By Ervin Dyer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Mr. John F. “Jack” McGowan was a self-made businessman who left the steel mills as a young man and built a career in the furniture business, helping to transform Roomful Express into one of the top furniture companies in the country.
Mr. McGowan, of Harmony, died at UPMC Montefiore of complications from lung cancer. He was 64.
He grew up in New Brighton and graduated in 1960 from New Brighton High School. His father worked in the steel mills and for awhile so did Mr. McGowan, who never went to college.
He hated the job and went into independent sales, where he walked door-to-door hawking fire alarms and other goods.
Of course, in the 1960s, fire alarms were before their time and he wasn’t very successful.
By 1970, he was selling sewing machines, stereos and other electronics for RH Kuhn Co., then a wholesale distributor. Two years later, he became a vice president with the company and, by 1973, helped its founder transition the company from a wholesale distributor to a retail furniture store chain.
Founded on the North Side in 1958, Roomful Express Furniture first operated as Freight Liquidators Furniture and had a tradition of operating bare-boned establishments.
But in 2000, under what has been described as Mr. McGowan’s persistent leadership and marketing influence, the company changed its name and the way it did business.
Mr. McGowan pushed for upgraded television advertising and improved color circulars, which helped to double the company’s sales, making it one of the nation’s top furniture retailers.
“Jack was a driven leader who saw our business through good times and bad,” said Michael Kuhn, president and chair of the board of RH Kuhn Co. “His consistent management of our business, in many ways, made it what it is today.”
Mr. McGowan enjoyed golf, photography and the computer. For the past six years at Christmas he composed a hardbound book of photography and presented it to family as gifts.
He is survived by his wife, Margaret Williams McGowan; a daughter, Jill Camardese of Crescent; and sons John Jr., of Center; and Brad of Kennedy; a sister Dawna Greco of New Brighton and seven grandchildren.
Visitation is today from 7 to 9 p.m. and tomorrow from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. at Boylan Funeral Home, 324 E. Grandview Ave., Zelienople, where a funeral is to be held Wednesday at 10 a.m.
