By MARK ZALOUDEK
\nPORT CHARLOTTE — Betty Bacon and her husband turned a small mom-and-pop furniture store into a chain of stores with 14 locations throughout Southwest Florida.<\/p>\n
Betty Bacon, who died Sept. 4 at age 85, and her husband, Robert, bought Palmer Furniture shortly after moving to Port Charlotte from Fort Myers in 1973.
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\nThe family-owned business, which featured moderately priced new and used furniture, expanded with the help of their four grown children.<\/p>\n
Betty Bacon remained a fixture at the Port Charlotte store, renamed Bacon’s Furniture, after she and her husband sold the company to one of their sons in 1987 and retired.<\/p>\n
For the next 15 years, Betty Bacon continued to regularly drop by on Saturday mornings to mingle with customers and co-workers over coffee and her fresh-baked cookies, said her son, Bill Bacon, of Port Charlotte.<\/p>\n
“It was the highlight of her life. All the salespeople loved her, and many of our customers over the years remembered her,” he said.<\/p>\n
One of the secrets of her success, he said, was that her customers became her friends.<\/p>\n
Betty and Robert Bacon had no experience in furniture sales, or in any retail operation, before embarking on the business venture.<\/p>\n
After years of working for a natural gas company in Miami and Fort Myers, Robert Bacon decided he wanted to run his own business, his son said.<\/p>\n
The couple handled all aspects of the business in its early years.<\/p>\n
After buying the business, Bill Bacon consolidated its operations, upgraded its product line and changed its name to Bacon’s Furniture. The company currently includes a Port Charlotte store that is one of the largest furniture stores on Florida’s west coast and three other furniture stores in Southwest Florida.<\/p>\n
Robert and Betty Bacon also helped found the Sonshine Baptist Church in Port Charlotte in 1984.<\/p>\n
Born Sarah Elizabeth “Betty” Whidby on Dec. 9, 1921, in Georgia, she moved to Miami with her husband in 1955. He died in 1993.<\/p>\n
In addition to her son, she is survived by a daughter, Beverly Williams of Oviedo; two other sons, Bob III of Englewood and Brad of Clearwater; and 11 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n
Funeral services were held last week.<\/p>\n
Memorial donations may be made to the Sonshine Baptist Church, 23105 Veterans Blvd., Port Charlotte, FL 33954, or TideWell Hospice and Palliative Care, 5955 Rand Blvd., Sarasota, FL 34238.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By MARK ZALOUDEK PORT CHARLOTTE — Betty Bacon and her husband turned a small mom-and-pop furniture store into a chain of stores with 14 locations throughout Southwest Florida. Betty Bacon, who died Sept. 4 at age 85, and her husband, Robert, bought Palmer Furniture shortly after moving to Port Charlotte from Fort Myers in 1973.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-furniture-indonesia-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}