quality wood furniture

After 70 years in the furniture business, his business is shutting down.

Ruth got his start at the furniture business receiving his neighborhood friends to help him haul mattresses for 50 cents an hour and driving a delivery truck. Health problems are forcing him to shut down his Gerard's Furniture store.

"I is not going house to mope about it," Ruth said, sitting at the center of the Florida Boulevard showroom. "I'm gonna keep on working. I got to deliver all this furniture."

When he turned 65, Ruth brought to help the inventory is sold off by him.

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

Ironically, the same company that helped him in 1996 back with all the retirement sale is assisting him with this sale.

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

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

"All that stuff on the world wide web, it is like going into the boats. It is gambling. You do not know what you are going to have," he said. "A number of this leather is seconds, some of it is rejects."

Ruth began working in the furniture industry during his senior year in Baton Rouge High at Lloyd Furniture Co., at 1126 North Blvd.. After graduation, he attended LSU, then joined the Coast Guard during the Korean War.

In 1953, he returned with the furniture shop to his job and also to Baton Rouge.



"I was making $35 per week at Lloyd Furniture, then I got a offer from Hemenway's Furniture on Plank Road," he explained.

He had been a salesman at Hemenway's, Ruth got into racing. He was a catalyst for your Tom Cat Baby, a ship with a Corvette engine that won the most dangerous and prestigious Pan American race Lake Pontchartrain in 1958.

With Lewis Gottlieb, Ruth became friends Throughout the ship races. Some racing teams were backed by gottlieb.

Ruth got a call from Gottlieb 1 afternoon. The proprietor of Simon Furniture Co. had died and his children were not interested in taking over the business. Would Ruth be interested in owning a furniture store?

Gottlieb advised him to check the store out, and he would help him finance the deal when he had been interested.

"It was a great store, and I knew I could do some good over there," Ruth said. The problem was money. But he did have a life insurance coverage he purchased from a member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.

"Mr. Gottlieb told me to deliver him that insurance coverage into the bank," Ruth explained. "He told me'You are going to make it."

Gerard's Furniture opened in 1966. There were three workers: the Ruths and a bookkeeper. In the shop, Ruth sold furniture during the afternoon. In the evenings, he delivered.

At that moment, the hottest trend in furniture was Mediterranean- and Spanish-style furniture. A Atlanta furniture salesman visited Gerard's Furniture and advised Ruth he needed to find some of those things in the store to make it successful. Ruth told the guy he did not have the money so he got them to ship three suites of Mediterranean-style furniture on credit to Gerard's and called a Virginia manufacturer. "That cranked business up," Ruth explained. "We sold out the hell of the furniture"

A few decades after, Ruth discovered about a shop. Ruth checked the construction at 7330 Florida Blvd. and chose to buy it and fix it up.



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

Ruth visits the furniture markets in North Carolina to round out the selection in Gerard's.

"Baton Rouge has ever been interested in good taste and standard furniture," he said. "The people who purchase important site nice furniture want to take a seat inside, want to feel this, and when they have any knowledge in any way, unzip it and see what is inside ."

He was diagnosed with lung disorder. That led him to close the shop after meeting with his wife and four children.

The decision was made to liquidate the organization, Since his children have professional jobs.

"I never got rich, but I was able to raise four kids, send them off to college -- and not have to pay any associations or attorneys to get them from trouble," he said.

Despite his years in business, Ruth said he chose to close the store.

"My family would go crazy trying to figure out everything in the furniture store," he said.

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

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

Ruth said he's seen a increase in clients since declaring he shut down his organization. The day after it was announced he was shutting, 500 people showed up in the store. The next day about 400 people were there.

"We had them come in from 20, check that 30, 40, even 50 years back to purchase things on our economy," he said. "It's been rewarding."