4 generations of family keep Russiaville grocery thriving

RUSSIAVILLE, Ind. (AP) - When the first Waddell's Grocery Store opened in Russiaville, they didn't sell sliced bread.

That's because it hadn't been invented yet.

In fact, sliced bread wouldn't even exist until 30 years after William H. Waddell first started his grocery store on the southwest corner of Union and Main Streets in 1898.

Now, 118 years later, Waddell's IGA has become a staple of the Russiaville community, and Howard County's oldest grocery store. And it's still in the Waddell family.

Today, the business is owned and operated by William H. Waddell's great-great-great granddaughter, Julie Waddell Newlin, and her husband, Jon.

Family-owned, small-town grocery stores like Waddell's are hard to find these days among the giant superstores that dominate the market, and that fact isn't lost on the family.

"We're definitely a dying breed," Julie said.

And although the grocery industry has changed dramatically over the last century, Waddell's has survived, adapted, and has no plans of ever going corporate. In fact, it's the only store left in the county with the Independent Grocers Alliance.

The next generation is already poised to take over the family business. Julie and Jon's son, 23-year-old Nick Newlin, is a manager at the store and plans to become the owner someday.

Already, he recognizes how unique a place like Waddell's is, and how difficult it will be to keep the store relevant in a global market place.

"You have Kroger, Marsh," Nick said. "The one thing you don't see any more is mom-and-pop grocery stores. It's a lot harder to have a small business now than it was back then. Somebody could build a Wal-Mart on either side of Russiaville and just like that, we'd be out of business."

Today, customers who walk into Waddell's are greeted by a modern grocery store, but one that still maintains its old-fashioned sense of hospitality.

There are no self-checkout lanes. Employees know the customers by name. And whether there are just a few bags or a cartload of them, bag boys still make it a point to carry out groceries to customers' cars.

"We are unique," Julie said. "It can be a destination location - not for a tube of toothpaste or a can of beans, but there are things you can only get at our store."

One of the biggest draws is the store's meat department, which has kept customers coming back to Waddell's since the 1940s. More recently, they've expanded their deli, where people can stop in for breakfast, lunch or dinner to get a homemade meal.

And then there's Sandy, the coin-operated mechanical horse that's been a fixture at the store for decades. People who enter Waddell's can't help but notice the vintage horse kiddie ride by the checkout lanes. Kids have been plugging dimes into the ride for three generations now.

But the Waddell's IGA of today is nearly unrecognizable from what it was more than a century ago.

Back then, the store was just one aisle with a wooden floor. Dinnerware and other goods filled the showcases. The store even carried Jell-O, which was stacked in large boxes on the shelves.

Since the beginning, two years before the turn of the 20th century, William H. Waddell always had a partner attached to the store's name. That first Waddell Grocery Store stayed open in Russiaville until 1917.

The grocery store business skipped a few generations from 1917 to 1946, and was no longer associated with the Waddell family. Then two of William's great-grandsons, Earl and Gene Waddell, brought the family name back to the grocery store.

The business was up for sale when the brothers returned to Russiaville from World War II, and Gene and Earl, along with their wives, Betty and Helen, decided to buy it.

A few years later, they acquired another grocery store located right next door, and tore down the wall in between, expanding what was then known as Waddell Brothers IGA.

From then on out, the store became a family affair.

Randy Waddell, Earl's son, grew up in the store working with his parents, his aunt and uncle, his brother and his cousins. He was 10 when he had his first job sorting eggs in the 1960s.

"People who lived out in the country would bring in a basket of eggs and I would count them and sort them out and package them in a carton of a dozen," he said. "They would get credit. If they brought in four dozen eggs, they would get credit on their groceries for four dozen eggs."

Business was good. The hours were long, but the support from the community was what kept them thriving.

That was proven true more than ever in 1965, when the Palm Sunday tornado tore through Russiaville. Waddell Brothers IGA, situated right off of Indiana 26, was right in its path. The twister left the store in shambles, along with most of the town.

Immediately, a temporary community center was set up at the Lions Club, which included a restaurant, post office, insurance, and on the end was the grocery store. Randy's dad, Earl, ran the temporary store, while his uncle, Gene, worked on rebuilding Waddell's.

It was an expensive project to build from scratch, so most fixtures for the store were bought used or refurbished. There were just three things that Earl and Gene bought new: an electric meat saw, a meat block and Sandy, the mechanical horse.

In 1966, a year after the tornado turned the store into rubble, Waddell's had its grand re-opening.

Gene retired from his position at the store in 1987, and that's when Randy took over the business, along with his dad.

Randy's first order of business was to expand the store, just like his parents and aunt and uncle had done 40 years earlier. Randy was already the owner of the drugstore next door, so he closed it down, tore down the wall and expanded Waddell's into the size it is today.

"The drugstore didn't have many sales," Randy said. "You're going to have more sales in the grocery business. When my uncle retired, I wanted to make it one big grocery store instead of two stores."

When Randy's dad died in 1990, he left his share of the store's ownership to Randy's brother, Larry.

But Larry and his wife, Janice, were the owners and operators of their own grocery store in Burlington. That left Randy responsible for nearly all of the day-to-day operations at Waddell's in Russiaville. He still had some help from his uncle Gene, as well as Larry and Janice once they retired from their Burlington store.

"I always felt like I had to be here 100 percent of the time," Randy said. "My life was in a grocery store. Working 80-to-90 hours a week was normal. It was seven days a week, 12 hours a day. I felt like it was necessary for me to be here."

Julie Waddell Newlin was the next in the family to take over the store, but it would be a few years before she decided to make the business move. And it wasn't an easy decision to make.

Like her uncle Randy, Julie grew up working in the grocery store. It was her parents' store in Burlington. She was a jack of all trades, working the register, in the bakery, in the meat department and every other job required by the business.

Julie said she enjoyed every aspect of working at the grocery store, but owning her family's business wasn't something that ever crossed her mind.

"I didn't want to be in the grocery business," Julie said. "I thought this isn't my thing. I had other desires. I wanted to do retail, but like department-store-type retail. I liked more of the fashion side. I wanted to be a buyer. That was my big dream a long time ago."

But in 2001, Randy wanted to retire and sell the store. Talk quickly spread around town that the store might be leaving the Waddell family after decades of ownership.

That talk started changing Julie's mind.

"People kept coming up to me and were saying 'Why don't you buy it? How could you let this leave your family?'" Julie said. "That started weighing on my heart and mind and I thought, 'You know, maybe this is meant to be.'"

So Julie, a stay-at-home mom with their two young kids, and her husband, Jon, who had a business management background, took a leap of faith. They took over Waddell's IGA.

It wasn't her vision of working in fashion retail, but Julie's dreams of becoming a buyer had finally come true.

"I am a buyer," she said. "That's what I do. It came back around and I love it."

She loves getting to know the customers who come through the grocery store, and many are now family friends. And just like friends, the Waddells know a lot about the people shopping in their store - who's sick, who's getting married or who's up to what.

"People actually congregate in the aisles," Julie said. "You'll see people, and even though they may go to church together, when they're in here, they catch up. That's their little social place. You see groups of different women or guys talking. It's kind of like a little 'Cheers.'"

Looking back, the early years were stressful for Julie and Jon. They were learning the ropes of running a grocery store while also making sure they attended their kids' sports games, school functions or other events.

"It was just a team effort," Julie said. "We just did it."

"It's a wonderful experience because you can trust each other," Jon said. "You have a common goal."

She and Jon divided up business responsibilities based on their own strengths, but they quickly learned that running a store with your family comes with its own challenges.

"You expect more out of people you love," Jon said. "With people you love, your expectations are so high and it puts an extra burden on the family. I don't expect nearly as much from one of our employees as I do our son. So that puts more of a burden on him."

After all, their family name is at stake.

But their son, Nick, who grew up in the store like his mom and grandparents and great uncle before him, is more than capable of handling it. After all, he's got 70 years of family experience to look back on and draw wisdom from.

"I feel really good about taking on the legacy," Nick said. "It is a lot to live up to because my grandpa and great uncle, as well as my great grandpa and great-great uncle, they were very successful. They built it from the ground up. It definitely makes me proud to take over, but at the same time, it's a lot to live up to."

Randy said in the end, the success of Waddell's can be attributed to two things: a strong family work ethic and a community that supports family-owned businesses.

"In a lot of small towns, the community won't support a store and they've had to close, where here it's been open since 1946," Randy said. "You have to give a lot of credit to the community because they must want it here."

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Source: Kokomo Tribune, http://bit.ly/2f04Xtc

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Information from: Kokomo Tribune, http://www.ktonline.com