Gordon Reddin, who died July 10 at age 86, was the longtime proprietor of Reddin’s Grocery, whose prominent “Drug Dealer” sign made it a popular photo opportunity among travelers in the San Luis Valley.
The son of a would-be oil tycoon who lost $75,000 in the 1929 stock market crash, Reddin was 9 when he began working as a caddie at the Denver Country Club. He earned 15 cents an hour plus tips.
He and his two brothers, also caddies, ran from school to the club and stayed there from dawn to dusk during their summer vacation.
Among his first customers was an elderly woman commonly known as the club’s worst golfer. She was notoriously slow and wildly inaccurate.
The first time Reddin caddied for her, he retrieved a ball that she hit into the street.
After she bought him a sarsaparilla and a candy bar, Reddin surreptitiously kicked her golf ball into the cup. She was so pleased that she engaged him for a standing weekly date.
Reddin also caddied for community pillars, including John Morey, J.S. Brown, L.C. Phipps, H.A. Marr, Claude C. Boettcher and other luminaries whose names and ventures Reddin memorized by studying the society pages.
He continued to caddie until age 14, when his father died and his mother sent Gordon and his younger sister to live with their cousins in Mosca. There, he met his future wife, Lelia Burns, whom he married in 1939.
They ran a Stahl’s Grocery in Hooper, along with a wholesale pop-and-candy route, from 1940 to 1943, when Gordon Reddin left to serve in the U.S. Army’s Pacific theater.
When he returned to Hooper in 1946, he opened his own grocery store in the town’s old bank building.
Reddin’s Grocery became the town hub. Reddin served as the town postmaster. He gave free lollipops to customers’ children and filled out their parents’ W-2 forms during tax season.
Outside the store, he built a liar’s bench where local seniors could, as he said, “practice their oratory.” Reddin’s knack for remembering names and faces stunned tourists on their returning trips.
For several years, the Reddins lived in two plumbing-free rooms behind the store.
They became accustomed to reopening the store after hours for clients who needed medicine for their children, or other emergencies.
Even after they moved their store to a new building on Colorado 17, the Reddins amiably unlocked the store for desperate customers. They installed gas pumps but refused to stock beer, on principle.
The much-photographed sign, “Drug Dealer,” painted on the store’s exterior wall, referred to the store’s small pharmacy. It replaced the long-standing previous advertisement, “Drugs,” because town leaders in the late 1960s worried the word might give tourists the wrong idea.
Though he was a spirited Democrat in a predominantly Republican town, Reddin served a term as Hooper’s mayor.
He also was school board president and led the Moffat-Hooper-Mosca Service League before closing the store and retiring in 1983.
Survivors include his wife, Lelia Reddin of Grand Junction; son Paul Reddin of Grand Junction; daughters Janice Carpenter of Fort Collins and Sue Ellison of Edgewater; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. One son, Gordon Jr., preceded him in death.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
