Sweet Salvation

In January, when the Winona Pie Lady, aka Mary Zimmerman, baked her one-thousandth pie, she called up Governor Tim Pawlenty to see if he would accept it. She talked to someone in his office but never heard back.

So the seventy-three-year-old great-grandmother phoned Representative Gil Gutknecht, the Republican congressman from Rochester. Gutknecht agreed immediately and showed up on Zimmerman’s doorstep. His much-publicized visit resulted in a fifty-dollar donation for Zimmerman’s landmark caramel apple pie decorated with two tiny American flags and the number “1,000.”

During a twenty-minute conversation—“I thought he would talk all afternoon, but whoever drives him around said, ‘We’d better get going,’ ” she recently recalled— Gutknecht even told Zimmerman that he would eschew his previous plan to pack chocolate-chip cookies for an upcoming trip to Iraq, instead taking some of her pies. She never did get his order, though she was too busy filling other requests to notice.

Zimmerman began baking pies and selling them for charity (at a cost of six or seven dollars each, depending on the filling) after the tsunami struck Southeast Asia in December 2004. The conservative Christian spent a week praying for a way that she could help; meanwhile, she kept thinking about how popular her pies were at church bake sales. “I don’t have many talents, but making pies came to mind,” she said. Zimmerman, a slight woman with brown curly hair, has been periodically hospitalized with depression and found that baking pies kept her mind occupied. She hoped to make five hundred dollars to donate to a missionary priest she knows in Sri Lanka. But after she was featured in the Winona Daily News, her phone began “ringing off the hook,” she said. “I’d bake into the evenings sometimes, and sometimes I would get up at 4:30 in the morning.” One anonymous local paid $250 for a pie. Someone else sent her a hundred-dollar bill in an envelope with no return address. A local orchard donated several bushels of apples. People began to recognize her in public, nicknaming her the Pie Lady. She raised $7,500 in nine months—enough to build three houses and support a shelter for homeless youth.

Zimmerman bakes all her pies in a small, 1970s-style kitchen dominated by a wooden dining-room table the size of a twin bed. The table allows her to lay out ingredients for an entire day’s worth of baking the night before. She started off making apple and cherry pies (the latter is her favorite; the former, the most popular request) and later expanded her repertoire to include caramel apple, blueberry, and pumpkin. At a customer’s request, she even added sour cream pies.

When it comes to the baking process, Zimmerman has two tips, both of which she’s more than willing to share. The first: canola and vegetable oils. “I would never use lard,” she said. “It makes good pie crusts and people used it years ago, but it has more cholesterol.”

The second: “When my granddaughter helps me, we put lemonade Kool-Aid in the apple pies to make them more tart.”

Zimmerman was initially uncomfortable in the spotlight but soon learned the value of publicity. When she baked her five-hundredth pie, she aimed straight for the top: In a letter to President Bush, she made it clear that she was willing to mail him the pie if he couldn’t make it to Winona to receive it personally. Some time later, she received a letter with the presidential seal at the top and Bush’s signature stamped at the bottom. “Thank you for taking the time to write and for the enclosed material,” the letter said. “Our nation faces great tasks and we’re meeting them with courage and resolve … Thank you for taking the time to share your views.”

Zimmerman interpreted the note as Bush’s rejection of her invitation—this being the era of Homeland Security and six-week presidential vacations—so she sold the pie to the local bishop instead.

In August of 2005, Zimmerman burned out. Then Hurricane Katrina struck, and she knew she couldn’t stop. She raised two thousand dollars from pie sales for Catholic Charities, and another six hundred dollars went to a local girl who suffers from spina bifida, bringing total donations to over ten thousand dollars.

This past summer, however, her depression returned, and Zimmerman stopped baking after selling around eleven-hundred pies. She thought briefly about abandoning her pies altogether, then thought again.

“I was very happy about being able to do what I did,” she said, looking longingly at her spotless kitchen. “I don’t know what to do with myself right now. When my health gets better, I would like very much to continue making pies.”

She paused. “I would like to bake pies right now. People liked them a lot. They said they’d never had a pie like that.”


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