All in the Family ~ Jurvelin Hardware Part II

10.1.2023 [archived ~ previously published 4.26.2018]

Olga and Henry Jurvelin ~ circa 1960

The history of Jurvelin Hardware store started when 26-year-old Henry Jurvelin began working for the Herreid Bros. in the late 1920s. Last week’s column took us from that time up until July 1964, when a fire in the adjacent Red Owl threatened to destroy the hardware store as well.

In early 1967, Henry was diagnosed with cancer and died in September of that year.  He had walked the floors of the hardware store for over 40 years. Before Henry’s death, his only son agreed to take over the store.  Dick was thirty-three years of age and his mother Olga sixty-six. The pair successfully continued to manage the store, with a little help from Fritz, the family dog.  Dick states “My mother and I walked to the store each morning.  Our dog came along too and then stood guard behind the counter.  She’d lay there on the floor, didn’t bother anybody, but if they [a customer] stepped behind the counter where they weren’t supposed to be, Fritz would give a warning growl.”

By then, Dick had had his eye on a petite young nurse, Fern Raboin, for some time.  Fern was from Cass Lake and began working at the Deer River Hospital in 1963.  She lived with her aunt and uncle, and later with other hospital staff. Dick was always delighted to wait on her when she came into the store, and in fact, the family lore of how they met, explained by Steve is as follows. “The story I heard of how you met, was that she came in the store to buy a cracker barrel. We had that cracker barrel at home for years until it finally broke.”

Fern pretty much confirms this, “Yes, I did go into the store to buy the cracker barrel, though I’m not sure it was the first time I had met Dick.  There was a group of us that did things together.  The cracker barrel eventually broke, and I found one just like it at a sale Reenie Reuters had, so I still have one.” 

After a few years at the hospital, Fern went back to school to become certified as a nurse anesthetist.  She worked away for a bit, returning to the Deer River Hospital in 1966.  Dick and Fern were married in June 1968 at St. Charles Church in Cass Lake. 

Steve, the oldest of Dick and Fern’s three children, is the only one who seems to have the hardware gene.  “I started coming down here at Christmas time when I was in first grade,” Steve said. “We’d be open two weeks before Christmas until 9:00 p.m.  That was my first job.  I would come here at 5:30 with supper for my Dad and my Grandma and then I stay until the store closed.” 

In 1979 Dick bought the old Herreid mortuary building on the east side of the hardware store.  If you remember it at all, it was probably as the Northwoods Gift Shop.  The Herreid Bros. closed their business shortly after Carroll Funeral Home opened.  In 1959 it was remodeled into a souvenir shop for Mrs. Chubb, then sold to Faddens in 1964.  Dick was glad to get the addition, not only for storage but because the chimney that the hardware store utilized was actually in the mortuary building!  When it was originally built by the Herreid’s in the early 1900’s, the heating system of the two buildings was connected in the basement.

By the time Steve was in 6^th grade, he was working at the store summers, after-school and Saturdays.  “In the evenings,” he said, “we’d pile in the truck to deliver 100-pound propane cylinders to area resorts and cabins. Grandpa did a lot of installs [appliances] and so did dad into the 1970s and 80s.  Washers, dryers, and Perfection oil stoves.”  Steve was involved in these activities and considered them to be part of the family business.  “I was like a farmer; I just thought that’s just what you did.”

Steve enjoyed working with his grandma Olga and was impressed that she was able to help customers who spoke Swedish.  Fern too was impressed with her mother-in-law’s dedication.  “She worked in the store virtually until the day she died. She worked on Saturday and died on Sunday.” From the time Henry took over the store, until 1983, over twenty-five years, Olga did the accounting which she entered by hand. 

Steve graduated in 1987 and continued working at the store while attending Itasca Community College and Bemidji State University.  “I wasn’t planning on staying at the store.  I went to school for business, but I wanted to fly. I would have loved to have been an airline pilot, but the store was an anchor, and it also provided income.”

By 1998, Steve had certainly decided to stay.  He was co-owner, and the store had more than doubled in size with the addition of 2500 square feet. Fern retired from the hospital after Olga was gone and stepped in as bookkeeper until Steve implemented a computerized system.  Although still family owned, the hardware store has had three or four other staff assisting with the day to day operations for the past 62 years. 

Dick hasn’t officially retired, and explains, “Steve is the owner and boss.  Sometimes he’s gone on fire calls, and at least I can close up and lock the door if I have to in the evening.”  Dick is at the store most of the time, and he doesn’t sit around with a coffee cup in his hand. He is always on the move.

Steve and Krystine married in March 2008.  Their son, Henrik Steven was born in December 2012. Now five-years-old, Henry has very definite ideas about his future.  “I am going to work here someday,” he told me as he confidently hung a bike horn back onto the store display, “and I might even be the boss.” By the time Henry is running the cash register, there will have been a Jurvelin in the building for 100 years and four generations.

Although Dick didn’t work much in the store until he came back from the service, he has walked the floors for about 60 years.  Steve isn’t too far behind, and then of course, there’s Henry.