Variety store a fixture downtown
Ronald Moser has especially fond memories of the downtown Butler Woolworth's store.
That's because Moser of Butler was the last manager of the Butler Woolworth's that sat at the corner of Cunningham and Main streets, the hub of a vibrant downtown retail area.
Woolworth's was famous for its lunch counter, candy sales and a longtime talking parrot named Charlie.
Moser, 89, was the Woolworth manager for 22 years and retired in 1992, after presiding over the venerable variety store's going-out-of-business sale.
Shortly afterward, the building's wall collapsed and the whole structure was torn down. Rite Aid Drug stands on the corner now.
Moser worked for the F.W. Woolworth chain starting out as a 15-year-old part-time stock boy in his hometown of Dunkirk, N.Y., doing anything that needed done: stock work, sweeping the floor and washing the windows.
After he graduated from high school in 1948, Moser went to work for Allegheny Ludlum where the rest of his family worked. He lasted two months.
“They kept changing my jobs and my shifts,” he said.
When he told his family he was quitting, he said, “They said, 'It's your life, do what you want.' It was the best move I ever made.”
Mostly because in 1950, Woolworth sent Moser to Bradford for a training program which is where he met his wife, the-then Rosemary DeLucia.
Rosemary Moser said, “We met in Bradford. He was the assistant manager. I walked past the store and we sort of looked at each other, and someone in the store introduced us, and that was a long time ago.”
After a stint in the Army during the Korean War where Moser said his typing skills got him sent to France instead of Korea, he and Rosemary married and he returned to working for Woolworth's.
It was boom times for the five-and-dime retailer, Moser remembered.“They had 7,000 to 8,000 stores. They were looking for men as fast as they could find them,” he said.After managing stores in Massachusetts, Erie and Oil City, he was transferred to Butler in 1970.“I always wanted that store. It was three times the size of the Oil City Woolworth's,” he said.He called the Butler Woolworth's the premier retailer of its time.“It was 17,000 square feet on two floors. I had two assistants in the beginning and 30 to 35 employees,” he said. “It sold clothes, jewelry, hardware and glassware.“And candy. They told me, 'So goes candy, so goes the store,' ” he remembered. “We sold a lot of candy, two pound for a buck. We used to buy it by the ton.”The store's lunch counter was the social hub of Butler, the Mosers said.“The lunch counter was right by the front window. It started with stools but we eventually put in chairs,” he said. Milk shakes and hot dogs were the big sellers,” said Moser.The pet department was famous for Charlie the talking parrot.“Everybody remembers Charlie. Everybody had to see Charlie when they came to the store,” Moser said.He said Butler Junior High students would come to Woolworth's when school let out and try to teach the parrot swear words.The long-lived bird was given to an employee when the store closed.
But even though Moser was putting in 65 hours a week and working Sundays to manage the store, he remembers downtown Butler fondly.“There was Jaffe's. There was Troutman's. There was McCarren's. There was Benson's. We had clerks that would actually talk to you,” he said.Woolworth's stayed open late on Friday nights, which was always a busy shopping night.There was always a big rush of shoppers into the store following the end of the annual downtown Christmas parade, Moser remembered.Moser can pinpoint the beginning of the end: October 1981.“The Clearview Mall opened and it was the same week Pullman-Standard closed,” he said.After the Christmas parade that year, the shoppers were largely absent from Woolworth's.“Everybody went to the mall. Everybody got used to the mall. You can see what it's like now,” he said.As customers stared to dwindle, the Woolworth chain as a whole was facing increasing pressure from newer retailers such as Walmart.By 1992, with the building in need of repairs, Woolworth pulled the plug on its downtown Butler store.Moser said he stayed around to supervise the final sales and the transfer of fixtures to the Indiana, Pa., Woolworth's and then he retired.The Mosers stayed in Butler because their sons were living in Butler and Mars and they liked the area.“We found a home in Butler,” Rosemary Moser said.
