My name is Lindsay Haukom. I’m 16 years old, and I was recently in Catalina for a week with my family. Every year, my grandparents, Bob and Sherry Haukom, rent two houses in Avalon, and our whole family stays there for a week. My family includes my grandparents, their three sons, their daughter-in-laws, my grandma’s younger sister, and their six grandchildren (including me), whose ages range from 5-16. It’s always an amazing week, and our whole family gets along and loves spending time together.
My family has been going to Catalina every year since 1980. It started with my grandparents taking my dad and his brothers to the island when they were kids. Catalina Island is a second home to them, and now that we’ve all been going as a big family again every year, it is a second home to all of us.
One of our family’s favorite Catalina traditions is to all eat ice cream together every evening. A few years ago when Scoops – Homemade Ice Cream first opened, they had the best coconut ice cream I’ve ever tasted. It was my favorite, as well as the favorite of multiple other family members! The next year I went, I was disappointed to find that they no longer had their coconut ice cream. About a year ago, I emailed Scoops and explained what their ice cream meant to my family and how much I enjoyed their coconut ice cream. I asked if it was possible they could bring the flavor back.
Jerry Dunn, the owner and chief ice cream maker at Scoops, kindly returned my email, and since then we’ve exchanged a few emails. Things were looking good about having the coconut ice cream again. Then, when we arrived in Catalina and went that evening to get our ice cream, we saw the flavor “Haukom Coconut” on the menu! Not only did Mr. Dunn bring back my favorite flavor (and it tasted just as amazing), but he named it after our family. He even had a laminated copy of the menu to give to us.
Our whole family thought it was really cool that Mr. Dunn named an ice cream flavor after us. We are all very thankful to Scoops and Jerry Dunn! Going back to us all feeling like Catalina is a second home, having an ice cream flavor named after our family really solidified our place on the island.
Thank you for considering my story to run in your newspaper. It is a nice, happy story and I thought that by telling it to the community, it would be a nice way to say thank you to Jerry Dunn.
Enjoy the rest of summer!
