There's always room for Jell-O .... It's one of the most famous advertising slogans in American history.
For decades, the village of Le Roy always made room for Jell-O, the world-famous gelatin dessert invented by a village resident in 1897.
But on Aug. 1, 1964, Jell-O no longer had room for Le Roy, as General Foods officially closed the village's North Street production plant and put scores of area residents out of work.
As third-shift employees filtered out of the Jell-O plant that Saturday morning, it marked the end of an era for Le Roy. The village in eastern Genesee County would never quite be the same.
But both Jell-O and the village survived and today, Le Roy proudly celebrates its honored place as the birthplace of ''America's Most Famous Dessert.''
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The Jell-O story began in 1897, when Pearle Wait, a Le Roy carpenter, began experimenting with a fruit-flavored gelatin, which his wife dubbed ''Jell-O.''
Unfortunately, Wait didn't have the capital or the expertise to properly market the product, so he sold the business in 1899 to his neighbor, Orator F. Woodward, for $450.
Woodward and his Genesee Pure Food Co. began an aggressive advertising campaign that included ads in Ladies Home Journal. By 1902, Jell-O sales had swelled to $250,000.
Orator Woodward died in 1906 and his son Ernest L. Woodward became company president. Sales of the product continued to grow and in 1925 the firm merged with the Postum Cereal Co, later General Foods (now Kraft Foods). Woodward remained as director of the Jell-O operation until his retirement in 1945.
Jell-O originally came in four flavors — orange, lemon, strawberry and raspberry. That number has greatly increased over the years and eventually Jell-O added a pudding line and other related products.
Jell-O's Batavia factory became world famous and other plants were built around the U.S. and in Canada and Mexico.
Comedian Jack Benny became Jell-O's first national spokesman in 1934 and for years, his popular radio program began with the famous refrain, ''J-E-L-L-O.''
Ernest Woodward and other members of the Woodward family became much beloved figures in Le Roy and Western New York, donating money for high school stadiums in Le Roy and Batavia and to local hospitals, libraries and other projects. Ernest died in 1948.
The Le Roy Jell-O factory enjoyed steady success through the 1940s and 1950s, producing more than 2.5 million packages of the dessert in 1957 alone. At its peak, the plant employed 600 people.
But as the 1960s dawned, economic storm clouds gathered. In March 1962, General Foods announced a cost-reduction program that included closing four Jell-O factories and building a new multi-million-dollar processing facility in Dover, Del.
Le Roy was one of the four factories earmarked to close, along with plants in Hoboken, N.J., Dorchester, Mass., and Orange, Mass.
The news shocked and angered the Le Roy community. Residents discovered that economic realities left little room for sentimentality.
Even the birthplace of Jell-O wasn't immune from job cuts and factory closings.
''Everybody is pretty disturbed,'' Village Mayor John F. McElroy told The Daily News. ''It is quite a blow to us and will throw a lot of people out of work ... There was always talk that the plant would never be taken out of Le Roy when the Woodwards were here.''
Unfortunately, Ernest Woodward and other members of the original Woodward family weren't in a position to protest the move. They had all passed away.
The Le Roy plant continued operations until the summer of 1964. When the end came on Saturday, Aug. 1, James Romano had the distinction of being the last production employee to leave the Jell-O factory.
(From the Batavia Daily News - By Mark Graczyk)
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