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HISTORY TOPICS: BIOGRAPHIES

JACOB L. LOOSE
FOUNDER OF LOOSE-WILES BISCUIT

Jacob Loose was a young Pennsylvania transplant to Chetopa, Kansas. He opened his first dry goods store there in the 1870s. Twenty-five years later, he was baking mogul of Kansas City's enormous Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company . Cookies and soda crackers enabled Jacob and Ella Loose to live well. And they gave generously.

The Loose's philanthropy is legendary. Jacob's name evokes lovely Loose Park . Mrs. Loose gave the 80-acre green space to the city in 1923 in her husband's memory. Ella Loose herself was famous for her 30-year tradition of Thanksgiving "shoe parties." Until the 1940s, Mrs. Loose gave an annual party for the children at the Gillis Orphans' Home. Each child received a brand new pair of shoes plus a dollar bill for spending money!

The Loose's splendid 1909 mansion still stands on the southeast corner of Walnut and Armour Boulevard. Still, during Jacob Loose's lifetime, the couple's social life was modest. But after his death, Ella Loose became a social butterfly. At past 60, she went to Washington D.C. "to scale the battlements of capital society," she said.

For almost ten winters she held sway there in a spacious apartment at the Mayflower Hotel. Then an unforgivable blunder occurred. At one of her dinner parties, a brand of crackers made by a company other than her own was served! Mrs. Loose promptly terminated her lease at the Mayflower. In a huff she moved to the Shoreham for her last seven years.

Jacob Loose died at age 73 on September 18, 1923. Ella Loose outlived him almost a quarter of a century, expiring on September 26, 1945. Their charitable trusts, combined with those of his brother Joseph and family, ultimately formed the basis for Kansas City's largest charitable organization, Greater Kansas City Community Foundation and Affiliated Trusts.