{"id":17810,"date":"2017-08-31T17:30:39","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T21:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=17810"},"modified":"2017-08-31T17:30:39","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T21:30:39","slug":"sutton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/sutton\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye Guy: Berlyn Kessler "B.K." Sutton '50"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After 67 years in the women\u2019s shoe business, B.K. Sutton said goodbye to his family storefront on Orchard Park Road in Greenville this past spring.
\nWith more than 6,500 pair of shoes to part with, the Suttons saw hundreds of customers filtering into Sutton\u2019s Shoes from March to May to say how much they were going to miss Sutton and his son Robert \u201cBob\u201d Sutton \u201979.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve had some hug us; we\u2019ve had a few cry with us,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have three generations of customers.\u201d
\nB.K. Sutton said the decline of customers in the last 10 years, especially since the recession of 2008, ultimately drove the decision to close up the last storefront of three the family has operated since 1950. The family opened three Greenville locations, including the Pleasantburg Shopping Center and Haywood Mall, which remained open into the 1990s.
\nBut B.K.\u2019s looking forward to a full-time retirement with more golf and traveling. \u201cMy son is 61 years old. I\u2019m 88 years old. It\u2019s time,\u201d he said.
\nB.K., a textile manufacturing major, began at Clemson in 1946. \u201cThere\u2019s no other place I\u2019d ever thought about going,\u201d he said with a wide grin.
\nWhile working his first job at the Judson Plant in Greenville, he was called into active duty in the Korean War. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a shock. We all sort of expected it,\u201d he said.
\nWhile B.K. was making headway in a military career, his father O.W. had aspirations of opening a department store. Sutton\u2019s father worked at the Belk store in downtown Greenville in fashion merchandising. Opening an entire department store wasn\u2019t in the cards in 1950, so O.W. and his wife Clara moved forward with one specialty \u2014 women\u2019s shoes.
\n\u201cIt was in Lewis Plaza off Augusta Road. It was unheard of at that time to have anything off Main Street whether that was here or in Atlanta,\u201d said B.K. \u201cWe priced shoes from $8 to $30. People were standing in line for our merchandise.\u201d
\nAfter four years in the Korean War, Sutton remained in the reserves, but took his service-oriented heart back to the shoe store to help his father build their generations of legacy. Bob joined the store after completing his degree at Clemson.
\n\u201cI hate to see the Sutton name leaving the big community, but I\u2019ve really enjoyed my civilian life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After 67 years in the women\u2019s shoe business, B.K. Sutton said goodbye to his family storefront on Orchard Park Road in Greenville this past spring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":17956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21,8],"tags":[2858,2859],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-17810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumniprofiles","category-my-clemson","tag-summer-fall-2017","tag-summer-fall-2017-alumni-profiles"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/08\/290x290-story5.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17810"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}