Our Roots

Pat & Vern Styron
The Styron Observer & Commercial Appeal is a tribute to Pat and Vern Styron, life-long entrepreneurs, who raised six Styron siblings in small towns in Northeast Oklahoma and Southwest Missouri.

Pat and Vern began their life together in Vinita, Oklahoma, in 1949, where Vern was working in his family’s business, the Lucky Service Station on Route 66, selling fishing tackle and live bait, beer and ice, and gasoline and oil, in addition to doing mechanical work and fixing flats. Pat, who grew up in nearby Pryor, was a waitress.

The First 3 of 6, on Route 66
When Jane, Emery and Harry were small, with John on the way, Pat and Vern moved to the next town west, Chelsea, where Jane and Emery began elementary school. In Chelsea, Vern had his own gas station on Route 66. The family lived in three houses in three years. In Chelsea, Pat and Vern became active in the Baptist Church, as they still are. The older siblings still remember the family dog, Red, Vern’s jeep, the day Pat kicked a cat through a screen door, and Vern’s apparent heart attack, which turned out to be the sting of a wasp on his chest. The siblings enjoyed their grandparents, Allen and Ruth Styron (and Ruth’s mother) of Vinita and Harry and Hettie Crittenden of Pryor, but Hettie died in 1955.

In early 1957, the State of Oklahoma started widening Route 66, and the gas station had to close, being too close to the new right-of-way. After the sale of the station, the family took its first vacation—a trip to Disneyland, then newly constructed near Los Angeles—and played in the Pacific surf at Seal Beach, with visits to Knott’s Berry Farm, Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. After returning from the trip in April, Vern ran a little ice house and bait shop in Chelsea and had a great time entertaining the kids by building a go-kart for them out of a baby bed frame with baby-buggy wheels, with a lawn mower motor. The family ran a fireworks stand in front of the ice house. There were lots of families with young kids in Chelsea at the time, and Pat and Vern and the kids had a busy social life.

The Move to MO
The family moved to Granby, Missouri, in August 1957. With backing from some of his Oklahoma business associates, Vern and Pat founded Granby Gas Company, to sell propane. At first, the business was run out of the four-room house that the family rented (Sam was born in April 1958). Vern leased a Cities Service gas station on Highway 60 for a couple of years, so the kids could no longer unscrew the posts in the Granby Gas Company ledger, which had been in the living room. Even though the business was now physically separated from the house, the phone number was the same, and all the siblings had to learn to take a phone message from customers needing propane or a pilot light lit.

The boys liked to play at the station, with the pop machine, the cash register, and especially the car repair garage, which had a hydraulic lift, several jacks, grease guns, air hoses, inner tubes, and patches.

By 1960, Vern and Pat were able to purchase a two-story house on North Main Street in Granby and a building across the street for Granby Gas Company. The gas company had a string of employees, who became nearly close enough to be called “family.” Among them were Obern Charlton, Jack Powell, Joe Laney, and especially Tommy Dawson who helped often, and whose wife, Jesse, helped Pat with mountains of laundry, ironing, house cleaning, and child care.

Business School for Kids—and the love of family ties
The kids were drafted into service as well. While their contributions to the business may have have offered more trouble than value for Vern and Pat, the kids were sometimes enlisted to do various office tasks, such as answering the phone, receiving payments from customers, posting delivery tickets into the journal and the daily totals into the general ledger. In addition, the boys were sometimes recruited to assist Vern with bending sheet metal and building heating ducts (Vern added HVAC to his offerings), changing the oil and brake linings on vehicles, filling propane cylinders, and setting up gas ranges, heating stoves and water heaters. They watched Vern and Pat deal with customers, who were sometimes demanding. Without question, all these experiences gave the siblings a wonderful foundation for operating their own businesses.

The Styron family fireworks business, which started in Oklahoma (under laws that permitted toddlers to sell cherry bombs) in the 1950s, was carried on by the kids in Missouri, at least until the early 1970s. The kids learned that they could avoid risk by buying the fireworks on consignment, because they could return the unsold merchandise; however the profit margin was only about 33%. If they purchased the fireworks outright at wholesale, the profit margin could be as much as 200% on some items, but a few rainy days could kill sales.

Sometime in the early 1960s, Vern brought the kids a proposition. If they would purchase shares of common stock (he carefully explained the difference between preferred and common) in a company to be formed under the name Security Finance, their capital could be loaned to purchasers of heating stoves from Granby Gas Company. Thus Granby Gas Company could increase its sales of stoves and propane, and the young investors would reap dividends from the interest earned on their capital. Shares were offered at $25 each and eagerly subscribed, but Security Finance never really got off the ground, perhaps because of a turn in the market. But the principles of corporate finance have not been forgotten.

Family life, mixed with business, made for an eventful household. Pat’s brother Richard Crittenden moved up from Oklahoma, finished high school in Granby in 1960, and helped in the gas company and entertained the Styron kids immensely. The final sibling, Kevin, was born in 1962. About that time, Pat’s father, then in his early 80s and in failing health, made several extended visits before his death in 1963.

Lessons of family and business were all mixed together. And it was good.

Just Learning to Work
Pat and Vern and the kids were involved in many other ventures in the 1960s. In about 1963, Vern and Pat made down payments of $11 each at Western Auto in Neosho for new bicycles for Emery and Harry. The down payments were Christmas presents. To qualify to receive these gifts, Emery and Harry had to make installment payments (probably six monthly installments of $3) and take over a paper route on the south side of Granby, delivering the Neosho Daily News. Soon the bikes were paid for and Emery and Harry had also taken over the route on the north side of Granby. As Emery and Harry got older, the routes were taken over by John, Sam and Kevin. After getting their driver’s licenses, Emery and Harry delivered the Springfield Leader-Press and the Joplin Globe. Later, John delivered the Joplin Globe, weekends and mail-carrier holidays, over a 100 miles of dirt road… and stock car/white lightnin’ runner, Jimmy Johnson, doesn’t have much on what John did with his ‘61 Ford Falcon way before dawn on those Ozark bi-ways (Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but it’s a great memory). For Emery and Harry, there was also an episode involving a sawmill and the cutting and selling of railroad ties.

Pat and Vern encouraged the kids to do other things to earn their way, so there were various spells of selling greeting cards, waitressing, babysitting, shoveling snow, bagging groceries, mowing lawns, hauling hay, working at a truck farm, making and installing storm windows, and working in various other businesses around town.

Because there were usually several potential hands available, on many Saturday mornings the phone would ring with a request for some of the Styron boys to do odd jobs, and they all felt like they should oblige.

Learning to Learn … and the Quest for Higher Ed
Though neither Pat nor Vern had much education past high school, they instilled a love of learning in their kids, taking them to the county library frequently. The county library’s bookmobile began making its monthly Granby stop in front of the Styron house on Main Street, and soon the idea was born of making a branch library in a front room of the Styron house, which had two front doors. The house had been built for a doctor, and the waiting room had its own entrance. That room was spruced up and a couple of bookcases installed. For many years, the doorbell would ring, a stranger would enter (sometimes at the oddest of hours) and spend several long minutes choosing a book from the small assortment, and some Styron would “check it out” with a date stamp on the card for the file and the sleeve on the inside front cover of the book.

The Styrons learned that the taste in literature of Granby residents, while having a tremendous range, tended to be focussed on the novels of Zane Grey, Grace Livingston Hill and Frank Slaughter and the non-fiction writings of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Dr. Thomas Dooley (The kids liked Cowboy Sam and Curious George.) After spending a summer working at the Library of Congress in 1976, Harry has remarked that he had been privileged to work at the smallest and largest libraries in the world.

Pat and Vern supported their kids in other ways. They attended thousands of ball games, concerts, and parades where their children were participants. On summer Sundays after church, they took the kids to swim in Big Sugar Creek in McDonald County, south of Granby, and there were several camping trips. Vern’s parents loved to fish, and the kids had big times at their fishing dock on Grand Lake in Oklahoma. The boys enjoyed catching sunfish, catfish, and crappie, and occasionally getting in on the white bass run up Sycamore Creek on the Missouri-Oklahoma line.

All the kids wanted to go to college. Jane was in the first graduating classes of the local junior college, Crowder College (1968), and Missouri Southern (1970). Emery graduated from Crowder and then went on to the University of Missouri, Columbia. That same year, Harry enrolled as a freshman at UMC in 1970. John and Sam each spent four years in the United States Air Force after high school, then moved on to graduate from UMC. Kevin completed college at the University of Northwestern Louisiana and a master’s from Webster University while in the USAF.

Global Action, Local Reaction: Selling Granby Gas Company … and Starting Something Better
In 1973, after the Arab oil embargo, the federal government got into the energy business in a big way and the propane business changed. Because of skyrocketing fuel prices, it wasn’t long before Granby Gas Company was having cash flow challenges because of high inventory costs. Vern and Pat decided to sell. But they weren’t finished.

Vern dabbled in real estate and Pat conjured. In the mid-1970s, Pat and Vern bought a popular restaurant/drive-in in Granby known as “Reta’s.” They applied their skills—Pat knew how to buy food and make it delicious, and Vern knew how to keep the refrigeration equipment, ice makers, soda fountains, cookers, and dishwashing equipment in good working order. They both sincerely enjoyed their interactions with employees and customers. Soon they were expanding the building. By 1982, they were exhausted and were able to sell. Though they had to take it back a couple of times, they eventually got a good down payment and carried back a note.

But retirement was not for Pat and Vern. They still owned the gas company property on North Main, though “Granby Gas Company” moved out after its lease expired. Pat and Vern bought out a stock of distressed clothing merchandise and started selling it from the old gas company building. It wasn’t long before clothing sales people began to call. And it wasn’t long after that that Pat figured out how to buy manufacturer return merchandise and other distressed clothing goods. She hit the jackpot when she learned to buy distressed merchandise directly from Lee, Levi’s, Chic, and Wrangler. At the time, return merchandise was readily available, and Pat could repair the zippers and buttons and small tears. The beauty of the merchandise was that Pat and Vern could buy it at a very favorable per/piece rate and sell it at a high margin while offering customers a deep discount over regular retail prices. It wasn’t long before the Tree House was also carrying first quality merchandise as well.

Vern had a sign he’d bought at a restaurant auction—“The Tree House.” The sign became the name of the business. The business gained regional acclaim, it’s slogan—“Save Big Bux on Jeans”—resonated with the working folks of Southwest Missouri, Southeast Kansas, Northeast Oklahoma, and Northwest Arkansas. At first, The Tree House was open only on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Because Pat and Vern were willing to work with customers and had jeans—at the right price—to fit almost anyone, sales increased rapidly and soon the store was open six days a week, and Vern was turning more of the old gas company building into retail space. The Tree House turned out to be one of the most profitable businesses Pat and Vern ever owned.

Pat and Vern Retire … sort of
In 1994, when Pat and Vern were ready for retirement, and John and his wife Beth were searching for a way to leave the “big city” and raise a family in a small town, a deal was struck. Pat and Vern made it easy for John and Beth to buy the Tree House. “We were their retirement plan,” said John. “Discount jeans was one of the best things we ever got into,” said Vern. Until the “outlet price” became THE PRICE, John and Beth certainly would agree.(Yet, the business—a clothing business on Main Street in a backwater town—is still “defying gravity.”)

Since selling The Tree House, Pat and Vern have continued their business activities on a reduced scale—some rental property and a very popular, almost perpetual garage sale. People love to do business with them. They love having people stop by and visit … and buy.

They continue to offer helpful insights to all their children about various strategies for managing employees, purchasing inventory, and making financial decisions. They have taught that honesty and customer service are essentials, but not guarantees. “Paying rent for the space you take up in the world” is a phrase that Vern has used to describe the duty of any citizen to give service to his community.

Even though they are in their eighties, Pat and Vern remain attuned to local, national and world events. They are steadfastly supportive of their community, enjoying Lions Club, Granby’s Old Mining Town Days celebration, and supporting their church. Vern has steadily upgraded his go-karts, which his grandchildren have loved. At age 75, Pat jumped on a computer for the first time, immediately seeing it as a tool to help her keep in touch with her spreading brood of kids, grandkids and great-grandkids.

Probably the greatest lesson of Pat and Vern as entrepreneurs is that they have always worked as a team. Maintaining their separate identities and often clashing, they still listened to one another, acknowledged each other’s special strengths, and worked together. There has never been any doubt that they are on the same team.