Mom and Pop Shops

For National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day, we're celebrating folks who ran family businesses.

For decades, my grandparents ran a neighborhood market that was attached to their home. It was a "Mom and Pop shop," though truth be told, I don’t ever recall seeing Grandpap in the store. Grandma ran it with help from my dad, her other children, and the next generation of offspring, including me.

On National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day, March 29, we're taking time to celebrate Moms and Pops who ran family businesses in their communities. Here are a few of the many who died recently.

George L. Bair Sr. and his wife Jean "were the original Bair's of the Bair's Grocery on South Campbell," per his obit in the Springfield (Missouri) News-Leader.

They opened Bair's in 1962, and the store moved to its current location in 1967. Though the Bairs sold the store in 1972, it continues to operate under their name (see photo above) and is "the last 'mom and pop' neighborhood grocery to exist in Springfield."

Nellie Flores Morales and her husband, Pete, operated a "mom and pop: neighborhood store, Tilden Grocery on Stafford and Tilden Streets in San Antonio for many years," according to the obituary published in the Express-News of San Antonio, Texas.

Lloyd Reinwald "ran Bob & Lloyd’s, a meat counter/locker business," with his first wife, Myrtle, and close friend, Bob Pitzer, according to his obit in The Statesman Journal of Salem, Oregon.

Kazuko Swauger and her husband, Charles, were known as "Mom and Pop Judo” during the 16 years they served "as sensei of the Judo program at Norton Air Force Base," teaching men, women, and children.

This post was contributed by Alana Baranick, a freelance obituary writer. She was the director of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers and chief author of Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers before she passed away in 2015.