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After 70 years in the furniture business, his business is currently shutting down.
Ruth got his start in the furniture industry 70 years back driving a delivery truck and getting his neighborhood buddies to assist him haul mattresses for 50 cents an hour. Now, health issues are forcing him to close down his Gerard's Furniture shop.
"I'm gonna continue functioning. I must deliver all this furniture"
Twenty-two years back, when he turned 65, Ruth brought to help the inventory is sold off by him.
Ironically, the company that helped him with all the retirement sale back in 1996 is assisting him with this sale.
Like he always did ruth, 87, still does business. His shop does not have a site. "I really don't text and that I do not email," he explained. "Just been a couple of years ago we got a computer for bookkeeping."
Gerard's has a focus on luxury, American-made furniture made with premium leather.
"All that stuff on the world wide web, it's like going to the ships. It's gambling. You do not know what you going to get," he explained. "Some 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., then at 1126 North Blvd.. After graduation, he attended LSU joined the Coast Guard during the Korean War.
He returned with the furniture store to his job and to Baton Rouge.
"I was making $35 a week at Lloyd Furniture, then I got an offer from Hemenway's Furniture on Plank Road," he explained.
He was a salesman at Hemenway's, Ruth got into hydroplane racing. He was a catalyst for the Tom Cat Baby, a boat with a Corvette engine that won the dangerous and prestigious Pan American race Lake Pontchartrain in 1958.
With Lewis Gottlieb, president of City National Bank, Ruth became buddies Throughout the boat races. Gottlieb endorsed some teams that were rushing.
Ruth got a call from Gottlieb, one day. The owner of Simon Furniture Co. had died and his kids were not interested in taking over the enterprise. Would Ruth be interested in having a furniture shop?
Gottlieb told him to have a look at the store, and he would help him fund the offer when he had been interested.
"It was a nice store, and I knew I could do some good over there," Ruth said. The issue was money. Ruth and his wife, Selma, had just had their second child, and he just needed a few hundred dollars after paying the hospital bill. But he'd have a life insurance coverage he bought from a fellow member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.
"Mr. Gottlieb told me to bring him that insurance coverage into the lender," Ruth said. "He told me'You're going to make it."
Gerard's Furniture started at 1530 Foster Drive in 1966. There were three employees: a bookkeeper and the Ruths. At the shop, Ruth sold furniture Throughout the afternoon. In the evenings, he delivered.
At that moment, the trend in furniture has been Mediterranean- and Spanish-style furniture. A successful Atlanta furniture salesman detected Gerard's Furniture and told Ruth he needed to get a few of those items in the shop to ensure it is successful. Ruth told the man he didn't have the money to buy the furnitureso that he phoned a Virginia manufacturer and got them to ship three suites of Mediterranean-style furniture to Gerard's on credit. "That really cranked up business," Ruth explained. "We sold the hell out of that furniture."
Ruth heard about a store.
"It cost $2 million to revive the whole building," he explained. The loan was really large, it had to be divided between CNB and St. Landry Bank in Opelousas.
The Florida Boulevard location of the Furniture of Gerard opened around read what he said 1975. The shop won acclaim for its completeness of the selection, which included artwork, furniture, fabrics, rugs and decorative accessories. 1 area is filled with George Rodrigue prints from the early 1970s. His son Larry has a bunch of original Louisiana art and prints in another area of the shop.
To round out the selection in Gerard's, Ruth visits with the furniture markets in North Carolina each six months to locate items.
"Baton Rouge has always been interested in good taste and traditional furniture," he said. "The people who buy fine furniture want to sit inside, would like to feel it, and if they have any knowledge at all, unzip it and see what's inside ."
Recently, he was diagnosed with chronic lung disorder. That led him to shut the shop after meeting with four kids and his wife.
Since his kids have professional jobs, the decision was made to liquidate the organization.
"I never got rich, but I was able to raise four children, send them off to school -- and not need to pay any institutions or attorneys to get them out of trouble," he explained.
Despite his years in business, Ruth stated he chose to close the shop.
"My family would go mad trying to work out everything in the furniture store," he said.
He made a point of helping eight grandchildren and his children find items in the store to help decorate their houses.
Plans are to spend promoting the stock off . When everything is gone, the store will close.
Ruth said he has seen a increase in customers, since declaring he shut down his business. The day after it official source was announced he closed, 500 people showed up in the shop.
"It has been rewarding."