The following comes from the History of the Sodus Point United Methodist Church (1971) by Gordon McKee Williams (page 21):
Mrs. VanHee had a strict sense of what was proper and what was not. One Sodus resident relayed the following story. When Mr. Terry Messinger was beginning his Heluva Good Cheese business in Sodus he used to send free samples around to churches and civic groups to advertise. Each bite size chunk of cheese would have a little flag in it stating that “you are eating a Heluva Good Cheese.” Ruth Kraus was in charge of a dinner at church and thought it would be a good idea to get some free cheese. Messinger asked Ruth if it was alright to put the little flags in the cheese saying, “You are eating a Heluva Good Cheese.” Ruth thought it was perfectly O.K. Down to the church the cheese came with the tidy little flags all flying. When Mrs. VanHee saw the flags she spent the afternoon cutting out the word, “Heluva” so when she finished about 200 flags read very properly, “you are eating a __________ good cheese.” Everyone at the dinner wondered what in the world had been cut out of the little flags. This secured for the name Heluva Good Cheese some of its best word of mouth advertisement – much better than the printed word.
