wooden table
After 70 years in furniture business, his business is currently shutting down.
Ruth got his start at the furniture industry driving a delivery truck and receiving his neighborhood buddies to help him haul mattresses for 50 cents an hour. Now, health problems are forcing him to shut down his Gerard's Furniture shop.
"I'm gonna continue functioning. I must deliver this furniture all "
Twenty-two decades back, when he turned 65, Ruth brought to help him sell off the stock.
"So I came back."
Ironically, the firm that assisted him with the retirement sale back in 1996 is currently helping him with this sale.
Ruth, 87, still does business like he always did. His shop doesn't have a site. "I really don't text and that I don't email," he said. "Only been a couple of years ago we got a computer for accounting."
Gerard's has a focus on American-made furniture created out of premium leather.
"All that stuff on the world wide web, it is like going into the boats. It's gambling. You do not understand exactly what you are going to get," he said. "A number of the leather is seconds, some of it's rejects."
Ruth started working at the furniture industry during his senior year in Baton Rouge High in Lloyd Furniture Co., at 1126 North Blvd.. After graduation, he attended LSU, then joined the Coast Guard.
In 1953, he returned with the furniture shop to his job and also to Baton Rouge.
"I was making $35 a week in Lloyd Furniture, then I got an offer from Hemenway's Furniture on Plank Road," he said.
He was a salesman in Hemenway's, Ruth got into hydroplane racing. He was a driver for your Tom Cat Baby, a boat with a Corvette engine which won the dangerous and prestigious Pan American race on Lake Pontchartrain.
With Lewis Gottlieb, president of City National Bank, Ruth became buddies through the ship races. Gottlieb backed some teams that were rushing.
Ruth got a call from Gottlieb one day. The proprietor of Simon Furniture Co. had expired and his kids weren't interested in taking over the business. Can Ruth be interested in owning a furniture shop?
Gottlieb told him to check out the shop, and he'd help him fund the deal, when he had been interested.
"It was a nice store, and I knew I could do some good on the market," Ruth said. The issue was money. His wife along with ruth, Selma, had just had their second child, and he needed a couple hundred dollars after paying the hospital bill. But 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 into the bank," Ruth said. "He told me'You're going to create it."
Gerard's Furniture started in 1530 Foster Drive in 1966. There were three employees: the Ruths and a bookkeeper. Ruth sold furniture in the shop. In the evenings, he delivered the items he offered.
At that moment, the trend in furniture has been Mediterranean- he said and Spanish-style furniture. A successful Atlanta furniture salesman detected Gerard's Furniture and advised Ruth, he had to find a few of those things in the store to ensure it is effective. Ruth told the guy he didn't have the money to purchase the furnitureso he phoned a Virginia manufacturer and got them to send three suites of Mediterranean-style furniture to Gerard. "That cranked business up," Ruth explained. "We sold out the hell of that furniture."
Ruth discovered about a shop. Ruth checked out the building at 7330 Florida Blvd. and decided to purchase it and fix it up.
"It cost $2 million to revive the entire construction," he explained. The loan was so big, it had to be split between CNB and St. Landry Bank in Opelousas.
The Florida Boulevard place of the Furniture of Gerard opened around 1975. The store won nationwide acclaim for the completeness of this selection, which included furniture, art, fabrics, rugs and decorative accessories. One area is filled with George Rodrigue prints in the 1970s. His son Larry has a bunch of original Louisiana art and prints in another part of the store.
Ruth visits websites the furniture markets in North Carolina to round out the selection in Gerard's.
"Baton Rouge has always been interested in good taste and standard furniture," he said. "The men and women who purchase fine furniture want to take a seat in it, would like to feel it, and when they have any knowledge at all, unzip it and see what is inside it."
Recently, he was diagnosed with lung disorder. That led the store to close after meeting with four children and his wife.
"I got outvoted," he said. The decision was made to liquidate the business because his kids have professional occupations.
"I never got rich, but I was able to raise four kids, send them all off to school -- and not need to pay any institutions or attorneys to get them from difficulty," he said.
Regardless of his years in business, Ruth stated he chose to shut the store.
"My family would go mad trying to work out everything in the furniture shop," he explained.
He made a point of helping his children and eight grandchildren find things in the shop to help decorate their own homes.
Plans are to spend the upcoming few months promoting all the stock off in Gerard's. When all is gone, the shop will close.
Ruth said he has seen a boost in clients since declaring his organization shut down. The day after it was announced he closed, 500 people showed up in the store.
"It has been rewarding."