To call Kenmore Freeze an “ice cream stand” would be to overlook its true role in the community.
For local baseball teams, it was where players went to celebrate their victories, and sweet balm after the games that didn’t turn out so well.
Families bonded there on warm summer days, or used it as an incentive to get those childhood chores done.
It was a hangout for teenagers after a pickup game on the basketball court or an afternoon of bike riding.
Church groups were among the regulars. Volunteers with a neighborhood youth nonprofit always swung by after their weekly meeting. Businessmen stopped in during the lunch hour.
So Dianne and Jim Bray didn’t take lightly their decision to close its doors last month, in the middle of a season made robust by hotter-than-usual temperatures.
But Dianne is 69 and Jim is 71, and they are the first to admit that age has taken its toll.
“Every year when it comes time to open, I’m ready to go. And I was ready this season. But as time went on, we were both getting tired,” said Dianne Bray, noting that the hands-on couple worked seven days a week, with one or both of them present for every opening and closing hour.
One day “we just looked at each other and said, ‘It’s time,’ ” she said.
On July 10, the Brays tacked a farewell sign across the window that lists the stand’s ice cream flavors, thanked their loyal customers, shared hugs with cherished employees and ventured off into retirement.
They’re not on social media, so they asked a Facebook-savvy friend to post about the store’s closing.
The post was shared 2,560 times.
“Great memories on East Ave.,” one fan said.
“The best ice cream on Earth,” another added.
Scoop on other stands
For many area residents, ice cream stands hold a special place in their memories. And when they close, their loss is keenly felt because they are nostalgically tied to happy times.
Debbie Bozzelli Sherritt reflected on her own childhood days riding on her bike to PJs in the old State Road Shopping Center in Cuyahoga Falls. Later in life, it’s where she took her own daughter for a special treat.
Teri Ashley can still remember the taste of the maple ice cream she would get when her grandparents took her to PJs. And Katie Nix fondly recalled sudden trips made at night after she was already in her pajamas, eager for a kids’ cone decorated with a sugar-button face.
In Barberton, Micheala Johanson’s walk down memory lane led her to a custard stand on Wooster Road North called Molly’s.
“I first remember my parents stopping there on the way back from a Goodyear Aircraft picnic at Meyers Lake,” she wrote on Facebook, then added, “Boy, I think I just wrote three dead horses into two sentences.” Indeed, the company and amusement park are also long gone.
For Sandy Hoffman, it was Angelmont, an ice cream purveyor “wayyyyy back” in the days of Greensburg, a quaint hamlet that became part of the city of Green.
“They packed that ice cream cone so high, to a child it looked like that Empire State Building,” she wrote. “Peach season was my favorite. They used peaches from their own orchard.”
57-year legacy
In Kenmore, memories of the Freeze go back to 1959.
That’s when Dianne Bray’s parents, Ruth and Len Black, built the stand.
They came from Wooster, settling in Kenmore with Len taking a factory job that he was soon eager to leave behind.
“He didn’t want to be a factory worker. He wanted out,” the daughter said, so her parents started Kenmore Freeze. They sold ice cream treats in the summer, and sold Christmas trees from the parking lot every winter.
In 1985, a year after her father died and three years before her mother’s passing, Bray and her husband took the reins.
And just as Bray worked at the store through her teenage years, so did her own children: Jamie, Patrick, Jody and Beau.
“It was a wish of mine that one of them would take over,” she said. “But they all have their own careers. Taking over the family business wasn’t in the stars for them the way it was for me.”
The Brays intend to put the store up for sale. And maybe next year, it will reopen under a new owner.
“The goal is to have the right person come along, run it the way we did so we know they are serving the customers right,” she said.
If the Freeze is resurrected, the Brays want to make sure the legacy they built over 57 years isn’t tarnished.
“People always knew what to expect from us,” she said. “If someone takes over, I want that person to make the public happy.”
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.