Tomorrow is National Doughnut Day, a fundraiser for The Salvation Army that occurs the first Friday of every June. Many local and 
national doughnut joints hand out free doughnuts, hoping that customers will donate their doughnut dollars to the Salvation Army. The doughnut hole-iday is more than a little symbolic this year, with the President on his way to France to mark the anniversary of D Day in Normandy, and with his continuing focus on honoring American service men and women. He also had big doughnut activity during Election Season, and interestingly, the Salvation Army began in Chicago. (Pic at top: The President autographs a coffee cup during Election Season. Inset is Krispy Kreme donuts on Election Day)Thousands of members of the Salvation Army provided crucial relief efforts for troops in both World Wars, including many women who were at or very near the front lines. The Salvation Army began Doughnut Day in 1938 as a way to raise funds for food in the Depression, and according to their official history, its origins go back to August, 1917, in Montiers, France:
In a tent near the front lines, Salvation Army lassies made donuts by filling a refuge pail with oil. They made dough with left over flour and other ingredients on hand, and used a wine bottle as a rolling pin. With a baking powder tin for a cutter end a camphor-ice suck tube for making the holes, donuts were fried - seven at a time - in soldier's steel helmets on an 18-inch stove. Later, a seven-pound shell fitted with a one-pound shell was used to cut out the donut holes....the 100 donuts made that first day were an immediate success. Soon, as many as 500 soldiers stood in muck outside the resurrected tent waiting for the sweet taste of donuts and, before long, 9,000 donuts were being made around the clock. The tent became the first 24-hour donut shop.
The President's campaign is frequently said to have "run on doughnuts;" he had countless stops at doughnut stores around the country, among his many other foodie venues. Dunkin' Donuts and Krispy Kreme doughnut stores both had get-out-the-vote campaigns, with special doughnuts and logo'd coffee cups. Dunkin' Donuts also had a create-your-own donut cards online component (pic below), and Krispy Kreme handed out special star-shaped doughnuts with red, white and blue sprinkles on November 4, 2008 if customers showed "I voted" stickers. They continued the fun on Inauguration Day, with more free doughnuts given to the happy masses. There was even a Donuts For Hope effort in the grassroots during Election Season.
When then-candidate Obama traveled to Germany in July of 2008, there was also an Obama Jelly Donut thing, with Sen. Obama being compared to President John F. Kennedy, and exhaustive references to Kennedy's Ich bin ein Berliner speech. It's historical apocrypha that what Kennedy was really saying was "I am a Jelly Doughnut," but this got attached to President Obama, all the same. It's interesting to note that if the President was related in any serious public way to doughnuts today, the shrieking from critics would be deafening, given that doughnuts are generally regarded as unhealthy. Dunkin' Donuts banned the use of trans fats in most of their products after Dr. Thomas Frieden, President Obama's new CDC head, ran a high-profile campaign against the ingredient, and managed to get trans fats banned in New York when he was Health Commissioner. (Pic: An Obama jelly d
onut lapel pin)*Obama Dunkin Donuts card, above, is from Steve Garfield at Flickr.
