Baskin, Burt
- Dennis Wepman
Extract
Baskin, Burt (17 December 1913–24 December 1967), cofounder of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor chain, was born Burton Baskin in Streator, Illinois, about eighty miles southwest of Chicago, the son of Harold Baskin, a Russian-Jewish immigrant who had arrived in the United States in 1925 and who owned a clothing store until his retirement in 1942; Burt's mother's name is not reported. He graduated from Streator High School in 1931 and attended the University of Illinois, where he was a member of the Jewish fraternity Zeta Beta Tau. After receiving a B.A. in 1935, he entered his father's trade, working in. and ultimately buying, a men's apparel shop in the historic Palmer House Hotel (now the Palmer House Hilton) in Chicago. In 1941 he met and began dating Shirley Robbins, of Tacoma, Washington, whom he married in 1942. They had two children....
