PORT ANGELES — Two longtime Port Angeles residents reminisced about adventures in business through the years at a Sunday History Tales event.
Bill Bork, owner of the former Johnson & Bork Paint, and Dick McLean, former owner of McLean’s Shoes, talked to a group of about 35 people.
Bork, 75, owned and operated Johnson & Bork Paint until the business sold about a dozen years ago.
His grandfather, Charles Bork, opened the store in 1892, he said.
Among the most exciting days for the business was the appearance of the FBI searching for Christopher Boyce.
Boyce was convicted in 1977 of espionage for selling sensitive documents to the Russian Embassy.
He escaped in 1980 and began robbing banks in the Pacific Northwest.
He was captured Aug. 28, 1981, at a Port Angeles restaurant.
The day before, the FBI visited Bork.
“When I heard it was the FBI, all I could think was, ‘What form didn’t I sign now,’ he said.
“But they wanted to go through our wholesale cash records.
“They wanted his [Boyce’s] address and anything that had his signature on it,” he said.
“I was surprised — he seemed like a nice guy.”
Boyce was returned to prison in California and was released in 2003 on parole.
The paint store was opened by Charles Bork and Herman Johnson, who each pitched in $125 to get the shop started, said Bill Bork.
A fire July 19 destroyed much of the building’s downstairs and caused Parker Paint, which had taken over the business in 1997, to permanently shut its doors.
Bork, who still owns the building, said repairs are nearing completion and that the insurer has been cooperative so far.
McLean, whose family was the longtime owner of McLean’s Shoes in downtown, said some of the best years for the shop were during World War II.
After opening up at the longtime location on First Street in 1943, the shoe store had a boon.
There was a wartime ration on shoes with rubber, but plastic shoes were still popular.
“Those war years were good for our business,” he said.
“I remember that we got our first new car after the war — it might even have been the first new car in Port Angeles — and I got to drive it off the boxcar at the railroad on Cherry Street.”
The car — a Nash — was sent without bumpers because enough metal wasn’t yet available after the war.
McLean’s parents ran the store until 1960, when they asked him to come help when his father was to have eye surgery.
McLean was working at Nordstrom in the Seattle area, where he had learned about shoe sales, budgeting and clothing rack sales — all things he used once running the shoe store.
“I never did go back to Nordstrom’s,” he said, saying he had originally requested two weeks off to help while his dad was in recovery.
His father died in 1969.
“I had 10 years with him, and without that, I wouldn’t have been able to run a business,” he said.
After working the shop for those decades with his wife, Carol, McLean sold the shop — but not the building — in 2003.
When that business closed, the McLeans’ reacquired the building, but “there was no way I was going back into the retail business,” he said.
“So we ended up shutting it down.”
McLean said he had good and bad customers, but one thing that always stuck out was his worst faux pax.
A couple came in nearly once a month, and he always was the one who helped them. He was pitching a new product that could remove calluses from feet to them.
“I said that it was so good it could remove a callus from a foot or a wart from the tip of the nose,” he said.
“No longer than did that leave my mouth but I realized the woman had a wart right on the end of her nose.
“There wasn’t another word spoken by any of us, and I turned about this color,” he said indicating the bright red color of his shirt by pulling the collar over his face.
Black Diamond Bridal now is housed at the building at 109 W. First St.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladaily news.com.
