leather couch
Ruth got his start in the furniture business receiving his neighborhood friends to help him haul mattresses for 50 cents an hour and 70 years back driving a delivery truck. Health problems are forcing him to shut down his Gerard's Furniture store.
"I is not going house to mope about it," Ruth said, sitting at the center of the Florida Boulevard showroom. "I am gonna keep on working. I got to deliver this furniture all "
Twenty-two years ago, when he turned 65, Ruth brought to help him sell off the stock.
"I went home, and after about 10 days, I went crazy," he explained.
Paradoxically, the firm that assisted him in 1996 back with all the retirement sale is currently assisting him with this sale.
Like he always did, ruth, 87, nevertheless does business. His shop doesn't have a website. "I don't text and that I do not email," he explained. "Just been a few years ago we got a computer for accounting."
Gerard's includes a focus on American-made furniture made out of premium leather.
"All that stuff on the world wide web, it's like going to the ships. It is gambling. You don't know what you going to have," he explained. "Some of the leather is seconds, some of it's rejects."
Ruth started working in the furniture industry during his senior year in Baton Rouge High at Lloyd Furniture Co., at 1126 North Blvd.. After graduation, he attended LSU joined the Coast Guard.
In 1953, he returned with the furniture shop to Baton Rouge and also to his job.
"I had been making $35 a week in Lloyd Furniture, then I got a offer from Hemenway's Furniture on Plank Road," he said.
He was a salesman in Hemenway's, Ruth got into racing. He was a driver for your Tom Cat Baby, a boat with a Corvette engine which won the prestigious and dangerous Pan American race on Lake Pontchartrain.
Throughout the boat races, Ruth became buddies with Lewis Gottlieb, president of City National Bank. Some rushing teams were backed by gottlieb.
Ruth got a call, one day. The proprietor of Simon Furniture Co. had expired and his children were not interested in taking over the enterprise. Can Ruth be interested in having a furniture store?
Gottlieb advised him to check the shop out, and if he had been interested, he would help him finance the offer.
"It was a nice store, and that I knew I could do some good over there," Ruth said. The issue was money. Ruth along with his wife, Selma, had just had their second child, and that he only had a couple hundred bucks after paying the hospital bill. However he did have a $10,000 life insurance policy he purchased from a member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.
"Mr. Gottlieb told me to bring him that insurance policy to the lender," Ruth explained. "He told me'You are going to make it."
Gerard's Furniture opened at 1530 Foster Drive in 1966. There were three workers: Bonuses a bookkeeper and the Ruths. In the shop, Ruth sold furniture Throughout the afternoon. In the evenings, he also delivered.
At that time, the trend in furniture was Victorian - and Spanish-style furniture. A successful Atlanta furniture salesman visited Gerard's Furniture and told Ruth he needed to get a few of those things in the shop to ensure it is effective. Ruth told the guy he didn't have the money to purchase the furnitureso that he got them to send three suites of Mediterranean-style furniture on credit to Gerard's and called a Virginia manufacturer. "That really cranked up business," Ruth explained. "We offered the hell out of that furniture"
Ruth heard about a store.
Gerard's Furniture's Florida Boulevard location opened around 1975. The shop won acclaim for the completeness of this selection, which included furniture, art, fabrics, rugs and accessories. One area is filled with George Rodrigue prints in the early 1970s. His son Larry has a bunch of original Louisiana art and prints in a different part of the store.
To round out the selection the furniture markets are visited by Ruth in North Carolina every six months to locate items.
"Baton Rouge has always been interested in good taste and standard furniture," he said. "The men and women who buy nice visit this website furniture want to take a seat inside, want to feel this, and when they have any knowledge in any way, unzip it and see what's inside it."
Through the years, Ruth has had health issues, such as diabetes and cancer. He had been diagnosed with chronic lung disorder. That led him to shut the store after meeting with four children and his wife.
Because his children have professional occupations, the decision was made to liquidate the business.
"I never got rich, but I was able to raise four children, send them all off to college -- and not have to pay any associations or attorneys to get them from trouble," he said.
Despite his years in business, Ruth stated he chose to shut the shop.
"My family would go crazy trying to figure out everything at the furniture shop," he explained.
He also made a point of helping his kids and eight grandchildren find items in the store to help decorate their own homes.
Plans are to spend selling off all of the stock . The shop will close when all is gone.
Ruth said he has seen a increase in clients, since declaring he was shutting down his business. The day after it was announced he was shutting, 500 people showed up in the store. The next day about 400 people were there.
"It has been rewarding."