August Pantages delighted family with his stories
August Pantages, an early Greek immigrant and former delivery boy who grew up to found Royal Dutch Ice Cream and run Pantages World Travel, found joy doing what was expected of him.
Through the Depression and later business challenges, he persevered, doing what it took to make a good life for his family.
Yet the debonair Mr. Pantages also took time to laugh, sing, flirt and tell entertaining tales at feasts and family gatherings.
When he was young and eyeing a stage career, he needed only a few more hours to earn a degree at the University of Washington. But with his parents barely making it, he quit school to go to work and never looked back.
"Then once, when he had only 25 cents in his pocket and couldn't eat unless he made the next sale to a customer, he made the next sale, period," said grandson Chris Burnside of Seattle.
"That's how he was brought up, it was your duty to put family first. He did sing all the time, though. Music was his heritage, too."
Mr. Pantages died Wednesday (May 17) of heart failure at 93.
Born on the Island of Koutali, then a part of Greece, he came to America at age 7. He settled in Seattle where his father had a fish market. Mr. Pantages worked at the market and also made deliveries.
He graduated in 1925 from the old Broadway High School.
Interested in opera and in Shakespearean acting, he attended Cornish College of the Arts. He also studied at the UW. But he terminated his education to work as a truck driver for Langendorf Bakery. He also became a salesman for Liquid Carbonics, which made carbonated fluids for soft drinks and sodas.
He learned about the installation and operation of coolers and soda machines. Soon he was helping design ice-cream parlors.
When the owner of Olympic Dairy needed someone to develop an ice-cream division, Mr. Pantages got the job. He ran Royal Dutch Ice Cream until Darigold bought the dairy in the mid-1970s.
He delighted family members with samples, said daughter Tarsi Pantages of Seattle. His favorite flavor was lemon custard.
In the late 1970s he and his wife, Virginia Pantages, started a travel business. They visited and booked tours to Europe and particularly Greece, where daughter Anastasia Alexander now resides.
Also surviving are grandchildren Tarsi Burnside of Seattle and Paul Thompson of Florida. Virginia Pantages died in 1982.
Services are at 12:30 p.m. today at Greek Orthodox Church of the Assumption, 1804 13th Ave., Seattle. Donations may go to the church (ZIP: 98122).
Carole Beers' e-mail address is cbeers@seattletimes.com