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Beloved Addie’s store closing, but jewelry shop will remain

Pete and Sandy Rinella are retiring from the business in January and Addie’s will close.

The end of an era is nearing as the Rinella brothers will close Addie’s Inc. — as we now know it — by mid-January.

But “it ain’t over yet,” Tony Rinella quipped.

Although his brother, Pete, and wife, Sandy, are retiring, Tony’s not ready to throw in the towel and say good-bye to what began as a small gift shop his mother opened in 1958 and grew into a major downtown business that became a lifetime career for the Rinella brothers and Sandy.

“It’s bittersweet,” Sandy admitted.

“Pete loves it and would work forever, but I think we need to enjoy a few years,” she said, glancing at her husband, all the while knowing he’s going to miss it a lot.

Adeline Rinella opened her gift shop, Addie’s, in 1958.

“So many clients, so many people. I still enjoy it,” Pete said.

That’s when Tony let it be known that he has no plans to retire anytime soon.

Rather, he will keep his mother’s dream alive … and her name … just on a smaller scale.

Tony and Addie’s jewelry designer and repairman Phil Reeder are joining forces and will open a brand new “Addie’s Inc.” just down the street from the current location.

The new Addie’s, which will carry a complete line of fine jewelry and watches, will also include a shop for Reeder, who has become well known in the area for designing unique pieces and jewelry repair.

Tony Rinella, back, and Phil Reeder will open a new jewelry store, also called Addie’s.

The new location will be 202 E. Main St., right beside the Texas Lunch.

And although Pete is “retiring,” he’s not getting out of the trophy-and-plaque portion of the business just yet.

“My intention is to keep the trophy shop open under new ownership. I’m negotiating with parties now to buy the trophy and engraving business. I’ll be helping the new owner get started. Hopefully, we will locate the new shop somewhere on Main Street in the near future,” Pete said.

You can see it in their eyes.

Neither Pete nor Tony are going to have an easy time saying goodbye to the business they grew up with.

PHOTO PROVIDED Addie’s was once located at 122 E. Main St., where the parking lot is now next to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

But Tony, the younger of the two, is much more settled with the decision, as he’ll still be working at Addie’s and doing what he likes to do.

“I can honestly say I enjoy getting up every morning and coming to work,” Tony said.

He’s looking forward to his new venture with Phil, who’s been at Addie’s for 35 years fixing jewelry and creating new and custom pieces for customers.

Tony is quick to give Phil a lot of credit for keeping the downtown store in business through the past few years, as Walmarts and Kmarts have taken so much of the sales from Addie’s.

“It’s the service that has kept us going,” Tony said. “I always say, ‘I don’t care where you buy it as long as I can fix it.'”

And let’s face it, where else can you take a broken chain to be fixed or a loose diamond to be firmly affixed to an engagement ring?

Or have that ring that used to be your grandmother’s sized to fit your finger or the gem made into a necklace?

Where else locally can engaged couples go to pick out their wedding rings … and have them sized to fit them perfectly at the same place.

And where else can husbands and boyfriends shop locally at Christmastime to buy their sweethearts a beautiful gold or silver necklace, earrings, bracelet or watch?

It’s Addies.

And that’s not going away, Tony said with a broad smile.

Still, it’s going to be much different for the trio — Tony, Pete and Sandy — who’ve worked together for more than 40 years in the family business.

Over the years, Addie’s has moved several times and added new items and dropped others as they’ve adjusted to changes in the business world.

As they stood in the middle of the Main Street store on Wednesday, they looked around and thought about all the changes through the years.

Behind them was a complete, store-length wall of greeting cards.

“We have hundreds of them,” Sandy said.

Hallmark is one of the biggest sellers, she said.

“You can’t imagine how many people came in and would buy only a Hallmark card,” Sandy said.

And by the way, all greeting cards, including Hallmark, are now 50 percent off, as “Pete’s Retirement Sale” begins.

Clearing the store of merchandise by mid-January is a daunting task, so local shoppers may find some great Christmas gifts at sale prices.

And then their thoughts went back to yesteryear as they took themselves back to the 1980s, when Piper Aircraft and International Paper flourished in town.

That was also the time when Addies was at its peak, offering a massive amount of inventory — including 40 different patterns of fine china, crystal glassware and silverware — to suit any man or woman’s taste in an approximately 10,000-square-foot store.

The store was the place to go for wedding gifts as prospective brides came in and picked out their china pattern and wrote down items they would like to receive from wedding guests. Sandy remembers taking shoppers through the store and pointing out what the bride had on her wish list.

Addie’s always used the same wrapping paper – a silver and white design – and it was not unusual for Tony to deliver dozens of those finely wrapped gifts to the reception hall on the big day. You could always tell which gifts came from Addie’s by the wrapping paper.

Once again, it was that good service that made Addie’s what it is today.

They still gift wrap … and will deliver on occasion.

The three of them talked about how busy the store was back then.

“We were open six days a week: Monday, Thursday and Friday until 9 at night and Saturday until 6. We closed on Wednesday afternoons,” Tony said, remembering a bustling downtown with a traffic cop helping shoppers cross the street on busy Friday nights.

“All of downtown was a Walmart,” Tony said as the three named some of the dozens of retail stores that lined Main Street at a time when people shopped for everything downtown — shoes, clothing, stationery, appliances, housewares, jewelry, furniture, toys, sporting goods — you name it, downtown Lock Haven had it.

And the sidewalk sales!

“They used to shut the street down. The stores put so much on the sidewalks, shoppers had to walk on the street,” Tony said.

Sometimes, they displayed cars on the street up through town for shoppers to admire, he added.

Oh, how times have changed since Adeline “Addie” Rinella decided she needed something to keep her busy.

The year was 1958 and her four children — Paula, Suzanne, Pete and Tony –were now in school.

Her husband, Anthony, operated a produce business downtown, Rinella’s.

The idea for a gift shop came after the Smith and Winters Department Store on Main Street went out of business.

The department store had a second floor gift shop, the only one in town.

Addie took a one-year lease on the vacant building that housed the department store, where PAMP is now located at 143 E. Main St.

Using Addie’s name for the gift shop was actually Anthony’s idea. Addie wanted to call it “Anthony’s” or “The Gift Shop,” but Anthony insisted that the store be named after his wife.

Addie hired Effie Knarr, who had operated the gift shop at Smith and Winter’s, and began her business with a small inventory of Hallmark cards, small gift ideas, linens, toys and lamps.

People at first thought the store wouldn’t survive.

Addie proved them wrong.

While Anthony operated the produce business that had been in his family for 125 years, Addie worked day and night at the gift shop.

In 1965, Anthony turned the produce business over to his brother and went full-time helping his wife at Addie’s.

As Addie’s became more popular as a unique gift shop, it outgrew it’s first home and moved across the street to a former auto supply store at 122 E. Main St.

Addie’s opened there a week before the 1972 Agnes flood.

The flood destroyed everything in the shop, leaving the family in despair, but not defeated.

It wasn’t long before Addie’s was back in business.

Tony joined the business in 1971.

Son, Pete, served in the Army and joined Addie’s when he was released three years later in 1974. His wife, Sandy, came with him, working three days a week while caring for the couple’s two young sons.

When Tony got involved, he expanded the jewelry department. When Pete joined, a carport was expanded as the stationery and engraving departments.

In 1985, Addie’s reached another milestone: It moved into a much larger store in the former Shadle’s Furniture Store, where it remains today.

The building is now owned by Don Leitzell of Beech Creek.

The new store enabled the business to grow even more with plenty of room for expansion.

Since then, as Pete puts it, “everything just kind of chipped away … loss of industry, Big N’s, Kmarts and Walmarts … it just seemed to go down hill little by little for small businesses like ours.”

But the Rinellas stuck it out, adding new merchandise and changing things up, all the while steadfast in its belief that service sells.

And now, even with Pete and Sandy retiring, Addie’s will go on.

Not with all those greeting cards and hundreds of other items that fill the store, but with the expertise, talent and strong desire of Tony and Phil to continue to offer fine jewelry and more importantly –good service — to the community that has been so good to the Rinella family all these years.

And that’s a wonderful thing.

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