Michelle Willard, Daily News Journal, April 27, 2015
SMYRNA – Gil’s Ace Hardware will reach a milestone this week as it celebrates 40 years of business, owner Ginny Williams said.
The Smyrna fixture will mark the occasion from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday at the store, located at 415 Nissan Drive in Smyrna. The anniversary party will include food, popcorn, drinks and door prizes.
Ginny Williams stands in her store, Gil’s Ace Hardware, in Smyrna April 13. (Photo: HELEN COMER/DNJ)
Founded in 1975 by Gilbert “Gil” Olerud, the hardware store was just part of a small claim staked by the family patriarch.
Smyrna Mayor Mary Esther Reed said she remembers shopping at the store with her grandparents.
“It’s always been an important part of the community,” said Reed, who is a native daughter of Smyrna.
Olerud opened his first business in what would become known as Gilsville in 1953 with a service station won in a bet, Williams said.
His holdings soon expanded to a grocery store, hardware store, appliance store, Radio Shack and trailer park. It was all located on the road into and out of Sewart Air Force Base in Smyrna.
Smyrna Town Manager Harry Gill, who grew up on the base, said the stores that sprouted up in Gilsville were “the place to shop.”
“We’d go down there and pick up odds and ends,” he said about shopping at the grocery store as a kid. He added if you couldn’t find it in the base commissary, then Gil’s would have it.
A customer comes out of the Gil’s Ace Hardware storefront in Smyrna April 13. (Photo: HELEN COMER/DNJ)
The stores have a special place in Gill’s heart.
“I’ve been asked many times if that was my family’s store,” he said, smiling at the memories. It’s not his family’s store, but he grew up with all of Olerud’s children including Williams, he said.
Like Gill’s family, the Oleruds found themselves in Smyrna after Gil Olerud was stationed at Sewart Air Force Base. Olerud, who along with his wife, Mavis, hailed from Fargo, North Dakota, served in the U.S. Army during World War II and the Korean conflict.
“They thought they were going to New York state,” Williams said with her characteristic laugh.
She explained there was a Stewart military base in New York, which was easily confused with the new closed Sewart base in Smyrna.
Despite the confusion, the family made the most of Smyrna and when Gil’s stint was up, he decided to continue a family tradition and go into business for himself.
“My grandfather owned a general store in Fargo,” Williams said, “so I guess we’re third-generation retailers.”
Gilsville started when Olerud bought Gambill’s Grocery & Trailer Park for $4,000, Williams said.
According to an account by county historian Greg Tucker, Olerud bought the Gulf station that had ended up in Vincent Gambill’s hands after he won it in a bet from James D. Hale.
Rick Bruen, right, with Gil’s Ace Hardware in Smyrna helps Marty Seng pick out the right materials April 13. (Photo: HELEN COMER/DNJ)
Within two years, Olerud had upgraded the service station to the first Gil’s Supermaket in 1955.
Even when Gil’s was a grocery store, it still stocked a little hardware and made keys, Williams said.
“He was a do-it-yourself guy,” Williams said about her father. “He figured is he needed it, he might as well sell it.”
She said the back aisle of the grocery store was filled with tools and hardware, but it was so disorganized she could never find anything.
So when he suggested opening a hardware store, she was grateful she wouldn’t have to deal with making keys or searching for a tool only to find it after the customer was gone.
But Williams suspected her father wanted to open the store for a more personal reason: to keep her close to home.
After Williams graduated from MTSU with a teaching degree in 1975, her first husband, Bob Lee, began interviewing for jobs out of state.
“My dad couldn’t stand the thought of us moving,” she said.
So Gil offered Lee a job managing a new hardware store.
By that time, Olerud had built the Gilsville Family Center, which housed the grocery store with other commercial offerings.
“He only had a fifth-grade education, but he was brilliant,” Williams said about her father.
After the base closed in 1970, the fortunes of Smyrna soon dwindled. Then the supermarket chains came in and eventually, Williams, who took over the family business after her father’s death in 1980, closed the IGA and the Radio Shack and the restaurant and the drive-in movie theater.
But the one store, besides the gas station and trailer park that started it all, is the hardware store.
“We had our best year last year,” Williams said about the store that now occupies the spot in the Family Center where groceries were once sold.
All the manufacturing and industry in Smyrna gives her business a boast she said, marking off Nissan North America and Taylor Farms as clients.
Gil’s and the Olerud family are very much a part of Smyrna’s past, present and future, Mayor Reed said.
“Their family embodies what Smyrna is all about,” she said. “It’s about choosing to make Smyrna your home and getting involved in the community to make a difference in the lives of individuals.”
And that’s something Williams hopes to continue for another 40 years.
Contact Michelle Willard at 615-278-5164. Follow her on Twitter @MichWillard.
If you go
Gil’s Ace Hardware 40th Anniversary Celebration
11 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday
415 Nissan Drive in Smyrna
615-459-4457