The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

Business

December 23, 2007

Wardle’s bicycle shop closes after 74 years

By Carol Ann Gregg

With $300 in savings, Bob and Lois Wardle changed the lives of hundreds of children.

Since 1933, parents have been taking their kids to Wardle’s Bike Shop and many children’s eyes were brightened on Christmas morning by the sight of a Schwinn bicycle from the store under the tree.

“I never realized that everyone came here,” Gay Griffin said of her family’s shop on South Center Street in Grove City.

For several weeks she has heard all the stories about what her father’s bike shop and her mom’s toys meant to local people. Friday was the store’s last day in business.

Mrs. Griffin hoped to sell the store and inventory together, but that didn’t happen. She and her husband want to move on with their lives and travel.

Prior to opening a bike shop, Bob Wardle worked in the mines. He and his wife Lois lived on West Main Street and ran the bicycle rental stand at Grove City Memorial Park.

When Lois saw that her husband was having health problems from mining, she suggested they use $300 she had saved to start a bicycle business. They bought six bicycles, Mrs. Griffin said.

According to oldest daughter Mary (Wardle) Watt, they opened their first shop in a small white building on the east side of South Center Street, beside what is now Bashlin Industries.

Local historian Chester Coulter recalled buying his first used bike there, and buying a new Schwinn Roadmaster there in 1941.

Coulter said this small shop had room for a row of bikes set at an angle along one wall and a path to the cash register and repair area. The shop moved across the street after the war in 1946 or 1947.

When the family first moved into the present building, the first floor was divided so there was a kitchen, living room and dining area to the right, with bedrooms on the second floor. The store was on the left. Bicycle repairs were in the back.

Wardle also had a gas station and parking lot beside the bike shop. Carol Chason remembers pumping gas and washing windshields for her father’s customers. She said the grease pit from the station is now under the back of the building. Mrs. Watt recalled that gas was 35 cents a gallon.

The sisters were paid 1 to 3 cents for lacing bicycle wheels for their dad. Mrs. Chason said that on one of the last wheels she laced, she put in all the spokes in seven minutes.

“I must have wanted to make more money,” she said.

Mrs. Watt said that the store always attracted kids. They had penny candy and a cooler in the front for pop and ice cream treats. Wardle was known for being patient and good with the children.

After Wardle died in 1980, Lois and daughter Nancy continued with the shop. Coulter recalled that Nancy was nearly as good a bicycle mechanic as her father.

Lois started incorporating craft items into the mix.

A couple of days before closing, Juanita Robinson and her granddaughter were in the shop. She recalled coming there as a child from her family’s farm near Lake Latonka.

“We bought our oldest son his first bike here,” she added.

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