With Roy in 2018. “”I think I’ve taught you all you needed to know,” he told me when he sold Bk Photo and Gallery in 2005. (Press Pros File Photos)
He passed away last month, as rich in experience and satisfaction for a life well-lived as any man I’ve ever known and worked with….one I called friend.
I regret that I was out of the state the week of May 8th through the 14th. My friend and long-time business associate Roy Baker passed away on May 8th, and I was not there for him.
Not like he was there for me for eighteen years, from 1988 through 2006…the years we worked together at the BK Photo and Gallery store in downtown Troy.
In fact, it wasn’t until two weeks after that I learned of his passing, and then from a former photo rep…and through a number of local people who contacted me to ask about ‘Mr. Baker’. Not Roy, mind you, but…’Mr. Baker’, Because many of them remembered him as the principal of the old Broadway Elementary School, in Tipp City, before he and Floyd Kenny opened BK Photo in Troy, where Hittle’s Jewelry is now.
I can truthfully say that there were few people in my former life as a photo retailer that I respected as much as Roy Baker, because he not only sold cameras, but he loved photography and picture-taking. He was unlike many bigger chain retail CEOs who would sell you a camera – any camera – without regard for your ever coming back. Not Roy. Roy was more interested in making a friend and a relationship than a hundred dollars. He’d say, “That hundred dollars will be gone in a week. A customer and a friend will be here for a long time.”
Independent retail in something like photography is tough. It can be discouraging. But it never discouraged Roy. On bad weeks and during bad months he’d always remind me, “Some people tell you they have to go to work. I tell people…I get to go to work.” He rarely missed a day, and he so imbued the people around him that his son Bill, who worked outside the area, would come in on Saturday mornings just to be around what was going on.
He hired me in August of 1988 because I was tired of retail for the sake of retail, and he was tired of spinning his wheels, unable to land the franchises in little BK Photo, in little Troy, Ohio…what he needed to open doors to future growth and prosperity. He took an enormous risk, gave me the keys to the store and access to the checkbook, and told me, “I believe in you, and I believe you know how to grow the business. Now go do it.”
He and his wife Jean introduced me to other people in Troy, who set high standards for the community and were robust in their efforts to bring positive attention to its downtown – Pat and Thom Robinson, Bill and Wanda Lukens, Pete and Ruth Jenkins, Steve McClain and Margaret Begg, and of course, Marilyn and Stu Lipp, of David’s Shoes.
Roy was a risk taker, and ironically my being hired came during the time when he was learning to fly an airplane, get his pilot’s license, and later his instrument rating. He believed in knowledge, and accumulating skills and experiences. Another Roy Baker wisdom: “Business can take your money, but it can’t take away what you know.” Well, after being with him for that first year, and right about the time he got his instrument rating, I realized…Roy Baker taught me how to fly, as well.
He loved what he did…”People tell me they have to go to work. I tell them…I get to go to work.”
Within two years we had added Nikon, Canon, Kodak Professional Products, Leica, and soon after the 1990 Photo Marketing Association Show, Roy decided to install a Noritsu professional photo processor and color lab in the basement of the building there on South Market Street. Business boomed, sales tripled, and soon thereafter we decided to take the next step in adding the print and frame gallery – licensed to sell the art works of the world’s best-known painters and lithographers.
By 1992 we inaugurated the annual Presentation Weekend in early May, a weekend art show that featured personal appearances by giants in the wildlife art industry like David Maass, Robert Bateman, Carl Brenders. Mort Kuntzler, and Jack Hanna; and by 1998 BK and Presentation Weekend were being nationally recognized as one of the top ten art events in the country. And it was largely because of Roy Baker, his daring, and his willingness to take a risk for the sake of profiling downtown Troy like no one had before imagined.
But the times were changing, and not in favor of small downtowns and small thinking. It became harder and harder to fight the increasing regulations from state and federal that sucked life out of the bottom line and made it more costly to exist as a small, independent merchant. Brands like Nikon and Canon lost patience with small dealerships, as well, and by 2005 Roy came to me and said, “We have to fish or cut bait.”
Eventually we cut bait, selling the business soon thereafter to a small-business collector from Cleveland who had no idea or knowledge about the heart and soul of Miami County and its people. By 2010 BK Photo and Gallery was a memory, and the building on Market was a furniture store.
When I started Press Pros in 2010, I went to Roy to explain the concept out of respect for what he had taught me…hoping that he would tell me, as he did in 1988, “Now go do it.” He brightened when I shared with him in the years thereafter how many people were reading, and how much he would enjoy being involved, just to see it grow.
“No,” he smiled. “You and I had our run. And I think I taught you all you need to know.”
They took Roy back to his home in Oneida, Kentucky for burial, and the first time I’m on the interstate headed for Knoxville or Chattanooga I’m going to get off at the exit for Oneida and go visit …like we did so many times in our Friday morning meetings in his office on the second floor, just off the elevator.
I’ll tell him, like I did back then, I couldn’t appreciate him more for the opportunities…what he taught me about taking risks and thinking outside the city limits.
That I couldn’t have had a better friend…or one who could teach me how to fly!
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