The "Dead Page" was what my former students called my daily Current Events lesson. Not only did we talk about, and locate current events, but also obituaries I found of interest of people who had touched their lives or lived through historical events. Evidently, I did so many obituaries, they go to to calling it the "Dead Page." I stuck with the name on my blog.
IRVINE ROBBINS, 90
Co-Founder of the Baskin-Robbins Empire
Irvine Robbins and his brother-in-law Burton Baskin both opened ice cream stores in Los Angeles after WW II and combined them in 1948. Irvine had a definite penchant for creating unusual ice cream concoctions. In 1958, when the Dodgers moved to town, he had Baseball Nut ice cream complete with raspberries for umpires.
The day after man landed on the moon, he had Lunar Cheesecake. Then, there was Beatle Nut for the Beatles. Other creations were Plum Nuts, Cha Cha Cha (cherry chocolate chip).
He retired in 1978 and by then was selling 20 million gallons of ice cream a year at more than 2000 stores world-wide.
He was the son of a dairyman and grew up scooping ice cream at his family's Tacoma, Washington store. After serving in WW II, he opened Snowbird Ice Cream store in Glendale, Ca, after cashing in an insurance policy his father had gotten him for his bar mitzvah to get the $6000 he needed to start.
Buster Baskin married his sister Shirley. He was also a WW II vet and, in 1946, opened Burton's Ice Cream in Pasadena. In 1948, the 5 Snowbirds and 3 Burton's combined. In 1953 it was renamed Baskin-Robbins, the order of names determined by a coin flip. That same year, the concept of 31 flavors was introduced.
1949- 43 stores, 1960 more than 100, 1967 about 500. It was sold to United Fruit Company in 1967 for $12 million. Six months later Baskin died from a heart attack.
Irvine Robbins' license plate read "31BR" for some reason.
From May 7th LA Times.
The Story of a Self-Made Man. More Honor to Him. Let's Commemorate by going to the local Baskin-Robbins 31 straight days. RoadDog
No comments:
Post a Comment