Four Generations and Counting at Aggie Ice Cream Store, Lab

“Everything I ever needed to know, I learned from working in USU’s dairy lab,” quips Stephanie Richardson White, a Utah State grad, Class of ’92, who now works in the university’s Ecology Center. “Some people are patient; some aren’t. Some know exactly what they want and others need time for serious deliberation. Some are easily pleased and others are never satisfied.”

White’s photo, taken with her sister, Darci Richardson Singer, graces the walls of the Aggie Ice Cream store. The pair represents the third generation of the Richardson family to work in the university’s dairy processing lab and Cache Valley’s landmark ice cream stop. Photos of their grandfather, Stanley Richardson, who co-managed the lab in 1920s, and their father, Emeritus Professor Gary Richardson, who was a student lab manager in the early 1950s and for whom the current lab is named, also deck the halls.

 

This spring, a fourth generation Richardson, freshman Jessica Neeley, joined the club when she took up an ice cream scoop and accepted employment at the store. An Idaho Falls native, Neeley is the great-granddaughter of Stanley, granddaughter of Gary and niece to White and Singer.

 

Neeley told a local reporter “it makes me feel really good” to continue the family tradition.

 

Gary Richardson, who graduated from Utah State in 1953 and joined the university’s faculty in 1967, recently shared a history of the lab with USU’s AC Women’s Club. The current lab was christened the Gary Haight Richardson Dairy Products Laboratory in 1994 as a result of a gift to the university from USU alum Niranjan R. Gandhi and his wife, Josephine N. Gandhi. Gandhi was a graduate student of Richardson.

 

Richardson says the new state-of-the-art facility, a teaching laboratory that yields True Blue Aggie Cheeses in addition to luscious frozen treats, is a far cry from the lab he first encountered as a USU student. “Drains were inadequate and we had water on the floor all the time,” he says. “We had to paint the equipment every year because it wasn’t stainless steel like it is now.”

 

Richardson recalls that the university’s dairy herd grazed next to the Nelson Fieldhouse and campus steam lines provided just the right temperature for making yogurt. Students and faculty were treated to free buttermilk until the fateful day when the spigot stuck and sprayed a professor with the thick, sour liquid. “He was irate and demanded to have his suit cleaned,” Richardson says.

 

Richardson initially planned to study music at USU, but pursued dairy science instead. Just one day into their marriage, Fran Richardson, Gary’s wife of 52 years, realized her husband’s passion when he stopped for a tour of a Star Valley, Wyo., cheese plant on their honeymoon. “On many a vacation around the country, our family has toured a cheese plant,” she says.

 

Richardson, who earned a doctorate degree from the University of Wisconsin and served on USU’s Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences faculty for 28 years, made many contributions to the dairy industry during his career. He helped to develop proteinase-negative lactic cultures that are now used in about 36 percent of all cheeses manufactured in the United States. “Microorganisms are our friends,” he says.

 

The first and only Utahn, so far, to serve as president of the American Dairy Science Association, Richardson was honored with the organization’s Fellow Award in 2002 for 20 or more years of distinguished service to the dairy industry.

 

The Richardson Dairy Products Lab offers Famous Aggie Ice Cream Tours Friday, May 19, at 3 and 4 p.m. Tours, $1 per person, start with a presentation in room 202 of the Ernstrom Nutrition and Food Sciences building at 750 N. 1200 East in Logan. A guided tour of the dairy processing lab follows, after which participants receive a cup of Aggie ice cream. Flavor choices include caramel cashew, strawberry cheesecake, chocolate chip mint, cookie fudge, Cookies ‘n’ Cream and chocolate chip cookie dough.

 

“We’ve enjoyed taking school groups through the lab and thought it would be fun to hold tours for the general public,” says Donald McMahon, lab director and professor in the Nutrition and Food Sciences Department. “We hope to hold more tours in the near future.”