A Life: Arthur Gerstenberger, 1924-2016, Longtime Hanover Co-op Employee

Hanover — As an employee of the Upper Valley’s first Co-op Food Store, Arthur Gerstenberger worked his way up during a stretch that lasted 39 years from meat cutter to general manager, assuming the latter role in the mid-1960s.

So when Gerstenberger died last month at 92, it’s safe to say the organization lost a significant part of its history.

“Arthur’s death feels like the passing of an era,” said current general manager Terry Appleby, who has been at the helm since 1992 but is retiring at the end of the year. “He really symbolized the good work that the Hanover Co-op is and I think we should appreciate that.”

Raised in Methuen, Mass., Gerstenberger was an Eagle Scout and served in the military during World War II. He was toiling in a Massachusetts woolen mill after the war when the workers went on strike in 1949, prompting him to take a meat cutting job at the Co-op when it was located on Hanover’s Main Street and his uncle, Harry Gerstenberger, was its first general manager.

In 1965, Harry Gerstenberger handed the reins to his nephew, by then the assistant general manager. Two years earlier, the Co-op had moved to a new building on Park Street and Paul Gerstenberger, the second of Arthur’s three children, recalls sweeping its parking lot for a quarter and using his earnings to gain admission to nearby Hanover High football games.

Paul graduated to cleaning the store, then worked as a bag boy, stock clerk and apprentice meat cutter. His older sister, Ellen (Gerstenberger) Redding, also stocked and added cutting and wrapping cheese and working a cash register to her repertoire.

Redding recalls her father’s dedication to Co-op members running deep. On Sundays, he would sometimes drive his Ford from his family’s house in Hanover Center to open the store for a frazzled customer. Relatives were en route, the pot roast hadn’t been bought as planned, could Arthur please help? Of course.

During regular business hours, Gerstenberger was rarely holed up in the administrative offices. He was in constant motion, checking on details and putting plans into motion.

“He would be all over the store but he let his department heads run things; he wasn’t domineering,” Paul Gerstenberger said. “He knew food quality. If you gave him a glass of milk, he could probably tell you what kind of cow it came from.”

Phil Coburn started working as a Co-op bag boy in 1959 and was the assistant general manager by the time he departed in 1977. He recalls Harry Gerstenberger as “on the run all the time, a kind of nervous person who expected everything to be done immediately. Arthur was more laid back and not pushy at all.”

Arthur Gerstenberger built a reputation as a visible manager, someone who knew many members’ names and might well be found out back, helping to unload a truck. He’d gone to a trade school to study refrigeration after his military service and was knowledgeable in the areas of plumbing, carpentry and electrical work. He could count and stack coins in their proper, rolled amounts for bank deposits in shockingly fast time and possessed the listening skills, humility and tact to work well with the membership’s board of directors.

One board member was Norwich attorney Dan Grossman, its president from 1986-90. He lauded the former general manager in an Aug. 18 tribute on the organization’s website, writing that Gerstenberger “was wonderful at working with people. With ever-changing boards of directors comprising all types, from three-piece-suit bankers to aging hippies in bare feet.

“With myriad cooperators, from students to homemakers to professors. With officials at the National Cooperative Bank, fellow directors at Associated Grocers of New England and… at national cooperative meetings. Arthur worked well with them all because he respected them all.”

Gerstenberger met his wife, Arleen, on a double date and the couple, who were married for 68 years, excelled at teamwork. Arleen worked overnight as a pediatric nurse at Hanover’s Mary Hitchcock Hospital, arriving home in time to braid Ellen’s hair before she boarded the school bus.

Arthur’s job was to get the kids up, fed and ready for the day, brushing out his daughter’s locks shortly beforehand.

The Gerstenbergers’ yard included vegetable gardens from which woodchucks were often shooed away, but not shot at.

The honey bee hives, however, had to be encircled by an electric fence, lest hungry bears destroyed them.

The family owned a cottage on Enfield’s Crystal Lake, an abode Gerstenberger designed and built himself, cutting and laying out the pieces for each wall in the Hanover Center house before transporting them to the lake and assembling the structure there.

He was also a Boy Scout Master, kept a boat on which he sailed Lake Champlain and flew his own small plane, in which Ellen eventually soloed.

Gerstenberger was a bail bondsman later in life and there was also a stint as a volunteer fire fighter, although that role led to him taking a tumble off a truck one day and breaking some ribs.

It was the Hanover Co-op, however, that received the vast majority of his working time. Harrison Drinkwater, a former Co-op employee and current board member, noted that the boss’s personal touch was seen in myriad programs and flourishes that made the store different from its chain competitors.

Cashiers were instructed to hand chocolate mints to shoppers who reused grocery bags, farmers and cows were stationed in the parking lot so that customers could meet them and a grocery delivery program was instituted for senior citizens and shut-ins.

“Arthur was able to do that very difficult balancing act — he could combine common-sense business practices with high-minded co-op principles,” Drinkwater wrote in an email. “He cared for Co-op members and employees, but he also had a tough business to run. The buck stopped with him.”

One of Gerstenberger’s toughest times came during the late 1960s, when grocers had to decide whether to support an agricultural workers strike against produce farms. Grapes and lettuce were at the center of the debate and within the Co-op membership there were passionate backers for each side.

“Members would walk out of the store eating non-union grapes in front of other members who were protesting their presence on the shelves,” said Appleby, who has researched his organization’s history. “The board was caught in the middle and Arthur was the bull’s-eye.

“He finally decided on his own to remove non-union grapes and lettuce from the store, which was a very bold move because the board hadn’t authorized it and he could have been fired. But he thought it was the best direction for the co-op.”

Gerstenberger’s retirement at age 65 was followed by decades of growth and expansion for the Co-op, which now has stores in Lebanon and White River Junction. He followed it all avidly and continued to drop in to the stores and the general manager’s office for many years afterwards.

“He shopped there exclusively and made himself available when people from the stores would call and bounce ideas off him or want to talk through an issue,” Ellen Redding said. “The co-op was woven into our family.”

Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.