Iowa's Oldest Family Business

LUCKE

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 2/9/2009 at 22:49:24

Bellevue Herald-Leader
October 18, 2001

Iowa’s oldest family business
Lucke name synonymous with quality shoes, clothing for 144 years
By Lowell Carlson

(Photo caption: Jerry Lucke found himself the young operator of the family’s business when his father died while he was still attending high school. Long store hours were part of the formula that saw the store continue through parts of three centuries.)

An advertisement in this week’s issue of the Bellevue Herald-Leader signals the apparent end of a business legacy believed to be the state’s oldest.

The store’s 144-year history included personal dealings with Ulysses S. Grant when he worked as a clerk in his father’s Galena leather business.

In all, this family business stretched across parts of three centuries, beginning with Luxembourg immigrant Joseph Lucke’s boot making business in 1857.

Lucke Bros., a Bellevue business mainstay ends four generations of family-ownership with announcement the widely known shoe and men’s clothing store is being offered for sale.

For long time customers the ritual of watching owner Jerry Lucke tie up purchases from a string ball fed from the ceiling was part of a visit to the store on North Riverview.

The store was the longest, continuous customer of LaCrosse Footwear, Inc. when announcement the store would close was made recently.

In the end it was health considerations that prompted the decision notes Lucke who closed “temporarily” in July to undergo hip surgery.

At 79, Lucke said last week it was not going to be physically possible to resume business as usual as he recuperates at Mill Valley Care Center.

Reaction in Bellevue to the prospect of main street without Lucke Bros. was predictable in a community that has grown accustomed to having the store a virtual fixture. Chamber of Commerce President Eric Newton, president of Iowa Bank, said Lucke’s store was a major store front in this river community and one that will be greatly missed. Newton said he understands the reasons behind the decision, but hopes a new owner/operator can be located to continue the vital main street business.

Lucke said last week the store had been successful through the years by offering customers quality products from some of the best known companies in the business.

He attributed some of the store’s appeal to customers in being able to offer basic clothing items people needed through the years.

Repeat customers were key to such a long term establishment like Lucke Bros. “I won’t mention any names, but we had people with big families who would come in and buy shoes for all the kids in the family. We don’t have big families like that any more,” Lucke reflected.

Lucke Bros. did have loyal customers. There were cases of visitors to Bellevue, from out-of-state who made a point of buying footwear from the Bellevue merchant.

It remained very much a family run store through the years.

Lucke credits his brothers Paul, Phil and Bill, as well as his late sister, Mary Lois with helping through the years. “The boys all worked in the store during their school years and Mary Lois was a big help when she came back from California when she retired and helped out for 11 years. She was 18 months older than I was so we were almost twins you might say,” explains Jerry. “The boys would wash windows and they learned how to wait on customers and sell shoes. They always came home for the holidays when they went away to school”

Fashions came and went and when they came back around again they were always just a little different when it came to footwear.

He credits Converse with popularizing what became a major segment of the footwear industry, sneakers, with their first canvas shoes after the war.

Nike, a company that is a virtual new comer among the list of popular brands the store carried, became a major seller for the small-town shoe store.

“Shoes that were flops? Well, they didn’t take them back and some how you got rid of them,” adds Jerry.

The store’s lineage runs from founder Joseph Lucke to his son William and then to his son Clarence.

“Uncle Bob ran the store from 1938-1941, but it wasn’t his cup of tea and he wanted out and I took over then. During World War II they rationed shoes to stores based on the volume of sales you had leading up to the war. And you had to deal with ration stamps and the paperwork that went with rationing. It meant long hours after work.”

After the war merchandise remained difficult to get for some time before peacetime production resumed in full.

In 1948 Jerry remodeled the front of the store his father had moved the business to in 1926 after leaving the original store location, where the Bronco Inn is now. It had formerly been a grocery store, operated by Ted Neu.

From a culture that brought shoes back to be repaired to throw away sneakers, the shoe business has indeed changed and somehow Lucke Bros. always managed to stay in step.

Jerry went to market frequently at major Midwest cities and even trips to New York to buy for the coming seasons.

There were some compensations for the long hours Harry devoted to the downtown business.

He was able to travel widely through the years including Scandinavia, Europe, the Mediterranean and Greece. “I especially enjoyed visiting Greece,” remarked the newly retired businessman.

As for the future of the store Jerry believes a new owner “could make a good living doing it. We sold basic merchandise that was always in demand. We had a lot of working men and women as customers through the years and they needed good, basic clothing,” notes Jerry.

But, it is a changed landscape while brands like Red Wing and Wolverine remain popular, Jerry notes the whole spectrum of children’s shoe manufacturer has been swept away by the transfer of production off shore. “All the children’s shoe companies that we once carried are gone now. It’s all imports now.”

In that regard this family owned, four-generation Bellevue business has seen shoemaking from literally the historic beginning to the present.

“When manufactured shoes came along that shut down the workshop in the back of the business. You couldn’t make handmade boots any longer with factory made goods available cheaper. And with companies like Nike, who had them manufactured overseas, it took out American manufacturers that tried to compete with cheap labor in foreign countries.”

The Lucke Bros. store may face a new future. The 144-year history of this unique family owned business stands as a remarkable statement about commitment to family and community.

(Picture caption: The Grant-Lucke connection
Ulysses S. Grant as he appeared in mid-life, and just after his short career as a leather goods sales man to Lucke Bros.
Joseph Lucke founded the family business in 1857 and was a leather customer of Grant when he came downriver from Galena to Bellevue.

The man who became President of the United States, who dined with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle, who took the salute of his generals and their armies in Washington after the Civil War first knew Joseph Lucke and men who made boots in the shop along Bellevue’s Water Street facing the Mississippi River in the 1850’s. Grant had come to work in his father’s business after his efforts as a farmer failed miserably.)