furniture xl

Ruth got his start at the furniture business receiving his neighborhood friends to help him haul mattresses and driving a delivery truck. Health issues are currently forcing him to shut down his Gerard's Furniture store.

"I am going to keep on working. I got to deliver all this furniture"

This is actually the second time that Ruth has had a sale. When he turned 65, Ruth brought to help him sell off the inventory.

"I went home, and after about 10 days, I went stir crazy," he said. "So I came back."

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

Like he did ruth, 87 does business. His shop doesn't have a website. "I really don't text and that I don't email," he explained. "Just been a few years ago we got a computer for bookkeeping."

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

"All that stuff on the internet, it's like going to the boats. It's gambling. You don't know exactly what you are going to get," he explained. "A number of the leather is seconds, some of it's rejects."

Ruth started working at the furniture industry 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 shop to his occupation and to Baton Rouge.



He was a salesman at Hemenway's, Ruth got into racing. He was a catalyst for the Tom Cat Baby, a boat with a Corvette engine which won the most prestigious and dangerous Pan American race on Lake Pontchartrain.

With Lewis Gottlieb, president of City National Bank, Ruth became buddies through the ship races. Gottlieb endorsed some racing teams.

Ruth got a call from Gottlieb one afternoon. The proprietor of Simon Furniture Co. had died and his children were not interested in taking over the business. Can Ruth be interested in owning a furniture shop?

Gottlieb told the store to be checked out by him, and he would help him fund the offer when he was interested.

"It was a great shop, and I knew I could do some good on the market," Ruth said. The problem was money. His wife and ruth, Selma, had just had their second child, and he just needed a couple hundred bucks after paying the hospital bill. However he'd have a life insurance coverage he purchased from a member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.

"Mr. Gottlieb advised me to deliver him that insurance policy into the bank," Ruth said. "He told me'You're going to make it."

The Furniture of gerard started in 1966. There were three workers: a bookkeeper and the Ruths. Ruth sold furniture. In the evenings, he also delivered the items he sold.

At that moment, the hottest trend in furniture was Victorian - and Spanish-style furniture. A successful Atlanta furniture salesman visited Gerard's Furniture and told Ruth he had to get some of those things in the store to ensure it is successful. Ruth told the guy he didn't have the money to buy the furniture, so that he called a Virginia maker and got them to ship three suites of furniture to Gerard. "That cranked up business," Ruth explained. "We offered out the hell of that furniture"

A couple of years after, Ruth heard about a store. Ruth checked the construction at 7330 Florida Blvd. and chose to purchase it and fix it up.

The loan was so large, it had to be split between CNB and St. Landry Bank in Opelousas.

Gerard's Furniture's Florida Boulevard place opened around 1975. The store won acclaim for its completeness of this choice, which included artwork, furniture, fabrics, rugs and accessories. One room is filled from the 1970s with George Rodrigue prints. His son Larry has a bunch of original Louisiana art and prints at a different part of the shop.

To round out the selection Ruth visits with the furniture markets in North Carolina.

"Baton Rouge has ever been interested in great taste and standard official source furniture," he said. "The men and women who purchase nice 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 ."

He was diagnosed with chronic lung disease. That led him to shut the shop after meeting with his wife and four kids.

"I got outvoted," he said. Because his children all have professional jobs, the choice was made to liquidate the organization.

"I never got rich, but I managed to raise four kids, send them off to college -- and not have to pay any next page institutions or lawyers to get them out of trouble," he explained.

Regardless of his years in business, Ruth stated he decided to close the store.

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

He also made a point of helping his kids and eight grandchildren find items in the store to help decorate their houses.

Plans are to spend selling all the stock off in Gerard's. When everything is gone, the shop will close.

Ruth said he's seen a increase in customers since declaring his business shut down. The day after it was announced he closed, 500 people showed up at the store. The following day about 400 people were there.

"We had them come in from 20, 30, 40, even 50 years back to buy things on our economy," he said. "It has been rewarding."