Decades ago, families descended upon Family Shoes at Chuck’s Corner, 150 Main St. in Monroe, before the new school year as shoppers bought shoes and sneakers for classes and cleats for the upcoming baseball and football seasons. The store also bustled with activity before Easter.
Stephen “Chuck” Chuckta started the business further down Route 25 as the Trumbull Family Shoe Outlet in 1963, before building Chuck’s Corner, the brick shopping center in Monroe, and moving his store there in 1973.
Family Shoes fulfilled a niche in town, until big box stores came in the 1990s, then the growing popularity of online shopping crippled the mom and pop business.
Susan Smith, Chuckta’s daughter, who remembers working at the store as a teenager, said Family Shoes dramatically scaled down the business over the past 20 years, when her two brothers specialized in selling Carolina men’s work boots.
Chuckta passed away in 2022 at the age of 93, so Smith suggested throwing out the old unsellable shoes and using the available shelf space to hold an estate sale, while selling the store’s remaining merchandise and closing Family Shoes once and for all.
“The plan is to close the doors at the end of the year,” Smith said. “A new business will come in and the shoe store will be no more. It really is the end of an era.”
Smith’s mother Emily, who used to work at the shoe store when it was in Trumbull, also passed.
Family Shoes is now open from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Some shelves are filled with shoes for toddlers, older children, women and men, and one shelf is stacked with boxes Carolina work boots.
“The Carolina boots are 10 percent off and the rest of the shoes are 50 percent off,” Smith said during an interview Saturday morning.
The rest of the store has items from the estate sale on display, including housewares, jewelry, books, toys, hats, clothing, prints, figurines an old set of golf clubs, records, a pair of binoculars and several guitars.
Among the housewares are a cocktail set, plates, flatware and mugs.
Other items include a large selection of unopened hardware, ornate oil lamps, home decor, an Elvis doll in its box, a two-sided Elvis puzzle and a magazine featuring photos in a memorial issue about the music icon.
Smith said she believes her late father would be happy she and her brothers chose to sell his old belongings for others to enjoy.
“This reopening for a store closing is a way to honor his efforts in life, in building this store,” she said.
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