brown leather sofa
Ruth got his start 70 years ago driving a delivery truck and receiving his neighborhood friends to assist him haul mattresses. Now, health issues are forcing him to shut down his Gerard's Furniture store.
"I am gonna keep on functioning. I got to deliver all this furniture."
This is the second time that Ruth has had a sale. Twenty-two years ago, when he turned 65, Ruth brought to help him sell the stock off.
"I went home, and after about 10 days, I went stir crazy," he explained. "So I came back."
Ironically, the company that assisted him in 1996 back with all the retirement sale is helping him with this going-out-of-business sale.
Like he did ruth, 87, still does business. His shop doesn't have a site. "I don't text and that I do not email," he said. "Just been a couple of years ago we got a computer for bookkeeping."
Gerard's includes a focus on high-end, American-made furniture.
"All that stuff on the internet, it is like going to the ships. It's gambling. You do not know what you going to have," he explained. "Some of the leather is seconds, some of it's rejects."
Ruth started working at the furniture business during his senior year in Baton Rouge High in Lloyd Furniture Co., then at 1126 North Blvd.. After graduation, he attended LSU joined the Coast Guard during the Korean War.
Back in 1953, he returned with the furniture shop to his job and to Baton Rouge.
He had been a salesman in Hemenway's, Ruth got into hydroplane racing. He was a driver for your Tom Cat Baby, a ship with a Corvette engine that won the most prestigious and dangerous Pan American race Lake Pontchartrain in 1958.
With Lewis Gottlieb, Ruth became buddies Throughout the ship races. Gottlieb backed some racing teams.
Ruth got a call from Gottlieb one day. The proprietor of Simon Furniture Co. had expired and his kids were not interested in taking over the enterprise. Can Ruth be interested in having a furniture shop?
Gottlieb advised him to have a look at the shop, and he would help him fund the offer, when he was interested.
"It was a nice store, and I knew I could do some good over there," Ruth said. The issue was money. But he did have a $10,000 life insurance policy he purchased from a member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.
"Mr. Gottlieb advised me to bring him that insurance policy into the lender," Ruth explained. "He told me'You're going to make it."
The Furniture of gerard started in 1530 Foster Drive in 1966. There were three employees: a bookkeeper and the Ruths. Ruth sold furniture. In the evenings, he delivered.
At that time, the trend in furniture has been Victorian - and Spanish-style furniture. An effective Atlanta furniture salesman detected Gerard's Furniture and told Ruth, he had to find a few of those things in the store. Ruth told the guy he didn't have the money so that he got them to send three suites of Mediterranean-style furniture to Gerard and called a Virginia maker. "That really cranked up business," Ruth said. "We offered out the hell of that furniture"
Ruth heard about a store.
The loan was really large, it had to be divided between CNB and St. Landry Bank in Opelousas.
The Florida Boulevard location of Gerard's Furniture opened around 1975. The shop won acclaim for its completeness of the selection, which included art, furniture, fabrics, rugs and accessories. One room is filled from the 1970s with George Rodrigue prints. His son Larry includes a gallery of original Louisiana art and prints in a different area of the store.
To round out the selection Ruth visits the significant furniture markets in North Carolina each six months to find items.
"Baton Rouge has ever been interested in great taste and traditional furniture," he said. "The people who purchase fine furniture want to take a seat inside, would like to feel this, and when they have any knowledge at all, unzip it click this link and see what's inside it."
Through the years, Ruth has had health problems, such as diabetes and cancer. He was diagnosed with lung disorder. That led the shop to shut after meeting with his wife and four kids.
The choice was made to liquidate the organization, Since his kids have professional jobs.
"I never got rich, but I managed to raise four kids, send them off to college -- and not have to pay any institutions or lawyers to get them from difficulty," he explained.
Regardless of his go right here years in business, Ruth stated he decided overnight to close the shop.
"My family would go mad trying to work out everything in the furniture shop," he said.
He also made a point of helping eight grandchildren and his kids find items in the shop to help decorate their homes.
Plans are to spend the next few months promoting off of the inventory in Gerard's. The store will close when everything is gone.
Ruth said he has seen a boost in clients since announcing his organization shut down. 500 people showed up in the store, the day after it was announced he was shutting. The next day about 400 people were there.
"It has been rewarding."