Great Scot 'just a hometown, little grocery store'

FINDLAY — Former employee Fred Sharrer had encouraged others who had worked at the downtown Findlay Great Scot to gather Tuesday night to reminisce and say goodbye. He hoped perhaps 25 people would show up. There were at least 100, spanning several decades of employment at the grocery store that was a fixture of downtown Findlay for more than 60 years. In early June, SpartanNash, owner of Great Scot since 2024, announced plans to close all three northwest Ohio stores. Findlay's West Main Cross Street store, along with the Great Scot in North Baltimore, will close Wednesday. The store on Broad Avenue in Findlay will close a week later, on July 8. Teens keep asking for a job Sharrer started working there in 1977 as a carryout boy. He was 15 years old and lived in the neighborhood. The carryout boys — wearing dress pants, white shirts and plaid bow ties — carried groceries out to customers' cars. Sharrer's best friend at school, Dan Johnson, started in the role around the same time. Johnson lives out of state and was unable to attend the Tuesday reunion, but shared his memories in a phone interview. He recalled pestering Jim Niemeyer, a neighbor and the assistant manager, for a job. Niemeyer kept saying none were available, then finally told Johnson to come back at 5 p.m. one day with a white shirt, which Johnson bought that day for $15. (Niemeyer, in a separate interview, described Sharrer, too, as continually asking for a job until he relented.) Niemeyer started at Great Scot as a carryout boy in the early 1970s, while a student at Central Junior High School. He stayed for about a decade, leaving as manager. "We all got along," Niemeyer said. 'Sort of like a family.'" Back then, he said, there were no UPC codes or scanners. Employees stamped prices on cans, and many cashiers had the prices of common items memorized. Sharrer, Johnson and Niemeyer were among a skeleton crew working during the blizzard of 1978. "It was incredible," Johnson said. Sharrer said his parents had run out of cigarettes and sent him and his siblings to the store with a sled. It was closed, but Niemeyer let them in to purchase bread, milk and the cigarettes, which were 50 cents per pack. "Back then you only needed a note" from your parents, Sharrer said. As they unloaded their purchases back home, Niemeyer called. People had seen the children pulling the sled with Great Scot grocery bags, and now other residents were stopping in for groceries of their own. Sharrer hurried back to help open up the store, and they called in Johnson to help. Sharrer said the parking lot was full of snowdrifts, covering Niemeyer's car so thoroughly that no one could tell it was there. They worked close to 12 hours, cleaning the floors continually as customers tracked in snow. But everyone was grateful, as "most places were closed," Sharrer said. He had planned to wear a version of his carryout boy clothes Tuesday, but wasn't able to find a plaid bow tie in time. Several former employees did wear Community Markets T-shirts, and at least one had her old store nametag. Before taking one last group picture, the employees mingled, greeting each other by name. Some had to re-introduce themselves. "We don't any of us look the same," said Martha Powell, 80, who was there with her twin sister, Mary Jo Rader. Both sisters worked at the store when they were young. After stopping inside the store, the group gathered outside for a picture, despite the extreme heat warning. After one person said, "Say 'Cheese!'" another called out instead the suggestion, "Fresh produce!" Drivers heading down West Main Cross Street honked their horns in support. Two employees working Tuesday evening came out shortly afterward to hug former coworkers who stopped by. Everybody knew your name Before America had big-box stores, everyone shopped at their neighborhood grocery store. "The best way to describe it would be like the TV show 'Cheers,' where everybody knew your name," Sharrer said. Powell and Rader, too, grew up in the neighborhood and attended the downtown St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church. "It was like we were home (at Great Scot) … It was the best job ever," Powell said. "I mean, we had so much love and so much fun." In the 1960s, many families could survive on one income, Powell recalled. But her job also provided her with an identity beyond simply being a wife and mother. She said many women needed these jobs "to keep your sanity." She started as a part-time cashier, later working as a relief bookkeeper. Rader started as a cashier in the late 1960s, later working in the meat department, bookkeeping and stocking shelves. Cashier was her favorite job, as it gave her a chance to talk to customers. She knew all the customers at the West Main Cross Street store by name, often knowing what days to expect them and what they were likely to buy. The cashiers gave out Dum Dum suckers to customers' children. Rader recalled that the manager had asked them to limit it to one per child. But "we had our favorites, and sometimes we'd just give them practically a whole lunch bag full." The sisters loved the store so much they dreamed of someday being part owners. "We all knew each other, and we grew up all together," Powell said. "It was just a hometown, little grocery store." She added that most of the customers were walk-ins. Back then most families had one car, if any. "Everybody was like family," Rader said. Both sisters stayed in touch with several former coworkers long after leaving the store. One close friend and former coworker died this spring. Four Findlay stores in Great Scot's heyday At one time there were four Great Scot stores in Findlay, including one on Tiffin Avenue and one on South Main Street as well as the West Main Cross and Broad Avenue locations. The South Main Street store closed in 1983, and the Tiffin Avenue store closed in early 1992. The May 6, 1964 issue of the Republican-Courier included a story about "a new corporation to be known as Great Scot Inc.," which would be assuming ownership of what had previously been known as Scheck Markets. The new corporation would be headquartered in Findlay. At the time, the Scheck company owned the Findlay Shop Rite as well as markets in Fostoria, Bucyrus, Galion and Fremont, the story stated. On July 21 of that year, the Republican-Courier reported on the formal opening of the Scheck's Great Scot! Food Store on Tiffin Avenue. The grand opening had a Scottish theme, with bagpipers in kilts performing throughout the two-day event. And on October 22, the Republican-Courier reported on the grand opening of a new store — then known as Scheck's Great Scot! — downtown on West Main Cross Street. The story noted that the meat department featured "Choosy-Choice" beef, USDA Choice beef personally selected by Great Scot! buyers. A lot of laughter Sharrer worked for Great Scot a total of around 13 years, leaving for another job and later returning. After his stint as a carryout boy, he joined the night stock crew upon graduating high school. He formed close friendships with his coworkers. He has stayed in touch with some throughout, and reconnected with many others through social media. "You know how the atmosphere was, if you had a job that long ago and you still remember all the names," he said. Nearly half a century later, Sharrer can recall so many times that the job made him laugh. There was the time Johnson, bagging groceries, told a cashier that a bag of flour had a hole in it. As he tried to show her, he squeezed the bag a bit. "He didn't mean to do it, but it was just like on the cartoon, all over her face," Sharrer said. Sharrer also recalled Niemeyer confronting a shoplifter attempting to smuggle eggs inside his clothing. He may have assumed it wasn't noticeable, but the experiment did not end well for either man or eggs. "There was egg dripping out of the guy's bib overalls," Sharrer recalled. Then there was the day a manager entrusted Sharrer with building a display of items that were on sale. "I put, 'Halloween special. Toilet paper. Four-pack, 99 cents,'" Sharrer said. Confronting him the next day, the manager "had a smirk on his face but he was trying to act mad." He asked Sharrer, "Do you think this is funny?" "I said, 'Yeah, I made one for the eggs, too,'" said Sharrer. (He hadn't.) "The thing that I enjoyed about it was just the group of people that worked there," Johnson said. "We just made it so much fun." The second carryout girl Patty Carnahan retired in January after 48 years at Great Scot. Her five brothers all also worked there. Carnahan started in 1977 at the Tiffin Avenue store, as the second carryout girl hired. The carryout team had been all boys, and the manager wasn't certain Carnahan could handle it because "those carts were about as tall as me." But she did. She later worked as a cashier and in the deli and the meat department, moving from Tiffin Avenue to Broad Avenue and then West Main Cross Street. She enjoyed the deli, and said the meat department wasn't bad but involved eight hours a day in a cold room. The day the company told employees the store would be closing, Carnahan had already retired but happened to be in the store visiting. "I felt sorry for them," she said. "I know one of the cashiers, she was crying when she came out of the back room." She said some of them had suspected it might happen, but didn't think it would be this soon. "I'm going to miss everybody here," she said. Chris Gearing, Carnahan's brother, started working at Great Scot a year or two after she did, as a carryout boy. He worked there 19 years, leaving as assistant manager of the West Main Cross Street store. He still runs into customers who remember him from many years ago. Gearing had replaced Sharrer when he left the store. The two families lived a block away, and the men had known each other since elementary school. 'This is my store' Along with the employees, longtime customer Michael Momany was on hand Tuesday to reconnect with many old friends. Momany has lived two blocks from the downtown Great Scot since 1982. "So this is my store," he said. In 43 years of shopping there, he became close to many store employees, often even bringing them breakfast such as homemade cinnamon rolls. Momany's description was similar to Sharrer's. Great Scot was, simply, a place where everybody knew your name. "You walk in the door, and you hardly get three steps, and somebody yells, 'Hey, Mike!'" he said. The store was scheduled to close for good at 11 a.m. Wednesday. On Tuesday night, the shelves were almost bare. But after greeting his friends, Momany stopped in for one last purchase, a package of Win Schuler's Cheese Spread. "Good people," he said afterward. "Just good people." Back then, it looked 'so big' Scott Woodward started at Great Scot in the 1980s as a carryout boy, later working as a stocker. He recalled saving up his $3.50 hourly wages to buy his first car, a yellow and black 1968 Chevrolet Camaro. He looked up to the managers at the store, who inspired him to want to get into management himself. Woodward is now operations manager at American Plastics. The cashiers at the time were almost all women, and slightly older than the carryout boys. "We all had crushes on the cashiers," and some actually dated, Woodward recalled. "I was very sad" to hear of the store closing, he said. "I buy all my groceries there. I always have." He said it has made him think about big-box stores pushing out smaller stores all over the country. But in the 1980s, he said, Great Scot didn't feel like a small store. "When I was that age, it looked like it was so big," he said. But stores were smaller in the 1960s and 1970s, said Powell, adding that she doesn't go to big-box stores. "They're too big," she said. "Everything's scattered, and they have so much more than what you want to go in there for." Her sister agreed, saying "I mean, it takes everything out of me when I go to the store." They had rung up grocery purchases in an era before cell phones. "There wasn't any of that stuff," Powell said. "You talked and communicated with people. ... It just was a simpler time, and a fun time." Customers brought in gifts for cashiers at Christmas or upon the birth of a new baby. And on the occasion a customer was grouchy, "I would kill them with kindness," Powell recalled. "Because you don't know what somebody else is going through." "I think back to those times, and it was a wonderful life. … Lots of memories," Powell said. "It was the best job we ever had," Rader said. Echoing a comment made by so many others, her sister summed it up simply as, "We were a family, all of us."