Bernice Gruchallaand Lee Rosenboth started working for JCPenney in the 1950s, when sales receipts and payments were sent through a pneumatic tube to a cashier on the mezzanine, purchases were wrapped with brown craft paper and tied with string, department managers hand-selected and ordered merchandise, and the store was closed on Sundays.
The Salem store was located at the time on Liberty Street NE, in what is now known as the Metropolitan Building. In 1965, having outgrown that space, the store moved less than two blocks north to its current location on the corner of Liberty and Chemeketa streets.
Gruchalla and Rosen may be the last local links to the original downtown location, giving them clout as unofficial ambassadors as the store commemorates its 100th anniversary.
With the recent closing of Barrick Funeral Home and Greenbaum’s Quilted Forest, JCPenney is the second-oldest business in downtown Salem after Saffron Supply Co., a hardware store that opened in 1910.
As Gruchalla and Rosen reminisced about the store’s early days, they reeled off names of former managers and associates they worked alongside. Gruchalla is 103, but she is sharp as a tack. Rosen, 78, had no problem deferring to her.
“Your memory is better than mine,” he said with a grin.
Gruchalla worked 17 years for JCPenney, all in Salem. She managed the purses and jewelry department, which was near the front entrance of the old store.
“I knew a lot of people as they came and went,” she said. “I always talked to everybody.”
She recalls her first store manager was Ray McKinnie, or Mr. Mack as she referred to him.
“After he left Salem, as long as he lived, he sent me a birthday card,” Gruchalla said.
JCPenney has long had a reputation for treating its employees — associates as founder James Cash Penney preferred to call them — like family.
Mr. Penney opened the company’s flagship store in 1902 in Kemmerer, Wyoming, and he called it the Golden Rule Store. The name was changed in 1913, but not its philosophy on service and quality. New employee training still includes the Golden Rule principles.
Expansion by the retail trailblazer was swift. The year the Salem store opened, it was one of 50 new locations and the company swelled to 177 stores in 22 states with sales of almost $15 million, according to the JCPenney Archives at Southern Methodist University’s DeGolyer Library in Dallas, Texas.
Using an inflation calculator, that's equivalent to more than $312 million in today’s dollars. By 1924, there were 500 stores and by 1928, more than 1,000.
The Penney Archives at SMU includes more than 20,000 photographs, 1,500 linear feet of correspondence, speeches, ledgers, catalogs, and company publications documenting more than a century of corporate history, plus a collection of "The Dynamo," a monthly company magazine first published in April 1917 — the same month the Salem store opened.
The magazine was designed to educate and motivate JCPenney associates and each month contained company news, inspirational messages, and training to help associates increase sales.
The Salem store, No. 132 in the company, opened on April 11, 1917. The company was already entrenched in Oregon, with 11other stores strategically located throughout the state.
Harlan “Doc” Barnett, a longtime JCPenney manager who lives in Washington, had this explanation for so many locations.
“When Mr. Penney started, it was a horse and buggy thing,” said Barnett, who during his 42-year career with the company worked at more than 20 stores and had 17 different jobs. “Stores were built no further apart than an hour or two by horse and buggy to serve customers.”
Locally, there once were stores in Dallas (1913-86), Silverton (1923-84) andIndependence (1928-55).
Barnett, 81, got his start in Salem as a stock boy making 55½ cents an hour. He worked there while attending Willamette University and studying pre-med. That’s how he got the nickname, from a woman named Edna who worked in the stock room. Barnett later became Rosen’s first boss.
Rosen attended Oregon State College but did not graduate. He was fed up selling encyclopedias when he was hired at JCPenney. Hestarted out in the shoe department in the basem*nt before moving up to the boy's department on the main floor, then joined the manager trainee program.
“We got our education from the Penney Company,” Rosen said. “They really taught me the business.”
He spent 40 years with the company, serving in management at seven different locations and retiring in 1999.
“I enjoyed every day. It was exciting, never boring," Rosen said. "One day you’d be hiring, the next day buying merchandise.”
Associates like Rosen and Gruchalla made lifelong connections working for the company. Rosen even met his wife, Loleta, at the store.
For years, a group of retired associates and managers met regularly at local coffee shops and restaurants. Gruchalla kept a record of attendees and still has the ledger, noting dates and locations. Her last entry was in 1988.
Gruchalla loves sharing the story about how sheintroduced Rosen to his future wife. Loletawas shopping in the boy's department and put pajamas on layaway for her brothers. After Rosen waited on her, she asked Gruchalla if the handsome young man had a girlfriend. Rosen wound up jotting down her name and number down from the layaway slip, and the rest is history. They've been married 57 years.
Both Gruchalla and Rosen were on staffin 1965 when JCPenney moved into a new $3 million store on the corner of Liberty and Chemeketa streets NE. That was 14 years before the Salem Center mall opened.
The project was made possible through a partnership with a Salem family that owned the property and with local investors who financed construction of the building. Both parties were approached by JCPenney.
The Nelson family has owned the property for more than a century, according to Rick Nelson. His grandfather, Adolph C. Nelson, purchased it in 1909, and it originally was the site of his sheet metal and heating business. To share history about the location, Rick Nelson brought in a photograph dated 1916 that shows a horse and buggy in front of the shop. His grandfather is on the left. Next door to Nelson Brothers is Salem Cigar Factory.
The building was expanded over the years and included several other businesses, including a jewelry store, an appliance store and a neon sign company before being razed to make room for the new JCPenney store. The building and property reverted to the Nelson family in 2000, which leases to JCPenney.
When the storefirst opened, it had 115,000 square feet and was reported to be the largest of 40 JCPenney locations in Oregon. Itfeatured 38 major departments, including appliances, hardware, sporting goods and clothing, plus asnack bar, a beauty salon, and an automotive center.
The gala opening, as it was called, began at 9:30 a.m. and drew an estimated 10,000 patrons into the store by noon, according to The Oregon Statesman.
Gruchalla and Rosen are proud to be part of a company that has been serving Salem for a century, outlasting countless other department stores. Among the bygones are Miller’s Mercantile, the Grant Company, Lipman’s, Frederick & Nelson, the Emporium, Montgomery Ward, Mervyn's, the Bon Marché, and Meier & Frank.
When the Salem JCPenney celebrated the company's 75th anniversary in 1977, there were reportedly 2,050 stores nationwide. Today there are around 1,000, and 140 of them are scheduled to close by June as the company aims to improve profitability in an era of online shopping.
Five Oregon stores are in the process of closing, including Astoria, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2016. When the closures are completed, only two Oregon stores — Roseburg and Eugene — will have been in operation longer than Salem.
“Forward This” appears Wednesdays and Sundays and highlights the people,places and organizations of the Mid-Willamette Valley. Contact Capi Lynn at clynn@StatesmanJournal.com or 503-399-6710, or follow her the rest of the week on Twitter @CapiLynn and Facebook @CapiLynnSJ.
