MSU bakers making the pink Gwen's Bagels for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Photo courtesy of MSU Culinary Services
MSU Bakers is showing its support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the form of their special bagels called Gwen’s Bagels.
Many for-profit organizations support Breast Cancer Awareness Month in an effort to raise awareness of the illness, and that’s what MSU Bakers Manager Cindy Baswell aims to do with this initiative, along with commemorating those who have lost their battle with the disease.
“It’s to bring awareness to the campus community about breast cancer,” Baswell said. “In the spirit of Breast Cancer Awareness Month that’s one goal of it. The other goal is to honor Gwen, who the bagel is named after and who is one of our bakers mothers who passed away from breast cancer.”
The baker that Baswell is referring to is Rita Lyon, a bagel baker who has worked at MSU Bakers for 19 years. Lyon originally came up with the idea of the pink-tinted cranberry bagels as a way to honor her mother who passed away in 1972.
Having been personally impacted by the disease and wanting to spread awareness to it, Lyon took the idea to Baswell back in 2009 with the hopes of the bagels actually being produced.
“She just felt a very deep desire to make sure people of this age were very aware of breast cancer, especially because she had her own experience with it,” Baswell said.
The bagels are produced and sold daily on their website throughout Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and are also sold and served in Sparty’s convenience stores and residential dining halls on campus every Wednesday through October, which MSU Bakers dub “Gwensday Wednesdays”.
While the bagels were originally sold in the shape of a ribbon to represent breast cancer awareness, Baswell said the hand-crafted process became too tedious.
“When they became so popular, we really couldn’t keep up with that production very well along with all of the other bagels we make every day,” Baswell said. “We went back to the round, traditional shape just because we needed to keep up with the number we were selling.”
Baswell said the bakery’s goal is to sell 200 dozen bagels and donate one dollar for every half-dozen bagels sold to the American Cancer Society.
“We want to at least donate 200 dollars to the American Cancer Society this year,” Baswell said. “It’s not a lot of money, but it’s a give-back opportunity.”
While there have been a couple of down years in regards to Gwen’s Bagels sales, Baswell said it was important to both her and Lyon to keep this initiative alive and going.
“Neither one of us really wanted to let it go, so we just kept doing it, because breast cancer is not going to go away so we might as well not let the awareness go away,” Baswell said.
Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
