Special Thanks to Robin Clifton (a.k.a. Robin Sackett)
Sent October 7, 2014
Here is the Story of Sackett & Peters in Robin's Words.
My father was brought up to play for the Cardinals in the farm team. He was then drafted and went in the NAVY ......and then came home and started this business back east.
My father and Rudy had a FIRESTONE tire store in PHILADELPHIA, PA where they were born. They had a tow truck and drove it in the snow...
My father didn't have much then a 6 grade education Rudy had went to high school. My father left the business and moved to CALIFORNIA with my mother to be near my mom's mother. My dad got some money from an accident and then built some houses with NO EDUCATION and took the money and started the little hardware store on Whittier BLVD. near COLIMA. Small place and called TEXACO and begged and begged for an OIL STATION and they said NO...just a bunch of ORANGE GROVES AND QUAKERS there and we are not interested. Great patience and constantly annoying them the finally gave in. He then called RUDY and he came out and ran the store and my father ran the gas station. Later they took in a partner VERL PETERS to be the bookkeeper and partner. They grew out of that building and went into the other location 15214 EAST WHITTIER BLVD. They bought Verl out I think in the early 70's for 100,000.
The bad thing they did was NOT BUY all the properties they were on ....there were 5 different parcels so they were LANDLOCKED. When the land became worth a lot no one wanted to sell they all landlocked us. That was the downfall of the entire company. But, besides they did dam good with NO EDUCATION....very proud. They opened a store in TORRANCE for a while and then BAKERSFIELD. They had BAKERSFIELD for a long time. Manager stealing us blind unfortunately. We employed so many people. We were what HOME DEPOT took and made better.
Steve Smith that worked for us took his experience and went to HOME DEPOT and developed gez what was it? Can't get the name but ....It was a great concept of a place you could go and shop with designers on staff and pick out all the high end appliances and fixtures and it was all there...Sorry can't remember the name. He did very well and was bought out I believe today I think many of our employees work at HOME DEPOTS and or have gone on to be very successful business people.
So, when the economy took a turn after the WHITTIER QUAKE (October 1, 1987), and HOME DEPOT opened we lost a lot of money and we had just done the redo and our mortgage was 40,000 a month. Bad timing and they didn't see the train wreck too old to get a handle on it and that's what happened.
Rudy and Bob didn't get a long and it was an unfortunate thing. Ted Summerset just died a few years ago, I believe 97 and Rudy was 98 and my father sick with congestive heart failure died 2004. He struggle horribly and I took care of him in his last 3 years. He didn't want to die he was strong to the end. I miss him so much it still hurts to think of him being gone.
Thank you for your time and putting this web page together.
Robin Sackett