The life and times of N. S. Golding, lead researcher for WSU’s famous ‘Cougar Gold Cheese’

Since Cougar Gold Cheese from the Washington State University (WSU) Creamery in Pullman was developed in the 1930s and 1940s, its production, sales and fame have increased over the years.

But, cheese namesake Norman Shirley Golding is not as famous as the cheese he helped develop as lead researcher at what was then Washington State College (WSC).

For the record, the name “Cougar Gold,” honoring Norman Golding and Butch, WSU’s cougar mascot, was the result of a campus-wide contest, according to the Spokane Chronicle.

The youngest of 13 children, nine of whom survived to adulthood, Norman was born Feb. 13, 1889, in the village of Plaxtol in the south of England in Kent (county). His parents were Sarah (“Sally”) Barton Golding and Thomas Golding.

In his youth, until 12 years of age, Norman and three younger cousins were taught by his older sister Mabel at the family home, known as the Tree House. Then, he attended Sevenoaks (Kent) Grammar School until he was 15 years old. For about a year, he was ill and had little schooling. Finally, he studied for two years—graduating in 1907—from Retford Grammar, a boarding school in Nottinghamshire (county) in England’s Midlands.

This was followed by two years at Midland Agricultural College, part of the University of Nottingham, where he earned, as a member of the university’s first graduating class, a first-class diploma, and passed Royal Agricultural Society examinations in agriculture and dairying.

After several months seeking a job, he went to work in 1910 for a Derbyshire milk factory. One of the factory’s accounts was Cadbury’s chocolate. Fulfilling the needs of the chocolate company required 100,000 pounds of milk a day, six days a week. Norman earned 30 shillings for 80 hours a week, and he got one Sunday off after working nine months.

Norman moved in late 1910 to Canada, joining his two older brothers in Ontario. He obtained a junior teaching post at Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph and also did research ($50 a month) while working on his bachelor of science in agriculture degree (earned in 1914).

One of Norman’s responsibilities at the college was teaching a class of 12 women who were about his age. He had never taught before and knew little about the subject he taught. However, he found the students to be “quite cooperative, but judged they were more interested in my accent” than the class subject.

He met his future wife Marion (May) Hill, who worked in the college’s poultry science department.

Just after Christmas in 1916, Norman and May married in a Plaxtol church. May came over from Canada by ship with a convoy. While he served, she lived at Tree House and took jobs to help the war effort. One duty was counting hay bales loading for shipment to France to feed British army horses.

Norman and May had two months together before his division moved to the Bethune area of France where he helped lead efforts dealing with water supplies, sewage (including dealing with manure from army horses), filtration and chlorination of water. Typhoid was a major problem. Unlike British and Canadian troops, French soldiers were not inoculated and suffered many more illnesses and deaths as a result. Sanitary sections helped reduce mortality from disease. Because two or three men in each British army section were trained in filtration and chlorination of water, the results were healthy British soldiers, a spectacular contrast to French troops.

Some of Norman’s military time was spent serving with his eldest brother, John (“Jack”) Golding, a British Army colonel and a chemist. Initially in London, the brothers Golding spent the later years of their military service in northern France. They developed a structure to kill bed bugs, lice fleas and other pathogen in blankets, mattresses, uniforms and other things. They also helped disband the British army after the war ended November 11, 1918.

Following the war, Norman remained in France several months to help deal with the fact that the Germans left Tournai, Belgium, in “very bad sanitary shape, piles of garbage on every corner, a huge pile of fermenting horse manure with accompanying house flies in the middle of cavalry barracks.” When the work in Tournai was well under way, Norman was transferred as chief instructor to the fifth Army Agricultural School for three months in Calais. There he provided agricultural training to soldiers before they returned to civilian life. Norman served in the British army until discharge in May 1919.

Thomas (“Tom”), Norman and May’s son, was born in 1918 in Sevenoaks, about seven miles from Plaxtol. In mid-summer 1919 the three Goldings sailed on the RMS Olympic transatlantic ocean liner to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. It was filled with Canadian troops, mothers, children and others.

While May and Tom stayed in Ontario, Norman traveled to the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, B.C. For 17 months, he taught former soldiers, returned from the war through the Soldiers Civic Reestablishment Program (SCR). The focus of the SCR was teaching agricultural skills for use in civilian life. Norman taught how to make cheese.

Following Norman’s SCR duties, May and Tom joined him in Vancouver after he became a member of the UBC faculty. Also, for six summers he attended graduate school at Iowa State University, earning a master of science degree in 1924 and a doctoral degree in 1929, both degrees in dairy mycology.

In 1932 as a ramification of Depression economic woes, Norman lost his job when the UBC agricultural department suffered a 66 percent budget cut.

Well known and qualified, Norman was hired for a fill-in position at WSC in Pullman while a faculty member and Iowa State University graduate, Hans Bendixen, dairy science professor, was on leave, 1932-1933.

After Bendixen returned, Norman went across the border from Pullman to Moscow, Idaho, to the University of Idaho (UI). During the 1933-1934 academic year, he filled in while Donald Theophilus, UI associate professor of dairying who later became UI president, was on leave completing his doctoral degree at Iowa State.

In October 1934, Norman returned to WSC as an associate professor and later became professor in its dairy program.

In Pullman the Golding family lived on College Hill. Tom attended and graduated from Pullman High School and WSC (Bachelor of Science, 1939). In 1943 he earned a medical doctor degree from McGill University, Montreal.

During Norman’s WSC tenure (1934-1955), he discovered how to can cheese without carbon dioxide building up and exploding cans. At that time, before plastic (shrink-wrap, sealed bags etc…) was used to package food items, cheese was commonly encased in wax. But, the wax often cracked. When WWII started, the U.S. government and the American Can Company helped fund Norman’s research, assisted by undergraduate and graduate students.

While Cougar Gold is Norman’s best known accomplishment, Norman had other successes. After retiring from WSC in 1956, Norman, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, continued research in the dairy program. He helped develop a process of curing canned cheese, a simple chemical test for bacteria in milk and a rapid, reliable test for determining the amount of non-fat milk solids. Some research was funded by the American Dairy Association and what he called “generous financial support” from the college/university. He was author of many articles and bulletins and a participant in international dairy conferences in Sweden, Holland, Italy and England.

“He was always inventing something,” said Jerry D. Clarke, WSC Class of 1942, one of the students who worked with Norman on the development of Cougar Gold Cheese. “Dr. Golding was the Thomas A. Edison of WSU,” Clarke wrote in a 1994 letter, equating Norman with the famous American inventor.

Looking back on his time at WSC/WSU, Norman said his research and working with undergraduate and grad students, faculty and staff was “congenial, helpful and cooperative” and “rewarding.”

May died in Pullman in 1961 after a long illness. When Norman left Pullman in the mid-1960s, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, with second wife E. Louise Nasmyth Golding, a retired WSC music faculty member. After Louise died in Victoria, Norman married Margery Excell Golding, a nurse. She soon became ill and succumbed several years later.

Norman led an active retirement which included extensive travel, especially to visit his four grandchildren in Tampa, where their parents, Tom and daughter-in-law, Lois, lived and worked. Norman died at age 95 on August 30, 1984, in Victoria. His ashes are buried near the chapel at Victoria’s St. Stephens Anglican Church Cemetery.

His grandchildren have fond memories of their grandfather, whom they called “the Professor.” They speak of his pronounced British accent, sense of humor and hearty laugh, his six-foot height, his mustache, the eyeglasses he wore, the fact he always smoked a pipe, played golf and liked to swim, fish, travel, read (especially British authors) and drank scotch.