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It was just this past Monday evening when I first heard that Ralph Nowak was in bad health. Although I would often think of Ralph as I walked past 209 W. Market St., our paths haven’t crossed since he closed his store in downtown Bluffton just over two years ago.
I first met Ralph in 1975 when I took a job selling ads at the Decatur newspaper. He was in his Decatur store every Tuesday as I recall. At the time he was running a small weekly ad of some sort, and then of course we put together ads for the special events: Downtown Dollars Days, Sidewalk Sale, Callithumpian Days.
So we visited briefly every Tuesday morning. But in a couple years, I moved into management and we only ran into each other at merchant meetings and some other chamber events that he would attend. It was in those meetings that I came to appreciate Ralph’s vision for small town merchants and his determination to promote and strengthen their hand.
He understood the value to a community of these local, independent merchants, how they help to define a community and make them all unique.
When I came to Bluffton about a dozen years ago, Ralph and I had several conversations about how retailing had changed, the differences and similarities between Bluffton and Decatur, and the new challenges being faced by small independent businesses — whether they be a card shop or a newspaper.
When word came early in the summer of 2006 that he had decided he would need to close his downtown Hallmark store, it was one of those stories that I knew I wanted to write myself. That was when I got to hear Ralph’s full story. My favorite part, I think, is that he came to Bluffton as a 19-year-old assistant manager in a local store and became manager just one year later.
He was a “mover and a shaker” pretty early on. I am sure I would have liked to have known Ralph in those days — the early-1950s, bustling about the downtown area — but I probably would not have appreciated his work as a toddler.
Howard Rich recalls coming to Bluffton about the same time as Ralph. They got to know each other in Chamber of Commerce activities and were good friends and compatriots in seeing Bluffton through a number of changes and improvements over the past 50 years or so.
I appreciate it when Howard says that “change didn’t scare him.” In my discussions with Ralph when he closed his store, he wasn’t particularly upset; he knew that people’s shopping habits had changed and that niche that he had so successfully filled over the years was simply no longer there.
As Howard noted, Ralph’s passing is part of the passing of an era. And that’s what I would contemplate, and will continue to do so, whenever I pass his old store. A different era, indeed.
by MARK MILLER
miller@news-banner.com
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