Arthur Sigmund Newman, Sr

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/54622376/arthur-sigmund-newman Name: Newman, Arthur S., Sr. Date: May 14 1950

Source: Source unknown; Cleveland Necrology File, Reel #060. Notes: Newman, Arthur S., Sr., of 2988 Brighton Rd., Shaker Heights, O.; beloved husband of Theresa; father of Arthur and Paul; brother of Joseph, Aaron, Gertrude, Mrs. Ottille Campen and Mrs. Minnie Brown.

Friends may call at the J. D. Deutsch Funeral Home, 1486 Crawford Rd., where funeral services will be held Sunday, May 14, at 3 p. m.

On a messy winter day in 1931, in the middle of the Great Depression, my father, Arthur Newman--looking as gray as the day itself--left house and family and headed for Chicago to try and negotiate with Spalding and Wilson, the two giant sporting goods manufacturers, to get sports equipment on consignment. My father and his brother owned The Newman-Stern Company of Cleveland, Ohio, purveyor of sports equipment since 1915, a surviving company in the “luxury” arena of retailing which would see 80 percent failure rate before the depression ended. Goods on consignment would be difficult to bargain for in good times, so it seemed almost impossible to expect success in bad, because the manufacturers would only be paid as the goods were sold and not upon delivery. A dicey deal to monitor. Money was scarce.

My father came home two days later with a letter of agreement from both manufacturers for $100,000 of goods on consignment, a staggering amount in those days, especially under the economic circumstances. But those manufacturers knew that if The Newman-Stern Company sold a baseball glove for nine dollars and ninety-five cents, the manufacturer would have a check in the mail from my father the next day for the five dollars owed them. Such was the reputation of the Newman-Stern Company and the gentlemen who ran it. The business survived and so did we.

I learned a great deal by my father’s example and have tried to measure up. I learned from him that honesty is the best medicine. It nourishes the soul, and at the same time, keeps meat and potatoes on the table. -Paul Newman. https://myhero.com/Neman_Father_bk06

https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=54622376

https://books.google.com/books?id=AfgbEC0LrFMC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=St...

The Newman-Stern Co. was one of the nation's largest and best-known sporting-goods stores. The company began as the Electro-Set Co., organized in 1915 by brothers Arthur S. and Joseph S. Nwman and Arnold L. Stern, which specialized in radio parts and electrical toys for boys. Located in a small store on E. 4th St., the company soon became Cleveland's first supplier of radio parts and began a national mail-order parts business. The firm changed its name to the Newman-Stern Co. in 1917, and after the federal government banned the manufacture and sale of wireless equipment during World War I, the company turned to sporting goods to bolster dwindling electronics sales.

With sporting goods its major business after the war, the company briefly occupied quarters in the Leader Bldg. at E. 6th St. and Superior Ave., before moving into the new Newman-Stern building at E. 12th St. and Walnut Ave. in 1921. With Arthur Newman's death in 1950, Joseph Newman sold his family's interest in the firm to department store owners Nathan Marcus and Allan Kramer. Under new management, Newman-Stern opened 2 suburban branches. By 1965, however, the store located in the Southgate Shopping Center remained the only branch store. In 1963, Gateway Sporting Goods Co. of Kansas City acquired the company and 4 years later, moved Newman-Stern's downtown store to 634 Euclid Ave. When Gateway encountered serious financial problems in the spring of 1973, it closed the remaining downtown and Southgate stores. In the meantime, the Newman family had organized the Newman-Adler Co. in 1967 to sell camping and outdoor equipment. By 2004, the camping equipment business, known as InterGreen Outfitters, operated a single location in Chagrin Falls , and was still owned by the Newman family.

Arthur Sigmund Newman was born on August 29, 1893, and soon afterward the family was altered forever; by the time of his second birthday, his father had died. Art, as he was always known, would be raised by his sisters and brothers, all still living at home as late as 1900. Hannah ran Newman’s Millinery in the bustling Jewish commercial district on Cleveland’s West Twenty-sixth Street. Like Joe, who was only two years older, Art attended Central High School; like Aaron, he was drawn into newspaper work. Not long after high school he founded, published, wrote, and solicited ads for a local business circular, the Home Advertiser. He parlayed that into a job in the advertising and news departments of the Cleveland Press, where he proved unlucky: in 1915, phoning into the newsroom to report a scoop regarding a contentious strike at the Mechanical Rubber Company, he was inadvertently connected to the rival Cleveland News, which published history while his own paper got nothing; they canned him. And so Art went straight to work at ElectroSet, finding in Joe not only a surrogate parent (Hannah had died in 1913 when Art was seventeen) but a perfectly complementary partner as well. A few years later, interviewed in a Cleveland business journal, Joe said:“ Art and I are as alike as sunup and sundown. I am the maniac of the business—the long-haired dreamer. At least that’s Art’s diagnosis. He is the hard-shelled, brass-tacks man. Every business needs both types. One counteracts the other. The brothers would work together side by side for decades: Joe a wise and wacky jester, filled with unpredictable energies, Art, balding and sad-eyed and diligent and upright and exact. (Even in his twenties he looked older than his older brother.) Paul-Newman-A-Life by Shawn Levy, Excerpt