On Thursday, July 31, 1924, an advertisement appeared in the Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian:

“The homes in this community are soon to have a J.C. Penney Co. department store of their own where reliable quality dry goods, apparel, clothing, furnishings, shoes, notions, etc. will be available at prices affording important savings,” it read. “… Watch for further announcements.”

Over the next week, further announcements were made in the pages of the newspaper regarding the imminent opening of the J.C. Penney store on Main Street. On Aug. 9, 1924, the department store opened to the public. Though its corporate name has changed, the company now commonly known as JCPenney has maintained a presence in the city ever since.

From its original location at 23 N. Main St., JCPenney expanded to 5 N. Main St. in 1929. It relocated to 2103 William St. in the 1970s and then moved to its current home at West Park Mall in 1981.

Life-changing job

Harry Rediger, Cape Girardeau’s mayor from 2010 to 2018, was born in Nebraska and spent his entire childhood there. He moved to the city he would one day become mayor of only because of his job at JCPenney.

After graduating from Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Rediger’s father offered him a job at the hardware store he operated in the nearby town of Seward. Rediger did not want to go back to work in the one-man store, so when he saw an ad in a newspaper for a management trainee, he went downtown for an interview.

The ad was not for JCPenney. It was instead for Sears, Roebuck and Co.

“I found a parking place on O Street in Lincoln, Nebraska. I interviewed there and it was promising. They said they’d let me know the next day,” Rediger said. “… On the way back to the car, I walked past JCPenney. They were on 13th and O at that point in time. I decided to walk in and see if they had any openings, and they did, and they hired me on the spot. I always said my life would have changed if I had parked on the other side of O Street and not walked by JCPenney.”

The next day, the leadership at the Sears store offered him a job. But Rediger had already accepted the JCPenney position, and it was a decision that changed his life.

He started at the Lincoln store, but over the years moved to stores in Dallas and the Kansas City area. In 1976, he was offered the general manager position at Cape Girardeau’s JCPenney store. He had never been before, so he flew to St. Louis and rented a car to drive to Cape Girardeau. Rediger said he liked what he saw so he moved with his wife and four children to Southeast Missouri.

“Through some of the luck and some of the bosses, the district managers, that I had throughout the years, they really wanted to transfer me and I said I wanted to stay. I was lucky enough to stay here for 20 years and retire here,” he said.

On June 3, 1981, JCPenney opened at West Park Mall. The mall itself had only been open for three months at that point.

Rediger said it had been helpful to move to the interim location on William Street, since it would have been difficult moving straight from a small store downtown to the spacious location at the mall. They had more than doubled their volume moving from Main Street to William Street and doubled it again moving to the mall.

Rediger recalled how, during the first Christmas at William Street, right before he had arrived, the store manager had ordered items conservatively and ran out of Christmas merchandise in early December. Rediger made sure not to make the same mistake, telling employees to purchase extras of what they thought would sell well.

“We just went along with the times and continued to grow the company with our market. People were amazed at the volume that we did here in Cape Girardeau,” Rediger said.

He attributed the amount of sales to the vast number of customers the Cape Girardeau store pulled from Southeast Missouri and the surrounding states, saying the location could reach some 400,000 potential customers.

“I enjoyed buying and selling merchandise and seeing my people who worked for me in my department areas were successful. We had some great people that worked for me that went on to bigger and better careers,” he said.

Rediger himself retired from JCPenney on Halloween of 1997 after 21 years in Cape Girardeau and 38 with the company overall.

Family company

Sarah Grigaitis, the current general manager of the Cape Girardeau JCPenney, started working for the company in 1983 while she was studying occupational therapy in college. She was a sales associate for store No. 911 in Omaha, Nebraska, and decided the company was the right fit for her. After attending a company training program, Grigaitis was promoted to general merchandise manager.

For a decade, she worked at a pair of Omaha stores before transferring to the Chicago suburbs in 1996. She said it was difficult to leave her family in Omaha behind, but that her new JCPenney coworkers made her feel at home.

“With family here, that makes it home,” Grigaitis said. “The second I walked into the store in Chicago, I had family again, because it’s the culture that the company has.”

After working at various Chicago-area locations for another decade, Grigaitis received her first general manager assignment at the Cape Girardeau JCPenney store.

“In Cape Girardeau, the expectations of JCPenney are a little different from the expectations of TJ Maxx or Target or Kohl’s or Walmart. We’ve been around longer than all those companies,” Grigaitis said.

Grigaitis managed the Cape Girardeau JCPenney from 2006 to 2013 and then transferred to a larger company store in the suburbs of Indianapolis. She retired in 2020 and then returned to the fold to resume her Cape Girardeau position the following year. With much of her family already living in Southeast Missouri, it was a logical next step.

“I’m really proud of the history we have here, and I appreciate the customer loyalty so much. We want to be able to give what we’ve always given the community in terms of service and quality,” she said.

Sitting in Grigaitis’s office is a painting of the Cape Girardeau JCPenney as it looked when it moved to the mall in 1981. Rediger and Gary McDowell, another former general manager, gave it to her when she left for Indiana.

“Like I said, they’re my family. This is my family,” she said.

Changes over the ages

Both Grigaitis and Rediger noted how much the company, and the industry, have changed since they started working there. When Grigaitis started in Omaha, for example, her store had 20 managers overseeing different departments. Her Cape Girardeau store has three.

“Working hasn’t gotten any easier over the years. Peoples’ responsibilities have grown throughout the years,” she said. “… I can’t say the direction has changed because we’ve always been about taking care of people. We’ve been very focused on Middle America and providing value to customers, which is super important right now, but that’s kind of been our culture all along.”

Grigaitis said she believes consumers still have a need for malls and believes West Park Mall is trending in the right direction with its ongoing renovations. She wants to continue teaching people how to be the best in the department store business.

“Shopping can be an event and fun; something that people look forward to,” she said.

When Grigaitis first started working at the company, each location bought its own merchandise. When various functions became centralized, they grew more cost effective, allowing store personnel to prioritize running the store and interacting with team members and customers.

“When we were buying, that could be pretty time consuming, so it really opened us up for far more people activities,” Grigaitis said.

As the company transitioned away from the catalogue model, the Cape Girardeau store underwent several remodels and expansions.

When Rediger took over the store, it featured several departments JCPenney is not known for today: automotive care, large appliances, sporting goods, electronic equipment. When the store relocated to the mall, it grew to include a styling salon, which Rediger said became a top-five salon across all JCPenney stores nationwide with more than 50 stylists and thousands of haircuts per month.

Rediger said managers were able to make more decisions of their own regarding merchandise, store hours and promotions in the past than today. During the company’s 75th anniversary in 1977, he oversaw the store as it won district and regional competitions for sales growth.

“I’m still wearing the ring that I was awarded (for winning the competition) … that’s a keepsake,” he said.

JCPenney went through bankruptcy in 2020 and was purchased by mall property groups Brookfield Property Partners and Simon Property Group for $800 million. The company’s official name is now Penney OpCo LLC. Grigaitis said the company emerged from the bankruptcy successfully. It currently operates more than 600 stores.

To this day, Rediger still shops at JCPenney and uses his company discount. He keeps up with the store and breakfasts regularly with Grigaitis and fellow former manager McDowell.

“It was quite a ride, those 20 years, and I enjoyed every minute of it,” he said.

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