PHOTO BY CHUCK HOVEN Saturday, December 17, 2016, West Side Market, W. 25th and Lorain Avenue: (L-R) Joe Wayma and Terry Leu at Rolston Poultry. Stand owner Terry Leu says he is retiring after 24 years at Rolston Poultry and 35 years working at the West Side Market. Prior to Rolston Poultry, Leu worked across the aisle at his family’s stand, Leu Brothers, selling ham, bacon and sausage.
(Plain Press, January 2017) Regular West Side Market shoppers and market stand workers will surely miss the smiling face, ready conversation, and quick wit of Terry Leu. After 24 years of running the Rolston Poultry stand at the West Side Market, Terry Leu has decided to retire. Leu says he has done well as a West Side Market merchant. He says, “The West Side Market has been good to me.”
In his retirement, Leu says he now hopes to spend some time traveling, including a trip with a friend to the Cleveland Indians Spring Training Camp in Arizona. He also has some home maintenance tasks at home that his wife has asked him to work on.
Born into a West Side Market family, Lue worked for his family’s stand, Leu Brothers, for 11 years prior to buying Rolston Poultry. Leu Brothers, which opened in 1912, was across the aisle from Rolston Poultry and sold hot dogs, ham, bacon and sausage.
Some of Terry Leu’s earliest memories are of events at the West Side Market. Terry Leu remembers cutting himself while cutting up hotdogs at Leu Brothers when he was seven years old. He said, he and his father walked down W. 25th to Lutheran Hospital. Leu said he apparently learned his lesson, he hasn’t cut himself like that since, despite many years of cutting up chickens for his customers at Rolston Poultry.
Leu said his plan was to sell the business to, Don Whitaker, the owner of the adjoining D.W. Whitaker Meats stand. He said Whitaker had an excellent plan to continue to serve Leu’s mostly food stamp customers with chicken sales on one side of the counter and to mix in some more specialty items on the other side of the counter. However, the West Side Market Manager Felicia Hall wouldn’t allow the transfer of ownership to Whitaker, because she said Whitaker already owned two stands and she wanted to get more diversity in the ownership of stands.
A potential sale to another interested West Side Market Merchant was cancelled for the same reason. While Leu is going ahead with his plans for retirement, he says at this point he does not have a buyer for the stand.
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