Stories in this Regional News Roundup are excerpted from weekly newspapers from around the region. This is part one, with part two scheduled to appear in Sunday’s Tribune.
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DAYTON, Wash. — What is as striking as the longevity of a 111-year-old local business operated by three generations of one family is the fact that Suffield’s Furniture endured not only the Great Depression and not one but two devastating fires over its lifespan, and each time bounced back to continue serving the residents of Dayton and Columbia County with its furniture, household and appliance needs.
Al and Carolyn Suffield locked the doors to Suffield’s Furniture for the last time in late July after closing on a real estate transaction that will soon see the Dayton First Christian Church occupying the building at 362 E. Main St.
Al is circumspect about being the last Suffield in a 111-year line.
“My dad told me not to go into the furniture business,” Al remembered last week.
Both he and wife of 52 years, Carolyn, advised their children to pursue other careers while they continued operating Suffield’s, and Carolyn’s Café, which operated for a few years until 2020 and the coronavirus shuttered it.
“It’s just not the same as when people shopped in town,” Al said of the business climate nowadays. “It’s a different time, and you can’t blame people. You’ve just got to accept it and move on.”
“It’s (Suffield’s 111-year run) only because Dayton supported us,” Carolyn said, “and we really appreciate it.”
To close and sell the building was a business decision, not forced by any circumstances such as health.
“It was just time,” Carolyn said.
Al, 73, added that his brothers, David, 70, and Richard, 66, and other peers are retired.
Suffield’s started in 1913 as a second-hand furniture store by Al Suffield’s grandfather C. E. “Earl” Suffield, in a building known as the Moe Building, presently the Moose Creek Bakery and Café, or the bakery’s parking lot, other sources indicate. He and wife Audrey Bess (Hill) Suffield arrived in Dayton from Kansas, first working at Samuel & Bailey Furniture Store in Waitsburg, according to family lore.
Al’s grandmother Suffield grew up on a farm, in a house with a dirt floor, and pledged that she wouldn’t accept that in her life. C.E. Suffield did well enough in later decades to obtain farm land on Robinette Mountain and North Touchet, according to archived information.
Around 1918, the end of World War I, Suffield’s moved to its present location at 3rd and Main, formerly the Alta Hotel. There Suffield launched into the competitive Dayton retail market, purveying furniture, bedding, baby furniture and items, flooring, appliances and the like until early August of this year. Street-level space was rented to Pacific Power and Light and, later, a bakery.
When C. E. Suffield started in business, there were five furniture stores in Dayton. If that competition wasn’t enough to cope with, there were two serious fires along the way, and a third during Al’s tenure.
The first was in 1945, when an alley-side part of the building caught fire and damage, compared to the one five years later, was relatively minor. According to a Chronicle-Dispatch story about the 1950 fire, a wood pile owned by the C-D caught fire, causing about $20,000 in damage.
In January 1950, a fire of unknown origin started at around 6:45 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19. Fire destroyed the entire building, unstable walls were pulled down and by the following Monday, Mr. Suffield and his crew began the labor of clearing out the wreckage. According to the Jan. 26, 1950, Chronicle story, Suffield pledged to be back in business out of the rear part of the building, which had been rebuilt with concrete walls five years earlier, within 60 days. Losses of the building were estimated at $50,000 to $60,000 while contents were valued at $75,000. Thankfully, insurance covered some of the losses.
Though some insurance covered the losses, Al’s father and grandfather salvaged lumber from an old wooden grain elevator to come up with materials for the rebuilding of the store, he said.
The last fire, in 1989, was also serious, Al remembers, but not as extensive. It is believed to be started by the neon sign’s transformer, and it charred the roof joists but didn’t damage the roof. By then Al was running the show and renting the building from his father, Clifton H. Suffield, who opted to sign the building over to Al three days after the fire.
The ceiling in the show room needed replacing, and a trio of community-minded men, Ray Zastrow, Roland Schirman and a third Al can’t recall, showed up and voluntarily replaced the ceiling.
One recent incident in 2018 eerily spared the Suffield Building from what could have been significant, devastating damage.
“I’ll never forget that call from Dispatch,” Carolyn remembers. “‘Carolyn, I hate to have to tell you this, but a trailer has gone through your front window, and I hate to tell you, but there’s a bull in your show room.’”
A stock trailer containing a bull had come off the hitch at the intersection of Fourth and Main, and free of its safety chains, had coasted unguided the block to Third Street, angling slightly so as to center-punch, exactly, the Suffield’s window facing Third. It was as if the fates had intervened and said “enough! No serious damage to this building!” Inches either way, literally, would have compromised the wall structure, Al said.
The hitch broke through the glass and the foundation brought the trailer to an abrupt halt, propelling the 1,300-pound bull through the front of the trailer into the store, where it waited patiently among the recliners and mattresses until removed.
Al remembers going on deliveries at around 10 years of age, and helped at the store in those formative years, as well as working part time for Pat O’Neil at the Chronicle, next door at 358 E. Main. After graduating in the Class of 1969, Al took business classes at Walla Walla Community College and then started as manager in the early ’70s.
After a few years, Al purchased Aunt Marjorie M. (Suffield) Sinkbeil’s interest in 1975 and partnered with his dad, Clifton. Al’s and Carolyn’s stewardship of the family company continued through the ups and downs of the economy of the 1970s until today.
Cliff Suffield followed in C. E.’s footsteps, and served in the Army in World War II. Al’s grandfather C. E. passed away in 1968, and grandmother Audrey Suffield died in 1979. His father died in 1994 at age 75, and his mother, Edna M. (Reinemer) Suffield, in 2012.
Al and Carolyn are breathing a sigh of relief after the “mad dash” to clear out of the building.
“It takes time to get 111 years out of the store,” he said.
A side business is Boxcar Storage, which the couple co-owns with daughter Meranda and son-in-law Wes Davis. Eldest son Jonathan, 46, is a mechanic with Fire District No. 9 in Medical Lake, Wash., and middle son Corey, 44, lives in Cheney, Wash., and works at Amazon. Wes and Meranda have four sons: Barrett, Landen, Kylen and Rowan.
— Loyal Baker, Dayton Chronicle (Dayton), Thursday
Payette Lake parcels net state $6 million: Five of six cabin sites sold at auction
McCALL, Idaho — AnnMarie and Zeke Johnson were relieved last week when the Waters Edge Event Center in Eagle, Idaho, grew quiet after they placed an opening bid on a Payette Lake cabin site the couple has been leasing from the state.
The Boise couple’s bid was the only one placed for the cottage site at 993 Grouse Way, one of two lots that did not receive more than one bid during last Friday’s auction by the Idaho Department of Lands.
“We didn’t know what to expect, but there were way more people at the auction than we thought,” Johnson said. “We were the only bidder (for the lot), which was kind of a surprise.”
The $473,000 the couple paid for the lot at 993 Grouse Way contributed to $6 million raised during the auction, which offered six lots with cabins for sale around Payette Lake, including one lakefront lot.
The auction raised about $1.4 million more than the minimum bids for the six lots, all of which sold except for a cabin site at 2060 Warren Wagon Road. that was offered for $438,000.
Three of the cabin sites were purchased by existing lessees, while two others were purchased by non-lessees who will pay the lessee for the appraised value of the cabin on the land.
A lakefront cabin site at 3670 Warren Wagon Road was the most expensive property sold at the auction at $2.8 million, which was the minimum bid for the 1.7-acre lot.
Meanwhile, a cabin site at 2074 Payette Drive sold for $1.8 million, or more than three times its appraised value of $505,000.
The Johnsons were thankful to retain ownership of their cabin at 993 Grouse Way, which is a third-generation family cabin to a family friend that the couple bought the cabin from a year ago.
“She wanted to get out of the lease, but she will still get to use it,” AnnMarie Johnson said. “It’s nice to carry that through for her.”
Endowment land around Payette Lake has been leased for use as residential cottage sites as far back as the early 1900s, according to the lands department.
In 2010, however, the land board approved a plan to begin selling the leased cottage sites at auction.
Cottage site lessees can voluntarily enter their lease into public auction for a chance to buy the land outright, or may continue leasing the land from the state.
So far, the auctions have raised more than $75 million and sold 161 Payette Lake cottage sites, including 132 sites that were leased.
After last Friday’s auction, the lands department has 16 remaining cottage sites in the McCall area, including 12 that are currently leased.
Funds from auctions of cottage sites are deposited in the lands department’s “Land Bank” fund that is used to buy other lands in Idaho.
The land board may also authorize the transfer of Land Bank funds to the “Permanent Fund,” which invests the money in financial markets to earn returns for endowment beneficiaries, like public schools and hospitals.
This month’s auction is not tied to the Payette Endowment Lands Strategy (PELS), a disposition schedule for underperforming state endowment lands around McCall that was adopted in 2021.
— Drew Dodson, The Star-News (McCall), Thursday
