dry cleaners

Most people remember Jim Richie (right) as the long-time proprietor of a clothing store in downtown Summerville.  Before his 50-year career as a successful haberdasher, however, Mr. Richie was in a different kind of clothing business - dry cleaning.  In the late 1940s, he and a partner, Herman Hall, opened the Lyerly Dry Cleaners on Alpine Street.

The young man on the left, Wilburn Ragland, remembers working for Jim Richie while attending Lyerly High School.  Ragland followed in the footsteps of his older brother, L.D., who also worked at the Lyerly Dry Cleaners and remembers picking up and delivering clothes all the way to Cloudland.

"He (Mr. Richie) would do whatever was needed, from running the counter to pressing clothes," Wilburn Ragland remembers.

Sometime in the mid-1950s, Jim Richie opened his first clothing store in Summerville (across Commerce Street from the post office) and left pressing engagements to others.

Thanks to Wilburn Ragland for sharing his photograph and information.


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Copyright 2011 Greg W. McCollum.  All rights reserved.