A Millstadt couple recently celebrated their retirement from a family business in the village, having spent many years together serving their community as best they could.

Mary and Paul Braner have spent a respective 46 and 39 years at Lee’s Home Center, a home improvement store offering a range of services for Millstadt that Mary’s family has operated since its founding.

Mary recalled her early years growing up in Millstadt, her family living above the old hardware store – now Breadeaux Pizza.

After her father returned from military service, he purchased the store, having worked there prior to his service. This was the beginning of Lee’s Hardware.

Mary spoke about working as part of the business as early as fifth grade, being placed in the ideal department for a kid: the toy department.

“I was in grade school at the time,” Mary said. “I was playing sports and going to school, so I would only work on Saturdays and Sundays. We weren’t open Sunday, but I could still unload and unpack the boxes of toys we got in… That’s where I started, and I loved it. And my dad put me there because who better to work in the toy department but a kid, right?”

She noted how involved she was with the business alongside her siblings, even at such a young age. She helped inform her father of what to stock based on the commercials she saw on television, and she also went up to Chicago for shows with different companies offering their toys.

Mary pointed out how different this sort of business activity was compared to now with larger businesses like Walmart or Toys R Us, particularly in a smaller community like Millstadt.

Lee’s Hardware began to grow as she entered high school, her dad buying into Kommunity Lumber with a partner that he ultimately bought out.

Her father ultimately achieved his dream of establishing a proper home center for the community, though the lumber yard and the hardware store were separate for a time before Lee’s Home Center really began.

Even before the home center, though, Mary was put to work at the lumber yard, and while she was intimidated given her expertise centered entirely on toys, she persevered and found great satisfaction in a job she wound up holding her entire career.

“When I was in high school and I started down at Kommunity Lumber, I didn’t know anything about lumber. Nothing,” Mary said. “I knew toys. That was it. But I took interest in it. I started out answering the phones and doing checkout, then I started doing the lumber pricing and lumber buying, just learning about it.”

While she did plenty of learning on the job, she also furthered her knowledge of the business outside, taking classes and striving to get a feel for the lumber field firsthand.

“I did a lot of learning on my own by going to job sites,” Mary said. “A lot of different courses… Estimating classes, things like that. I loved the business because it was a challenge for me. I always liked a challenge. I just took interest in it.”

Mary mentioned how difficult the job was for her early on as a young woman in what’s broadly sconsidered a man’s field, particularly several decades ago.

She stuck with it, however, earning expertise and customer trust – as well as the nickname “Termite” – and ultimately winding up serving as vice president of Lee’s Home Center, sticking around in the lumber section as lumber and building materials buyer.

While Mary began with strong roots in both Millstadt and Lee’s Home Center – especially working alongside her siblings and other family members – Paul is a bit newer.

He was born in Alton and spent his infancy there before his family moved to Collinsville. Paul wound up spending most of his early years in Belleville, attending St. Peter’s Cathedral.

It took him some time to wind up in Millstadt.

“I went to the National River Academy Extension of the University of Arkansas,” Paul said. “Worked on the river a little while. Worked my way up from deckhand to chief engineer of a boat. Decided that wasn’t for me, though.”

He then returned to Belleville to work at an outdoor store as well as part-time at B Street Bar.

Paul eventually met Mary, who brought him to Lee’s Home Center where he did some moving up in the ranks over the years, going from taking out the trash to driving and doing deliveries before winding up in the plumbing and electrical department.

As he and Mary told it, the two of them both worked for a time in the lumber department, though Mary’s father nudged him into plumbing and electrical as they got married, thinking it best that the couple have some time to themselves each day.

Like Mary learned a great deal about her field from checking out job sites, Paul spoke about learning thanks to customers who steered him in the right direction.

“You learn a lot from customers,” Paul said. “They taught me the most, not just Mary or her dad or other people working at the home center. The customers are the ones who really took the time to educate me. They would ask me how I thought you did something, and I’d start getting everything together, and then they’d say, ‘That’s not how you do it. This is how you do it.’”

Both Mary and Paul had plenty of positive things to say about their experiences working at Lee’s Home Center.

Mary emphasized the relationships she had while working at Lee’s over the years. She worked alongside four of her siblings for some time, getting along quite well and working as a good team in what truly was a family business.

Working alongside family was very important for Mary, from her siblings to extended family like her nephew, who’ll be taking on her responsibilities.

Customers were also a major part of Mary’s job satisfaction, particularly given Lee’s place as a family business in a small community.

“The best thing about the whole business is the customers,” Mary said. “That’s what I’m gonna miss the most is our customers. To us, they weren’t just customers. They were our friends. They’re our community, the tight-knit community of Millstadt. Small town where everybody knows everybody. It’s grown a lot, and we don’t know everybody anymore, but they’re familiar faces.”

Mary further emphasized the small-business nature of the home center, providing a more personal touch than large department stores and other big businesses today.

“We all work as a team,” Mary said. “We’re a small business. It’s not like when you go to somebody else and they say ‘Oh, that’s not my department,’ or, ‘I don’t know.’ We always would go to one another and help each other out, whether it’s family or other employees, we all worked together. It’s a small-town-atmosphere business. We just want to help the customers that come in and take care of them.”

Paul likewise spoke about the satisfaction of working at a small business in a small town.

He placed particular emphasis on the joy he got being able to help people each day, providing them with a solution to the problem that might well have been the biggest thing on their plate at the time.

“People would come in with the littlest thing – sometimes it was a big thing, but a lot of the time it was little – and it was very important to them, didn’t matter how tiny it was,” Paul said. “That was what was bothering them, and that’s what they wanted to fix. Man, if you can help somebody out 20 times a day, getting the thing that’s most important to them, that kinda makes you feel pretty darn good. Get to feel like a little bit of a hero.”

With both of them having a lengthy tenure at Lee’s Home Center, there’s plenty they’ll miss, but there’s also plenty they’re looking forward to enjoying in their retirement.

Their first agenda item for retirement is a trip to New Zealand to visit their daughter, something they’re quite eager for as they haven’t had much opportunity to see her in recent years.

Mary also spoke about her excitement to get outside a lot more, be it on a hike or a bike.

“I’ve worked inside my whole life underneath a roof,” Mary said. “The thing I look forward to the most is just enjoying the outdoors with all the hiking, the biking, walking, traveling, all that.”

Paul said he hopes to take things slow and enjoy the newfound peace and freedom of retirement, though he’s also happy to join Mary as best he can.

“Just spending time with my wife,” Paul said. “I’m gonna try to keep up with her on that bike, and I’m gonna try to keep up with her on those trails through the woods. It’s pretty tough. She moves pretty fast. But that’s what I’m gonna try to do.”