Recent Bluffton residents never met Bruce Shelly, former Bluffton insurance agent who retired to Florida several years back. Bruce recently died in Florida. While I worked at the Bluffton News, next to his office, I came into daily contact with Bruce. He was a great source for news and appreciated giving me advice, which I often took. Click here to read his obituary. He also told me several interesting Bluffton stories and assured me that upon his death I could repeat some of them. Thus this column:
• He informed me how the Bluffton Business Men’s Association purchased a property on East Elm Street to expand parking in downtown Bluffton.
I think this story involves Al Ingalls, Maurice Fett and Bruce, and probably Jim West and Roger Edwards. The property sold at auction. You can imagine that real estate auctions are pretty unpredictable. The Business Men’s Association wanted the property for a parking lot, but didn’t want anyone else bidding to know this.
According to Bruce, Al devised a plan to win the bid. It was orchestrated like this: Al made a bid and then shook his head at the next bid price and walked off, saying, “I’m out.” That somehow distilled all potential buyers. They figured if Al didn’t want it at that price, it wasn’t worth it. The guy holding the highest bid believed he was stuck with property.
After a long pause, one of the other Business Men’s Association members (who was in on the plan) volunteered a price to get the pressure off the guy with the then-highest bid – who was frantically looking for a way to get out of the bid.
After the next bid was placed, no one else bid and the auction ended – successfully with the Bluffton Men’s Association buying the property, apparently at a decent price. That lot is now part of the village parking lot behind Main Street.
• The rest room behind Bruce’s Nationwide building was rented out to the Bluffton News because it needed the space. The rest room had only cold water and was not heated.
I pointed this out to Bruce several times, hoping he’d get hot water and heat. He told me the reason it lacked hot water and heat was because he took business classes from Howard Raid at Bluffton College. Howard always taught his students to be careful and not over capitalize their businesses, according to Bruce.
I thought this was a bit odd and shared it with Paul Snyder, then owner of Jan’s, housed in what is today The Black Lab.
Paul laughed very hard and said that, he, too, was a former student of Howard Raid, and that his store bathroom lacked heat and hot water also.
• Bruce told me that he never believed in procrastinating, however, there was one time he wished he had.
He claimed to have a neighbor with wolfhound. The dog would wake up early in the morning and howl. This drove Bruce crazy. Finally, Bruce approached the wolfhound owner and asked if something could be done about the dog.
The dog owner replied, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” Bruce apparently pushed the issue and the conversation became heated.
According to Bruce, unknown to him, earlier in the day, the dog died. The next day, the dog owner came in and pulled out all his insurance and took it to another agent.
“That was one time I wish I had procrastinated,” he told me.
• Bruce, an avid golfer, shared this story about Joe Urich, Sr., also an avid golfer. At the time Joe owned Urich’s IGA Foodliner on Vance Street. The senior Urich was extremely competitive. He didn’t like to lose and didn’t like to admit that he could loose.
Mr. Urich annually competed in the Lima area golfers senior tournament. He won the event several times. On this particular tourney, however, he was losing pretty badly in the championship round.
The story goes from Bruce, that although Mr. Urich was losing soundly, he refused to admit it. At one point in the match, according to Bruce, Joe Urich Sr., watched his opponent getting ready to swing the club. Mr. Urich said, “Bob, I think I know what your problem is.” (As if Urich was leading and the golfer was losing!)
• Bruce never liked to lose a good deal when it came to cars or car parts. He was once in the market for some new tires, but didn’t want any tire dealer to know that he was shopping around. Apparently one of the tire dealers was a customer.
So, he asked me to call the dealer and inquire about a certain tire and its price. I did so, in his office, as he listened and wrote down the tire price. (His ear was to the phone receiver as I talked.) The tire price quoted was higher than another dealer – and he bought the lower-priced tire. But, it was my voice on the phone and the dealer didn’t recognize me.
He later thanked me, because he didn’t want his insurance customer to know he bought from someone else.
• Concerning vehicles, Bruce usually drove Buick Regals. Once he considered buying a German car, but knew that one of his customers worked at the Ford plant in Lima. “If I bought a BMW (name of is customer) would – well, I’d never hear the end of it.”
Bruce waited until he retired before he switched from Buicks to BMWs, or whatever foreign-brand he was interested in.
