When Rufus Suhls father approached him with a business offer back - TopicsExpress

When Rufus Suhls father approached him with a business offer back in the early 1930s, little did he realize it would change not only his profession but lead to a successful business that would span 50 years in Osceola County. Suhl was a licensed barber in a shop in downtown Kissimmee when his father proposed the deal. He wanted Rufus and his wife to take over his small dairy business and run it for six months. If he did not like the business, his father said, he would buy him a barber shop and Suhl could return to his profession. Rufus Suhl said he could not lose on that offer. Although he kept his license current for a number of years, he never returned to the barber business. Today, at 82 years of age, he loves to talk about those days and reminisce with close friends and family. He moved to Kissimmee with his parents, Herbert and Pearl Suhl, from Missouri in 1913. He was 5 years old, the youngest of three children. He attended county schools and graduated in 1929. That was at the beginning of the Depression, he said. The population in the county back then was around 2,000 and was larger than Orlando because there was more work for people because of the cattle, citrus, saw mills, shingle mills and logging business. There was one bank, a watering tank for horses and five or six stores on Broadway, he recalls. Katz Brothers was a clothing store on the corner where Pioneer Plaza is being built. When Katz put in a big vault, some people trusted the store so much more than the bank that they put their cash in the vault, he said. But most everybody trusted everybody else and never had to lock their doors. And, everybody knew each other by their first name, he recalled. They called my dad whistling Suhl. He could whistle and play the fiddle at the same time. Almost monthly there would be a square dance at somebodys home and my dad would be there fiddling and they would dance until daylight. When they picked me up from the bed, I knew the dance was over and it was time to go home. When Suhl was 10 years old, his dad bought a team of horses and a harness and a wagon from Mack Brothers Livery Stable. They had been shipped in from Minnesota, he recalls. With that team, his father went into the dray business hauling lumber from the mills and oranges to the packing houses. When a large load of citrus came in on a barge, his dad would drive the team of horses out into Lake Tohopekaliga about belly deep and load the fruit onto the wagon to haul to the packing houses. There the fruit was washed, wrapped and packed to ship north. Those were the good old days when $1 was worth $1 and 10 cents, he said. In 1932, Suhl and Frances Young, who was born in Kissimmee, were married. That marriage was to last until her death in 1980. They had three children: Joan, Cissy and Gary. When he took over Suhls Dairy, he and his wife milked the 15 cows by hand. He said he realized that he was up against six or seven competitors and had to come up with an idea that would sell his milk. He said he always thought that cleanliness and the highest fat count in the milk was what would make him successful. So, in addition to keeping the dairy clean, Suhl painted his pickup truck white and trimmed it in red. He wore a white uniform and wore a hat with the name of the business on it. He built his herd with Jersey cows, which produced high fat content - sometimes as high as 6 percent. He also had a logo made for the truck and his milk bottles and soon the business began to grow. The bottled quart of milk cost 8 cents back and butter was 25 cents a pound. Suhl said he built a steam cabinet in which to sterilize the bottles and other vessels. State inspectors dropped by every two months or so, he said, to see that the dairy was clean. They milked and delivered twice a day and soon he was hauling milk as far as St. Cloud and Holopaw and even into Loughman in Polk County. After he sold the dairy, Suhl developed a 200-space mobile home park in Kissimmee. Country Club Mobile Estates was the biggest park of that type in the state at the time, he said. He said he owned 550 acres but only used 30 acres for the park and rented the lots. He sold the park in 1980 and it was renamed Country Club Village. After giving each of his children land, he has 20 acres left, including his current home on Hoagland Boulevard. Over the years, Suhl has been active in the community. He was one of the founders of the Bank of Osceola and first president and chairman of the board in 1967. That bank later was sold to the Exchange Bank in Tampa and is now NCNB Bank. He was president of the Central Florida Milk Producers Association from 1964-72 and was Big Boss of the Silver Spurs Riding Club from 1960-61. He recently was asked to be on the board of the Bank of Sumter County. Suhl, always the businessman, recalls the time when he was asked to provide a building for a couple to operate a souvenir store. He looked around and on U.S. Highway 27 a 7-Eleven store had bought a big lot and put in a store on part of it. Suhl bought the other half. He decided to put in a souvenir store and went to the Exchange Bank, where he was chairman of the board. He borrowed $100,000 by just signing his name. The couple, named Burden, ran it for some time but in 1973 we were in a slight recession and business was not good there. It was on the highway and the traffic passed pretty fast and there were not too many local people in the area to buy souvenirs. They soon gave it up and he found another tenant who took over the business with an option to buy. Several years later they offered to buy the shop. I thought it over and agreed to it. They borrowed the money and paid me off. I took the money and put it in First Federal in a CD until I decided what else I might use it for. It drew 13.2 percent interest and that gave me almost as much income as I had been getting in rent from the building. Time passed on and things worked out pretty good and I still have that money in the CD at First Federal. But I expect I will be using it before too long for some other business.