Creamy goodness. That might be the best description for the soft-serve ice cream which many remember being served at Dairy Queens throughout Texas 50 or so years ago. There was good reason for that iconic taste: it was the result of a 10% butter fat, ice milk formula, and it was produced for years right here in Mineola. 

The ice milk formula was produced at Sugar Creek Creamery in an industrial facility which occupied much of the block where Broadstreet Bank now resides near downtown.  

Nelda Cox’s late husband, Will, was the plant manager at the company for years. For the young married couple, life revolved around what was happening at the creamery – and keeping Dairy Queens across the state supplied with the creamy magic.

“We called it a hot-shot,” Nelda explained. “It was when a Dairy Queen somewhere in the state either ran out, or had a batch of formula turn on them, and they needed immediate re-supply.” 

Will would head to the plant, regardless of the hour, to load up a truck with formula and make a delivery.

“Will was the plant manager, but we made all the hot-shot runs,” Nelda admitted.

Even with young children in the family, they continued to make those runs.

The trucks were green, GMC cabovers, with the company’s heraldry painted on the side. The design of the company seal was a red maple leaf centered in a white oval with ‘Sugar Creek Foods’ lettered around the oval.  Nelda possesses an incredibly succinct memory, and details came fast and furious as she talked about Sugar Creek.

Although the Cox family was not involved in the creamery from the outset, their relationship with it ran for some 25 (or so) years.

Will graduated from Hawkins High School in 1957. That summer, Bill Mann, office manager of the creamery, offered Will a job washing out the milk cans in which the milk was delivered to the plant from dairies up in Hopkins County. 

With the Cuban Missile Crisis facing the nation, Will was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1960, and spent two years in uniform. He served at Fort Ord, California; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; and Berlin, Germany. The creamery kept his job for him, and he returned to the creamery when his contract with the government expired.

It was an October night in 1966 when Will and Nelda met at the fair in Tyler. There was an immediate connection between the two. They shared a Ferris Wheel ride that evening and met for lunch the following day. A year later, they were husband and wife.

The two settled in Mineola in a small, blue and white, two-bedroom frame house off of Hwy. 37.

“Will just loved blue and white,” Nelda recalled. 

Will had already come a long way from washing out those milk cans. When marriage came around, Will was plant manager. A skilled mechanic, he also ran the motor pool and did the maintenance on the truck fleet.  

The plant had its own boiler, as steam was a critical part of the operation, and used ammonia in their daily sanitation process.

“Will did the maintenance on the boiler as well as doing any repairs to the ammonia tanks and piping,” Nelda added.

Sugar Creek Creamery was a major industrial facility. It had two main customers: Dairy Queen for the milk ice formula, and Johnson’s Foods up in Sulphur Springs, which used their cream in an ice cream line. 

The creamery was a part of Kraft Foods, operating as such in the 1950’s, 60’s, and into the 70’s.  Sugar Creek merged with Brookstone Creamery in the 1970’s, and a line of cream cheese was added. Also in that decade, Kraft moved their operations out (and with it the mix sourcing for Dairy Queen soft serve).

Johnson Foods acquired the creamery in 1979 to continue supplying their ice cream production, but in the early 1980’s, Johnson ceased operations, and the end was in sight for the creamery in Mineola. 

Listening to Nelda speak of Sugar Creek is like listening to family stories.  Bill Tipton, Linda Rhodes, Diane Haisten, Bonnie Boyles, Earle Davis, Charlie Wallace and Clydene Childress were some of the employees who formed quite a family at Sugar Creek.

Nelda described what the company meant to her and Will.

“It was our life. Everything revolved around the creamery,” she said.

The favorite site for company parties and dinners was Herms Restaurant, which was located on the north side of Hwy. 80 just east of town. 

The creamery was a part of the community. They were quite involved in selling 5-lb rounds of cheese from Kraft Foods as a holiday fundraiser for the Kiwanis Club.  Annually, the creamery would provide one of their refrigerated trailers to the organizers of the East Texas Fair in Tyler for proprietors to store their food stock on site at the fair.

The most meaningful initiative, however, was the efforts at raising funds to help finance a heart transplant surgery for driver Charlie Wallace, who suffered from a congenital heart issue. In the course of one month, several thousand dollars were raised to help him receive a transplant.  

Nelda and Will were blessed with two children – Amye, who is singer/songwriter, and Tracie, who is a site manager for a solar power firm in the Midwest. Nelda produced a photograph taken of Will, Amye and Tracie at the front of the creamery during the long cold snap of December 1983. The condensation from the factory had frozen, causing a large ice flow which covered the front of the building.  

Both Will and Nelda passionately pursued their respective hobbies. For Will, it was car restoration, and for Nelda, it remains singing and the arts. After the creamery closed, Will worked for a spell with Johnson Foods, and came to retire from Mineola Meat Packing Company. He passed on January 31, 2021.

Nelda offered a tremendously meaningful thought about her late husband when she said, “Will always enjoyed his work and working with people… he never left a place disgruntled.”

The creamery is now Mineola history, and for Dairy Queen fans, the butterfat soft serve ice cream now has much less butterfat. Yet, Mineola’s role in establishing Dairy Queen as the ‘Texas stop sign,’ and the people who made that happen, are not forgotten.