ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 14, 1996 TAG: 9601120084
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: G1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
MAYORS from Roanoke, Salem and Vinton cut the ribbon in 1956 when S.H. Heironimus Co. moved into its current site in downtown Roanoke. The store's female employees wore turquoise dresses and the males sported turquoise ties and pocket handkerchiefs.
The store itself - at Jefferson Street and Church Avenue - had gotten a turquoise and pink decor as part of a $1.4 million remodeling that included escalators and a heating and cooling system that reportedly was the first of its kind in the world.
The air system, built by York Corp., filtered air every 10 to 12 minutes. Its debut was noted with a luncheon and news conference in New York City the week the Roanoke store packed up at its Campbell Avenue and First Street location and moved.
Heironimus, which dated to 1890 was on its fifth expansion, and its experience was so like Roanoke's own history, a newspaper story noted.
"Acorn to oak, watch Roanoke" was, after all, one of the city's mottos, reported a writer for the Roanoke World-News.
But things change. The World-News has since been absorbed into The Roanoke Times, and by Jan. 27, Heironimus will have left its downtown birthplace for life in suburban malls. In 1993 Heironimus became part of The Dunlap Co., a Fort Worth, Texas-based chain of small department stores.
No longer could a customer personally confront the owner to voice a complaint the way customers used to do members of the Robert Lee Lynn family.
Heironimus was there during the grand days of department stores when the choices of places to shop were fewer, said Richard L. "Dick" Lynn.
Lynn, who lives in Roanoke, is the grandson of Robert Lee Lynn and was president of the stores at the time of their sale to Dunlap.
The retail business wasn't always focused on who had the lowest price, and customers were thought of as like family, he said.
"I felt like we had an awfully good time," Lynn said.
By the time of the sale, though, the downtown Heironimus flagship didn't resemble the bold, full-service department store that featured Ted Mack of "Ted Mack and the Original Amateur Hour" at its 1956 opening. For several years now, only the first floor and the basement have been used for retailing.
Long gone was the Anticipation Shop that began selling maternity clothes in the 1950s about the time that women decided that pregnancy was nothing to hide. The gourmet foods counter where country hams were a feature was dropped so long ago few of today's shoppers can remember it.
And it has been a generation since WROV Radio broadcast "TeenTalk" from the store's junior department on Saturdays when fashion shows often drew 200 to 300 young people.
"Those were gentler times," said Betsy Kay Tobias Lilgendahl of St. Louis, who was the store's first youth council coordinator.
In 1964, at age 26, Lilgendahl was hired to be Heironimus' gift guide. Her assignment at Christmas was to wear a holly wreath crown and a red dress and assist male customers in shopping for women.
"It turned out to be a disaster because I kept finding things I wanted for myself," she said last week. But the job led to her becoming coordinator of the store's successful youth program, which was aimed at the war babies, "all those teens with expendable income," she said.
The youth program consisted of teen councils made up of male and female representatives from each area high school. They were generally school and civic leaders that represented the area's middle-class.
Hers was an enviable position, Lilgendahl recalled.
"It was the most respected store in town; you knew you were getting quality, and everyone connected with the store had respect in the community," she said.
"Did it really happen?" said Brenda Ingram Wingfield, who in 1966 was a William Fleming High School student and one of Lilgendahl's council members.
Wingfield won the annual teen council trip to New York where she got to meet top executives of fashion and cosmetic companies. She said the experience changed her life.
"I didn't have any idea of the self-confidence it was building," she said.
Instead of Sweet Briar College and a premed curriculum, Wingfield got a degree in marketing from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is currently director of development for Jackson-Feild Homes for girls in Richmond. Before she ended up there, though, she worked with retail in New York and Richmond.
When she visits Roanoke to raise money for the homes, which also serve abused and pregnant girls from this area, Wingfield said she often looks at Heironimus and thinks of how it "couldn't be duplicated" because it was the result of the Lynn family's attitude and the skills of James Powers, the store's fashion consultant and director of displays until 1977.
"It's a 'Leave It to Beaver' memory," Wingfield said.
In 1967, Lilgendahl moved to Richmond to become an assistant fashion coordinator for Miller & Rhoads - a now-defunct Richmond-based chain - and Roanoke Valley dramatist Polly Ayers Bixler took her place.
Bixler boosted the teen program to national recognition.
In 1971, the 27-member teen council launched a "Save the Animals" program. The students held bake sales to raise money to sponsor an endangered camel in Africa and visited Virginia legislators to lobby for a bill prohibiting the sale of endangered species products in the state.
The bill was passed, and in 1972, the council members won $1,000 from Seventeen magazine for their animal aid efforts.
Heironimus had a strong commitment to volunteerism and encouraged its employees and the young people on its councils to get involved.
Robert Lynn, the second generation store leader who is deceased, liked for people to get involved in civic project, said Powers, now a partner in the design firm of Bowles Nelson Powers Inc.
A Symphony Ball wasn't complete without the decorating touches of Powers. For years, he selected the gowns for Miss Virginia and directed the show's sets. His display windows at the store were considered works of art.
Powers' design talents were so intertwined with the community that when the First Union Tower made its debut in 1991, Powers was asked to do the floral arrangements and other displays for the building's lobby.
"I tried to bring some glamour and excitement," he said. "I remember times when we had the very best of everything."
He also can recall the exact dimensions of the carpet of yellow chrysanthemums that he created for a garden club fashion show, 50 feet by 70 feet.
The store's attention to the community spilled into its retailing efforts. A promotion with sheetmaker Wamsutta featured linens based on porcelain designs in a collection at Washington and Lee University. Powers remembers it well because the sheeting for the window displays was still stranded on a truck when he needed it.
During the 39 years he spent with Heironimus, Powers said he developed friendships that have carried over into the design business.
He has traveled to England to help Jean Inge Cox, a former Miss Virginia, decorate her home and to Palm Beach, Fla., to advise singer Mary Costa on decorating. He met Costa when she performed with the Thursday Morning Music Club.
Heironimus' history, probably like that of any home-grown business in the last 100 years, is also like a scrapbook of the larger world. The business blossomed and retrenched and changed with the times.
In the late 1960s, store President Robert L. Lynn, the second generation of his family to run the company, applauded the success of the teen council, but believed he needed to hear more of what older shoppers wanted. He set up an 11-member advisory board of women who were civic leaders and asked them to give him ideas for change and keep him aware of any complaints about the store.
During luncheons at the Shenandoah Club, the women told Lynn that the store needed a tearoom to encourage one-stop shopping and a gourmet shop where shoppers could get cheeses and baked goods.
Only a few blocks from Heironimus, on the store's old site, Miller & Rhoads had expanded to Roanoke and featured a tearoom and a gourmet shop.
Heironimus had its own entrance into the S&W Cafeteria next door, but Lynn kept hearing the request for a tearoom. It was never added although the store has had a successful lunchroom downtown and runs popular restaurants as part of many of its shopping center stores.
In 1970, Heironimus and the Edgar A. Thurman Foundation that owned the downtown building made news with what was hailed as a major downtown renovation. They spent $350,000 to change the building's exterior giving it a black granite and aluminum facade.
Among new things added inside were men's wigs, with sideburns.
That year, the store held a sale event, the "Best of Britain," that was a nine-day promotion that included afternoon tea and fashion shows, fresh flowers sold from vendor carts and an exhibit of rubbings from British Tombs.
More than 1,000 people were invited to a preopening of the British-made goods that fashion consultant Powers spent a week in London selecting. Australian actor Cyril Ritchard was the celebrity guest.
By the mid-1970s, the winner of the downtown vs. shopping center retail war was obvious and the kinder, gentler life began to disappear.
Heironimus was accused of paying its male employees more than females doing the same jobs. It settled the lawsuit with $150,000 in back pay and a promise to equalize wages.
The company also expanded the store it had opened at Towers Shopping Center in 1961. It anticipated additional business from interstate traffic that could now more easily get to Towers because of the completion of the Colonial Avenue exit off the Roy L. Webber Highway. The Towers store was expanded again in 1978.
By 1979, there was talk of Heironimus leaving downtown. In 1980, the downtown store closed its third and fourth floors, doing away with furniture and large appliances in its mix of merchandise. A remodeling that year also closed off the view to the first floor from the beauty salon on the mezzanine.
Heironimus had become one of the few independently owned department stores in the country, news accounts said.
Still, even in 1981, downtown Heironimus was striving to remain a center for shoppers.
The store had long been the site of annual art shows sponsored by the local chapter of the American Association of University Women. The art work was hung above the merchandise display counters and along the walls of the escalators. But, in 1981, Heironimus spent $30,000 to remodel an employee lounge into an art gallery and meeting room.
Among exhibits staged in the gallery was "Solar Designs of Virginia," done by the state office of Emergency and Energy Services to show citizens how to build more efficient town houses and multifamily buildings.
Gradually, community activities ceased in the gallery.
Heironimus was preparing to leave, following in the footsteps of former downtown neighbors such as N.W. Pugh (out of business), Smartwear Irving Saks (fled to a mall and then went out of business); Leggett and J.C. Penney (gone to the malls and shopping centers) and Miller & Rhoads (absorbed into Thalhimer's which was bought by Hecht's, which is now at the malls.)
LENGTH: Long : 195 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. James Powers adds glove to mannequin to 1966 windowby CNBfeaturing feathers, flowers asnd shades of pink fabrics. color
2. Donna Woodson, a buyer at Heironimus, wore a gown from actress
Lillian Russell and Betsy Kay Tobias, youth coordinator, modeled a
Gibson era outfit for the store's 75th-anniversary fashion show in
1965. Woodson now owns Good Looks, a Roanoke Valley beauty and
fashion shop. KEYWORDS: PROFILE