Griber’s Grocery Was More Than Just a Corner Store
Lithuanian family persevered to achieve the American dream
By Mary Ann McCormick
A tall, sturdy building remains standing on the southwest corner of Church Street and Pennington Avenue in Curtis Bay. The once-proud building used to be a grocery for some, a daycare center of sorts for others, and a gossip fence for still many more. Griber’s Grocery Store held an iconic place and role in the evolution of the hamlet of Curtis Bay. It was the community’s gathering place.
The Griber’s Grocery business didn’t start in this well-visited location. It began as a simple bakery on Cherry Street and Curtis Avenue in 1907. But Matewsz and Eva Griber, who had recently emigrated from Lithuania, wanted more than to simply rent a store for their business. They contracted with the Brooklyn, Maryland-based John H. Geis Lumber Company to have a new two-story building constructed in 1924. The intention was to open a grocery store on the first floor and to have their family live upstairs.
Matewsz died in 1923, and Eva later applied for a Female Trader’s License from the City of Baltimore in 1933. Paying a license fee of $6 per year, she operated the store with the help of her two oldest sons, Joe and John, while also caring for her two youngest sons, Paul and Pete.
Joan Griber Sullivan, the granddaughter of Matewsz and Eva, grew up around the store and remembered it fondly.
“My father, John, eventually took over the store, and for 66 years he worked six days a week,” she said. “Except for his honeymoon, Christmas and Easter and Sundays, he worked behind the meat counter and ran the business. To the people of Curtis Bay, my father was more than a grocer. He was the loan company, babysitter, pawnbroker, a shoulder to cry on. He was a friend.”
“It was the Curtis Bay clientele, of mostly old timers, the Polish, Ukrainian, Slovic, and a few other nationalities who remained valued customers,” she said. “You see, it was at Griber’s that you could meet your neighbors. You could visit and vent and share the happy and sad. If you were a teenage boy you could get a job there helping Mr. John stock the shelves and make deliveries of the call-in orders to the neighbors. My father could have published a newspaper with all the daily news that passed through the doors of his small store.”
As industry grew over the years in the Curtis Bay area, lunchtime became a hub of activity at the store. Workers from nearby factories and truck drivers passing by with their wares would crowd into the little store. They would choose freshly baked bread and wait in line at the meat counter for Mr. John to pile on freshly sliced meat. Their taste buds would bring them back again and again for a deli sandwich at Griber’s.
As larger supermarkets loomed on the horizon, Griber’s weathered the changes. The Acme Market arrived in nearby Brooklyn Park in 1937, and a parade of others followed including the Sanitary Food Market and the A&P. Still, Griber’s Grocery marshaled on. Sullivan said Griber’s remained a viable part of the community until her father retired in 1993.
“Every now and then the store was visited by people from boats docked in the the nearby harbor — Swedes, South Americans, and Asiatics. Once, when 15 Formosan sailors came in they nearly bought out the store!” Sullivan said. “The truck load of their purchases going back to the ship looked as though the last train was leaving for China!”
Susan Zaruba Hess, who was raised in the community and frequented the store as a child, was able to stop by in 1994 for a nostalgic visit. By then, the building housed an antique store.
“I walked around and in my mind I could see Mr. John in his apron at the meat block. I could see Mrs. Ann, Mr. John’s wife, patiently waiting while I picked out items for the few nickels my mother had given me to spend,” Hess said. “I could hear the joking banter that went on inside.”
Hess remembers thinking, ”I wish my children had a corner store in which to spend a few nickels and meet people who knew them and who knew their parents, their aunts and uncles, and their grandparents. As a child, how could one know she is living in such a treasured time?”
Joanna Sullivan, John and Ann Griber’s granddaughter-in-law, captures a truth for all of us:
“Community business owners such as the Gribers impart simple business and life lessons. Work hard. Respect others. Treat people as you’d like to be treated. Give back to the community,” she said. “These lessons are just as relevant today as they were when John and Ann Griber first greeted customers.”
The building at 4800 Pennington Avenue that once housed Griber’s Store was sold by the family and for a short time operated as Patrick Clair’s Bay Area Antiques.
This story was republished with permission from Mary Ann McCormick and will be included in the book Brooklyn Rising when it is completed. — Rik Forgo
