Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/1508745
44 • Footwear Insight ~ September/October 2023 footwearinsight.com LEBO'S CELEBRATES 100 YEARS RETAIL A Family- owned Retail Institution in North Carolina Since 1923. By Bob McGee T his year marks 100 years in business for Lebo's, a retail stalwart with multiple stores in the Carolinas. Where to start in telling the century-long success story of this family-owned business? Let's start at the beginning… In 1923 when Sidney Levin opened the first Lebo's store in Charlotte, NC, the first issue of Time magazine was published; the original Yankee Stadium was opened; and Calvin Coolidge was in the White House. Women wore high and wide heels on pumps and loafers. Levin had le behind his family's four-door department store business in Gastonia, NC to go 25 miles east in the Tar Heel State's Piedmont region to strike out on his own with a family shoe store business on Charlotte's East Trade Street. at original Lebo's store would remain there for 53 years until an urban renewal project forced it to relocate. Two decades aer that first store opened, in the 1940s, Sidney's son Jerome (Jerry) would also officially join the business. (And Jerry still serves as chairman today.) In 1943, Jerry, a recent high school graduate who had spent several years as a salesclerk in the family business, was off to Italy and a military run as a flight engineer on a B-24 bomber where he would fly 35 combat missions over Italy during World War II. Upon his return to the States, he would enroll in business school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But Jerry's higher-education path ceased in his junior year when an ill Dad called him home with the words he remembers to this day. "I need you in the business. I'll be your professor, quit Carolina." Jerr y would leave the campus behind to immediately take over the children's department of Lebo's Shoe Store and formally commence a 74- year career in the family business that today, at age 99, largely involves him visiting stores weekly and pointing out merchandising or other elements that could be done differently by cur- rent store personnel. A consummate merchandiser and self-proclaimed "customer pleaser," Jerry Levin's long-