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Posts Tagged ‘Charlie Lovejoy’

Say Good-Bye to a Plain City Icon.

Lovejoys Market

For Charlie Lovejoy, the grocery business makes up the fiber of who he is. In fact, the grocery business seems to be woven into his genetic material; material he inherited from his parents and grandparents who also harbored a love for the family owned grocery store.

Charlie’s grandparents, Louise and Paul Lovejoy, moved from Portsmouth, Ohio to Plain City in 1947. They opened the first Lovejoy’s family grocery in 1950. That store, located at the corner of 161 and 42 in the space recently occupied by Domino’s Pizza, supplied food and products to the Plain City community from that corner lot until the family relocated the business downtown.

During those early years, a ten-year-old Bud Lovejoy, Charlie’s father, began working in the store with his parents. Bud remained their right hand man doing anything he could to help the family business until their retirement in 1970. At that time, Bud officially took over as owner and manager of the grocery store.

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In 1985, an electrical fire destroyed the grocery store. Undaunted by the disaster, the family reopened the business in June on West Main Street at the present day location of Yoder’s Hardware. The empty lot downtown was later turned into Lovejoy Plaza, hosting a number of businesses.

Fire similarly devastated the family business again in 2001. While building a new 21,000 square foot store, a fire in the old store on West Main Street left the Lovejoy family again without a working grocery. With the new store not yet completed and the old store unusable, the family scrambled to finish construction and resume business in the Plain City community.

Although the grocery store has moved four times in just over fifty years, the lesson learned from these relocations is that the business just changed streets, never zip codes. The Lovejoy family never left the community. Lovejoy’s grocery store has been a part of Plain City for almost seven decades.

The newest store at 900 Village Boulevard opened on September 18, 2001.

2001 was a year of new beginnings as well as heart breaking endings. Not only was the grocery store temporarily lost but, in March of that year, the patriarch of the Lovejoy family, Bud, passed away.

Now sixteen years later from the date the new store opened, more heartbreak has arrived for the Lovejoy family.

Lovejoy’s Market will be closing.

Charlie and the Lovejoy family have always made the Plain City community an integral part of their lives, supporting numerous organizations, clubs, churches, and school activities through their roles as leaders in the grocery business.

They need your support now.

Stop in today and buy something to help Charlie clear off the shelves and finish paying his employees and vendors. Even if you only buy one thing, make this ending a tiny bit easier for Charlie.

After 67 years, a Plain City icon is leaving us. Please help Charlie close the doors of Lovejoy’s Market knowing that the village supported his final efforts.

CJ and Charlie

Charlie and C.J. Lovejoy

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Charlie with his dad, Bud Lovejoy.

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The photo above is where the Super Duper used to stand on West Main Street (now Lovejoy Plaza) before the fire that destroyed the building and caused them to relocate to the current location of Yoder’s Hardware.

The partial newspaper article below, from The Plain City Advocate, was written in September of 2001 when the new store opened at 900 Village Boulevard.

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