The Sertoma Ice Cream Festival in Utica, which melted away over the last two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, is back this Memorial Day weekend.
"This year marks the 46th annual Ice Cream festival," Luconda Dager, president of Velvet Ice Cream in Utica which is hosting the the event told the Mount Vernon News. "It's been such a tradition for so many years that when we couldn't have it we weren't sure what to do with that three day-weekend. We had never had a three-day Memorial Day weekend before without the festival. It was strange for us not to have it but we were trying to do the right thing, trying to be as cautious as we could with so many unknowns with the pandemic."
The Sertoma Club in Utica approached Velvet 46 years ago about having a fundraising event, said Dager.
"My father and my uncles tell the story that they thought the festival might last three to five years, something like that, not knowing what kind of impact it would have" she said. "Clearly, 46 years later, it's made a big impact. We're fortunate that so many families make this a tradition every year."
Money raised goes to the Sertoma Club, which puts it right back into the community, Dager said.
"They help pay for scholarships, they help people in the community buy hearing aids," she said. "The money goes back into the community in various different ways."
Velvet is now 108 years old, with Dager the fourth generation of Dagers to lead the company. Her sister, Joanne Dager, is vice president.
"My great grandfather, Joseph Dager, started the company back in 1914 right here in downtown Utica," she said. "It was in the lower level of Ritchie's confectionery which was a local place to get ice cream and a hamburger."
Her great-grandfather immigrated to the United States from Lebanon in the early 1900s when he was only 15.
"He could not read or write English," said Dager. But he soon realized that ice cream was this all American desert. He wanted to try making it. I guess he was pretty good at it."
He began selling it to the restaurant across the street.
"My grandfather was really the one who started taking it out to the grocery store level in the 1950s," she said.
It's now distributed all over Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia, much of Indiana and parts of Michigan and Pennsylvania.
One of the favorite flavors is Buckeye Classic.
"It's a peanut butter ice cream with a chocolate thick fudge and actual little miniature buckeye candies in it," said Dager.
The festival will take place Saturday, Sunday and Monday 11339 Mt. Vernon Road. It kicks off Saturday at 11 a.m. with a parade that begins at Utica High School located at the intersection of Church and Jefferson Streets.
Throughout the weekend, it will be feature banjo music, arts and crafts, seed-spitting contest and of course, on Monday an ice-cream eating contest.
"One of the new things we have this year is the Ohio Muffins, an old-fashioned baseball team," Dager said.
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