Folks knew not to ask Vivian White for her lemon pound cake recipe. She guarded it with zeal.

But, if you needed one for, say, a graduation party, she’d bake you one. No charge.

Around the holidays, to stay ahead of demand, she baked in bulk.

“She just loved making those cakes, and seeing people taste them and be like ‘Oh, my goodness!’” said her daughter, Deidra White Cope.

Mrs. White once was awoken in the night by a friend with a short-notice cake request, which she honored by turning on the lights in the kitchen of her Chatham home and getting to work. Kindness was her currency, family said.

Mrs. White died Sept. 22 from natural causes. She was 92.

In 1951, when she was 19, Mrs. White moved from rural Arkansas to Chicago — one of the millions of rural Blacks who fled the South an

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