Gannon’s Ice Cream serves cold, generational traditions

In 1982, John Gannon was a student at Onondaga Community College with no idea what career he wanted to pursue. Growing up, he worked at his father’s full-service grocery store, Gannon’s Silver Star, but he felt a sense of inertia about his future. It wasn’t a matter of laziness, but of aimlessness. “I had no idea what I wanted to do,” John said. “I think it was driving my parents crazy.” So John’s father convinced him and his sister, Eileen, to start Gannon’s Ice Cream shop at the small ice cream stand on the lot of Gannon’s Silver Star. The stand went through several managers, and it wasn’t until John was stuck and the grocery store had gone out of business that the now 42-year-old ice cream store served up its first scoop.