modern contemporary furniture



After 70 years in the furniture business, his business is shutting down.

Ruth got his start 70 years ago driving a delivery truck and getting his neighborhood friends to help him haul mattresses for 50 cents an hour. Health issues are forcing him to close down his Gerard's Furniture shop.

"I'm gonna keep on working. I must deliver this furniture all ."

When he turned 65, Ruth brought in an outside business to help the inventory is sold off by him.

"So I came back."

Ironically, the firm that helped him in 1996 back with the retirement sale is currently helping him with this sale.

Like he always did, 87, ruth does business. His store doesn't have a site. "I don't text and I don't email," he said. "Only been a few years ago we got a computer for bookkeeping."

Gerard's includes a focus on American-made furniture.

"All that stuff on the world wide web, it's like going to the ships. It is gambling. You do not understand exactly what you going to have," he said. "A number of the leather is seconds, some of it's rejects."

Ruth began working in the furniture business 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 during the Korean War.

He returned to Baton Rouge and to his job with the furniture shop.



Throughout that time he had been a salesman in Hemenway's, Ruth got into hydroplane racing. He was a driver for the Tom Cat Baby, a boat with a Corvette engine that won the prestigious and dangerous Pan American race on Lake Pontchartrain in 1958.

With Lewis Gottlieb, Ruth became friends through the ship races. Some racing teams were backed by gottlieb.

Ruth got a call one afternoon. The proprietor of Simon Furniture Co. had died and his children weren't interested in taking over the enterprise. Would Ruth be interested in having a furniture store?

Gottlieb told the shop to be checked out by him, and he'd help him finance the offer, when he was interested.

"It was a great shop, and I knew I could do some good on the market," Ruth explained. The issue was money. But he did have a $10,000 life insurance coverage he bought from a fellow member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.

"Mr. Gottlieb told me to deliver him that insurance coverage to the lender," Ruth explained. "He told me'You're going to create it."

Gerard's Furniture started in 1966. There were three employees: a bookkeeper and the Ruths. During the check over here day, Ruth sold furniture. In the evenings, he delivered.

At that moment, the most popular trend in furniture was Mediterranean- and Spanish-style furniture. An effective Atlanta furniture salesman detected Gerard's Furniture and told Ruth he had to find some of those things in the shop. Ruth told the guy he didn't have the money to purchase the furniture, so that he called a Virginia manufacturer and got them to ship three suites of furniture to Gerard's on credit. "That cranked business up," Ruth said. "We offered out the hell of the furniture."

A couple of years later, Ruth heard about a shop.

"It cost $2 million to revive the entire building," he said. The loan was really large, 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 shop won nationwide acclaim for the completeness of this choice, which included artwork, furniture, fabrics, rugs and accessories. One area is filled with George Rodrigue prints in the early 1970s. His son Larry has a bunch of original Louisiana art and prints at a different area of the store.

Ruth visits the furniture markets in North Carolina each six months to locate items to round out the selection in Gerard's.

"Baton Rouge has ever been interested in good taste and traditional furniture," he said. "The people who buy fine furniture want to sit in it, would like to feel this, and if they have any understanding in any way, unzip it and see what is inside ."

Through the years, Ruth has had health issues, such as cancer and diabetes. He was diagnosed with chronic lung disease. That led the store to close after meeting with his wife and four kids.

The choice was made to liquidate the organization because his kids have professional jobs.

"I never got rich, but I managed to raise four kids, send them all off to college -- and not have to pay any institutions or attorneys to get them from trouble," he said.

Despite his years in business, Ruth said he chose overnight to shut the store.

"My family would go mad trying to work out everything at the furniture shop," he explained.

He made a point of helping eight grandchildren and his children find Homepage things in the store to help decorate their own houses.

Plans are to spend the upcoming few months promoting off all the inventory . The store will close, when all is gone.

Ruth said he has seen a boost in clients since declaring his business was shutting down. 500 people showed up in the store the day after it was announced he was shutting.

"It's been rewarding."

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