Jay’s IGA Food Liner Opens – March 5, 1952

Two page spread from the Lorain Journal, March 6, 1952

Seventy years ago this month, Frank Jursinski opened Jay’s IGA Food Liner at the corner of Oberlin Avenue and Meister Road. An Open House was held on March 5, 1952.

According to an article in the Lorain Journal on that day, “Jay’s Food Liner is the newest Lorain member of the IGA – the Independent Grocer’s Alliance. Established in 1926, the IGA is one of America’s foremost groups of independently owned and operated food stores.

“Owner of the IGA - Supervised market is Frank Jursinski, 809 West 14th Street. Jursinski, who served five years in World War II and was discharged with the rank of captain, is married and has two sons, Kenneth and Kevin.

“For the past six years, he had operated a store at 1404 Long Avenue.

“Jursinski entered the Army as a private in the engineers in 1941. While serving with the First Army in France, he was wounded near Versailles and received a citation from the Belgian government.

“Following his discharge he first went into the real estate business and then opened the market at Long Avenue and 14th Street.”

Jursinski’s store appears to be the original building in the strip which for many years included Whalen Drug and Willow Hardware.

In April 1955, Jursinski moved his grocery store to a larger space within the same shopping center. Jay’s Food Center was located in the space that would later be home to Willow Hardware.

Finally, in 1962 Jursinski relocated his store, now called Jay’s Sparkle Market, to a new building further south on Oberlin Avenue that would later become the longtime home of Meyer Goldberg.

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I covered some of this history before, but it’s of special interest to me because it is the specific area in Lorain where I grew up. Click here to read my post about the Oberlin Avenue Commercial Strip Pioneers, including Frank Jursinski. And Hank Kozlowski of the Journal wrote this great story (in two parts, here and here) about how Oberlin Avenue went from farmland to a busy commercial center.