Family ties still remain at Shamrock

Today, Shamrock Foods is the largest family owned and operated dairy in the Southwest - though it's expanded way past all things homogenized.

"We're in the food service industry now, everything from soup to nuts," says Norman McClelland, 82, chairman and CEO of the family business.

Son of W.T. and Winifred, Norman McClelland grew up on the family farm on West Ruthrauff Road, near North Romero Road. That location still serves as a distribution point, though Shamrock's headquarters moved to Phoenix decades ago.

"We needed to compete in a bigger market," says McClelland, who like his late sister, Frances McClelland, (see accompanying story) began working in the family business at an early age.

"I remember driving the hay wagon, which was pulled by mules, and collecting the cows," says McClelland.

His father, then 18, came in 1912 from Ireland to Arizona, where an uncle was living. He worked for the 3C Ranch near Oracle and a number of dairies, where he drove a milk truck, says McClelland.

After serving in World War I, W.T. McClelland sold the family farm in Ireland, which gave him enough money to buy about 40 acres at Ruthrauff near Romero and start up what was originally called New Modern Dairy.

By that time, he had married Winifred, who came to Tucson from Northern Ireland in 1920.

A short while later, says McClelland, his parents sold the dairy and moved to California. "But the family who bought the dairy couldn't make the payments so Mom and Dad came back and renamed it Shamrock Dairy in 1922."

His father ran the farm, his mother did the bookkeeping. "She did not keep a garden but we did keep chickens. We had an ongoing fight with the coyotes," says McClelland, who grew up in an adobe house his father built on the property.

"There were three families on the farm and two families down the road. That was it," says McClelland. "And the mesquite trees went all the way to Oracle Road."

During the Great Depression, hobos would trek to the farm from the nearby railroad tracks, looking for a meal. "They came to the back door and Mom gave them food. In return, they'd chop wood, that sort of thing."

In 1941 the dairy got a new plant and in time expanded to more than 300 acres, with a fleet of trucks supplying milk and other dairy products, mainly to homes.

"Our cows couldn't supply all the milk so we were receiving it from other dairies in Tucson and Phoenix," says McClelland, who joined the business in 1949.

In 1951, Shamrock bought its first refrigerated truck. In 1956, the company moved from Tucson to Phoenix after building a new processing plant.

"We started butter and cottage cheese in the early '60s," says McClelland.

Meanwhile, milk went from glass bottles to cartons to plastic containers. The milkman also largely disappeared as milk started appearing in supermarkets and convenience stores.

And while Shamrock has branched out way past dairy, its 9,000 cows outnumber its 2,700 empoyees more than 3-to-1.

"Roxie is our mascot," says McClelland, who clearly still knows a thing or two about those cows.