Poland True Value sign replaced

Sarah Ein­se­len — Staff

Rick Wolf, one of Poland True Value’s co-owners, helps a cus­tomer find the right size screw for the job.

By Sarah Einselen

Inquirer Reporter

Poland’s is finally Poland’s again, after wait­ing months for its new sign to replace the one bro­ken in the spring hailstorms.

Rumors that it had been bought out and its name changed are unfounded, said Poland True Value co-owner Amie Wolf. The new sign was sim­ply delayed in com­ing because of a fire in the ware­house from whence it was ordered, dou­bling the man­u­fac­ture and deliv­ery time. It finally arrived on Oct. 20.

Amie and hus­band Rick did, in fact, part­ner with Rick’s par­ents Dick and Paulette Wolf to pur­chase the busi­ness from the Poland fam­ily in Jan­u­ary of 2008, but the four decided at the time to keep the Poland name.

“We never announced when we bought the store,” Amie said. “It wasn’t an issue.”

That’s because the Wolf fam­ily has been involved with the store for many years. After retir­ing as a Galion fire­fighter, Dick (for­mally Harley Richard Wolf, Jr.) was hired at Poland’s hard­ware in the mid-nineties, where Paulette joined him in 1997 after 27 years work­ing at Taylor’s. Dick had spent most of his life in Galion, hav­ing grad­u­ated from the high school in 1963.

Their son Rick (or Harley Richard Wolf, III), a 1989 Galion grad­u­ate, joined them in Jan­u­ary of 2006 to help man­age the store for own­ers Willard and Annabelle Poland. Just months after­ward, in May, Willard died, leav­ing Annabelle with the store after the pair had owned and oper­ated it together for 37 years. The Wolfs pur­chased it from her to relieve her of the respon­si­bil­ity, which weighed heav­ily as she reached her mid-80s.

“Willard and Dick were always good friends,” Amie said, “and Willard wanted him to come in with him when he bought the store.

“Annabelle always said it would have made Willard very happy that we bought the store. He wanted the store to go to a family.”

Sarah Ein­se­len — Staff

Amie joined the crew last year to help man­age the grow­ing busi­ness behind the scenes, work­ing mostly with the store’s accounts. She taught Eng­lish classes at the main cam­pus of Ohio State Uni­ver­sity before and said she is glad not to have to make such a long drive to work any­more. She has no plans to return to teach­ing full-time, she said, but may con­sider adjunct teach­ing if cir­cum­stances permit.

The Wolf fam­ily wants to keep expand­ing the busi­ness in the next few years. An appli­ca­tion with the city zon­ing depart­ment to expand its retail space is pend­ing, and, if approved, would allow Poland’s to add just under 1,000 square feet to the store’s retail space, to be fol­lowed by more expan­sion phases begin­ning with addi­tional paint sales space. An expan­sion to the gift sales area will prob­a­bly come after that.

Poland True Value Hard­ware is located at 234 Hard­ing Way East in Galion.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Nov 2 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.