Longtime Oakland bakery owner knew every customer by name
Ruth LaVallee grew up in every child’s dream, surrounded by the colorful iced cookies, chocolate-chocolate cakes and cream- and jellyfilled doughnuts her father, Peter Kunst, got up at 4 a.m. to bake from scratch in his bakery on Forbes Avenue in Oakland.
Yet little did she know as a little girl that she’d one day become not just the public face of the mom-and-pop business, but also the personification of its slogan, “It pleases us to please you.”
After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in 1951 with a degree in business, Mrs. LaVallee ended up working for the familyowned Kunst Bakery for more than 50 years. She took to her role as front-of-house manager like buttercream icing to one of her dad’s legendary sheet cakes.
“She loved the bakery business because of the people,” said her son, Charles LaVallee of Cranberry, who is executive director for Variety the Children’s Charity, a nonprofit dedicated to enabling children with disabilities. “Whether you were somebody important, or a grandmother who lived on Atwood Street getting cookies for the grandkids, she knew you, what you liked and what was going on in the neighborhood.”
Mrs. LaVallee died Saturday of congestive heart failure at Wexford Healthcare Center in McCandless. She was 87.
The middle of three children, Mrs. LaVallee was born on June 10, 1930, and grew up in Brookline.
Her mother, Theresa, took ill when she was very young, so she was raised by her father, Peter Kunst, who immigrated to Pittsburgh from Hude, Germany, in 1925 at age 20.
One of 13 children, Mr. Kunst dreamed of being a gardener. But his mother decided he’d be better off learning to use his hands to work dough instead of soil, “because then he’d always have something to eat,” recalled Mr. LaVallee. He took that advice to heart, and 12 years after arriving in thecity, he opened Kunst Bakery on Brookline Boulevard in Brookline. It was an immediatesuccess.
In 1945, the bakery relocated to bustling Forbes Avenue in Oakland. And like her older brother and younger sister, Mrs. LaVallee helped out where she could, usually behind the counter or near the front door, where she first greeted customers with a ready smile and then thanked them on their way out the door for their patronage.
She met her future husband, Charles, after he returned home from World War II, and after marrying in 1954, they would live in Shadyside until his death in 2000.
Many of those customers became good friends. Former University of Pittsburgh chancellor Mark Nordenberg first got to know Mrs. LaVallee in the late 1970s, when as a Pitt law professor he began his day with a 6 a.m. visit to the bakery, often with law school dean Ed Sell in tow. “We’d start the day with a doughnut, but what was really great about the trip was the company of Ruth. She had a kind word for everyone.”
Mr. Nordenberg also was struck by her entrepreneurial spirit. “Ruth really was a pioneering woman in her own right,” he said. Even as the bakery lost sales to supermarkets and national chains in later years, she and her brother, Paul Kunst, who took over the business when their father died in 1973, kept it going. “There she was, maintaining success year after year.”
Still, the bakery would not continue to a third generation: After retiring in 2003, Mrs. LaVallee and her brother sold it to the same baking family that purchased Peter Kunst’s bakery in Brookline in the 1940s.
Edmund Ricci, professor emeritus of Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health, is another who knew both the gooey pleasure of the bakery’s doughnuts and took refuge in its warm, comforting atmosphere.
“It was a crossroads for Oakland humanity and beyond,” said Mr. Ricci, drawing not just everyday folk but also local celebrities such as Fred Rogers and Thomas Starzl, the pioneering Pittsburgh transplant surgeon and researcher. “Everyone was attracted to her.”
So much so, that one time after undergoing surgery, Dr. Starzl slipped a raincoat over his hospital gown and sneaked out of the hospital to go have a doughnut with Mrs. LaVallee, said her son.
While the bakery’s smells were always heavenly, the hours were not. “My goodness, she had an incredible work ethic,” said Mr. Ricci of her 14-hour days. “And you knew she had been there since whatever ungodly hour.”
Bill Isler, who recently retired as longtime president and CEO of the Fred Rogers Co., remembered her generous spirit.
“When you walked in to her bakery, everything was about you,” he said. “She knew people by name and remembered what they liked.”
Mr. Isler first came to know Mrs. LaVallee during college, when he was working for Forbes Steel & Wire Corp. in Canonsburg. One of his tasks as a lowly “roadrunner” was to drive to the bakery and pick up cinnamon doughnuts for the president of the company. He rekindled their friendship when he started working in Oakland. “I never saw her in anything but a happy mood. She loved her customers.”
It was Mrs. LaVallee’s deep sense of community that led her son to choose a career serving others in the nonprofit sector, and also why her grandson, Daniel LaVallee of Greenfield, decided to make a run for Congress in 2014. “She taught me to act each day to try to make a difference in people’s lives,” he said. “She was so genuine and kind to others.”
Besides her son and grandson, Mrs. LaVallee is survived by a daughter-inlaw, Terese Vorsheck; granddaughter, Terrina LaVallee; several greatgrandchildren; and nieces and nephews. Visitation is from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday at John A. Freyvogel Sons Inc., 4900 Centre Ave. at Devonshire Street, Shadyside, A memorial service will follow at 7 p.m. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to Variety, the Children’s Charity.