Does anybody know of a way to do the following...?

I have a section in a site I am working on where a list of subpages needs to appear inside the body of the parent page.
This list needs to be auto-generated based on the published subpages of that section but also allow the CMS Editor to add an optional image and description to each list item from within the page view of the parent page.

I have created a cutom webpart which I have put into the template. This webpart uses TreeHelper.SelectNodes() to load the subpages into a DataSet and then uses this DataSet to load a custom control ('ListItem') for each row in the DataSet.

The ListItem custom control has some HTML markup, some custom Properties (Title, Link), a CMSEditableRegion control and a CMSEditableImage control. I set the ID of each of the editable controls to use the title as part of the id eg. editableControl.ID = Title + "IntroText"

The setup works properly to render the list and controls within the cms and I can enter information and save the page. However, the saved information does not get rendered on the live view of the page and when I refresh the page view in the cms the content disappears. (it still exists in CMS.CMSHelper.CMSContext.CurrentPageInfo.EditableRegions when I debug).

Is this even possible?

P.S. I know I could create this list entirely from the content on the subpages themselves by adding additional fields to the form tab but I would like to try and do this without creating a new document type or modifying the Page (Menu Item) doctype.

Thanks.