Longtime business owner retiring

After 58 years as part of the business community in Dexter, Cleo Holder will close his service station on the corner of W. Stoddard and Mulberry Streets. The last day of business is Saturday at noon.

"I'm really going to miss the people," says Cleo, sitting at his desk at the station on Thursday.

The station opened for business under Holder on Nov. 30, 1954. The first two customers that morning were Bert Minton and Dayton Forkum. Both are deceased now, but Bert's wife, Martha, continued to buy her gas at Cleo's until she was unable to drive.

"Their daughter still does business with me," adds Cleo. "I have a lot of customers who have been loyal to me for many years."

Holder is 80 years old, well past retirement age. He confesses that he only worked about 20 hours per week the last several years. The exception is when the planting season was underway and he sometimes worked up to 60 hours a week. He added four greenhouses several years ago to supplement the income from the station. These, he says, proved quite successful.

His son, Tim, has pretty much run the station the last several years. Tim started working at his dad's station when he was 13 years old. He has been there 37 years now. Cleo's granddaughter also works there when she is not attending college and his other son, Terry, works there when needed. It was truly a family business.

Cleo's sons have bought a business in Dexter, so he now feels free to retire.

What does he plan to do with his free time?

"I'll run around like I always do," he laughs.

Cleo is proud of the fact that he has seen all 50 states and every province in Canada. He and his wife, Glenda, took every opportunity that came their way to travel. She would not fly, so all their travels have been by vehicle.

"I've seen every state in the Union," he says, "but my wife has seen only 49 because you can't drive to Hawaii."

Glenda worked at Puralator for years, so every time she was able to get off from work they hit the road. He worked plenty of hours at the station, so he felt comfortable enough in leaving the business with his sons to travel extensively.

Cleo did not plan to close the station until the end of October this year. He thought it would take that long to sell the inventory and equipment. He does not own the building, but rather Chrisman LP Gas and Oil Company does. But the process went much faster than anticipated. The greenhouses sold in four days, prompting him to muse whether he had priced them too cheap. A deal was struck on much of the equipment. He had just ordered 200 mums to sell and also some ferns. Thursday morning the last mum was sold and only a few ferns remained on the parking area east of the station in front of where the greenhouses once stood. Cleo joked that if they sold out of gas, he might just close the business on Friday.

Cleo graduated from Gray Ridge High School in 1949. His family moved to Dexter just before he graduated, so he caught rides back and forth to Gray Ridge because he didn't want to finish his last four months at Dexter.

The Holder family took over a dairy farm operation on the corner of One Mile Road and Grant Street. There was 160 acres there and the operation was managed by Doan Agriculture Service. They sold the milk to Ozark Dairy, which was located on Highway 25 across from the current Bud Shell Ford location. Cleo's dad sold 40 acres to the Dexter School District in 1953, and that land was where the high school and Southwest Elementary were constructed. His dad later got out of the dairy business.

Cleo became a diesel engineer while working on a barge on the Mississippi River. He was drafted into the Army during the Korean Conflict. As a diesel engineer he was stationed in the Phillippines.

He and Glenda were seeing each other before he was drafted, but he didn't want to get married and then leave for duty. When he returned, the two were married.

Cleo bought a station at the current location from Red Francis in 1954. That building was a small metal building that sat at an angle on the corner. Representatives of Sinclair approached him about building a newer, more modern building. They came to terms and a year later the new building was constructed, owned by Sinclair. Some modifications have been made, including adding two service bays and an underground 20,000 gallon gas storage tank. The storage bays replaced an old "outside grease rack," Cleo says.

Chrisman bought the building from Sinclair in 1991, and still owns it.

""We've had an excellent relationship over the years," says Cleo. "Terry Burlison and Chrisman Oil have been really good to me."

Full service gas stations began fading in the 1990s. Cleo continued through service work on vehicles and picking up anything he could to stay in business. At one time he sold campers and trailers. Later he added the greenhouses to sell garden plants and seeds.

Government regulations and changes in car engineering have continued to erode business, Cleo laments. New vehicles are operated by computer, and the diagnostic equipment needed to make repairs is expensive.

Earlier this year in an interview with the Statesman, Cleo sounded as if the time had come to an end for the 58-year-old business. He was, however, concerned about his family, and wanted to keep the business going as long as it was needed.

Now both sons have bought a local flower and gift shop. Terry went to work at Jackson's Florist when he was in high school. He was teaching design when he was 16 years old, according to Cleo. He has been working primarily at Gregory's for several years, but now he will be joined by his brother, Tim, and perhaps even Cleo's granddaughter will work there while attending college.

That was enough for Cleo to make the decision to close the long-time business.

Still, it will be hard. He won't miss the work so much, but he will miss seeing his friends and customers.

"I've been real blessed," says Cleo. "I'm really going to miss seeing all of them. It will be tough."