By SHRADDHA R. JAISWAL Special to the Daily Press
Dessie Stanich is in the business of friendships. For more than 20 years, she has been a staple at Santa Monica’s last remaining mom-and-pop stationery store.
But now, after closing the 37-year-old Santa Monica Stationers store that was more about reminiscent chats and family ties than it was about papers and pens, Dessie’s smiling face, her caring demeanor and her small town ways in a much-too-big city will disappear from the streets of Santa Monica.
Born to Serbian immigrants in 1932 and growing up in the small, Depression-era steel town of Duquesne, Pa., Dessie always worked for what she wanted.
When all the other girls were getting married out of high school, Dessie knew she wanted to make something of herself before she settled down for a family life. And she did.
From cleaning houses for 25 cents an hour to working as an executive secretary for U.S. Steel, Dessie was determined to make the most of her life. Armed with her father’s extroversion and cultural pride, Dessie never failed to enjoy people and life wherever she went.
In 1962, Dessie moved to California and married George Stanich, which in essence meant marrying the entire family. She began working for free for George’s brother Nick, the original founder of Santa Monica Stationers.
When Nick fell ill with a brain tumor, Dessie and George took over the business — and ended up taking care of people for 21 years.
Not only did Dessie adopt her employees as family, but her customers became family as well. The place to go where everybody knew your name was Santa Monica Stationers. And the woman behind it all was Dessie Stanich.
The Daily Press sat down in an interview with Dessie to talk about life, friendships and serving her adopted Santa Monica family for 37 years.
Where did the idea for a stationary store come from?
“The business was started by my brother-in-law, and in 1967 he opened up a small stationery store on Montana Avenue. George’s and Nick’s father owned a small mom-and-pop-type running tabs store in Globe, Ariz.
“After both my husband and his brother served in World War II in the Navy, my husband went off to college in Flagstaff, and his brother did not like school. He was a high school dropout. So his dad said, ‘Well, if you’re not going to college, then well it’s time for me to retire.’
“So he sold the business to his son for I don’t know what. And his son knew people. He knew how to sell. He enlarged his father’s store. After X amount of years, I forget exactly how many it was, he decided to head to California.
“He had business sense, and he had a personality. He loved people, he was a hard worker, and in those few years he never even took a penny out of the store to build it up.”
How did you become the store’s president?
“When Nick developed the brain tumor, I took care of him. I took him to our house and everything, and he used to say to me, ‘My life’s blood, sweat and tears are in that store, Dessie. Don’t sell it. You work it.’
“And I said, ‘I’m not going to work it.’ And he said, ‘You’ll do it. I’ll pump your head up.’ That’s the way he used to talk. ‘I’ll pump your head up before I go.’
“We had a unique relationship too. My husband was the only one that was married, so he used to tell the sisters, ‘When Dessie married George, she married the whole Stanich Family.’”
Have you ever had any competition? “At one time, there were at least six or seven. There was American Office Products. They moved out. They closed down their retail store and moved to commercial. There was Forest Stationers, there was Century Stationers, there was Westwood Stationers. And each one just kept closing up completely if they were smaller...but that was it, you could see it. I could see it eventually coming to us. In fact, we lasted the longest, let’s put it that way. We just hung in there. Now there are outside salesmen, and things have changed. It got to the point where every manufacturer delivered direct to you at better prices, but you have to have a minimum. So when you don’t have the minimum, they tell you to go to a wholesaler, which we do. But, the wholesaler has his markup in this, so that you cannot give a discount. You cannot match the super-store pricing, or online pricing. So it’s just evolution. What goes around comes around, but I doubt if it’ll ever come back.”
What is the best memory of Santa Monica that you’ll take with you?
“The people. The people that patronized us. The people. They became our friends, we became their friends. It actually became a personal relationship with the people that remained true to us. I have a lot of very happy memories here in Santa Monica. I spent most of my time here in Santa Monica.
“It was really such a unique place because people would come in and reminisce. Like with my husband, he’s a World War II veteran, and of course there are a lot of the old timers that would come in, and they would discuss the war. It was really unique. And they would spend like an hour and half maybe just to do three or four copies on the Xerox machine, which is eight cents, right, and spend an hour and half just reminiscing.
“Those are the memories. I take with me a lot of happy memories of the people here in Santa Monica that supported us.”
Do you have one memory that specifically stands out?
“Not really. Just many. Many, many happy memories. I mean to think that literally, I was the voice over the telephone, and they’d say, ‘I thought you were the order taker.’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, I am.’ “‘Well, we just found out you were the president when you signed that letter!’
“And I’d say, ‘But that doesn’t matter.’
“People actually came down to wish all of us good-bye. Actually, meeting sometimes for the first time face to face. Isn’t that something? ‘Oh is that what you look like? I pictured you differently.’
“One time, I wasn’t here, but Stephen (the manager) was. A couple that came in periodically to buy odd and ends came in with their little boy and (Councilman) Mike Feinstein was here. And they were talking about how the store was going to close July 31. The little boy took out his wallet and put 38 cents on the counter to try and help keep the store open. He wanted to do his part, and Steve (the manger) didn’t take the money and said, ‘No, honey you have to buy something.’ So he bought a little eraser. But can you imagine that? Thirty-eight cents to help keep the store open. He wanted to give it, but isn’t that something?”
What has changed the most about Santa Monica?
“Businesses. Take a look at the Promenade. And the thing is, they’re in and they’re out. The same thing with Montana Avenue, they’re in and they’re out.
“Take a look at the Santa Monica Place Mall, how the businesses on the Promenade and on Montana Avenue have even affected those stores. And we don’t have the Newberry’s Five and Ten anymore. You don’t have Penny’s any-more.
“Maybe there are a lot of wealthy people in Santa Monica now, but the thing is, there still are the originals who are still living on probably pensions and where do they go? That’s the change.”
Has anything stayed the same? “Not really. I don’t think so. I really don’t. You know, having started on Montana Avenue, the whole street has changed. You have more coffee shops and more things like that there than you have businesses. And then the business are in and out.”
Do you think things have changed for better or for worse?
“Being my age? For worse. You don’t have the atmosphere anymore. It’s different. It’s completely different. So, I take with me the best part. We still had the best part down here. Those are the ones that kept coming. The best parts kept coming.”
Do you ever miss a particular time period like the 1950s?
“What was my best era? I don’t know. I’ve enjoyed life, no matter what part I was in. I should say, no I really didn’t enjoy high school, but I was an honors student and I received a scholarship for college, and do you know what my father said to me?
“He said, ‘Well, we don’t have money. Even though you have a scholarship, you still need money to go to school and everything like that. But I need you to go to work.’ At that time my father had gotten ill. He had three surgeries, heart problems and that. And my sister had married, in those days they married young, right out of high school, you married someone from the steel mills and things like that.
“And for some reason or other it wasn’t meant to be for me. As I said, I got married when I was 30, but I had made up my mind. I wanted to do something before I got married and settled down. I was probably one of the first girls in Duquesne who bought her own car.”
Many people criticize City Hall for being anti-small businesses. Would you agree with them?
“I have no problems with the city. I’ve accepted...as I’ve said I use the terminology, evolution. It’s a sign of the times. It wasn’t just Office Depot, Staples and all that. You have all this online ordering. You have all of these other companies that are out there that are doing the same type of business. You have Quills, you have Reliable, you have Boise Cascades. They have outside salesman. I have never had outside salesmen.
“We have always been like a mom-and-pop-type store. We knew all our customers. We watched our customers who had children, when we were on Montana Avenue, their children would get all of their school supplies from us, and then those children grew up and then we watched their children buying the school supplies.
“And then after a while it was like every store started. I mean Savon was carrying school supplies, Von’s was carrying school supplies. So we kind of lost that line. It’s a progression of things, the way things were going.”
Are you upset at having to leave Santa Monica after serving the city for such a long time?
“I’m not bitter because I think, my very last comment to our customers was, ‘It was our pleasure serving you and the Santa Monica community for 37 years.’ It was more like friends. You knew everyone that would come in that was faithful. It was just little things that they needed. They knew that they could get one or two pen refills or they could buy three refills.
“At the tail end, some of the customers would come in and say, ‘Well we stopped off at Staples and we have to buy a dozen, and we only need the three so we came back.’ But we didn’t say anything and I’d say, ‘Well, we still have the three.’ It was not a problem. I can tell you I enjoyed the customers. That was the whole thing. That’s the hardest part for all of us. It’s to leave the customers.”
After being in Santa Monica for 37 years, what made you decide this was the time to move on?
“Well, when you don’t have the sales. Business just kept going slower and slower...I live in Downey and we travel everyday. We leave home every morning at 7:15 to be sure we get here in time with that freeway traffic.
“But the thing is, I’m closing with a clean record. I don’t owe anybody any money, and I don’t want someone to close me. It’s on my own terms and everything.
“Like I said, the landlords have been very kind to me. They have not raised the lease payments in several years just so that I could still be here to serve Santa Monica.”
What have you told your faithful customers? “I told my customers, ‘I’m taking all of your records home with me.’ I’ll keep the computer alive until the end of the year...I have to tell you how they would order over the phone.
“We would have these young girls, they’d say, ‘You know Dessie that paper that we like that has fish on it,’ and I say, ‘Yeah the great white whale, the recycled paper.’ “‘You know the other one that we like with the red and white package?’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah, I know that number too.’
“So I actually downloaded history usage files and told them these are the right numbers, whoever you get to deliver, you have to order by that number and not say, ‘You know those pens that we like, the ones with the grey barrel.’”
Now that you have all of this free time, what do you plan on doing with it?
“Plan on doing? At 72? I do a lot of volunteer work. I just plan on devoting more time to church work. Actually, I’ve even been offered a job from one of our customers, but I said no simply because I live in Downey. She said, ‘You know so much about offices and organizing, maybe you should start a business called Office Overhaul.’ You know, just go in and work a couple of months, and I said no.
“I do volunteer work and...I think work and activity keep a person young. It definitely does. I’ve worked since I was 13 years old. I’ve enjoyed wherever I was involved or what I’ve done.
“I actually do a catering service for the church, fundraisers for the church. I don’t do all the hard work, but I do the organizing, the ordering, and I get the workers and we have 85 year olds peeling 100, 200 pounds of potatoes. But see, that keeps them active and involved. And we usually make around $25,000 - $35,000 a year for the church.
“Actually I’ve already received phone calls from one of my members at church asking when am I going to be available to make poppyseed rolls that we’re going to take to our church camp up in Jackson.
“So see, everyone has plans for me...I’ll just wait and see where I’m supposed to be. I definitely won’t be overhauling offices. I just want to do something where I can give back. Like I said, I love people.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 9, 2004. Read the original PDF.