Decades after closing, Lexington honors department store with ‘McAlpin’s Reunion Day’
Decades after McAlpin’s Department Store closed in 1998, the traditions and camaraderie are beloved to this day.
That appreciation and nostalgia was solidified on Sunday, Aug. 28, which was dubbed “McAlpin’s Reunion Day’ in the city of Lexington by proclamation of Mayor Linda Gorton.
McAlpin’s opened in 1967 at Turfland Mall, and two other locations followed on Richmond Road and Fayette Mall. The store closed their location in 1998 after it was bought out by Dillard’s.
On Sunday afternoon, former employees of the department store gathered at The Cellar on Lansdowne Drive for a reunion.
People threw their arms around fellow coworkers they hadn’t seen in years, swapping stories and memories of their time on the sales floor.
One was former McAlpin’s buyer Ron Boaz, who worked with the store for 27 years.
He highlighted what he thought made the store favored among customers including their return policy, customer service, and the springtime Moonlight Madness sales.
Employees and customers agree that the return policy was one of a kind, and something you wouldn’t see today, as they accepted any return — even if it was not from McAlpin’s.
“There was an older lady and she came in with a hammer,” Boaz recalled. “And obviously we didn’t carry hammers, and she said, ‘I bought it here,’ ‘I bought it here,’ so with our return policy, we took it back, gave her the money, whatever the price was. Then we took it down to the hardware store where she got it and got our money back. That is how liberal it was. It helped us make a lot of friends.”
For him, the best part of working at McAlpin’s was the people.
“I mean, I had great employees,” he said. “... It was a family atmosphere.” He gave credit to Fred Peters, another McAlpin’s employee, who helped organize Sunday’s reunion, which was the second event to be held.
Couple Shelley and Joseph Jackson agreed the people were special at McAlpin’s. Both of them worked at the store where they met and fell in love. Joseph worked in stock, and Shelley worked in lamps, paintings and prints department.
“She would come back to the stock area, and we became friends,” Joseph Jackson laughed.
They have been married for 35 years, and share four kids.
Lexington councilman Richard Moloney presented the proclamation on behalf of the city, and told the crowd he had aunts and cousins who worked at McAlpin’s.
“Around Christmas time, McAlpin’s had a special gift wrap, and when you saw it around the tree you knew what you were getting,” he said.
Not only did McAlpin’s leave an impact on their employees and customers, Moloney said it also had an impact on the community and growth of Lexington.
“With Turfland Mall and Fayette Mall, and the arrival of IBM, we became a suburb city and merged government,” he said. “That is why Lexington is where it is today, because without McAlpin’s we wouldn’t be a suburb city.”
