Blood is Thicker than Ice Cream.
John Robbins once described growing up surrounded by ice cream—heir to the Baskin-Robbins empire, where thirty-one flavours promised endless sweetness.
But his story took a different path.
There is no ice cream in the freezer now. There rarely is.
Once, our family name was attached to countless tubs of it—a sweet dynasty of scoops and cones that seemed, in my childhood, as permanent as summer itself.
Rows of flavours lined the counters of the Baskin-Robbins empire my relatives helped build: mint chocolate chip, pralines and cream, rainbow sherbet—thirty-one promises of happiness in a paper cup.
But when Uncle Burt died unexpectedly, something shifted in me. The business that had once felt joyful suddenly seemed built on a foundation of excess. I stepped away from the path that had been laid out for me—a decision that felt, to my father at least, like betrayal.
To him, the family business was more than ice cream. It was identity, success, and loyalty. Walking away from it meant turning my back on all three.
Instead, I began writing books about health and the environment — work that he struggled to understand, let alone support.
For years the distance between us lingered.
Then his own health began to falter.
Slowly, the books he had once dismissed found their way onto his bedside table. He read them quietly, asking questions now and then; the edge in his voice softened by time.
Near the end of his life, he told me something I had never expected to hear.
He said he was proud.
In that moment I realized that what had grown between us was far richer than anything we might have scooped from a container.
And perhaps that is the real measure of inheritance.
Inspired by John Robbins, who rejected his family’s billion-dollar ice cream business to promote health and protect the environment.
