The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Muzik Bros. celebrates 75 years
Garage celebrating generations of service and five locations
A Lorain garage is celebrating service spanning three generations, five locations, 75 years and thousands upon thousands of automobiles.
In 2017, car repairs continue at Muzik’s Auto Care, 704 W. Erie Ave., like they have since 1942. Third-generation owner John Muzik, 38, continues the family business started by his grandfather, John C. Muzik, and nurtured by his father, Richard Muzik.
“I never really looked at it as a personal accomplishment, being that I’m the third generation,” Muzik said. “I guess you’d call me the low man on the totem pole of Muzik’s Auto Care.”
The office wall includes a picture of John C. Muzik, who started repairing cars in a garage at the trolley loop at Broadway and East Erie Avenue.
When his brother, Joseph, got out of the Army at the end of World War II, he joined the shop in 1945 and “Muzik Bros.” was born.
The younger John Muzik never met his grandfather, but every day sees his portrait on the office wall.
“A lot of customers, when they come in they look at these old pictures on the wall, it jogs memories,” Muzik said. “They talk about their grandparents going to my grandpa when he started the business.”
John C. Muzik died in spring 1974 and his son, Richard, purchased it.
The garage already had been in three spots around Lorain. In 1984, the state of Ohio bought the garage at 13th Street and Broadway to make room for the railroad underpass.
Richard Muzik in 1984 moved to 3671 Oberlin Ave., where it stayed until 2014. He retired in 2012, but remains in town and is enjoying traveling and his grandchildren, Hugh, 9, Lincoln, 8, and Violet, 4, John Muzik said.
When Taco Bell approached the family about selling the Oberlin Avenue garage to make room for its restaurant, Muzik acknowledged he and his wife, Nickole, discussed closing the shop.
Then the space on West Erie Avenue became available.
“It was a big decision to make,” Muzik said. “We have three little children and to decide, do I in theory start over and try to find another line of work? Or do I try to just carry it on, keep it going?
“I don’t have any doubts that I made the right decision,” he said. “I always say that I love coming to work. There’s not a day that I dread coming in here. It makes life easier, workwise. Not a lot of people are in the same boat.”
Sustaining a local business is, in a sense, a community effort.
Since the 1940s, word of mouth advertising has been the biggest form of advertising for the shop. Muzik has supplemented that with a website, Facebook page and Twitter handle, and he said the social media help.
The garage employs technicians Chris Smith and Jimmy Paiva.
“Everyone here brings something different to the table,” Muzik said. “We have our certain things that we like to work on and we’re good at. It’s a very good balance.”
Smith went to school with Muzik and has been on staff about six years.
He said he and his brother, Doug, an art teacher, are nephews of Lorain artist Stevan Dohanos.
Chris Smith said his brother inherited the eye for design, so Doug Smith, now of Cuyahoga Falls, created Muzik’s 75th anniversary logo.
Technician Jimmy Paiva joined them about 2 ½ years ago. Paiva worked for the late Al Perhot, owner of Perhot Auto Service on Oberlin Avenue and a mentor to Muzik, who inherited Perhot’s Tootsie Roll jar.
That container sits in the office with another gift creating the “Complaint Dept. – Take a number,” with the No. 1 tag attached to the pin of a dummy hand grenade.
Muzik received that from Dr. Robert Gradisek, a longtime Lorain optometrist who is now retired. They became friends because Gradisek’s office sat near Muzik’s Auto Care when it was on Oberlin Avenue.
“It sat on his desk for 40 years,” Muzik said. “He said, I want this to be on your desk for 40 more years.”
The shop is west of Broadway, but Muzik maintains close contacts with merchants of downtown Lorain.
“I’d like to say that we’re proof that businesses do work down here, and obviously we’re optimistic that we get some new restaurants and whatnot close, see some positives happening,” Muzik said.