George cherry pie keeps people coming back

People wait in line for a bird's eye shot of the giant Fourth of July pie in George. The city's annual giant cherry pie has in past years fed up to 2,000 people, organizers said.

A girl watches her little brother give a carnival game a try in George Monday.

by Herald Staff Writer & Ryan Lancaster
| July 6, 2011 6:05 AM

A girl watches her little brother give a carnival game a try in George Monday.

GEORGE - Thousands of people lined up in George Monday for a little slice of a big tradition.

In 1957 George founder Charlie Brown started handing out pieces of "the world's largest cherry pie" to attract people to his new town site for Fourth of July celebrations, according to local historians.

While the claim may have gone unproven, the custom has carried on long after the city was incorporated 50 years ago.

Lately that's in large part thanks to the Georgettes, a group of about 20 women who spend a couple days and lots of ingredients making the pie a reality each year.

The annual pie crust design is created on a computer by Georgettes member Debby Kooy, who then gets help from others to translate her vision into doughy cutouts, about 15 gallons worth according to Marylou Krautscheid, another member of the group.

The pie crust is baked over several hours in six ovens at Quincy High School before it's artfully arranged on top of 75 gallons of cherry pie filling, Krautscheid said.

For many years the group employed an outdoor brick oven to bake the crust but it was vandalized many years ago, she said. The Georgettes still use the original pie pan, an enormous metal square that takes several men to lift even before it's filled with dessert.

"We feed anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 people, depending on the year," Krautscheid said. "Last year the pie was gone in an hour."

The process of making it goes pretty fast, too, said Jeannie Bushman, another Georgette.

"We all know how the process goes now, we pretty much have it down to a science," she said.

Bushman is also in charge of baking a cake for the city's President's Day celebrations, a massive undertaking itself that requires eight large pans that each contain four boxes of cake mix and a dozen eggs.

Kooy, who has headed up the city's Fourth of July celebrations since 2000, said she's pleased to be part of keeping such a unique tradition alive as well as doing her part to bring people into the area.

"It's only natural for the Fourth of July to happen in a big way in George, Washington," she said. "While we'd love to have a hotel of our own here in town this event really benefits the whole Columbia Basin area."