News

LEWIS YANCY LEAVES FAMILY LEGACY

By Nicole Brown/Of The Commercial Staff
Wednesday, October 8, 2008 9:44 AM CDT

A business pioneer and community activist, Lewis Yancy Sr., owner of Yancy’s Furniture and Appliances, died Saturday at the age of 90.

What began as a childhood dream for Yancy, became a family legacy that has been a Pine Bluff fixture for furniture and home decor for more than 67 years.

It’s a legacy that Yancy’s wife, Queen Yancy, said she hopes to continue.

“He was a wonderful husband, a good father and role model to the children and I will miss him dearly,” she said.

“He worked hard to make something of himself and make something of this business and we’re going to try to keep it going.”

A business that began in the 1940s as Yancy’s Radio Shop is continuing to thrive as a business that caters to customers of diverse races and backgrounds. However, Yancy faced many early challenges.

He and his wife were initially shut out of the market because companies did not want to deliver to black-owned businesses. But they eventually got back into the market and the store prospered.

Yancy’s determination to make a better life went beyond himself and his business. It extended to the community. In 1962, he joined an organization called the Pine Bluff Movement, an effort that was designed to break down the walls of segregation.

Yancy was a permanent fixture in marches and sit-ins at restaurants that refused service to blacks, Queen Yancy said.

“He was really interested in other people having better jobs,” she said.

And even though Yancy’s fight for equal opportunity through the Pine Bluff Movement ended in 1964, his love for his community lived on, according to the Rev. H.L. Box, pastor of Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church at Scott.

“He was a man who loved God, his family, his church, his pastor and he prayed for his community, as well as his neighbors on a constant basis,” Box said.

Box recalled that he met Yancy 16 years ago and they had breakfast together for the past 15 years, until about three months ago when Yancy’s health would not allow him to go anymore.

“He no longer had the strength to come, but his heart was still in it. And he lived for Thursday mornings to pray with the brothers,” he said.

Box said Yancy was instrumental in starting a prayer group at Southside Baptist Church that meets every Thursday morning and includes men of all races.

Ed Olmstead, an agent with Shelter Insurance, said he and Yancy prayed in that same prayer group for 15 years.

“If there was ever a true Christian gentleman, it was Lewis Yancy. He was an inspiration I think to most people who knew him,” Olmstead said.

“The last several months of his life, due to ill health, he had to be carried to and from the prayer meeting. How many people do you know would still attend under those circumstances?”

“He really and truly loved Jesus,” he said.

Funeral arrangements for Yancy will be announced by Brown Funeral Home of Pine Bluff.

Print this story   |   Email this story