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40 years in jewelry business ends next monthThe Telegraph/RUSS SMITH Don and Helen Ott will be closing their East Alton jewelry store after 40 years in the business.By NETA CANDELAFor TheTelegraphWhen Don and Helen Ott close the doors of their East Alton jewelry store for the last time in January, it will signal the end of a 56-year-old family legacy.The first Ott Jewelers opened in Alton in 1932. It was in the Faulstich Building (now the Laura Building) on Broadway, and the proprietor was Don’s uncle, Edward Ott. He later moved his store to the Stratford building on Market Street.In 1945, Don Ott graduated from Elgin Watch College and joined his uncle. The next year, he and Helen married and moved to Sparta, where they managed a jewelry store,‘‘We came back home and opened our first store in downtown East Alton in 1948,” Helen Ott said. “After that we moved around in the same area several times because there was a lot of redevelopment going on, and everybody kept moving us out.”The Otts moved to their present location on Berkshire Boulevard in 1955.“We started out with a workbench and two showcases thatwe borrowed from my uncle,” said Ott.“We were here so much of the time that our first daughter grew up in the back of the store,” Helen Ott grinned.Over the past 40 years, the couple has seen a great deal of change in the jewelry business.“Costume jewelry was really big in the ’50s,” Helen Ott said, “but we don’t even carry it anymore. Today, people want quality. That seemed to come about when gold chains became so popular. Now everyone is into gold.”“Another drastic change has been in watch manufacturing,” Ott said. “It used to be that watches had a balance and a mainspring. Now they are all computerized.“One of the things we’ve enjoyed most is belonging to the Illinois Jewelers’ Association and traveling to the factories where our merchandise is made. We’ve been to Switzerland to the watch factories, to gold companies in the Black Hills and to Hawaii, where they fashion black coral. What I’ve learned in my travels I’ve been able to come home and share with my customers.”But life in a jewelry shop hasn’t always had a silver lining for the Otts. Take, for instance, the day the pick-up truck drove right through the shop window or the evening when they faced a thief with a revolver.“There was this customer in the shop, and we didn’t know it, but he had left his truck running outside,” Helen Ott said. “Some kids got in the truck and set it in motion, and the next thing we knew, it was crashing through the plate glass and into the display cases. I don’t know how Don did it, but he jumped over the cases and out through that glass to get to the truck because he thought there was a driver still inside having a heart attack.“Then, it was about this time of year when it happened, a man came in the door waving a gun around and demanding money. We told him we had already been to the bank and he said, ‘Then let me see your diamonds.’ Don said, ‘They’re right there,’ and when the gunman took his eyes off us for an instant, Don knocked the gun out of his hand.“‘He ran. Don wasn’t able tocatch him, but the police did, about two days later.”The couple plans on doing whatever they feel like doing after they retire the middle of January, Ott said. He has been attending both Lewis and Clark College and SIUE for the past three years, studying a broad range of interests from auto mechanics and body work to jewelry design and casting.“I’ll continue to go to school,” said Ott. “Kids in college worry about their grades, but that doesn’t bother me. I just want to learn.‘‘I plan to work on my car and the cars my family owns. Then I have some repair work I want to do on the antique watches that I’ve been collecting, and I plan on continuing my work in jewelry design and casting.“We’ve met a lot of wonderful people during the years we've been here, and we’ve made a lot of friends. But the biggest thrill of all has been doing a good job for a customer and getting a kiss as a reward. In the last 40 years I’ve kissed a lot of women over this counter.”
Newspaper Details
Alton Telegraph
Alton, Illinois, US
Sun, Dec 25, 1988
Page 40
Full Page
Clipped by
Hayner P.
IL, USA 09 Jan 2024
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