EXTRA CREDIT

photo by Sally McCay

You’ve sat here, you’ll sit here

by Thomas Weaver

Recycling, these days, runs a good deal broader than putting the newspapers and milk jugs out on the curb once a week. When UVM “deconstructed” the 57-year-old Carrigan Dairy Science Building in February, that verb, awkward and euphemistic as it might sound, was a pretty accurate description of the process. As construction crews and heavy equipment chipped away at the building, twisted metal, brick, and concrete were sorted into piles. Measured by weight, 75 percent of Carrigan will be recycled or reused—a good deal of the old building will become the sub-base for the Dudley H. Davis Center, the new University commons scheduled for completion in 2007.

For many alumni, of course, Carrigan is synonymous with The UVM Dairy Bar, a campus institution from 1950 to 1995. While it’s tough to get sentimental about the Carrigan rubble that will lie beneath the Davis Center, chrome and vinyl vestiges of the Dairy Bar are another matter. Six vintage stools from the bar, sponsored by UVM donors, will be used in a dining area in the Davis Center, and a permanent display in the building will trace the history of agricultural study at UVM.

When the new Dairy Science Building opened in 1949, it was a state-of-the-art facility for studying one of Vermont’s signature agricultural products. Professor Emeritus Henry Atherton ’48 G’50 recalls, “It came on line at a critical time when the dairy industry was adjusting to the use of refrigerated bulk tanks and our research team responded by doing studies on cold tolerant bacteria, milk flavor, and shelf life. There was a world of possibilities in dairy foods that needed to be studied then, just as there is a whole new world of dairy foods options to be examined today.”

The Dairy Bar, student-run under the auspices of the Animal Sciences Department for most of its existence, was started up in 1950 by Atherton, 25 years old and armed with a fresh UVM master’s degree. In the summer 1992 issue of Vermont Quarterly magazine, Atherton remembered the early days. “It was a small operation, nothing fancy. We had seven or eight flavors of ice cream, cottage cheese, and later on, yogurt. We were no Howard Johnson’s by any means.” But could HoJo’s boast that the ice-cream food chain—pasture and UVM’s Holstein herd—nearly rolled up to the restaurant’s back door?

In addition to Atherton, Dairy Bar pillars included ice-cream maker Leon Lockerby and Mary Dion, who for nearly 20 years was the face of the operation where the cones met the customers.

Sitting at the counter, chatting with Dion while dipping into a sundae, are sweet memories for generations of UVM alumni. Chico Lager ’75 was among them and his ice-cream experience would later run a good deal deeper through years as a key player in the rise of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade. It makes perfect sense that Lager was the catalyst behind the idea to offer naming opportunities on the old Dairy Bar stools. In addition to raising close to $20,000 for College of Agriculture and Life Sciences scholarships, the effort has assured that some cherished relics from UVM history will swivel on.

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