STERLING, Sanpete County — If records were kept on the longevity of country storekeepers, Lillie Thomas, 92, would probably hold the Utah title.
Except for three years during World War II, she's been waiting on customers in Sterling, a town of 300 located six miles south of Manti, continuously for 74 years.
She keeps "a goin'," she says, because she needs the income and loves the work.
"I love to work with people. I certainly do. I love to serve if I possibly can," she says. "And every doctor has urged me to go on as long as I could."
Thomas Grocery, a white frame building with a single gas pump out front, is on the west side of U.S. 89 about a half mile into town. She lives in a white cottage next door. The store is open six days per week, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. during the winter, and 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. during summer when the farmers are working late. Thomas covers most of those hours.
A heart attack, cancer, macular degeneration, a broken hip that required two surgeries, and two hospitalizations in the past five years haven't stopped her. Neither did her husband's sudden death.
Thomas represents the third generation in her family to operate stores in Sterling. Thomas started clerking in her father's store when she was 16. A couple of years later, she married Evan Thomas, her sweetheart since eighth grade. Over the next decade, through the births of three children, she continued working for her father.
Just after Pearl Harbor, the Thomases decided to go "up north" to work. Evan Thomas was among the workers who helped build Hill Air Force Base. The couple also worked nights at a cannery, processing food for the military.
When the war ended, they returned to Sterling, and Lillie's father asked them to take over his business. They took out a loan and built a new building across the street and north of her father's store. (The old store was later torn down.)
They furnished the store with counters out of Lillie's father's store — some of which dated back to the previous owner. "Them counters is way, way over 100 years old, you bet they are," she says of the heavy wooden counters that still dominate the interior of the store.
The country store of the 1940s and 1950s was stocked with 50-gallon kegs of vinegar, 50-pound sacks of flour and 40-pound boxes of bananas from the Pacific Fruit and Produce Co. Thomas Grocery got its eggs from local farmers in trade for groceries.
"On the counter, we had a big, round cheese cutter," she says. "We'd get a big round block of cheese and put it on (the plate), and then we'd go for so many little notches, and we'd pull it (the cutter) down and cut it off, and that's the way we sold cheese." They sold baloney and bacon the same way.
After a few years in business, they started selling Western wear — Justin, Nacoma and Red Wing boots, fur felt and straw cowboy hats, and shirts and pants from Miller's Western Wear in Denver.
When the store was at its peak, it took both Lillie and Evan Thomas to run it. "It wasn't help yourself, then," she says. "You waited on everybody. You got them what they wanted."
But the store provided a good living by rural standards. "We was able to do just fine," she says.
Hard challenges
The arrival of supermarkets, especially the Ephraim Wal-Mart, has forced a lot of changes. Produce and Western wear have given way to soda pop and a hot-dog machine. "There's no way a little independent store can compete in prices with such a place as Wal-Mart," she says. "So that's changed everything a lot."
In 1975, 30 years after Thomas Grocery opened, Evan Thomas died at 63 of a massive heart attack. Lillie still gets a twinge in her voice when she talks about it.
At first, she didn't think she could go on, she says. Then she realized the vegetables in the store were spoiling. "I had no choice, only to go back," she says. "I'd wait on people, and I'd cry. I'd wait on people, and I'd cry. And they was willing to put up with me."
A year later, in her early 60s, macular degeneration set in, and she started losing her eyesight. She now uses a special light from an eye doctor if she really needs to read something. But reading a whole page is out of the question.
"But do you know something," she says, "the people here have been so danged good to me." Even though she has to put her face within inches of the cash register to ring up a sale, "they've been perfectly willing to still come in and buy, and don't think I'm not mighty thankful to 'em."
In 1980, she had breast-cancer surgery and in 1985 a minor heart attack. But her biggest trial began on July 24, Pioneer Day, in 1987. She had watered her sheep and was rushing back to the store when she caught her foot in a tangle of morning-glory vines, fell and broke her hip.
She underwent surgery, but the bones never knit back together. A year later, she had hip-replacement surgery, but the incision became infected, and she spent a month in two hospitals.
Since then, she's had to use a walker. A pair of railings runs between the back of her house and the store. She uses a walker to get to her back door, holds onto the railings to walk the equivalent of a half block to the store, and picks up another walker at the back door of the store.
One chilly night in March 2002, she fell on her front porch, couldn't get up, and stayed there for 1 1/2 hours. She says a high school student getting off a school bus after a night activity saved her life.
"She heard me hollerin', bless her heart," Thomas says. "And she yelled, 'I'm coming, I'm coming.' And don't you think I was tickled to hear that voice."
A doctor told her she wouldn't have survived another hour on the porch. She spent two weeks in the hospital.
Famous visitors
Amid such trials, running Thomas Grocery on her own for the past 30 years has also brought Thomas some small-town excitement.
There was the time movie star Wilford Brimley, who was staying with a friend at a ranch near Sterling, exchanged dogs with her.
Thomas had told people she wanted a dog. One day, Brimley and the rancher came in and gave Thomas a dog named Old John. But the dog didn't work out, Thomas says. It was a ranch dog, not a house dog, and "just never was contented."
So later, Brimley came in "dressed like any other farmer." He offered to take Old John back so the dog could live out its days on the ranch and to give Thomas a puppy in exchange.
Another time, Karl Malone came in and bought fishing equipment. After the Jazz player left, one of the customers wanted to know why Thomas didn't ask for his autograph. "And I said, 'I imagine he's sick of all that. I think he'd like a little bit of normal, everyday treatment. And that's what he got."'
The past 30 years have even brought some recognition. She starred in a Cream O'Weber TV commercial, one of a series featuring Utah store owners talking about why they carried Cream O'Weber products. Thomas Grocery has carried Anheiser Busch products for pretty much the whole time it's been in business, Thomas says, and last summer, "the big wigs, the big big wigs, the owners" from Anheiser Busch visited her.
Thomas's biggest honor came in 1990, when she was 86. Snow College, located 15 miles up the road in Ephraim, bestowed a "distinguished service award" on her at a football game. "I got a standing ovation from the grandstand," she says.
Thomas's youngest son died at 57. She has a daughter, 74, living in Clearfield, and a son, 71, in Richfield. She also has 10 grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.
Since her hip surgery 20 years ago, she's had employees covering some of the store hours. Typically, she rests for a few hours in the afternoon and comes back to close. But when employees have had to be off, she's covered all the store hours herself. "And I fared just fine," she says.
In fact, self-sufficiency is what Thomas Grocery is all about. "I've always been a person that never saved up money," she says. "I would help somebody else if they needed help, and I've done that through all the years."
While her Social Security goes up just a little, her Medicare contributions go up quite a bit, she says. "To pay a lot of these things, (such as) my medicine, I keep going," she says. "I've always wanted to stand on my own feet, not have somebody else pay my way. Never wanted to do that."
E-mail: suzanne@sanpetemessenger.com