A legacy lives on
Jolicoeur siblings honor their parents with ‘Adopt-a-Spot’ where their popular Woonsocket furniture store once stood
WOONSOCKET — Albert Jolicoeur had a full-time job at the Taft-Pierce tool-making factory in the years leading up to the Great Depression. But in order to support his growing family he moonlighted as a door-to-door mattress salesman, distributing the inventory from an established furniture dealer.
He let his customers pay on the installment plan – just 50 cents a week.
Years later, when Jolicoeur managed to scrape together enough money to launch his own furniture store, his flexpay generosity was something his early customers never forgot. Their loyalty helped make Jolicoeur Furniture such a success that, even after he sold the 229 Bernon St. business, the new owners kept the name.
Jolicoeur and his wife, Claudia, both died many years ago. But most of their surviving children – they raised a dozen – with help from city officials, paid homage to the Jolicoeur legacy on Friday with a ceremony marking the spot at the site of the furniture store – now a vacant lot. But a very pretty one. The Jolicoeur siblings decided to honor their parents
by joining the city’s “Adopt-a-Spot” program. For a modest annual fee of $250, the city erected a decorative sign dedicated to Mr. and Mrs. Jolicoeur, situated in the midst of a tidily manicured plot of perennials.
Five of the six surviving Jolicoeur brothers and sisters teamed up with Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt at the site for a brief ceremony commemorating the placement of the new sign. But it was mostly a chance for the descendants of the Jolicoeur Furniture legacy to reminisce about the store and how their parents passed along the old-fashioned values that made them successful.
“I worked in the store,” said Terry Mello of Rumford, a daughter of Jolicoeurs. “They had a gift shop and I would come in and work in the gift shop.”
“Did you know they had a bingo hall on the fifth floor?” wondered Albert Jolicoeur Jr.
In addition to Albert Jr. of Uxbridge and Mello, the other Jolicoeur siblings on hand for the dedication were Anita Wilbur, a city resident; Jay Cote, another daughter from Woonsocket; and r Lucien Jolicoeur of Burrillville. They also brought along three granddaughters of the Jolicoeurs – including Kimberly Blais and Stephanie Wilbur, who are sisr ters, and Gail Spinella. A sixth surviving f sibling, Robert Jolicoeur of Bellingham, was unable to attend the ceremony.
Exactly when the store was razed – r no one in the Jolicoeur family was quite able to recall. But stories in archives indicate that it was scheduled to be torn down to make way for a new Bernon Street Bridge in 1986.
The bricks and mortar of Albert Jolt icoeur’s legacy may not have survived the march of progress, but it was enduring enough to become part of the family lore – even among relatives who were born long after he sold the store.
“We always knew Pepere had the furniture store,” says Blais.
The city has some two dozen Adoptd a-Spot locations available for small business or individual sponsors, but Baldelr li-Hunt said Friday’s ceremony wasn’t intended to advertise the program.
“Today is to recognize the Jolicoeur family...to keep the memory of the family alive,” she said.
With the customer loyalty he built from selling 50-cent-a-week mattresses, Jolicoeur managed to launch a successful business in midst of the Great Depression to launch a used furniture store in 1929. The originally location, however, wasn’t 229 Bernon St. – a corner lot at the junction of Bernon and Front streets. The first store was established in a much smaller building located on the corner diagonally opposite.
It wasn’t until 1939 that he opened Jolicoeur Furniture at 229 Bernon St..
“The customers that dad made during his door-to-door selling days did not forget him when he opened his business venture,” Anita Wilbur wrote in a family biography of her father. “Dad’s business did well enough for him to support the family on sales from the store. Soon he became the exclusive dealer of Zenith TVs and radios in the area.”
But Jolicoeur would run the thriving enterprise for only a few more years. In 1942, he sold Jolicoeur Furniture to Donald Schafrath, who continued to operate it under the Jolicoeur name.
Meanwhile, Jolicoeur went on to work for another retail institution in the city – McCarthy’s – originally known as McCarthy’s Dry Goods.
“He went to work as a furniture buyer for McCarthy’s,” said Wilbur.
In 1953, Jolicoeur left the private sector when he landed an appointment as city clerk under the administration of the late former Mayor Kevin Coleman. The title of the position was later changed to purchasing agent after an overhaul of the City Charter.
Jolicoeur stayed with the public sector until Coleman’s political clout was exhausted, at which point he returned to what he knew: buying and selling furniture. He popped up again as the buyer for McCarthy’s.
After his wife Claudia died in 1969, Jolicoeur retired and moved to Plattsburgh, New York, where he eventually remarried and lived for a time. When his second wife was debilitated by a stroke, however, family members relocated the both of them to Rhode Island. His second wife, Rachel, passed away in 1990 and Jolicoeur, after residing for a spell at The Holiday in Manville, passed away in January 1994.
Jolicoeur is just one of the heroes in the family tree.
If the name sounds familiar, it’s because there is a monument near the headquarters of the Woonsocket Fire Department that is named for his brother, William Jolicoeur, a World War I soldier who was tragically killed in France after the declaration of the Armistice due to a communications snafu with the front lines. Distinguished by a prominent Latin cross, the monument, known as Place Jolicoeur, became the focal point of patriotic demonstrations several years ago after a Wisconsin-based atheist group threatened to go to court in order to compel the city to tear it down.
The Freedom from Religion Foundation argued that the cross of Place Jolicoeur was a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing the separation of religion and government. City officials disagreed and mounted a campaign to raise funds in preparation for the anticipated legal battle.
Eventually, the controversy fizzled out and Place Jolicoeur still stands – solid as the memory of Jolicoeur Furniture.