Copyright The Oregonian
Chuck Kesey, founder of an Oregon-based natural foods business and brother to author and counterculture luminary Ken Kesey, died in Eugene, his family said. He was 87. Chuck Kesey cofounded Springfield Creamery, the Eugene-based producer of Nancy’s Probiotic Foods, with his wife Sue, who died in August at age 86. “Our dad never stopped exploring. His mind was interested in so many pieces of life,” said his daughter, Sheryl Kesey-Thompson, who co-owns Springfield Creamery with her brother Kit. “He believed that real, healthy food could make people’s lives better,” Kesey-Thompson added in a statement. “That was his true calling, and I think that is what he was most pleased to have had an impact on.” Kesey-Thompson said her father believed so deeply in the product he used to say, “We are not making breakfast. We are making health food, and we are saving lives here.” Springfield Creamery claims it became the first U.S. company to incorporate live probiotics into yogurt in 1970, bolstering demand for Nancy’s Yogurt and launching a product line that grew to more than 40 Nancy’s Probiotic Foods items sold across the nation. During a financial squeeze in the early 1970s, the Keseys held a benefit concert headlined by the Grateful Dead to help keep the struggling company going. The Grateful Dead also served as the house band for Ken Kesey’s psychedelic parties, know as Acid Tests, in the 1960s. Chuck and Sue Kesey led the independently owned and operated company for more than 60 years. In a news release, the family requested donations in remembrance be made to the Chuck and Sue Kesey Endowed Scholarship at Oregon State University’s Department of Food Science & Technology to support a new “generation of food innovators and fermentation scientists.” “His legacy isn’t just in every cup of yogurt,” Kit Kesey said in a statement. “It’s in the culture of curiosity, kindness and the commitment of doing things the right way, even if you have to strap it together. He created that culture and instilled it in all of us.”
