Charles later bought a stock of vacuum tubes so he could service televisions and a used Plymouth station wagon to make service calls and struck out on his own.
He later purchased some property located at 701 N. Court St., on the northeast corner of North Court and West White Street, which was part of an older home, to establish his first service shop. The corner was prone to flooding in those days, just like the old intersection of Court and Main, and water entering the business was not uncommon after rainstorms. Charles opened his first business here and procured franchises for Zenith and Philco televisions, employing his old boss Paul Gore as a service man.
Charles’ father, Arthur Boatright, owned half of the Boatright/Bainbridge building located in the 800 block of the public square. Charles told me a story about the ownership of the building. His father had been renting half of the building since 1923 as Boatright’s Tavern. The other half of the building was rented by Lawrence Bainbridge and housed Bainbridge Jewelry. Offices upstairs were occupied by various organization and businesses. When the building’s owner, unknown at this time, fell deathly ill he called the two men and offered to sell them the building. Arthur and Lawrence purchased the building as two halves and it remained that way, in possession of the men’s families, until the building was leveled by the city in 1997. Arthur Boatright died September 12, 1961 which left the building in Charles’ ownership but it was tied up in a lease to Tony Fontanetta who continued operating the tavern.
In September of 1963, Charles had the opportunity to move to a location at 305 Public Square in the northwest corner formerly occupied by a business called Peers. He had barely occupied the spot when the lease on his father’s old tavern across the square which was held by Fontanetta timed out, so Charles decided that since he owned a building on the square he may as well occupy it. He had the building stripped out and remodeled for use as an electronic store after it had been used as a tavern by his father for four decades.
With additional space to expand, he later dropped his original Zenith and Philco lines and picked up an exclusive on the Magnavox line. Magnavox was well known in those days for their excellent cabinetry and console stereos. Keep in mind that in the early days, there were no component systems and everything came in a wooden cabinet appearing as a piece of furniture rather than dedicated hardware.
In addition to expanding his television and stereo line, Charles developed a record department that was large enough to be claimed as the largest in Southern Illinois. Customers frequently traveled miles to purchase music on LP record albums or 45 RPM records, which was the only format available in the day. Records were stocked following the Bill Board Hot 100 and the store maintained a file of all records produced and who recorded them on a paper system called Phonolog.
By the late 1960’s, component stereos had started taking over the market from console stereos and Boatrights took on the Fisher line of stereos. The store also dabbled in the sale of guitars, amps and accessories for a few years through the middle to late 1960’s.
From the inception, Boatright had made Public Address systems available for rental and one of the regular jobs was supplying the infield and grandstand P.A. systems for use during the Williamson County Fair and special events. Boatright’s covered the fair sound system needs from the late 1950’s through the late 1980’s.
Sam Lattuca started working for Boatrights in 1963 when they were transitioning from one side of the square to the other and remained with them through high school until just prior to entering active duty service in 1967, working for them as clerk, record manager and assisting the repair department. He came back to work for them in 1971 as a service technician and worked for them until the fall of 1976 when he bought the service department end of the business to start his own business called Lattuca Electronic Service.
Over time, a number of the employees have been John Strohmeier, Benji Cooksey, Randy Crouse, Jeff McCoskey and Bill Murrie. Bill Murrie used to be a traveling salesman for an electronic parts distribution firm out of Cape Girardeau called Seudekum Electronics that called on Boatrights. In the late 1960’s, Murrie became store manager for Boatrights Electronics and on January 1, 1984 bought the business and called it Murrie’s Electronics.
Murrie’s remained in this location until the 1990’s and the building was eventually purchased by the City of Marion to make way for the new Marion Cultural and Civic Center. The building was destroyed in 1997.
(Data extracted from an interview with Charles Boatright and Sam Lattuca; compiled by Sam Lattuca on 11/12/2013)