Another loss for Lewiston

Had J.C. Penney’s executives paid attention, they would have needed to look no further than the store’s housewares department to discover that Lewiston is a place with hot summers where people frequently value utility over looks.

Before it was discontinued, a Lewiston favorite was an inexpensive foam-backed, machine-washable drapery that came in 25 sizes and a number of colors, said Annette Thivierge, who worked at the store from 1983 until the beginning of this year.

It had an added benefit of shielding home interiors from high temperatures. Customers purchased every shade other than floral, Thivierge said.

“It was something you could sell practically blindfolded to people,” she said. “The hard choice was trying to help them decide what size they needed.”

Thivierge is among those who are disappointed Lewiston’s J.C. Penney is closing after being part of the community since 1911, when it opened as the ninth store in the national chain in downtown. The store is the town’s last traditional department store and is an anchor of the Lewiston Center Mall where it moved from downtown many decades ago.

The Lewiston store is among 154 the company decided to shutter in June after filing for bankruptcy protection in May. Before the bankruptcy, J.C. Penney had 850 locations in the United States and Puerto Rico, according to national media reports.

Thivierge witnessed the store’s importance for thousands of customers who purchased what she described as “good quality merchandise for not a lot of money.”

As recently as last year, employees were told by J.C. Penney the store was profitable and that its numbers even beat Spokane, she said.

“I think it’s a mistake on the company’s part,” she said. “We were a small store, but we were really a hub, because we had people from all over coming in.”

Most of the time, Thivierge worked at a counter in the children’s department, near housewares. She helped customers select linens for their first apartments and buy clothing for new babies, the first day of school and holidays.

One of the fun parts of her job was watching trends.

A popular item in the housewares department for a time was a line of pillows with faces of dogs, cats and bears dressed in Victorian outfits. They would sell out quickly any time a shipment arrived.

“No one in the country was selling them,” she said. “Only us.”

Novelty T-shirts for boys and girls were a mirror of what was happening in the culture.

Boys’ T-shirts with references to the video game Minecraft were big in the latter part of her career. So were sequined girls’ tops with pictures that changed if someone rubbed the image. One girl told her she would make the eyes close on her top if what was being said in class was boring.

“I don’t think teachers liked them, because little girls would be playing with their shirts (and not paying attention),” Thivierge said.

In her earlier years, observations from employees at her level about customers’ tastes played into what the store stocked. They could request greater numbers of items that sold well instead of being limited to what J.C. Penney allocated to the Lewiston location.

Besides interacting with customers, part of what was rewarding about the job was the camaraderie of employees, she said. They collaborated on store displays before the corporate office specified exactly how they had to be. One she liked was a “hunk man,” a person made from pillows. The employees would change his outfit for each season, one time outfitting him with sunglasses and a lei for summer.

Thivierge isn’t the only former J.C. Penney employee who appreciated her co-workers.

Being a clerk when the store was downtown in the early 1970s was Gloria Stevenson Condon’s first real job before a career that included being a teacher and a travel agent.

An assistant manager she babysat for told Condon during her senior year in high school that she was old enough to work at the store. She worked in the women’s and children’s department, wrapped gifts and even decorated the store windows part time on evenings, weekends and school vacations. More than a little of her earnings went right back into the store buying, at a discount, clothes she got to see as soon as they arrived.

Some of the older female employees mentored her on basics, such as how to process credit card transactions, which then involved putting cards in a press machine that made an imprint of the raised numbers and letters in the card onto carbon paper.

They also told her to prioritize a customer in the store over one calling on the telephone.

“They were kind and friendly,” said Condon, who’s now retired and living in Bend, Ore. “There was just a warmth there.”

Like Condon, DeLayne Whipple Brown worked at J.C. Penney when it was downtown.

Many of Brown’s family members worked downtown too. Her dad was at Erb Hardware; her mom and sister were at Payless Drug.

She would eat lunch with her friends at downtown eateries that no longer are in business: Headquarters, Irene’s Bakery or a mezzanine area at a department store where the Breier Building apartments are now.

One of her responsibilities was dressing mannequins in 12 store windows every two weeks.

“You were like a fly on the wall,” she said. “I saw things I could not talk about except to the police.”

One of her bosses was a man named Ben Morris, who Brown remembers for how he handled an outage that knocked out power to downtown and J.C. Penney’s cash registers. Morris brought out crank-handle cash registers, and the staff continued selling merchandise instead of closing.

“I am so sad to see J.C. Penney go,” said Brown, who now lives in Vancouver, Wash. “It was an icon, a historical retail model (that) gave us very important lessons for our early work ethic and a good source for clothing our families.”

Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2261.

“I think it’s a mistake on the company’s part. We were a small store, but we were really a hub, because we had people from all over coming in.”

Annette Thivierge, who has worked at J.C. Penney since 1983