On October 10, 1943, Shirley Belle Robbins marries Burton Baskin at Glendale Golf and Country Club near Seattle. A decade later, Shirley's older brother Irvine will re-brand his Snowbird ice cream shop in Glendale, California, as the first Baskin-Robbins. Baskin-Robbins will become the nation’s best-known ice cream company with more than 8,000 stores in 52 countries. Shirley and Burton’s 1943 wedding marks the first time the Baskin-Robbins name makes headlines in a news story.
Baskin, Meet Robbins
Shirley Robbins was born in Winnipeg, Canada, before her parents Aaron and Goldie Robbins moved their family to Seattle in 1923. Shirley's uncle Samuel Berch owned the successful Velvet Ice Cream company in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and convinced his in-laws to move to Seattle. It was at the Velvet Ice Cream company where Irvine Robbins first scooped ice cream and found the thrill of the business with unique flavors. Sticking a scoop into an ice cream container at his uncle’s store was the greatest thrill of his life, Irv Robbins once said. Berch also was president of Western Dairy Products and co-founded Arden Farms in 1925, of which Shirley's father, Aaron Robbins, was also connected. Aaron Robbins started Olympic Dairy in Tacoma and also was influential in his son’s ice cream ambitions.
The Robbins family lived on 22nd Avenue on Capitol Hill. After their move to Tacoma, she attended Annie Wright before enrolling at the University of Washington, where she was elected president of the Associated Women Students (AWS) on Februaru 4, 1941. It also was the first time voting machines were used in the history of AWS elections – and an initial election that year was ruled invalid because of ballot box fraud. Robbins, who stared with AWS activities on her first day at the UW in 1938, was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority.
"The telephone at Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority was as busy as a microphone at a Hollywood premiere last night, what with everyone calling up to congratulate a pretty, blue-eyed coed from Tacoma who had just become president of the University of Washington Associated Women Students," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported after her victory. Newspapers marked the uniqueness of a Tacoma resident winning the election at a Seattle school – a sign of the 20-year-old junior’s personality. Her major was commercial art, and hobbies included skiing, tennis, and swimming. Male votes in the AWS election were disqualified, but her smile "could have won them," the P-I wrote below a photo of Robbins at her sorority ("Tacoma Girl …"). It wasn’t the only time she was complimented by a Seattle publication. In 1942, it was reported that Robbins was one of eight young women listed in Columns, the UW campus magazine, who fraternity men recently drafted into World War II "would most like to kiss good-bye."
Burton Baskin was born in Streator, Illinois. He graduated from Streator High in 1931, and the University of Illinois in 1935. He later worked at the men’s shop inside Chicago’s Palmer House Hotel and started dating Shirley in 1941. The son of Eda and Al Baskin, he was a Naval Reserve Lieutenant Commander at the time of the wedding. From her own advice, it seems Baskin was someone Robbins genuinely adored. "As freshmen, don’t grab the first man that comes along," she advised other students in a November 1940 story in The Seattle Times. "If you do go steady, it should be someone you really like – not just because he is a big shot on campus" ("Freshman Co-Eds …").
Ice Cream Empire
Shirley Robbins and Burt Baskin were married on Sunday, October 10, 1943, with rabbi the Rev. Raphael H. Levine officiating before roughly 200 relatives and friends. Irvine Robbins's wife Irma was matron of honor, and the Robbins's sister Elka was maid of honor. Irv Robbins, then an Army sergeant, was best man. Shirley, carrying a bouquet of orchids surrounded by gardenias and carnations, wore a Basque-style ivory satin gown and long illusion veil with a Juliet cap.
Glendale Golf and Country Club, established in 1923 and opened July 1, 1925, was formed and built by the Seattle-area Jewish community after discriminatory practices at other Seattle clubs prohibited their membership. The club – including board of governors member Joe Gottestein, founder of Longacres Racetrack – started as a nine-hole course on McKinley Hill overlooking the Duwamish Valley, the Cascade Mountains, and Seattle. The clubhouse where Baskin and Robbins were married opened on New Year’s Day 1926. Glendale Golf and Country Club later moved to Bellevue.
As the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire grew, Shirley Baskin worked alongside her husband and brother, writing by hand birthday cards for free birthday ice cream cones. In 2024, nearly 80 years after the start of the birthday cone promotion, the Baskin-Robbins company has a database of millions.
While serving in World War II, Burt Baskin bought an ice cream freezer from an aircraft carrier supply officer and sold his first ice cream to fellow servicemen in the South Pacific. When Baskin returned from his war service, Irv Robbins already had three ice cream stores of his own in California and offered to show his brother-in-law where to get equipment and supplies. Baskin and Robbins might have been partners earlier if not for the advice of Robbins’s father, Aaron. Creating a partnership early would lead them to compromise too often in an effort to get along, he advised. As a result, Baskin opened a Burton’s Ice Cream Shop in Pasadena in 1946, a year after Robbins opened his first Snowbird ice cream shop in Glendale. By 1949, the men had more than 40 stores in Southern California and purchased their first dairy, in Burbank – a move that allowed them to have complete control over ice cream production and flavor development. The separate store identities remained until 1953, when the original Snowbird at 1130 South Adams Street in Glendale became the first Baskin-Robbins.
An Artistic Family
Shirley and Burt Baskin had a son, Richard Baskin, who became a composer and wrote the score for Willie Nelson’s film Honeysuckle Rose and songs for Robert Altman’s film Nashville. Their daughter, Edie Baskin Bronson, became a photographer whose work included illustrations on Saturday Night Live.
The couple co-founded Los Angeles public television station KCET, which in 1964 became an affiliate of the National Educational Television network. Shirley Baskin served on the KCET board for more than 60 years. She was 47 when Baskin died of a heart attack on Christmas Eve at their Studio City, California, home. Baskin saw his company grow to more than 400 stores nationwide when it was sold in 1967 to United Fruit for $12 million – roughly $110 million in 2024 dollars, adjusted for inflation. His death at age 54 came less than six months after the sale.
Shirley later married Aaron Goldfarb, who died less than a year later. At age 60, she wed businessman Isadore Familian. She kept creating art even at age 100, and at times had one-woman shows at the Los Angeles Crafts museum, Indianapolis Children’s Museum, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. Shirley Baskin Familian died on October 23, 2022, at age 101. She was survived by her children Richard and Edie; grandchildren Annabella, David, Scott, and Jon; and great-granddaughter Goldie Bronson. "Shirley had an incredible thirst and joy for life, was always positive, and had a spirit which cannot be expressed in words," her family wrote in her 2022 obituary. "She was a caring, kind-hearted, fair-minded woman of enormous dignity, strength and resilience, who always promoted peace, understanding and generosity of spirit between everyone she knew, and lived those values herself." Her family welcomed donations to the UCLA Neurosurgery Institute, but noted that Shirley did not wish to have a formal funeral or memorial. "She wanted a party."
