* Nathan Ehrlich; Longtime Leader of Cake Bakers Union

Nathan Ehrlich, 87, a union leader who baked cakes for presidents. Ehrlich led the Cake Bakers Union, Local 51, in New York, for more than 40 years. “The people in his union were the artisans of the cake industry,” his daughter, Sandra Banner, said. She said her father was born in Poland and emigrated to New York in 1923. “He worked in basements, in horrendous conditions--rats, no ventilation . . . they were practically slaves,” Mrs. Banner said. Her father organized the union to improve working conditions. Ehrlich baked cakes for the presidential inaugurations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as well as cakes for Eleanor Roosevelt, Prince Philip, senators and foreign dignitaries including Israel’s Golda Meir. In Los Angeles on Friday.