By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
When Tamy Ramey took a part-time job at the Ben Franklin store in downtown Bowling Green in 1983, it was because the position was a better fit for her family.
Now she’s part of the Ben’s family, said Amy Craft Ahrens, who has been managing the store for her parents as they recuperate from serious health issues.
In her 40 years, Ramey has done just about every job in the store, except work in the office, and that’s been essential over the past few months, as the owners and operators Floyd and Charlotte Craft have been absent from the shop.
“I probably would not still be in business if it wasn’t for people like Tamy,” Floyd Craft said. She and fellow workers including Suzanne Whittaker and Tim Bean know what needs to be done and do it.
“Other than office, she can step in and take over anybody’s role and probably has over the 40 years,” Craft Ahrens said. That includes emptying the trash if that’s needed.
Ramey started working at the store after seeing a help wanted sign posted on the door.
At the time she was working as a chauffeur for the state Bureau of Services for the Visually Impaired. She recalls transporting Bob Oberhouse of Pemberville a lot.
That was part-time with irregular hours.
She had two children, 2 and 4, at the time and felt she needed something steadier. Within a year she was working full time.
Retail wasn’t new to her. Her family moved to Bowling Green in 1965 when her father came to manage to Murphy’s store.
She recalls spending Sunday afternoons in the store oiling the hardwood floors and restocking. A 1978 graduate of Bowling Green, she also studied accounting at Penta Career Center. That has been helpful in her job over the years.
“They’ve been really good to me about raising kids,” Ramey, 63, said. “Charlotte understood if I called and said I’d been up all night.”
Ben’s has evolved over the years. They used to have window blinds and sold jewelry. The candy counter was much smaller.
The shop offered 24-hour film development and had a photo studio.
Ramey said she took passport photos and has family photos that were taken by former employee Steve France.
“We’ve reconfigured so many times and grown,” she said. “That’s why Ben’s has survived. We listen to our customers and their requests. As the trends change, we’re able to follow.”
She’s long managed the store’s toy department and has seen trends come and go.
Now on the start of another holiday season, she said some of the old standbys, like Monopoly, either the traditional or specialty editions, such as one featuring National Parks, remain popular.
The most popular item this season has been a spin-off of another old favorite, “The Grinch Operation Game.” And large trucks made by Bruder are also good sellers, as is dress up clothes for boys and girls.
It’s the workers on the sales floor, Craft Ahrens said, who communicate that to the proprietors.
Ramey recalls they even sold body parts – Cabbage Patch doll body parts. The store couldn’t get the franchise to sell the popular dolls but were able to stock build-your-own kits in its craft department.
It was Craft Ahrens who gets credit for bringing the store’s hottest ever item Beanie Babies. When she returned to Bowling Green in 1997 to start For Keeps, the plush toys were just catching on in Chicago where she’d been working. She stocked them in the gift shop, and, at her urging, her father stocked them in Ben’s.
They took off. But the store maintained its cool during the craze. Sticking to the $5 price – the amount a kid would get for an allowance, Ramey said. They limited how many someone could buy because some adults were coming in purchasing as many as they could to sell on the secondary market. “If a kid came in wanting to get a Beanie Baby, we wanted them to be able to get a Beanie Baby,” Craft Ahrens said, admitting it was an odd position for. retailer to not let someone buy as much as they wanted.
The item was a huge success, and the revenue they generated helped the businesses weather some difficult economic times.
Nothing could prepare them, though, for what Craft Ahrens called “the summer from hell.”
In late June, long-time employee Connie Miller, who managed the Busy Thimble, died.
Then both elder Crafts developed serious health problems. Craft Ahrens had to move over to Ben’s to manage it. She noted she is relying on employees at For Keeps to run the show in her absence.
Craft acknowledged the strain this put on the staff, and on his daughter.
“We would not been able to survive that” without Ramey and the other employees, Craft Ahrens said.
“We’ve been blessed with really good long-term employees,” her father, who has returned to work, said. “It just means on a day-to-day basis you don’t have to continually guide people.”
That comes from trying to accommodate workers, Craft said. “We’ve always been able to give people time off when an emergency comes up.”
“You can’t even quantify the value of someone having 40 years of experience,” Craft Ahrens said of Ramey. “She knows every aspect of the business. She’s filled in in every department.
“She understands what our goals are, what kind of business we want to be. … We’re community minded. Our customers are our friends. We’ve seen three generations of customers,” Craft Ahrens said. “Tamy is one of the people who trains people because we know she’s going to impart all those things not just the operational stuff. You can’t undervalue that,” she said. “And she’s family.”
