walmart.”
She had also done flowers for many weddings and applied for a floral position at the new Walmart Supercenter, but was hired as head cake decorator. She did that until 1996 when she broke her pelvis.
“I spent three years in a wheelchair, but I’ve had my knee replaced and lost a lot of weight, and I’m getting around much better now,” Tanner said.
She no longer does cakes professionally, but cherishes a scrapbook filled with photos of the wedding cakes and other special occasion cakes she has made, and also fondly remembers letters and cards she’s received.
“One bride wrote that she’d been to two other weddings after her own,” Tanner said. “At one of them the cake had been beautiful but tasted terrible, and at the other, the cake wasn’t very pretty but tasted good. She thanked me because her wedding cake had been both pretty and good. That was so nice to hear.”
She insists, though, that she simply used cake mixes for her cakes.
“I froze the cakes, and I tell people that if they want to have a moist cake, they should freeze it,” Tanner said. “I’d freeze the layers, crumb-coat them and then I would ice them.”
There was one unforeseen consequence to her baking.
“I have three sons who do not like cake,” Tanner said. “They used to lick the bowl when I made cake icing, and they can’t stand it any more. They’d rather have a good old pie.”
While she doesn’t do much baking now, she still loves working with her hands.
“I used to teach a craft class here at the Towers, and I’d like to do that again,” Tanner said.
She also makes arrangements using seashells and artificial flowers and gives them to friends and acquaintances.
“I love flowers and I love shells, and I asked God what I could do with them,” Tanner said.
She was born at 403 E. Ninth, Pittsburg, and later lived at 407 E. Ninth for a time.
“My great-grandmother built the first three rooms for the house at 407 E. Ninth, and my father was born in that house,” Tanner said. “It was in our family until I sold it and moved here to the Towers in October of 2000.”
She said that Ken Burbach, then Towers manager, showed her several apartments, but she didn’t particularly care for them.
Then she returned and saw an apartment on the fifth floor.
“When I walked in, I knew that was my apartment,” Tanner said.
She also found love when she met Jimmie Tanner, a Towers resident whose wife had died a year earlier. They chose to have their wedding in the Towers social hall. Sadly, her husband died on Oct. 14, 2010.
“We were only married four years and two months, but those were my happiest four years,” Tanner said. “He was so good to me.”
She has been comforted by her friends in the Knights of Columbus Towers.
“I’ve always been a people person and would never have been happy living somewhere where there weren’t other people living around,” Tanner said. “I love it here and wouldn’t want to live any place else.”
