LYRCH THOMAS

Many people have asked, who is Lyrch?  After painstaking research, we determined the following:

Lyrch Thomas was born in Nistuckaway, Oregon in 1879.  He founded the first Cheesecake Mission in northern Seaside, Oregon in 1905, where wayward souls would stop by and get a good slice of cheesecake on their way to southern Florence, Oregon, the end of the Washington trail.  Lyrch liked making Pumpkin Cheesecake for his visitors during Thanksgiving.  His Coconut Cheesecake was a big hit during the warm summer months.

He married Missie Clayborn in 1908, after meeting her at the mission.  Missie had traveled by covered wagon from Blairport, Iowa all the way to Seaside, when she had to pull over at the mission to try Lyrch's Cherry Cheesecake.  After one bite she was hooked on the cheesecake, and figured the only way to have more of it was to marry Lyrch (Lyrch found this out many years later).  They had 5 children, 3 boys: Myrch, Nyrch, & Pyrch and 2 girls: Sissie and Lissie.  They all worked at the mission for many years to follow.

Determined to make the finest ingredients for his cheesecakes, Lyrch planted Vanilla and Coconut trees at the Mission, but he always had problems with the coconuts, due to the extremely cloudy, rainy and overall miserable climate that Seaside offers.  His Pistachio plantation really took off, however, so he was usually pushing the Pistachio cheesecake onto everyone - they were OK with this for awhile, until the infamous Pistachio Mutiny of 1912 - after that Lyrch backed off on the Pistachio.    

Lyrch was recently on A&E's Biography Series, so look for a rerun of that to get the full story.

Lyrch lived to be 105, finally passing away in 1984 of too much cheesecake...