For nearly four decades one of Vermilion's most popular grocery stores was the A&P. It was situated in the Fischer Building on the very corner of Liberty and Division/Main Streets. Today the space is occupied by CMO Health Foods.
The photo accompanying this sketch portrays the store as it looked on October 5, 1927. As I, along with some of my contemporaries who knew the place in the 1950's, recall the store was (or perhaps just seemed) much larger than it appears in this picture. During the '50's there were several aisles with tables of produce, etc. in the market, and the store extended a bit further south (beyond the back wall) than pictured.
The detail in the photograph is quite remarkable. Boxes of Kellogg's Corn flakes, Cream of Wheat, and Post Toasties breakfast foods have a prominent place on the top grocery shelves. The old coffee grinder sits on the edge of the counter above a display of A&P Bread; eight cents for a 24 ounce loaf. A 25 pound bag of sugar is on sale for $1.69. A sign advertising "Oleo Margarine Sold Here" is attached to the top of the very modern ice box cooler with glass doors at the back wall of the shop. And a sign on a small basket of cigarettes on the counter tells the prospective shopper that one can get "2 packs for a quarter". What a deal.
Somewhat harder to see is the small nameplate atop the manual cash register where the store manager's name is posted. His name is K.S. Lindsley. His full name is Kent Sherman Lindsley. He is the gentleman in the picture. His friends (which were numerous) just called him "Sherm". The lady helping him is his sister-in-law Phoebe French (later Nuhn).
Sherman was born in Brownhelm Township on August 26, 1902. He was one of four sons born to Mattie E. and Benjamin Lindsley. His father owned and operated a store in Brownhelm. During his school years he helped his father in that store.In 1923 he took a job with the A&P Grocery Company where he succeeded his brother, Ray, as manager of a store in the Village of Vermilion. Ray had purchased a store in Sandusky. The other brother, Donald, had followed a different vocation altogether and had become a prominent doctor in Providence, R.I. The fourth brother had died in infancy.
In October of 1925 Sherman married a former schoolmate and lifetime friend, (Olive) Jeannette French. By 1926 the pair had set up housekeeping in the little village, and by 1928 they had their first daughter, Betty. By 1938 another daughter, Jean, was added to the family and the friendly grocer had decided that it was time to widen his proverbial horizons. The following year he bought an interest in his brother's Sandusky store. But, unfortunately, that was not to be.
On Thursday, September 7, 1939, while on vacation from the store, he attended a ball game in Cleveland which he, it was later reported in The Vermilion News, "enjoyed...immensely". He spent that evening down town "joking among the boys and visiting among the men". It was extremely warm, and upon returning home that night he decided to sleep on a day cot downstairs in his home where it was cooler. He never awoke from that slumber.
The following Monday afternoon one of the largest funerals ever held in Vermilion took place at the Congregational Church on Division Street. His friends from the Ely Lodge order of the Masons, where he had served as Master in 1931; those from the local Fish and Game; the Civic Club; and the local Bowling League crowded into the church sanctuary to pay their last respects. And thus was another chapter of Vermilion's yesteryear closed. Kent Sherman Lindsley, popular Vermilion grocer, was but 37 years old.
Ref: The Vermilion News; 9-14-39; Special Thanks to Jean Lindsley Miller; Ancestry.com; Ohio Deaths 1908-1944 and 1958-1002 Record Appeared in the 10-21-04 edition of the Vermilion Photojournal Written on October 17, 2004 @ 7:24 PM Previous Bio Next Bio
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© 2006 Rich Tarrant
