Lasting legacy
By Melinda Harrell
Published in News on February 25, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
Charlie Howell, owner of Howell Brothers Grocery, stands at a cash register in the iconic Pikeville store that will be closing in the coming weeks. The store has been open since 1947 and will close with Charlie's retirement.
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News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
From left, Trey Branson and Bryan Wheeler, employees at Howell Brothers Grocery, and Lyman Galloway, loyal customer, joke around in the store as they do on most days.
PIKEVILLE -- The grocery store business is the only life that Charlie Howell knows, and after his 55 year tenure he is retiring.
He has been working at Howell Brothers -- his family's business -- since he was 10 years old and now that it is time to turn the page in his life he knows exactly what he will miss when he shuts the business doors for good.
"This is a very emotional thing for me. It has been my entire life. It is the only thing I know. I grew up in the grocery business. I love displaying stock. I love meeting the people," Howell said.
"I am going to miss selling and I'm going to miss the people. We had a good relationship with our customers and a good relationship with our people and I am really going to miss that."
In his younger years he helped clean and stock the store that was his father's and uncle's. When he got older and graduated from Charles B. Aycock High School and going on to Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount he continued to work at the grocery store for 30 to 40 hours a week.
When he took ownership of the business, he worked 80 to 90 hours a week. Over the many years, standing for hours on the hard floors tending to customers and stocking product, Howell's knees have worn down.
"Of course my family has been wanting me to get out for several years, because I have knee problems," he said.
"My knees are giving out because I have been working for 80 or 90 hours a week. I can't keep going the pace that I'm going and now is the time."
Closing the doors of Howell Brothers will not just be the end of Howell's career in the grocery business, but it will also signify the end of a family legacy.
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Howell's family has been in the grocery business since the early 1900s, with his father, Clifton's, grandmother, owning a store in Goldsboro.
In 1947, Howell Brothers was born. Clifton, Howell's father, along with Howell's two uncles, opened the doors of the shop on the corner of Main Street in Pikeville.
They would remain open there for 68 years.
During that time, the brothers built a loyal customer base.
"What is so unique about these three brothers is they respected each other. They had strong family values, and I've never heard them in any kind of argument or disagreement," Howell remembers.
He attributes their respectful nature to why their customers kept coming back.
"Of course, this respect they had for each other was carried on to their loyal customers. They had a lot of loyal customers when they started out."
Howell said they always did the best they could by their customers.
"On each statement of the charge book it said, 'We aim to please,'" Howell said.
"The Howell brothers meant what they said in this statement. They went out of their way to uphold the principles to each and every customer."
In the early years the wives and the children of the brothers worked in the store that, at the time, sold a wide range of items -- from shoes to flour to molasses.
Howell Brothers Grocery also serviced the many farmers in the Pikeville community, offering them yearlong charge accounts until their harvest brought in money to pay.
In some cases, these rotating charge accounts ended up being a family's saving grace in tough years.
"We've had families come in and tell us years later that come in and tell us, if it hadn't been for us they would have never made it with a family at that time," Howell said.
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Howell Brothers was very busy for many years, said Howell, with people lining up on Saturdays to do their grocery shopping and farmers coming in to have their pork ground.
"The whole time we have been committed to custom-cut meats for our customers, which helped us stay in business for so many years," Howell said.
"At one time, we had as many as five butchers working the meat counter. We made our own fresh sausage, which came from an old family recipe. We also ground sausage meat for local farmers during hog-killing season."
Farmers would be waiting, 30 to 40 at a time, to have their pork processed, said Howell.
The grocery store's reputation of success reached all the way up the eastern seaboard with salesman coming down from New York to see the store.
The store has also been featured in the books, "Glimpses of Wayne County: Architectural History" and "Our Vanishing Americana; and magazines, Our State and Carolina Farmer.
And though Howell celebrates the early days of the store as bustling, he also recognizes that Howell Brothers is dying breed today.
"Every independent store has its own unique style and personality," Howell said.
"Of course, independent stores are having a tough time surviving now because of all the big box stores, but you can go to any town and shop at a Wal-mart and Food Lion, but you can only go to one place and find a Howell Brothers and that is in Pikeville."
Corporate grocery stores do not offer customers the one-on-one relationship that Howell Brothers have provided over the years, nor do they watch generations of families grow.
"We were a grocery store, but we were more than a grocery; we were a community meeting place," Howell said.
"I guess all independent stores, at one time, were like that. The friendly atmosphere draws more than local customers. A group of men will show up nearly every morning and sit around the old oil heater, drink a Coke and tell their stories and, wow, did they tell some.
"That is another big thing that some of the big stores don't offer, but it never bothered us and we found that it was sort of special and it made us feel like we were a part of the community. And of course, downtown businesses are really the heartbeat of any town in my opinion and we cherish the fact that we have been a part of that heartbeat."
Howell Brothers has been the place that families relied on for food and help; a place where old men go to tell their tall tales; and a place that has forever made its mark in Wayne County culture.
Now, within the week or into the beginning of March the store will be closed, but the impact the Howell brothers, Howell and the store have made will be forever etched in the fabric of a community.