POSTED: 3:30 pm CDT October 21, 2006
OMAHA, Neb. — After serving as a landmark in Benson for 92 years, the True Value Hardware store is preparing to close its doors.
The loss will leave an empty space in the community.
Mary Cox said she’s the last of what used to be a crowded field along Maple Street.”There were several hardware stores up and down the street, and Johnson Hardware beat all the competition and stayed here,” Cox said.
The True Value was C.C. Johnson Hardware in 1914. In its tenure, the competition has changed.
“The big box store come in and every year we saw our numbers just kind of dwindling down and we decided that it didn’t make any sense to continue,” Cox said.
Cox said she doesn’t want to focus on the reasons the store is closing. Instead, she and her family and employees are looking back at the impact they had on a community.
“We know our attachment, but it never occurred to me that people would be so emotional to lose part of their history,” she said.
Part of that community was Benson the cat. Benson lives and sleeps — a lot — in the store
“Everybody in Benson that has driven by the hardware store or been in the hardware store knows Benson the cat,” Cox said.
Benson will got home with Cox at the end of the month when the store closes to live with her and her husband, Dan.
When the store goes quiet, the Benson neighborhood will lose something special, Cox said.
“It has to do with Benson and Florence and Dundee. They’re actual neighborhoods. They’re actual towns. And the people that live in those areas are very attached to the downtown areas,” Cox said.
