The original store was in the east half of South Vienna’s IOOF Lodge Hall, across the street from the closing store.
In addition to the inventory, the store came stocked with its lone employee and butcher, Brownie Clark.
“He worked from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. five days a week and 9 a.m. to noon on Wednesday for $15,” Shoemaker said.
That worked smoothly for two months, then Mr. Clark died of a heart attack.
“Dad said, ‘when he died, all of a sudden, I was the meat cutter, I was the cashier, I was everything else,’” Ron Shoemaker said.
Because his father also was at the store all the time, Ron’s childhood memories include his mother pulling him in the wagon along the three blocks to the store every day to bring his father lunch.
During that time, the Shoemakers could never be sure when Earl would make it home Saturday nights.
The reason for the delay was Dee Dillard.
“He was a farmer, lived out on old Osborn Road,” Ron Shoemaker recalled. Although Dillard came in every Saturday night for his groceries, “you never knew when it was,” he said.
“Whenever he came, dad was there to take care of him.”
Roma Jean and Jack
Earl Shoemaker’s years of going it mostly alone ended in 1947.
“Roma Jean Garringer came into the store and applied for a job. And dad said, ‘I’d like to hire you. I’d also like to hire your husband,’” Ron Shoemaker said.
Jack Garringer, until then employed at Robbins & Myers in Springfield, “became dad’s meat manager and general right hand man,” Shoemaker said.
That started a relationship between the families that continues today. Jack and Roma Jean’s son, Mike, is co-owner of Shoemaker’s in South Charleston.
The Garringers’ arrival is also “about where I come into the picture,” Ron Shoemaker said. “When I was 10 or 11, I went to the store and worked in the summertime,” 8 a.m. to noon five days a week.
He remembers sorting pop bottles, which customers brought in to redeem their 2-cent deposits, and turning single 50-pound bags of potatoes delivered to the store into 10-pound bags for sale to customers.
“The thing I disliked most was getting part way into a bag with rotten potatoes,” he recalled.
Perhaps as tedious but less disagreeable was time he later spent candling eggs.
“You probably went back in the rest room, where it was dark,” he said. “You had your little box with a light and a hole in it to see if there was anything in the egg that didn’t belong there. Because we bought eggs from farmers, you never knew if they were laid yesterday or last month.”
Next in line
Not long after Ron was called on to look into the shells of eggs, his father asked him to look into the future.
About to graduate from high school in 1954, the decision seemed like a natural: Yes, Ron would follow his dad into the business.
“I guess I never knew any better,” Ron said. “It’s all I ever did. I liked it and still do.”
On his son’s promise, Earl Shoemaker bought the former Massey-Harris farm implement dealership across the street from the IOOF Lodge and opened a new Shoemaker’s in 1956. The grand opening was held when his son was on spring break from Bowling Green State University.
Two years later, Ron graduated and got married. That winter, with snow clogging the roads, his wife, Carolyn, quit her job at Sears and started working at the family store as well.
And by 1961, the family business was going strong enough that the Shoemakers had to doubled the size of their store and bought a 50-foot strip that had been Don Cornwell’s garden to build a parking lot.
Junior and the Fun Center
In the 1960s, Earl turned over more of the business to Ron, whose brother-in-law Virgil Akers Jr. (known as Junior) came on as a manager and co-owner.
Meanwhile, Ron Shoemaker and the Garringers tried some new business interests, including convenience stores in Russells Point and Marion that the Garringers managed.
With baby boom babies at the right age, the spot behind the South Vienna store was turned into Shoemaker’s Fun Department, where the Garringers’ son, Bill, spun records for outdoor summertime dances.
About midway through the decade, Ron Shoemaker and Jack Garringer bought a South Charleston grocery that had been in Shoemaker family hands since 1949.
A March 31, 1969, fire destroyed the rest of that South Charleston building, and the Shoemakers in 1973 expanded the grocery onto land Earl had purchased nearby. The Short Stops were sold, and the Garringers focused their energies on the South Charleston businesses.
Transitions
Since the 1980s, there has been a transition from one generation of Shoemakers and Garringers to the next. And in 1990, founder Earl passed away.
Ron and Carolyn’s son, Rollie, and his wife, Stephanie, have managed the South Vienna store and now will join Mike Garringer at the South Charleston grocery.
Ron Shoemaker hopes customers loyal to the South Veinna store will continue their allegiance to the Shoemaker’s in South Charleston.
“The meat at South Charleston comes off the same truck,” he said.
But as the South Vienna chapter comes to a close, Ron Shoemaker has all the store’s extended family on his mind, too.
Just as his own children worked in high school and worked their way through college at the store, so did the children of many other South Vienna area families.
“I’d like to know how many kids have worked in the store over the past 50 years,” Ron Shoemaker said.
Until her departure a year ago, Dorothy Jenkins was an important member of the store and the village’s extended family.
“She was our cashier for probably 40 years,” Ron Shoemaker said. “She was the person everybody came to see. If we wanted to know what was going on in the community, she knew.”
An open and shut case
Ron Shoemaker said the decision to close the South Vienna store was both difficult and obvious.
“When you’ve got more going out than you’ve got coming in, you’ve got to close it,” he said.
“I know what my dad would have told me: That I was stupid for not doing it before,” Shoemaker said.
As for himself, “I wouldn’t have changed anything,” he said. “It’s been a good 70 years. I’ve enjoyed it, I enjoy the people. They’ve been good to us.”
So when Scott Griswold, pastor of the United Church of South Vienna, asked if he could come to the store at its closing Saturday to offer a prayer, Shoemaker gave his blessing.
At the end of 70 years — and with Thanksgiving less than a week away — it seemed only appropriate to offer a word of thanks.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.
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