Remembering KCET Co-Founder Shirley Baskin Familian (1920-2022)

This article was updated on October 31, 20222 at 4:45 p.m. PT.

Shirley Baskin Familian, a member of the iconic ice cream family who co-founded Los Angeles public television station KCET, has died. She was 101.

Baskin Familian, a KCET board member for several decades, died Oct. 23 at her Los Angeles home with her children at her side.

"Shirley Baskin Familian is a true legend with regards to her dedication and deep belief in public television as she helped to ensure that it was always an indispensable community resource," said Andrew Russell, CEO and president of Public Media Group of Southern California, which operates KCET.

As news of her death spread, friends and fellow board members described Baskin Familian as an elegant firebrand who believed strongly in KCET's educational programming.

"We all knew who our leader was," said Sally Beaudette, who served with Baskin Familian on the KCET Women's Council for 17 years. "Everything about her — her grace and her wisdom and her total commitment — it lit the light that led us down the road."

Born in Winnipeg, Canada on Nov. 21, 1920, then Shirley Robbins went on to become not only a key member of KCET's history, but a well-respected artist. She also was instrumental in the founding of Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream with her brother and first husband.

Moving with her family to Seattle and later Tacoma, where she attended school, Robbins went on to study art and design at the University of Washington and serve as president of the Associated Women Students.

During her college years, Robbins met Burton "Butch" Baskin, a young businessman from Chicago who was drafted into the Navy. Although she barely knew him, her family said, she waited four years for him to return from service in World War II. They married and moved to Southern California, where the family business would soon become ice cream.

Baskin Familian's brother, Irv Robbins, had opened Irvin's Snowbird, a small ice cream shop in Glendale. Once he expanded to three shops, Robbins convinced his brother-in-law to join him in 1945. Before long, the pair owned six stores and created Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream, which would go on to become the largest ice cream company in the world.

"Shirley worked alongside her brother and husband to establish and build Baskin-Robbins, at first writing out by hand the 'Free Birthday Ice Cream Cone' cards a generation of Americans would come to prize on their birthdays," the family said.

Soon, however, public television became her focus. As Baskin Familian explained in an interview several years ago with KCET, she and her husband were in Washington D.C. visiting a cousin, Newton Minow, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission under President John Kennedy.

In 1961, Minow called television programming a "vast wasteland," saying the medium was missing an opportunity to educate. His comments resulted in the beginning of public television.

"He said to my husband, 'When you go back to L.A., I would like you to become involved,'" Baskin Familian recalled. "There is a group that's putting together a board and they want to start public television because Los Angeles is the only major city in the United States that does not have public television. I think you could be helpful to them."

After the couple returned home, Burton Baskin made phone calls to get it started.

"Before I knew it, we were involved," Baskin Familian recalled. "I say 'we,' because at that time he was extremely busy building his business and he didn't have time for a lot of details, so he turned them over to me."

The couple helped launch KCET, which signed on as an affiliate with the National Educational Television network in 1964, operating out of a Vine Street building in Hollywood. Russell called Baskin Familian a pioneer of public television, "very passionate" about the medium's mission and "a major reason for the success of KCET."

Baskin Familian recalled that when she first began talking about KCET and public television, her friends had no idea about what was to come.

"We never had it in Los Angeles," Baskin Familian recalled. "I said, 'Well, they call it educational television,' but it turned out to be a great deal more than just educational. It was inspiring. It was exciting."

Baskin Familian said it took a great effort to convince friends to make donations. At the time, the station's signal did not even reach her own home in the San Fernando Valley.

In 1964, Baskin Familian was instrumental in establishing the KCET Women's Council, which served to bring attention to public television and raise funding. The Women's Council did the fundraising now undertaken with Pledge Drives.

The council honored her in 2011, saying "her vision and energy have ignited the enthusiasm of volunteers as well as viewers."

"Shirley was a most remarkable woman!" said Margaret Black, a former KCET board member and Women's Council member. "Shirley stepped in and began its initial fundraising, gaining immediate support from the Los Angeles community. Her passion never waned."

During Baskin Familian's service on the station's board, KCET produced landmark series and specials including "Cosmos: A Personal Journey" with Carl Sagan, "The Cousteau Odyssey," "American Family" and Huell Howser's "California's Gold." Baskin Familian also was responsible for KCET being one in a consortium of stations that produced the Emmy-winning "American Playhouse."

Baskin Familian played a large role in fundraising premieres and events, including one attended by 1,000 people at the Griffith Park Observatory for the Carl Sagan astronomy program and another with the Boston Pops to open the Century Plaza Towers in Century City.

"It was just a glorious event," Baskin Familian said. "They hadn't even opened the buildings. They allowed us to go up the elevator to the top floor so we could enjoy the view. It was very exciting and it created quite a buzz in the community."

Besides her work as a businesswoman and philanthropist, Baskin Familian became a notable artist, creating mosaic-style pieces from canceled postage stamps. Into her 90s, she held one-woman shows at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles, The Children's Museum of Indianapolis and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington.

O'Connell recalled all the wax envelopes that Baskin Familian kept filled with stamps from around the world.

"Nobody could do that stuff without being patient," O'Connell said. "They were really beautiful works of art. She had an exquisite eye."

Former KCET news anchor Val Zavala, whose husband, Mark Greenfield is an accomplished artist, said Baskin Familian insisted on meeting him when she saw some of his work. They spent a wonderful afternoon together, she said, looking at "some of her remarkable works in progress."

"Few people can take a simple object and imbue it with such meticulous beauty," Zavala said. "If Shirley's art is a reflection of her soul, hers is patient, whimsical and full of love. May the next world she visits be filled with beauty."

Baskin Familian's family said she completed her last piece at 100 years old, but had plans to do more.

"Shirley had an incredible thirst and joy for life, was always positive and had a spirit which cannot be expressed in words," her family said. "She was a caring, kind-hearted, fair minded woman of enormous dignity, strength and resilience, who always promoted peace, understanding and generosity-of-spirit between everyone she knew, and lived those values herself."

In her personal life, Baskin Familan lost three husbands. After Burton Baskin died in 1967, she married Houston resident Aaron Goldfarb. He died less than a year later.

At 60 years old, Baskin Familian married again, becoming the second wife of Isadore Familian, a prominent Los Angeles businessman and community leader who served on the board of directors for City of Hope, City National Bank and the Los Angeles Music Center. Familian died in 2002.

Baskin Familian is survived by her children, Edie Baskin Bronson, Richard Baskin and Richard "Skip" Bronson; her grandchildren, Anabella, David, Scott and Jon; and her great-granddaughter, Goldie Bronson.

Baskin Familian chose not to have a formal funeral or memorial. Her family said she wanted a party.

O'Connell said she was "somebody to emulate as one grows older."

"She just had a great style," O'Connell said. "She was a stunning woman to look at. She was always well dressed, elegant and refined. She was just a vision … She was a special human being."

Donations may be made to the UCLA Neurosurgery Institute and the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.