Creston News-Advertiser
Creston, Union County, Iowa
Monday, March 27, 2006, Pages 44A & 45A

CLEARFIELD -- Four generations of SPURRIERS have worked in Clearfield in their family service station. The company was started 76 years ago by Albert SPURRIER. Eleven years later, his son, R.E. SPURRIER, took over the station. He had two sons, Richard and Dean.

When R.E. took over the family business from his father, there were two parts to the business. There was the service station, providing gasoline, oil changes and tires for the Clearfield community. There was also the bulk plant ant tank wagon business.

The tank wagon business is the part of the SPURRIER business that R.E.'s oldest son Richard bought in 1971.

"Dad worked for R.E. all through his youth and school years," said Richard's son, Clint. "After he graduated from Clearfield High School in 1955, he went to work for R.E. full-time.

"He and Mom were married in 1960, and he took over the bulk plant/tank wagon business in 1971."

When Richard bought the business from his father, the main part of the business was hauling gasoline to farms.

"Over the years, Dad developed the gas transport and bulk fuel sales aspect of the business," Clint said. "My brother Cory and I did not work for Dad on a regular basis, normally we would just do occasional labor for him like painting buildings and unloading oil and tires.

"Cory and I worked at SPURRIER Station growing up. We helped R.E. there when we were 14 and 15, and then worked as employees when we were 16. We primarily worked in the summers, with occasional periods of the year that we could work after school and Saturdays."

Richard's oldest son Cory graduated from Clearfield High School in 1978. After graduation he went to Ellsworth Junior College in Iowa Falls to study petroleum marketing.

"I worked in Des Moines for a couple of years, then decided I wanted a little bit more for myself," Cory said. "It was a situation where all of my friends were getting good jobs after four years of college, and I decided maybe I should get more education.

"I went to school in Kansas City. it was a college where you go to school all year, so after three and a half years I had a bachelor's degree."

Cory worked in Kansas City for a few years, then moved to California.

"I had some friends who lived in California and I went for a visit," Cory said. "I came back and started pricing U-hauls. I loved it and I wanted to be out there."

After 10 years in California Cory moved back to Clearfield.

"My dad passed away in October 1995, and I moved back in November," Cory said. "My decision was 100 percent family related.

"Not only with Dad dying, but I had just started a family of my own. California is a horrible place to raise a family."

Cory moved to Creston and commuted to work at the family business in Clearfield.

"I took over a good little company in a good community with good customers," Cory said. "For the first three or four years we were able to grow the business. It took a bit of a down turn in 2001, but even still we are not below the point we were at when I started here."

Cory recently moved to Des Moines, but he continues to commute to Clearfield to work.

"My daughter moved back to California with her mother a few years ago," he said. "I have been spending all my free time in Des Moines, it just made sense to buy a place while the interest rates were so low."

Cory says he enjoys every thing about the city most people dislike.

"I want to live right in the downtown area. I enjoy the freedom offered in the metro area.

"I have always had to commute, and in a lot worse conditions than these. I just forward the office phone to my cell phone and it works out really well."

Clint SPURRIER graduated from Clearfield High School in 1981.

"We weren't the very last class," Clint said. "But we were pretty darn close."

After graduating from high school, he went to Iowa State University where he earned a bachelor's degree in history. He then went to the University of Iowa for his law degree.

Clint was working in Woodbury County as an assistant county attorney in 1995 when his father died suddenly.

He and wife Kris had just brought a new baby girl into their family.

"We had been looking to move to a smaller town around Sioux City to get the kids into smaller schools," SPURRIER said. "When Dad died, we decided to look down here."

Arlen HUGHES was the county attorney in Mount Ayr at the time, and had served since 1961. When he died, the board of supervisors called Clint.

"They called me and said, 'We hear you're interested in moving down here.' I interviewed with them on a Saturday and was offered the job."

Clint has been Ringgold County attorney since February 1996. Last year, he took on the role of Taylor County attorney, as well.

While Cory enjoys the metro atmosphere, Clint does not miss it at all.

"Kris and I have both really enjoyed our move to this area," Clint said. "Kris grew up in various towns, some of which were fairly small. It was not a complete culture shock for either of us, more of a process of becoming reacquainted with small-town life.

"People in our community pull together when there is a need, and they go out of their way to help each other. It is the difference between being members of a community instead of just a couple of faces in the crowd."

Clint doesn't miss the crime or the congested traffic of the city either.

"One perfect example of things I don't miss is, one year in Sioux City I put Christmas lights on an evergreen in my front yard. A few days later I noticed the lights on the side facing away from the house were not lighting very well. I checked the bulbs and found the reason for the lack of sufficient illumination was because someone had stolen all of the light bulbs on that side of the tree. I have not had that problem in Mount Ayr."

Dean spent one year at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Mo., before returning to Clearfield to marry his high-school sweetheart, Brenda DUEY.

The young couple married one week after Brenda graduated from high school in 1960.

Dean worked for his father two more years, then he and Brenda moved to Boulder, Colo.

"When we moved out there, we never planned on moving home," Brenda said. "We really loved it. The weather, the community we were in, everything."

Dean worked at a car dealership when the couple originally moved west.

"After the car dealership, he went into business with his uncle Gilbert SHAFER," Brenda said. "They had a service station out there together. Then he had a station by himself for a while."

Dean and Brenda eventually bought an upholstry shop and ran it together.

"Dean had worked in a service station since he was 12-years-old," Brenda said. "He just needed a break from it when we bought the upholstry shop."

"Our parents would visit us every three months," Brenda said. "My sister Judy had moved out there, so we were still able to be close to our families."

Family connections were built with trips back to Clearfield, as well.

"As soon as our kids turned 5, my mom would let them come to visit," Brenda said. "They would come and spend a week or two over the Fourth of July.

"There was always so much for the kids to do, and they loved spending time here."

Dean and Brenda have three children, Scott, Angie and Brent. Brenda says they were the driving factor in their decision to move back to Clearfield.

When the family moved back in 1982, Scott was 15, Angie 13, [Page 45A] and Brent 10.

"The kids wanted to move back, they loved being here." Brenda said. "They already had friends here from when they would visit in the summers."

When Dean's father passed away, the couple needed to move home to help with the station.

"Gilbert was running the service part of the business," Dean said. "So I bought into the tank wagon side of things with my brother Richard."

After a year or two, Dean bought the service station and began running it himself. The couple settled back into the town easily.

"When we left in 1962, we had been in a card club," Brenda said. "When we came back 20 years later we went right back into the same card club."

The town was the same, but smaller.

"There were a lot less people, farms and businesses," Dean said. "The farms had gotten bigger and fewer, so it was understandable."

"The school was smaller too," Brenda said. "There were 80 kids in high school when we graduated. Two years after we moved back, we lost our high school completely."

Dean and Brenda have lived and worked in Clearfield for 24 years now. Brenda worked as city clerk from 1992 to 2005 when she retired and went to work as deputy clerk for the city. Dean retired from the service station in February, leaving his oldest son Scott to run the business for him.

"Right now, Scott is just managing the station for us," Brenda said. "We hope he will own it in the future, but for now we are just playing it by ear."

The couple is excited about the next stage in their life as retirees.

"We want to do some traveling," Brenda said. "We want to spend a lot of time with our grandchildren."

When they were interviewed, Dean and Brenda were preparing for a three-week vacation to Arizona and anywhere else along the way.

"We have never really taken a vacation together," Dean said. "We would leave for the weekend, but this is something completely new to us."

Scott SPURRIER has stepped into the role of manager in his family's business.

"This vaction they are taking is my test," Scott said. "This is a very big deal for my dad to be gone this long and be able to not think about the station."

Scott has worked off and on at the station since he was in high school. In the back of his mind has always been the possibility of taking over someday.

"I used to think about it a lot in high school," Scott said. "My brother Brent and I figured we would do it together some day. It just seemed like the natural progression of things."

Scott had a bit of wanderlust to get rid of before he could settle down in his small town life. After he graduated from Clearfield High School in 1984, he moved to Arizona.

"I went because I wanted to," Scott said. "I was young and I wasn't afraid of the risk."

In 1990, Scott moved back to Clearfield to go to college.

"I graduated from Hair Tech in 1991 and started teaching there, soon after that," Scott said. "I got married to another stylist and we decided to move to Arizona in 1994."

After owning two hair salons and going through a divorce, Scott returned to Clearfield in 2002.

"I was was raised in that home where Mom and Dad are," Scott said. "It was still a very hard decision to leave. My son is still down there, and I miss seeing him more, but I don't miss the rat race of the city."

When Scott returned to Clearfield, he went to work at Hair House in Creston.

"I worked at Hair House for a few months before coming back to work for Dad," Scott said. "This is hard and dirty work, but it's good for me."

Scott works in the station with Larry BRAMMER, an employee who has worked with three generations of SPURRIERS in his 30 years of service to the company.

"Loyalty like that is amazing," Scott said of BRAMMER. "We have only had one other employee work here longer and that was only by one year."

Scott is aware of the demands of running a service station in a small town.

"People would come up to our house at all hours and ask Dad if he could open up and let them get some gas of fix a tire," Scott said. "Dad would always go and do it for them, and we still do that for people.

"If they want to support our business I will make the effort to help them."

Scott would like his son Drue, 9, to have the chance to experience a small town childhood.

"I really do wish he could be raised here," Scott said. "So does his mom, she was raised in Corning, so she remembers what it is like.

"When he comes to visit he loves it because he can run all over. He can ride his bike up here from my mom's by himself. He doesn't get that kind of freedom in Arizona."

Scott misses certain things about the city.

"I will always love the city," he said. "I love all the amenities and there is always something fun to do. Unfortunately, it costs an arm and a leg to do it.

"I really missed my family and friends while I was gone. It's nice to come home and find nothing in the town had really changed."

Scott is looking forward to running and possibly even buying the business from his parents some day.

"If I do nothing else right, I think this is what I am doing right," Scott said. "My dad always taught me, 'Wherever you are, be there.'

"I'm here, and I'm trying to fill the shoes of the three generations ahead of me."

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, November of 2012