Spring is in the air. The fragrant scent is in the dazzling daffodils, the rains and the lush green
grass.
And in that sweet smell of cinnamon bread wafting down the street.
Real estate agent Marie Pendleton makes her special recipe, which has been baked in her family for over
50 years, for all of her clients at the closing of their new home.
She made four last week.
“It’s truly April,” said Pendleton, referring to the typically busy time in the real estate market.
The Cinnamon Swirl Bread has a sweet white bread as its base. She recommends toasting and buttering it,
warming it in the oven, or serving it as French toast.
For Christmas morning, she’ll cut the dough into rolls, serving them with a caramel sauce with pecans.

“To me, it tastes like Christmas because it’s been in my life for 60 years.”
The tradition started in her mom’s kitchen, growing up in Champagne, Illinois.
“When I was a girl, my mother made loaves of cinnamon bread for a handful of people.”
That handful grew to a community. Pendleton took up the torch after she married husband Mark 43 years
ago.
“I started out giving to my in-laws and family,” she said, adding that Mark has seven siblings, so that
was no small feat.
When she founded the Montessori School of Bowling Green in 1980, she began making the loaves for staff.
In the beginning, that was one person.
By 2005, Pendleton was up to baking 35 loaves during the holiday season.
When she added in neighbors, the bread number rose to 85.
When she retired from Montessori in 2005, the bread-baking was drastically cut. But not for long.
“When I started selling real estate in 2006, all real estate agents gave a closing gift.”
Pendleton decided to give her clients the cinnamon loaf, wrapped in a tea towel, with this message: “Your
house will be a home because it has homemade bread.”
The recipe is taken from a 1968 Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, with hers being the sixth printing
in 1973.
The bread process is quite time consuming, with the milk scalding, rising and cooling processes.
Pendleton doesn’t take any shortcuts.
“They’re all hand-done. There’s no bread machine.”
She will make up to five loaves at a time, doubling the recipe.
Her daughters, Emily and Anna, are continuing the tradition with their families; there are four
grandchildren.
“They have taken the mantle on from my mother. It’s just a family tradition.”
Pendleton’s mother, Maxine Pearson, lived in Bowling Green for a few years with Marie and Mark. She died
in 2010.
She was an excellent pie maker, with the dessert served every Sunday in the evening. The family would
have a big lunch at noon after church, then eat salad and pie for dinner.
“I grew up on every kind of fruit pie.”
Pendleton recalled the Sunday pies being served the same size to her and her siblings — sometimes a
protractor was pulled out — to make sure everyone got the exact serving.
The family grumbled mightily every Sunday, with each wanting a whole pie. One day, Maxine called their
bluff and everyone got a pie.
No one came close to finishing.
“We were all busted,” Pendleton said with a smile.
After she and Mark settled in Bowling Green, Pendleton knew almost immediately that she wanted to start
Montessori, which focuses on educating the whole child to develop mutual respect, personal
responsibility and a passion for learning.
Deciding to retire was difficult.
“It’s hard to leave a place that you founded,” she said. “But if everything’s healthy, it’s a good time.”

After a year off, she joined Newlove Realty.
Pendleton has received the OAR President’s Sales Club Award every year since 2010, and was the president
of the Wood County Board of Realtors in 2014.
After the real estate downturn in the early 2000s, the application process to buy a home became extremely
complicated, Pendleton said. She developed a checklist to help her clients.
“I really take pride in educating my people on the way,” she said. “It is one of the high, high stressors
in life (buying a home). I work really hard for it to be the least possible stress it can be.”
She and Mark attend Brookside Church, where they’re involved in communion ministry. Pendleton also knits,
and showed off a sweater that she made, during the interview last week in her Newlove office. She also
serves on the board for the Bowling Green Community Foundation.