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Through the years

Williamson’s Food Store endures after more than four decades

Christiaan DeFranco
Posted 9/21/16

MELROSE — Stepping into Williamson’s Food Store is like taking a step back in time.

It is reminiscent of when Kevin Costner’s character in Field of Dreams went for a walk one night in the …

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Through the years

Williamson’s Food Store endures after more than four decades


Posted

MELROSE — Stepping into Williamson’s Food Store is like taking a step back in time.

It is reminiscent of when Kevin Costner’s character in Field of Dreams went for a walk one night in the small town of Chisholm, Minn., and found himself in 1972, where he met an older Archibald “Moonlight” Graham – who had become Dr. Graham after his baseball days – played by Burt Lancaster.

“This is my most special place in all the world,” Graham said. “Once a place touches you like this, the wind never blows so cold again. You feel for it, like it was your child. I can’t leave Chisholm.”

Williamson’s, coincidentally, opened in 1972 on North State Road 21 in Melrose, which today is home to approximately 4,700 people. From the fluorescent tube lights that line the low ceiling, to the handwritten signs and price tags that adorn every aisle, to the Formica-topped checkout counters, to the 59-cent Moon Pies, the store looks much the same as it did 44 years ago, before the age of big-box supermarkets and mega-chains.

Romie Williamson, 88 (or “44 years young, twice,” as he puts it), can’t bring himself to leave Melrose or the store he and his wife Twila founded.

“What else could I do?” he said, chatting in an office area behind the deli section after slicing some cold-cuts for a customer. “I’ve seen old men who are really still young men – still vigorous – and after six or seven months when they’re retired, they’re just sitting there watching the TV and looking at the four walls. They just wither away.”

Every day except Sunday, Romie and 81-year-old Twila are hands-on at the store. They have been married for 64 years.

“I’m the boss, remember that,” he said. “And I do everything she tells me to.”

Twila laughs.

“Now shut up and listen,” she jokes to him while he has his arm around her.

Their two sons, Brian and Bruce, are store directors who handle day-to-day operations. Grandsons Wesley, Mark, Scott and John Curtis have also spent time working here.

“It’s very cozy,” said John Curtis, a business major at Santa Fe College in Gainesville. “You don’t have as much pressure as you would in a standard work environment. The main thing is to treat customers right and be fair to everybody who walks through that door.”

Being around family makes coming to work enjoyable.

“We get along most of the time,” Twila said, with a grin.

Williamson’s Food store, just like the family who owns it, is an institution around these parts. People come from far and wide for the reasonable prices, extensive meat selection and family atmosphere. Considering its location in the heart of Melrose – which sits in Clay, Putnam, Alachua and Bradford counties – it might just be in the perfect spot.

“They’ve got a really good variety of meats and fish, really high quality, stuff you can’t find anywhere else,” said Joe Middleton, a resident of the Speedville community, who has been coming to Williamson’s for 20-plus years. “They always have exactly what I want and everyone here is always very nice.”

Romie and Twila met in Orville, W.Va., which is about 70 miles south of Charleston and an hour east of the Kentucky border, when Harry Truman was president. Twila’s parents ran a boarding house for coal miners, around 30 to 40 at a time, and Romie was one of the miners.

“I think God had something to do with us getting connected,” Romie said. “I don’t know what I’d do without her. If she dies, I don’t know if I would live long after that.”

Romie soon went off with the Navy to fight in the Korean War. Twila wrote him a letter every single day while he was away. During that period, her family moved to Hawthorne, Fla., about 12 miles from Melrose. Upon returning from Korea, Romie requested to be stationed at Green Cove Springs. He and Twila were married, and he later split his time between Florida and mining in West Virginia.

In 1968, the pair moved to Florida permanently, and he and Twila worked at a grocery store her parents owned before opening Williamson’s a few years later. They’ve been a cornerstone of Melrose ever since.

“I guess he means everything to me,” Twila said. “I never know what to expect from him.

“And I’ll tell you what,” she said, perhaps hinting at one way Williamson’s has attracted generations of customers. “All the little kids love him. He’s been giving out lollipops here for 44 years.”

Paul Seay, the store’s top meat cutter, likes the environment at Williamson’s so well he has been working here 31 years.

“A lot of families come in, and I’ve waited on some of them in their second and third generations,” said Seay, 65, who has been in the grocery business since 1964. “I fell in love with the meat department, and I enjoy interacting with the people who shop here.

“We specialize in things that a lot of stores don’t, and we take time with the customers,” he said. “We get and fix what they want. We’ve got stuffed pork chops, stuffed chickens, all kinds of products. I see how the meat industry has changed over the years, with people not cooking like they did 30 years ago, eating lots of fast food. But we’re still hanging in there trying to please the customers.”

Romie believes the store’s unique offerings, along with its personal touch and sense of community, has helped Williamson’s survive and grow as competitors have come and gone.

Also, he had a chance to sell the business several years ago, when Walmart wanted to buy him out for a presumably large payout.

“What would my family do?” Romie said, adding that he didn’t even entertain a money offer. “It never got that far. I just told them no. This is my family.”

He knows his sons will run Williamson’s on their own someday. He’d like for them to eventually pass it on to their sons and have it be part of Melrose for many more years to come. He may even have a plan to make sure that happens.

“I had a will made to see that my children get the store, but I’m thinking about adding that if they ever sell it, all the proceeds go to charity,” Romie said using deadpan humor. “That’ll keep them in the business.”

It sure would. It would probably make a lot of customers happy, too.

Email Christiaan DeFranco at chris@opcfla.com. Follow him on Twitter @cdefranco.