Oldest working drycleaner dies at
92
Often dubbed as the industry’s
“Oldest Working Drycleaner,” James Steven McArdle,
92, passed away at his home on April 14 following a lengthy
illness.
When he first entered the industry as a
teenager in the mid-1920s, most people didn’t even know
what
the term “drycleaning” meant.
He simply figured he could make a little extra money by
starting a route for a plant that opened up in his hometown of
Mason, WV.
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At the time, he was already working a
paper route, selling various goods from American Products, and
cleaning up around his mother’s restaurant in order to
help the family survive tough economic times made even tougher
by the passing of his father.
Not only did he find an extra source of
income with drycleaning, he found a calling that he would
pursue for the next 76 years, including a stint of 15 years at
Nu-Way Cleaners in Cincinnati where he worked as plant manager.
Some of his earliest memories of the
industry involved making deliveries with Model T Fords that
broke down frequently.
“Every time I turned the wheel, it
seemed I had a flat tire on that damn Ford,” he said in
an article
from the May 2001 issue of National Clothesline.
Around that time, he also recalled
spotting a pair of blood-stained pants that came in from a
delivery one day.
One of his jobs was to keep track of
difficult stains so that customers could be charged
appropriately
“I didn’t have my notebook, so
I wrote it up on the white-washed wall right next to me,”
he said.
When a sheriff visited the plant to
inquire about a murder suspect, he showed him the writing on
the wall, which helped lead the police to an arrest.
Oddly enough, he assisted police almost 30
years later in the 1950s in North Vernon, IN, when he arrived
for work and discovered a pile of clothes on the floor. He
inspected the store’s garment inventory to discover
clothes had been stolen and approximated the size of the
culprits using that information. It eventually helped police to
arrest three juveniles who had been running from the law from
Michigan to Florida.
Not all of his memories had been pleasant
ones, however. During the Great Depression, it was difficult
just to find work. “The cleaners today don’t know
what tough times are,” he said.
Even when he did find work, the lack of
safety measures in plants often made him wish he hadn’t.
“I got on fire one time pulling the coal out of the
boiler. It hit the floor,” he said. He ran out of the
plant and rolled down a hill to smother the flames.
When U.S. troops began fighting in World
War II, he wanted to leave his job at Nu-Way to be a
tailgunner. During his physical examination, doctors discovered
he had bone osteomyelitis. Fighting against tough odds, he
declined to have his leg amputated and endured three years of
operations to save it.
He summed up all of the good and bad
experiences in his life with a simple philosophy: “I was
lucky. Sometimes it was good. Sometimes it was bad.”
In 1953, he married his wife, Pat, and the
couple decided to settle down in Sharon, PA. They bought Newell
Cleaners and operated the plant at the same location for the
next 48 years together.
He could have retired many times, but one
thing kept him going: “There’s a problem every day.
That’s the reason I am in this business. Something new
comes up every day that you have to solve.”
He believed that much of his success was
due to his honest, tell-it-like-it-is attitude. In October of
2000, he wrote a letter to the National Enquirer proclaiming
his disdain for an article the publication had printed called
“Beware! Dry-Cleaned Clothes Can Kill You!”
Believing that the industry had been too
often plagued with bad publicity and that cleaners
shouldn’t tolerate it, he wrote: “The write-up in
your paper is absolutely the worst ever that I have come
across. I do not read the ‘rags’ because they are
mostly untruths, but this was called to my attention by a
friend. Your writer, S.D. Hubbard, did not stretch the truth,
tell the truth, but his comments were downright all outright
lies.”
Memorial contributions may be made to the
American Diabetes Association, 300 Penn Center Blvd., Suite
700, Pittsburgh, PA 15235.
McArdle was survived by his wife, Pat; two
daughters, Ella Hill and Dorothy Hurtt; a son, James Kelly
McArdle; two sisters, Eleanor Besselman and Glenna Fruith; 17
grandchildren; 12 great-grandchildren; and two
great-great-grandchildren.
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