Goodbye, Rudy, and thanks for the bungee cords - hardware store owner - Obituary

Home Channel News, Nov 5, 2001

Rudy was an absolute ... well now ... let me see. How the heck can I describe Rudy? One of a kind? Yeah, that's him. Unique? Most certainly. Completely nuts? That too.

Rudy was a character. But no matter what he did, it would at least be outrageous. No matter how outrageous, or utterly lacking in taste, good or otherwise, it was tough to get mad at Rudy. He spent his summers in an Irish-Catholic beach community (Rudy was not Catholic) where he delighted in telling dirty jokes to priests. And he always got a laugh.

Rudy was a nuclear engineer who never spent any time working as a nuclear engineer -- except when Three-Mile Island had a problem and the government asked him to help. Rudy spent the first part of his career working as a chemical engineer. Rudy explained, "Hey, nuclear ... chemical ... it's close enough."

At a party, a casual acquaintance lamented the 9-to-5 grind and exclaimed, "If I had a couple of bucks, I'd trash it all and open up a hardware store." Well, Rudy had a couple of bucks and thought, "What the hell?"

Within six months the two had a Coast-to-Coast hardware store in Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey. Rudy loved it. Within a few years he had bought out the friend and was semi-retired in a vacation spot 50 miles from New York City.

Over the years, New York City suburbs moved out to Lake Hopatcong, and Rudy supplied all the materials needed to turn vacation bungalows into beautiful homes. Rudy did okay for himself, and he was always Rudy. He managed to put about 17,000 square feet of product into a 10,000-square-foot building.

He wouldn't use bar codes. You see, the tags were too big for small items, and then he wouldn't be able to fit as many items on a rack. He put wire caps in bins. I said, "Rudy, aren't these things stolen from bins like that?"

"Of course!" he would cackle. "But who cares? They only cost about a quarter of a cent each. Enough people actually buy them that I do fine."

Rudy was more concerned with entertaining his customers than anything else. But don't let that fool you. He was as smart as they come and had a great business sense. I mean ... he was a nuclear engineer.

He went through the merger with TruServ and while he complained about some things, he appreciated what the co-op did for its members. Even when problems surfaced, he stood up at a meeting to praise the co-op for all the things they did right. I told you he was a unique guy.

"Was" is the operative word here. Rudy died a few months ago from pancreatic cancer. Rudy's family, his friends and our industry lost something special. The store is still there. Rudy's son runs it, but of course, it will never be the same.

I wonder how many "Rudys" we are losing in this business. Small independents are closing down, selling out or merging. Even among some of our larger retailers, it is time for the corporate guys to start running things. After all, this is big business. Competition is tough. Our industry must change, must become more efficient and must become better. Let's just not forget Rudy, and the fun you can still have in this business.