By SUSAN BERG

Managing editor

When news hit the airwaves Monday evening that the Marion Duckwall store was closing, residents didn’t take it well.

Longtime store manager Janie Meierhoff was fielding calls Tuesday morning from customers who couldn’t believe the news.

“Yes, it’s true,” Meierhoff said to the caller.

“It’s hard,” she said after she hung up the phone.

Meierhoff, 64, has been store manager since 1978.

The Marion store will close Jan. 9.

An anchor business on Marion’s Main Street for more than 75 years, the Marion store was among 43 stores nationwide and 22 in Kansas to close permanently. Duckwall-ALCO Stores Inc. of Abilene made the announcement Monday.

According to senior vice president and chief financial officer Wayne Peterson, the Marion store and the other 42 stores closed because of the “disproportionate amount of resources these stores utilize and the required additional capital investment.”

“The inability to provide the same variety of merchandise as an ALCO store also contributed to the decision,” he said.

Peterson said the ALCO store in Hillsboro was recently “reset and re-merchandised.”

“All of the ALCO stores have gone through these changes and unfortunately, the size of the Duckwall stores severely limits the opportunity to make similar changes.”

The company will also change its corporate name to ALCO Stores Inc., to reflect its new strategic focus.

“It’s a sad day in Marion,” Jeanice Thomas of Marion said Tuesday as she shopped in Duckwall.

Meierhoff said she and her employees heard in a conference call Monday afternoon about the store closing. The local store has five employees.

Students at Marion Elementary School aren’t taking the store closing lightly. In Tuesday morning’s assembly, librarian Lori Kirkpatrick challenged students to write persuasive letters to the headquarters in Abilene.

“I was amazed with what the kids came up with,” Kirkpatrick said. “They are fired up.”

The kindergarten class wrote a letter as a class but the other students wrote individual ones.

“We’re using this as a learning experience,” Kirkpatrick said, with teachers and students discussing the importance of shopping locally.

Marion Chamber of Commerce Director Margo Yates will miss the relationship Duckwall has had with the business community.

“I don’t remember Janie ever telling me no,” Yates said. “They (Duckwall employees) were the best help in bringing gifts together for Community Christmas.”

Duckwall always donated proceeds from annual cute baby contests to the Christmas fund and encouraged customers to contribute to the cause.

“It’s a shame it comes down to numbers (for ALCO) and not people,” Yates said. “ALCO has forgotten about small towns.”

“We’re looking at other options,” city economic development director Doug Kjellin said about the anticipated void in the downtown district.

He doesn’t think there is any chance ALCO executives will change their minds.

“It’s more important for us to see how we (the community) will rise up to this,” Yates said, “and decide what we’re going to do next.”

Meierhoff also believes there may be other opportunities but will miss her job.

“I have really enjoyed the customers,” she said with a smile and a tear in her eye.

Ironically, Meierhoff was part of a team that helped to open new stores and close others. She was part of the group that closed the Duckwall store in Cottonwood Falls a few years earlier but remains grateful.

“I am so lucky to have had this opportunity,” Meierhoff said. “It’s going to be difficult not to come to work here every day. I’ll miss working with the public.

“This was my life,” she said.