Dairy Queen exec celebrates chain’s start in Joliet
By Bob Okon bokon@stmedianetwork.com May 20, 2011 7:34PM
John Gainor, president and CEO of Dairy Queen International, speaks about the first Dairy Queen on Friday, May 20, 2011, during a ceremony at the Joliet Area Historical Museum in Joliet, Ill. | Matt Marton~Sun-Times Media
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Updated: June 23, 2011 12:30AM
JOLIET — Dairy Queen’s chief executive’s voice lifted with enthusiasm as he spoke with one of the early customers at the company’s very first store in Joliet.
“I’m very privileged to meet you,” John Gainor said to Jonita Ruth for a video that will be shown to Dairy Queen franchisees from around the world at an annual convention later this year. “I never thought when I came here today that one of our first customers would come up.”
Gainor, president and CEO of Dairy Queen International, stood on a sidewalk outside the site of Dairy Queen’s very first store Friday during a celebration for the local landmark status awarded to the building at 501 N. Chicago St.
Ruth, who now manages the office of the Slovenian Women’s Union of America a block away, grew up just a couple of houses up the street from the Dairy Queen.
The store opened June 22, 1940.
The building may not look like much now. It’s an unimposing storefront church that shows the wear expected of a structure believed to have been built in 1895. On Friday, it was honored as the birthplace of an ice cream and restaurant giant that has more than 6,000 locations around the world, including in places like China and Saudi Arabia.
“When you think about it, it all started right here in your town,” Gainor told a gathering at the Joliet Area Historical Museum, where the celebration started. “You all should be very proud.”
It was Gainor’s first trip to Joliet. But he is well aware of Joliet’s spot in the company’s history. Dairy Queen puts a photograph of the Joliet store in its Grill and Chill outlets.
Dairy Queen keeps tabs on its heritage, Gainor said. The company has a Dairy Queen museum at its corporate headquarters in Minneapolis. Gainor also is familiar with the local controversy over whether Dairy Queen started in Joliet or Kankakee.
The company has sorted it out, and the origins involve a third town. A father-and-son business in northwestern Illinois’ Green River developed a soft-serve dairy product and first began to sell it through an ice cream store in Kankakee. The store owner, Sherwood Noble, sold the soft-serve product for two years there. But he first used the name Dairy Queen when he opened the store on North Chicago Street in Joliet.
“It was wonderful,” Ruth said of the Dairy Queen shop in the neighborhood. There were long lines, she said, and the soft-serve ice cream caught on quick.
An important place in local memories
While there is nothing extraordinary about the building itself, the local memories associated with it and the structure’s place in American corporate history are what makes it a landmark, said John Hickman, chairman of the Joliet Historic Preservation Commission. The commission did the research for the landmark status first awarded in November.
Hickman said the preservation commission has an “old mansions and Victorian homes reputation. What people don’t realize is that we’re preserving history and preserving memories. Preserving history that everyone shared is a lot more important.”
He said the building on North Chicago Street “is home. It’s not upper-class. It’s basic Joliet.”
Hickman, who grew up in the area, also was an early customer of the store. Black customers there got equal treatment as white customers, which wasn’t true at all Joliet businesses in the 1950s, he said.
“That was important to blacks back then,” said Hickman, who is black. “There were places that blacks just didn’t go. That wasn’t the case here.”
Also at the ceremony was Noble’s granddaughter, Jennifer Stevens. Her mother, Sue Stevens, and aunt, Christie Noble, worked at the ice cream stores for their father. The family still has Dairy Queen franchises in Kankakee, Bourbonnais, Aurora and Geneva.
“When I was very young, we drove by here,” Stevens said of her one previous contact with the Joliet store. “But it wasn’t a Dairy Queen.”
The store is believed to have closed in the early 1950s, although researchers have not pinned down the year and memory is foggy.
“It was a sad day when Dairy Queen closed,” Ruth said, but she could not remember what year it happened.
Since then, even the memory of the Dairy Queen store faded. When the preservation commission had the building landmarked, many area residents were surprise to learn Joliet was home to the first Dairy Queen.
Even John Georguses did not know the history when he bought the building six years ago. He found out from a couple of Joliet police officers who told him while eating at Georguses’ The Joliet Restaurant downtown.
Georguses, who was among the guests of honor Friday, said he is surprised at how much attention the building is getting, but, “People are interested in what’s there — the history of Joliet.”
And, the history of Dairy Queen.
Georguses said he would be willing to make the building’s history more visible in some way. There will be a plaque placed on the building from the city and in the sidewalk from Dairy Queen.
The site is on old Route 66, so creative minds have thought about tying it into the Route 66 Visitors Center at the Joliet Area Historical Museum.
No matter what promotions come to pass, at least the building at 501 N. Chicago St. is getting some recognition.
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