Gray’s Garden Center grows with the community By Aaron Ragan-Fore
Launching a new business is always a tricky proposition, doubly so during a financial recession. But imagine opening a business, one with lots of competition in town, at the tail end of history’s very worst economic downturn.
That was the situation in 1940, when brothers Bob and Charlton Gray founded Gray’s Feed Store on West 6th Avenue between Madison and Monroe, at what was then the western extremity of metropolitan Eugene. Gray’s was just one of the businesses anchoring the very first shopping center on the West Coast, with an ice cream parlor, grocery store, and beauty salon, among other businesses, rounding out the block on West 7th between Madison and Monroe.
Downtown Eugene looked very different then than it does today. Willamette Street sported a public trolley car. Fifth Street Public Market was a poultry plant. And, recalls Wendell Gray, “back in those days, down Fifth Street there were as many as 15 different feed companies,” all between High and Madison. That made for stiff competition, even in a town at the epicenter of the Willamette Valley’s robust agricultural industry.
This year marks the 70th birthday of both Gray’s Garden Center and Wendell Gray, Charlton’s son. The fact that Wendell’s first engagement after leaving the hospital as a newborn was a stop at the six-month-old Gray’s Feed, as it was then known, demonstrates just how committed the family has been to the business that bears its name.
Wendell himself grew up to work in the family business starting in 1960, and after nearly 30 years on staff, eventually graduated to his own shop, Wendell’s Garden Center. These days Wendell is retired, living in Pleasant Valley, and full of amazing stories about times past.
Gray’s quickly evolved into a community gathering place, he says. Locals would call to ask for recommendations for plumbers and other professionals. “Every Saturday we had to have extra money in the till,” Gray remembers, for all the working men who’d cash their checks at Gray’s before grocery shopping. Farmers’ wives purchased sackcloth to make dresses for their daughters. Animal hides lined the wall up the central entry ramp, and “one of them would wiggle and jump” as children walked by—a staff member would be stationed on the other side, poking the skin.
After World War II, Bob and Charlton brought their brother-in-law Charles Laird into the business. And it’s a good thing, too: at its heyday, Gray’s was packaging and selling three tons of local vegetable seeds each year. In 1950, the family opened a second store in Springfield.
One of Wendell’s memories, in particular, captures the Gray’s way of life. When the epic snowstorm of January 1969 hit Eugene, some stores immediately marked up prices on the snow shovels necessary to dig out a burg unprepared for the deep white drifts. But Gray’s held steady on prices. “That’s just the old philosophy, the old way of doing things,” Wendell recalls fondly.
Throughout its decades as a local institution, Gray’s has had only four sets of owners. And it seems the current owner, James Kline, meets Wendell Gray’s standards. “James Kline is a wonderful young man,” enthuses Gray. “I think it’s neat that he can keep it going.”
Wendell relates how he came into the Eugene store a couple of years ago for a Founder’s Day Celebration, and how he was barely through the door before Kline’s wife, Liz, was greeting him and offering him coffee. That sort of interaction typifies the friendly, laid-back demeanor prevalent throughout Eugene’s business community.
Wendell Gray attributes his family’s success, and that of James Kline, to diversifying Gray’s product lines, such as purchasing the Reed & Cross Floral brand in 2008.
But diversifying only works up to a point. Though times have changed, and the focus of the business has shifted a bit, the core mission of feed, seed, and plants has remained the same. And Wendell Gray approves: “You gotta dance with the girl what you brung.”
Gray’s Garden Centers
37 W 6th Ave. • 541/345-1569
4441 Main St., Springfield • 541/747-2301
graysgardens.com
