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

Ruth got his start in the furniture industry driving a delivery truck and receiving his neighborhood friends to help him haul mattresses for 50 cents an hour. Now, health issues are forcing him to close down his Gerard's Furniture shop.

"I ain’t going home to mope about it," Ruth said, sitting in the middle of his Florida Boulevard showroom. "I am going to keep on working. I must deliver this furniture all ."

This is actually the second time that Ruth has had a sale. When he turned 65, Ruth brought to help him sell off the stock.



Ironically, the company that assisted him with all the retirement sale back in 1996 is helping him with this going-out-of-business sale.

Ruth, 87, still does business like he did. His shop doesn't have a site. "I don't text and that I don't email," he said. "Only been a few years ago we have a computer for accounting."

Gerard's has a focus on luxury, American-made furniture.

"All that stuff on the internet, it is like going into the ships. It is gambling. You don't understand what you going to have," he said. "Some of the leather is seconds, some of it is rejects."

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

Back in 1953, he returned with the furniture shop to his job and to Baton Rouge.



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

Through the boat races, Ruth became friends with Lewis Gottlieb. Some teams that were rushing were backed by gottlieb.

Ruth got a call from Gottlieb, one afternoon. The proprietor of Simon Furniture Co. had expired and his children were not interested in taking over the enterprise. Can Ruth be interested in having a furniture store?

Gottlieb told him to check the shop out, and he would help him fund the offer, if he had been interested.

"It was a nice store, and that I knew I could do some good over there," Ruth said. The issue was money. His wife along with ruth, Selma, had just had their second child, and he only had a couple hundred dollars after paying the hospital bill. But he'd have a $10,000 life check my site insurance coverage he bought from a member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.

"Mr. Gottlieb told me to deliver him that insurance policy to the lender," Ruth said. "He told me'You're going to make it."

The Furniture of gerard opened at 1530 Foster Drive in 1966. There were three workers: a bookkeeper and the Ruths. Ruth sold furniture. In the evenings, he also delivered the items he offered.

At that time, the trend in furniture was Victorian - and Spanish-style furniture. A Atlanta furniture salesman detected Gerard's Furniture and told Ruth, he needed to get a few of those things in the store. Ruth told the guy he didn't have the money to purchase the furnitureso he phoned a Virginia maker and got them to send three suites of Mediterranean-style furniture to Gerard's on credit. "That cranked business up," Ruth said. "We sold out the hell of the furniture."

Ruth discovered about a shop.

The loan was so big, it had to be split between CNB and St. Landry Bank in Opelousas.

The Florida Boulevard place of Gerard's Furniture opened around 1975. The store won nationwide acclaim for its completeness of the selection, which included furniture, art, fabrics, rugs and decorative accessories. 1 area is filled in the early 1970s with George Rodrigue prints. His son Larry prints at a different part of the shop and includes a bunch of original Louisiana art.

To round out the selection in Gerard's, Ruth and the furniture markets visit in North Carolina every six months to find items.

"Baton Rouge has always been interested in great taste and traditional furniture," he explained. "The men and women who buy fine furniture want to sit in it, would like to feel it, and when they have any understanding in any way, unzip it and see what's inside ."

Through the years, Ruth has had health issues, such as cancer and diabetes. He was diagnosed with lung disease. That led the store to shut after meeting with four children and his wife.

Because his kids have professional jobs, the choice was made to liquidate the business.

"I never got rich, but I was able to raise four kids, send them all off to college -- and not need to pay any institutions or attorneys to get them out of trouble," he said.

Regardless of his years in business, Ruth stated he chose overnight to shut the shop.

"My family would go crazy trying to figure out everything at the furniture shop," he explained.

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

Plans are to spend selling off all of the inventory . The store will close when all is gone.

Ruth said he has seen a increase in customers additional info since announcing his organization was shutting down. The day after it was announced he was closing, 500 people showed up in the store.

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