Owner of Woodlands candy shop always had a smile, wisdom and tons of sweets
THE WOODLANDS — The first time Nicholas Haffter Von Heide walked into The Candy House more than a decade ago, a set of pewter trinkets in a canister caught his attention as he looked through the shop.
The set reminded the customer of a similar one that his parents had bought him as a child in the 1980s during a vacation in Galveston, although that one was a set of trains, he told the store’s owner Donald Baker Sr. A few visits to the sugar wonderland later, Baker said he had tracked down the set of knickknacks and wondered if Haffter Von Heide would like to buy it before he put it out for sale.
“Of course I did,” Haffter Von Heide recounted this week, still awed at Baker’s extra effort to find the set.
“His ability to acquire the details of someone’s life and make those moments and impact those in such a way that could really …” Haffter Von Heide said , interrupting himself with a pause. “I mean that’s beyond customer service. That’s beyond the normality of what we accept as normal business practice today.”
Baker, 89, died Jan. 2 after more than 30 years of running the candy store in The Woodlands. His family, which announced his death in a statement, did not specify a cause of death. In November, longtime customers rallied to support the business after a social media post said the shop was struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“He proudly served the community in The Woodlands and touched the lives of over three generations of customers,” his family wrote in a statement posted on The Candy House’s Facebook page. “His legacy will live forever in our hearts.”
In interviews, people who knew Baker described a Korean War veteran and cancer survivor who was always up for conversation and sincerely tried to get to know anyone who walked into his store. He served as a father and grandfather figure to many beyond his direct family.
Sherrie Sturkie, owner of Pizza Tonight a couple storefronts away from the candy store, remembered how Baker would never charge her son for candy when he was growing up. Or more recently, at that, even though her son is now 23 years old. She and her husband visited him, too, for sweets and wisdom.
“He was just so loving,” Sturkie said as she pulled a pizza pie out of the oven Thursday afternoon. “It’s going to leave a big hole in the shopping center.”
Nick Rama, a food photographer and writer, called Baker “the unofficial Woodlands grandpa.” Rama first started visiting the store as a high school student at its original location in Panther Creek in the late 1980s. Over the last few years, Rama took his own child to the store, where Baker would round down weighted candy, giving them a bit for free.
“We just lost a really good person and a community leader,” he said.
Old-timey store
Walking into the store, which Baker owned with his wife Barbara, “was like walking back in time,” Rama added. Its big glass bowls filled with candy, including some unique offerings, popular fudge and flavored popcorn, evoked an era that included stores solely dedicated to sweets and treats.
True to form, the store lacked an internet connection. Baker accepted payment in the form of cash or credit card, the latter which was processed with a device that connected to a telephone landline.
Its sense of charming antiquity remains etched itself in the memories of those who visited, like Haffter Von Heide. He recalled a jawbreaker bigger than a human fist behind the counter atop a shelf. “It feels like my jaw is going to break just looking at it,” he remembered.
And nearby, above the register, was a Veterans Day article about Baker, Haffter Von Heide said.
“Oh, you served?” he once asked Baker. “As well?”
The question led to their first conversation about their time in the military. Baker served in the Navy during the Korean War, according to his family’s statement. As Haffter Von Heide launched his own business ventures, the relationship between the two strengthened, with Baker offering advice based on the experiences he’d had.
“He had one of the biggest hearts I ever met,” Haffter Von Heide said.
In November, a regular customer walked into the store and caught up with Baker, who mentioned the shop had experienced a bit of a slow October, usually one of its busiest months due to Halloween. The customer wrote about the conversation on Facebook, stating that Baker told them he was hoping for enough business to make it to the holidays. Or he might close.
The post, as they tend to do on social media, took off.
Customers support shop
A GoFundMe fundraiser was created. Dozens of people showed up to form a line stretching out of the shop. A TV news station chronicled the rallying to save the iconic community staple. Another local business offered the Candy House space on a new floor for free.
So many people showed up that Sturkie was overwhelmed at her nearby pizza shop by the influx of people who ordered food while they waited to enter the candy store.
Two former employees of Baker’s returned to help out.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Cindy Sackett, who started going to the store as a kid to wait for new shipments of Beanie Babies and worked for a few years, starting around 2006, when she was in high school and during breaks from college.
Baker tried to pay her and her former coworker, she recalled. They weren’t there for the money, she said they told him. They just wanted to help him with the hundreds of customers, some of whom told her they had waited three hours to enter.
“That’s just how much he meant to us,” Sackett said.
After a chaotic day of business on the third night, a Saturday, Sturkie went to the candy shop.
“I said, ‘Are y’all opening tomorrow? ‘Cause we have to know because we have to prep extra food,” she recounted, laughing.
No, they did not plan to open. Amid the support, Baker told the Woodlands Villager that the store was not in dire straits, as the Facebook post had suggested. But he had been concerned about its future.
“Everybody had good intentions,” he told a reporter. “It is manna from heaven. It was very fulfilling that so many people wanted to help.”
In addition to Barbara, his wife of 66 years, Baker left behind four children and three grandchildren, according to his family’s statement.
Several of the people interviewed for this story said they last saw or spoke to Baker weeks ago. As he often did, they recalled, he had a smile on his face. Like the one Sackett remembers when he gave kids from an elementary school next door a hard time about not having enough spare change for a piece of candy. In the end, he wouldn’t take their money and gave them the candy.
But with his death, it became clear to those who adored him that their favorite part of The Candy House was gone.
“He had one of the biggest hearts I ever met.” Nicholas Haffter Von Heide, a frequent customer and eventual friend