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Ruth got his start at the furniture industry getting his neighborhood friends to assist him haul mattresses and 70 years back driving a delivery truck. Health problems are currently forcing him to close down his Gerard's Furniture shop.
"I is not going house to mope about it," Ruth said, sitting at the center of the Florida Boulevard showroom. "I am going to keep on working. I got to deliver this furniture all ."
When he turned 65, Ruth brought to help the inventory is sold off by him.
"So I came back."
Ironically, the same firm that assisted him in 1996 back with the retirement sale is helping him with this going-out-of-business sale.
87, ruth , still does business like he always did. His store doesn't have a website. "I don't text and I don't email," he said. "Just been a couple of years ago we have a computer for accounting."
Gerard's includes a focus on luxury furniture.
"All that stuff on the world wide web, it is like going to the ships. It is gambling. You don't understand exactly what you going to have," he said. "Some of this leather is seconds, some of it is rejects."
Ruth began working in the furniture business during his senior year in Baton Rouge High at Lloyd Furniture Co., then 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 store to Baton Rouge and to his occupation.
"I had been making $35 a week at Lloyd Furniture, then I got an offer from Hemenway's Furniture on Plank Road," he said.
Throughout that time he had been a salesman in Hemenway's, Ruth got into hydroplane racing. He was a driver for your Tom Cat Baby, a ship with a Corvette engine which won the most dangerous and prestigious Pan American race Lake Pontchartrain.
Through the boat races, Ruth became friends with Lewis Gottlieb. Some teams that were racing were endorsed by gottlieb.
Ruth got a call one afternoon. The proprietor of Simon Furniture Co. had died and his kids were not interested in taking over the business. Would Ruth be interested in having a furniture store?
Gottlieb told the shop to be checked out by him, and he'd help him fund the deal if he was interested.
"It was a nice store, and that I knew I could do some good on the market," Ruth explained. The problem was money. But he'd have a $10,000 life insurance coverage he bought from a member of the Red Stick Kiwanis Club.
"Mr. Gottlieb told me to deliver him that insurance policy into the lender," Ruth said. "He told me'You're going to create it."
Gerard's Furniture opened at 1530 Foster Drive in 1966. There were three workers: the Ruths and a bookkeeper. Throughout the day, Ruth sold furniture at the store. In the evenings, he delivered.
At that time, the most popular trend in furniture was Victorian - and Spanish-style furniture. An effective Atlanta furniture salesman detected Gerard's Furniture and advised Ruth, he had to find a few of those items in the store. Ruth told the man he didn't have the money to buy the furnitureso that he phoned a Virginia maker and got them to send three suites of Mediterranean-style furniture on credit to Gerard's. "That cranked up business," Ruth explained. "We offered the hell out of that furniture"
Ruth heard about a shop.
"It cost $2 million to restore the whole building," he said. The loan was really large, it was divided between CNB and St. Landry Bank in Opelousas.
Gerard's Furniture's Florida Boulevard location opened around 1975. The store won acclaim for its completeness of this choice, which included art furniture, fabrics, rugs and decorative accessories. One room is filled with George Rodrigue prints from the early 1970s. His son Larry includes a gallery of original Louisiana art and prints at another part of the shop.
To round out the selection Ruth visits with the furniture markets in North Carolina every six months to find items.
"Baton Rouge has always been interested in good taste and traditional furniture," he said. "The people who purchase nice furniture want to sit in it, would like to feel it, and if they have any understanding at all, unzip it and see what is inside ."
Through the years, Ruth has had health problems, including cancer and diabetes. He was diagnosed with lung disease. That led the store to shut after meeting with his wife and four kids.
Since his children have professional jobs, the decision was made to liquidate the i was reading this organization.
"I never got rich, but I was able to raise four kids, send them off to college -- and not need to pay any associations or attorneys to get them from difficulty," he explained.
Despite his years in business, Ruth stated he decided overnight to shut the store.
"My family would go crazy trying to work out everything at the furniture shop," he said.
He made a point of helping his children and eight grandchildren my response find things in the store to help decorate their homes.
Plans are to spend selling off the stock in Gerard's. The store will close when all is gone.
Ruth said he has seen a boost in customers, since announcing he shut down his business. The day after it was announced he was closing, 500 people showed up at the store. The following day about 400 people were there.
"It has been rewarding."