Business & Tech

A Business Older Than Mentor Turns 60

Pummel's Home Furnishings will commemorate its 60th anniversary this weekend with a party at the business.

Things were beyond different when Pummel's Home Furnishings opened in 1953.

For one, Mentor wasn't even a city yet. Mentor Township, as it was known then, was no shopping destination, playing second fiddle to Painesville, Willoughby, Euclid and other nearby communities.

"(Mentor Avenue) was just a two-lane road," said Roberta Fulton, who was a 10-year-old when her parents opened Pummel's. "There was no mall or anything. This wasn't known as a convenient place to shop."

Fulton remembers nearly all of her neighbors periodically gathering at her family's home to watch the street's only television. Also, if you dared to utter a curse word in the Pummel's store back then, you would have been better off just heading toward the exit.

Fulton says those are some of the "honorable, Christian" values Lester and Eva Pummel built the business on. Sixty years later, their daughter is thrilled to be able to uphold them.

Pummel's has been celebrating its 60th anniversary all year and will commemorate the occasion at a party from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday June 1.

Fulton says her father built Pummel's with his bare hands in Eastlake in 1953. The home furnishing business then had a short stay in Willoughby before making Mentor its permanent home in 1960.

"People told my father he was crazy for buying a building in Mentor ... Mentor had nothing," she said.

Proving those people wrong became Fulton's full-time duty in 1985, when she bought the business from her parents, though she had worked there since 1969, only taking time off to go to college and begin her short-lived teaching career.

Fulton runs it with the help of Sandy Hamrick and Sally Fonick, who have been there for a combined 41 years. She employs two delivery workers and her daughter, Heather Kilfoyle, lends a helping hand, too. The 8,000-square-foot store ships as far west as Rocky River, South to Akron and as far east as Erie, Pa. 

"There aren't any good, family furniture stores between here and Erie," Fulton said.

She would know, especially in Mentor. She keeps a list in her desk of all of the family stores in the area that have closed since her family opened there. The list has nearly 20 names. 

Customers like the Ward family are the main reason Pummel's continues to sell couches, chairs, cribs, tables and more. Sandy Ward and her husband moved from Mentor to Columbus years ago, but still come back regularly and always have Pummel's on their to-do list. Their son recently moved to California, but called Fulton for advice on purchasing a bed. He was bummed to learn that she would not be able to ship a bed out to the Pacific Coast.

"We've never been sorry, we've bought so much furniture here over the years, even after we moved," Sandy said. "A place like Pummel's — and I'm not just saying this because (Fulton is here) — is hard to find. Definitely."
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