Tom Harte drinks his coffee from a mug "on principle." He smiles as he sits down at My Daddy's Cheesecake, pointing to his own caricature on the ceramic and nostalgically thinking back to 1987. He founded the bakery then with his wife Jane and partners Lauchette and Joe Low. The business has traded hands, moved from its original spot in downtown Cape Girardeau to 265 S. Broadview St. and expanded to a location at Saint Francis Medical Center since, but it keeps the same charm it always has.

Harte is a retired professor, debate coach and speech communication and theater department chair from Southeast Missouri State University, but he hasn't slowed down in his work. He now writes a food column for the Southeast Missourian and hosts KRCU's "Caffé Concerto," a show that combines his knowledge of cuisine and love of classical music. An avid traveler as well, Harte's interests really sum up to a will to never stop learning.

Could you explain your previous roles at Southeast?

I was a student first. I came to college, and then I went and taught for a year in Hazelwood, Missouri. Then, actually, some of my former professors, mentors, called and said, "We have an opening here, if you would be interested, for an assistant debate coach." So we came back and the rest, I guess as they say, is history. I just stayed. I went back to school and finished my degree at Illinois. I think I was on staff [at Southeast] for 34 years.

You're the founder of My Daddy's Cheesecake. How did you get started?

Well it really wasn't me so much as it was my good friend Lauchette Low. She was married to Joe Low, who was one of my former teachers and then became a colleague, and we were very good friends, we had lots of things in common. We liked to eat, for example, and cheesecake was one of his passions. He challenged me to see if I could recreate the cheesecake at the Chase Park Plaza hotel in St. Louis. So I worked on that, and then one time, believe it or not, we had a little supper club and there were some other people in it, I think eight people, four couples, we actually had a cheesecake party one night. We had 10 or so different cheesecakes, each person brought one or something. Anyway, so she said, "I think you could sell these. These cheesecakes are so good," and I said, "No, I don't have time for that. I think it's very nice, it's flattering and so on, but really I couldn't."

She was quite the go-getter and very persuasive, so she went down to [Jeremiah's] and asked them if they would be interested in serving cheesecakes. It was a steakhouse place, and all they had on the menu were basically steaks and chops. They didn't really have much in the way of desserts, it was kind of an afterthought, so they said, "Sure." So Lauchette said, "Could you make four cheesecakes a week for them?" and I said, "Yeah, I can make that. That's not that much trouble." Then my daughter got into the process because then she was hired, totally independently, by the folks down there to be a waitress. She was in school at Mizzou and needed a job in the summertime. So she would ask people at the end of their meal, "Would you like a slice of my daddy's cheesecake?" which was a perfectly legitimate thing for her to say because it was her daddy's cheesecake. The rest of the waiters and waitresses saw she was selling a lot of desserts that way, so they all did the same thing -- "Would you like a slice of my daddy's cheesecake?" -- and the name just kind of stuck. When we expanded the business we had originally had all kinds of loony ideas about what to call it, and we said, "You know, we ought to call it My Daddy's Cheesecake," so that's how we got started.

Then we expanded to other restaurants besides Jeremiah's, and then one thing led to another and we did a kind of a wholesale and mail order business. Finally, we had our little store. ... It says up here on [the "Our Story" board at My Daddy's Cheesecake], "the dessert sensation," and it kind of was a dessert sensation. I think maybe because people hadn't had that much experience with real honest-to-goodness, well-made cheesecake, that had something that was less than that. We prided ourselves on making what we thought was the best cheesecake.

You're also a food columnist for the Southeast Missourian. What does your work entail there?

I do this column once a month, and really it was the cheesecake thing that got me into it. ... I call it a food essay. Now there's only one recipe in the column. When we first started we thought we had to have a lot of recipes and so on, but now the focus is more on maybe the history of a particular food or how it was invented, what its significance is.

... Of course, my travels feed into that a lot as well. I might write about something that I did a lot with. Spanish ham, for example, when we were in Madrid, I did a column on that. But it's not, I don't think, your usual cooking column which has just a quick little header and then gives you a bunch of recipes. ... The columns range far and wide. Then a book came out with all of these columns that the University Press did. So, as I say, food essay is the best, or I think the book says "reflections and recipes."

Did your background in food influence your KRCU show "Caffé Concerto?"

I'm not really sure that there was a connection. For some reason, I was asked to do an interview show with a couple of other colleagues on KRCU. We called it "Going Public," and we would interview somebody -- it was a public affairs show, really. We had fun doing that, and then when I was about to retire, the manager at the station, Greg Petrowich, who's now managing over at Carbondale ... said, "You're retiring, would you like to do a show?" and I said, "Of course, I'm a ham. I'd love to be on the radio every day."

I love classical music, so that's how I got the assignment of the "Caffé Concerto." ... It's been called the "Caffé Concerto" ever since they started. It's had other hosts, but no one ever thought of, for some reason, running it like a cafĂ©, so that's what I decided. You know, "Your table is waiting" and "I'm your server" and we do birthdays. The first piece is an hors d'oeuvre, the symphony is the main course and we have a little piano sonata for dessert. That's been the most fun thing that I have ever done, because I love the music, I love being on the air. I program my own music, and I love doing different things.

How has a combination of these experiences affected your leadership style?

I don't really think of myself as much of leader, I think of myself as more of a follower, maybe, but I think when you have a passion for something and you're always trying to find out more about it -- to me, one of the most exciting things, and it happened on this last trip, is to go someplace and find a dish you've never heard of, you never knew it existed, and here people have been eating it over in this country for hundreds and hundreds of years -- I think maybe that rubs off on people. I don't know if you call it leadership, but when you have a passion for something and you have some knowledge about it and you try to impart it to other people, that has an impact.

What qualities constitute someone who shows exemplary leadership?

I think that passion is part of it. I think you have to really like what you do and want to do it. On the other hand, I think, probably, there are way too many people in this world who don't have the luxury of going to work and doing what they like. They hate the thought of going, and they can't wait for the clock to say it's time to go home, and I think that's probably true of a lot of people. You're really lucky to be able to do something that you enjoy and think you're halfway good at.

... Frankly, I have seen this back when I was advising students. I'd see them come in and they were interested in this or that, but they decided they want to take this major instead because those people make more money when they get out. I think some people, understandably, end up doing jobs which aren't that exciting to them, but I think that's an important part of it. I think if you like what you're doing and think you're competent in it, I think that's the best way to lead. People can see that and people react.