HOLLAND, MI — Over the past 23 years, Denny Ellens helped transform Hudsonville Ice Cream from a small creamery with 30 employees into one of Michigan’s biggest ice cream makers whose products fill freezer aisles across the Midwest and beyond.
But when friends and colleagues talk about Ellens, who owned Hudsonville Ice Cream and died unexpectedly Feb. 7, his business acumen isn’t the first trait that comes to mind.
It was his dedication to his workers, they say…