Editor’s note: Photos from the Heidrick family’s 51 years in Fort Scott follow the story.
FORT SCOTT - Denny Heidrick was about 10 years old when he took his first job with the family business, pedaling a bicycle around Girard and throwing advertising circulars.
Fifty-one years after he left college to open the family’s first Fort Scott store downtown, he has signed the papers to sell Heidrick’s True Value, which has operated from its South National Avenue building since 1980, ending more than five decades of family ownership of the hardware, rental and appliance store, and three generations in the family business that began in Girard in 1947.
The buyer is Rusty Gerken, owner of Pittsburg-based Gerken Rent-All and the Waters Hardware chain. Heidrick said Gerken bought the inventory and the building, is keeping the store’s employees and plans to hire at least two more full-time workers.
Heidrick signed the sale documents Thursday. As of Tuesday he did not know whether the handover would come Oct. 15 or at the end of the month.
“It’s time to do it,” Heidrick said. “But it’s going to be a little bit tough to walk away from our customers and everything.”
From Western Auto in Girard to a store of his own
The business began in 1947 as a Western Auto store in Girard, opened by Heidrick’s grandfather and later run by his father. Heidrick worked there through junior high and high school.
He had started college when his father came to him with an opportunity to open a second store.
“He asked me, said, ‘You want to quit college and open up the store and everything?’” Heidrick said. “I said, ‘Absolutely.’”
His mother was less enthusiastic. “Dad was in bad shape with my mom for quite a while,” he said.
The Fort Scott Western Auto opened in 1975 on the mall at the north end of Main Street. In 1978 the family bought an existing appliance store in Girard, which moved them from Western Auto’s Citation line into name-brand appliances.
The business moved to its current building in 1980, and appliances made the trip.
“When we moved down here, appliances was a big part of the move with us,” Heidrick said.
With a bigger building to fill, the family decided it needed more than Western Auto could offer and switched to a True Value franchise. Heidrick later built an addition on the south side for the rental equipment business, and a 2010 remodel added a building on the north side for more display space.
‘I found out how little I really, truly knew’
Heidrick’s father died in 1985, when Heidrick was 30. At the time the family was running the Fort Scott store and two separate businesses in Girard, a Western Auto and an appliance store.
“I thought I knew everything there was to do,” Heidrick said. “Boy, I found out how little I really, truly knew when it all fell on my shoulders.”
He said he always looked for the challenge, and the Fort Scott store eventually required three of them at once.
“It’s much easier to run an appliance business than it is the three different hats that I had to wear here: the rental hat, the hardware hat and then the appliance hat,” he said.
An eight-year-old offer
Heidrick said Gerken first expressed interest in the store about eight years ago through Heidrick’s True Value sales representative.
“He said, ‘Well, when he gets ready to retire, gets ready to get out, have him get in touch with me,’” Heidrick said.
Gerken’s family founded Gerken Rent-All in 2002 and bought Paola Hardware in 2016. In 2019 the company acquired Waters True Value, a seven-store Kansas chain with locations including Manhattan and Salina, ending 125 years of family ownership there. Heidrick said the Fort Scott store is Gerken’s 35th hardware store, most of them in the region and most under the Waters name.
Several things pushed Heidrick to make the call. He said the COVID-19 years were some of the store’s best ever, with customers tackling home projects and buying appliances even when they were hard to get, but the period changed the business.
“COVID changed so much,” he said. “It’s been very difficult to find help.”
True Value’s own troubles were another factor. The hardware cooperative filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2024, and rival Do it Best Corp. bought most of its assets.
“It kind of got pretty dicey there for a while,” Heidrick said. “Do it Best came to it as a savior for the True Value organization.”
He said he can see good things happening in the company, “but not good enough to keep me right now.”
The biggest factor was his health. Heidrick had open-heart surgery in 2023 and said he was laid up for about five months.
“After I got off of that table, business wasn’t as important,” he said.
‘I want to make sure that Fort Scott has a good hardware store’
Heidrick said he did not want to sell to someone who might be gone in two years, and he told Gerken the store had more room to grow than he had given it.
“I’m just scratching the barrel of what could actually be in this town right now, because I’ve gotten pretty fat and complacent — not open late of an evening and not open on Sundays,” he said.
Gerken plans Sunday hours, Heidrick said, though he did not know how late the store would stay open. Because Gerken’s company is large, it can offer employees benefits such as a health care plan that a family store could not.
“The employees were pretty, pretty happy,” Heidrick said.
The Heidrick name will stay on the building for up to 120 days before it changes to Waters. Heidrick’s sister, Nancy Hofer, who manages the store, agreed to stay 60 days to help with the transition after Gerken asked her to stay six months.
“Anything I can do to make sure that you’re successful, that’s what I want,” Heidrick said he told Gerken. “I want to make sure that Fort Scott has a good hardware store.”
‘They’ll see Uncle Denny a little bit more often’
Heidrick is not retiring. He will keep the family’s Girard appliance store and continue working there, following the example of his mother, who turned 92 on Tuesday and until the last month or so was at the store every day.
“I went to my 50th high school reunion, and about everybody was retired,” he said. “They all asked me, ‘Well, when are you going to retire?’ ‘Oh, hell, you can’t. Your mother’s still going down to the store.’”
He does plan to travel. Heidrick never married, but he has 21 great-nieces and great-nephews in Minnesota, Omaha and North Carolina.
“All my other siblings have provided me with them,” he said. “So they’ll see Uncle Denny a little bit more often now.”
He said the only trips he took in 51 years were to the two annual hardware markets and two appliance markets.
Heidrick plans to run radio ads thanking customers for 51 years of patronage. He said the decision was bittersweet for the family.
One customer recently told him he did not know what he would do without the store.
“He says, ‘Whenever I’m in problems, I always come in to you to solve my problems. I’m going to put you on speed dial,’” Heidrick said. “I said, ‘That’s fine.’”
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