Albert Rogers Yarnell

Arkansas man who spent more than 75 years with family’s ice cream business dies at 94

FILE — Yarnell's Chairman Albert Yarnell helps Georgia Vest cut a container of ice cream for a quality and taste test at Yarnell's Factory in this 2007 file photo.
FILE — Yarnell's Chairman Albert Yarnell helps Georgia Vest cut a container of ice cream for a quality and taste test at Yarnell's Factory in this 2007 file photo.

SEARCY — With a name long associated with “Arkansas’s ice cream,” Albert Rogers Yarnell worked in and later oversaw his family’s business of manufacturing Yarnell’s Ice Cream in Searcy, while also becoming a community leader in both his hometown and the state.

Yarnell, who died Sunday at 94, spent more than 75 years with his family’s business, then, after the Searcy plant closed in 2011, served as a consultant during the brand’s rebirth the following year.

Yarnell’s father, Ray Yarnell, began the Yarnell’s Ice Cream Company in 1932. When Albert returned home after serving in World War II decoding top-secret messages, he joined the family business in 1948 as vice president and sales manager.

Yarnell helped to guide a major plant expansion that increased the company’s production ability and broadened its sales territory through central and south Arkansas, according to a company history in the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Yarnell’s became one of the most successful regional ice cream companies in the country. Yarnell became general manager in 1964 then company president upon his father’s death in 1974.

Yarnell, though, may be best remembered by those who knew him as being a “strong civic leader” both in his community and the state, and for his willingness to quietly help anyone in need, said his son, Rogers Yarnell.

Albert Yarnell had served as a president of the Searcy Chamber of Commerce and the Lions Club and even as mayor of Searcy. He was a member of the statewide Baptist Medical System Board of Directors for more than 40 years and the board’s chairman in 2000, and also was a past president of the Arkansas Dairy Products Association. He was a member of the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame, “one of his nicest honors,” Rogers Yarnell said.

As a “very private man,” Albert Yarnell was always available to hear others’ problems and help however he could, his son said.

“Many times I would find out after the fact that someone who worked with him or someone in his church had a problem, that might have been a financial problem or a marital problem,” he said. “He was always willing to take the time to understand and would do what he could to help them. He always thought of others before he thought of himself.”

Yarnell’s plant closed in June 2011 because of declining ice cream sales and rising prices, according to the company at the time. A Chicago group, Schulze & Burch Biscuit Co. acquired the Searcy plant in November 2011 and the Yarnell’s brand was reborn the next year. Albert Yarnell served as a consultant to the new owners, saying in an interview that offering advice “just seemed like the right thing to do,” according to a Jan. 27, 2014, Associated Press article.

Yarnell and Kevin Boyle, Schulze & Burch’s president, became “really close,” Rogers Yarnell recalled.

“Questions about things that just weren’t on any drawings and where you had to rely on someone’s personal knowledge to figure out,” Yarnell said. “Dad was always there to help Kevin, and Kevin relied on my father.”

During a celebration of his life, Yarnell’s ice cream will be hand dipped during a visitation Thursday at First Baptist Church in Searcy, according to his obituary. Albert Yarnell’s own favorite flavor was “probably French Vanilla,” his son said.

“He worked very hard to develop that flavor and its characteristics that some of our other vanillas did not have,” he said. “He liked it a lot.”

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