The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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  • Helen Griffith owned and operated Grandma’s V Store on North Mankato’s Belgrade Avenue.

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March 12, 2010

A Life Remembered: A unique store, a unique proprietor

Helen Griffith died this week at age 85

By Robb Murray Free Press Staff Writer

NORTH MANKATO — At first, they chased the dream together. Helen and Tom Griffith, a husband and wife team, wanted something more fulfilling to carry them into retirement, and a dime store seemed the perfect fit for them.

But when Tom died on the job at then-Honeymead, Helen found herself with a crucial decision to make: pack up and give up, or make a go of it on her own.

She chose the latter, and spent the next 20 years creating Grandma’s V Store, a place that was, to say the least, unique.

The variety store closed in 1997. And this week, at age 85, Griffith herself closed up shop. She died Monday after a two-year battle with Parkinson’s disease. And while her store may be long gone, the inventory of memories scattered among the people who shopped there is likely alive and well.

She ran a store that couldn’t exist today, a slice of retro even in its heyday, a true dime store, the kind of place where the proprietor knew your name and didn’t mind special ordering stuff for you, a store with personality, a store with flair.

And it was all Griffith.

She stocked a peculiar line of goods.

Pinwheels, plastic vegetables, yarn, Christmas garland in July, mustache wax. Yo-yos, kaleidoscopes, garter stockings ... and so much more.

“We order odds and ends that the big stores can’t bother with,” she told a Free Press reporter in 1983.

Allen Griffith, one of Helen’s sons, said his mother’s decision to operate the store even after her husband’s death probably changed her life.

“She gave her life to her husband and her kids,” he said. “But when her husband died, it’s almost like her life blossomed.”

He recalled seeing families come to Belgrade Avenue and all the men would go into Mutch’s Hardware while the women and kids went into Grandma’s.

She sold penny candy and buttons in bulk. She dressed up as Mrs. Santa Claus during Christmas and did whatever she could to liven up the block.

She traveled. The income from the store wasn’t great, but it was enough to let her see the world. Griffith visited most of the world’s continents alone, making friends everywhere she went, including a British couple she met at Gibraltar that, for the rest of her life, remained her close friends.

Grandma’s V Store closed in 1997. By that time Griffith was using a cane to get around. But she didn’t quit living.

She continued to volunteer, including one of her favorite tasks: cutting out and pasting newspaper obituaries into books at the Blue Earth County Historical Society. Griffith used to joke that she hoped she live to see the 100th book of cut-out obituaries.

Her Parkinson’s took her out of the volunteer business in recent years. But she would have been happy to see that, when Historical Society volunteers cut out her obituary this week, the book they pasted hers into was labeled “100.”

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