Chuck Drake grew up in Elkhart…and came back
On the 12-hour drive back home to Atlanta in 2022, Chuck Drake came to the decision. He would move back to his hometown after nearly 50 years away.
Chuck’s last name is synonymous with his family’s department store, once located on Main Street in downtown Elkhart and later at Concord Mall and Easy Shopping Place. He moved south after the family business closed in the 1970s.
But parts of him never left. After retiring, visits to see old friends became more frequent. It was during one trip that the idea of coming back finally stuck.
“A friend of mine said, ‘You should really move back up here. We still party and have fun like we used to,’” Chuck says.
Returning to Elkhart was in some ways a move 10 years in the making. After reconnecting with old classmates and friends through Facebook, Chuck discovered a new appreciation for Elkhart and his family’s story. He’s shared plenty of these memories on the I Grew Up In Elkhart page.
Beginnings
Chuck grew up on East Jackson Boulevard, the son of Durward and Dorothy Drake.
Along with his sisters, Nancy and Judith, they were almost always inside their parents’ namesake store at the corner of Main and High.
Chuck and his siblings were required to go to school in the latest fashions, to be a walking mannequin for the store products. That was something Chuck didn’t like at the time.
“I was always frustrated because my parents made me wear new shirts that were coming out,” he says. “I was shy, I never wanted to set a trend. When you’re the first to wear it, you stick out.”
Years later, while going through 1920s Elkhart Pennant yearbooks, he came across a photo of his father and realized he wasn’t the first in his family to be fashion-forward.
“There’s a picture of all the men sitting in the bleachers and he has on the ugliest sport coat. Everyone else had plain sport coats, and his was this ugly pattern. You could see it on his face. I knew that look.”
He also remembers when the downtown store burned in a 1955 fire when he was 7 years old.
“The firefighters had to hold my dad back from trying to run back in. The fire was raging; he wouldn’t have made it inside anyway. We just stood across the street and watched it burn,” he says.
The store came back strong at Easy Shopping Place and added a location at Concord Mall.
After high school and attending Ball State, he began working inside the store and planned to take it all over. The economy had other ideas.
By the early ‘70s, the store was struggling and eventually closed in the middle of the decade after he and his dad stepped away from it. Chuck moved to Atlanta in 1974. He worked in sales training and started small businesses.
Back home again
After making a living and raising a family in Atlanta, Chuck began reconnecting with his past.
About 10 years ago, he joined a Facebook group, I Grew Up in Elkhart. There, he reconnected with old friends and classmates from decades ago.
“I was amazed at how many members there were,” he says. “I thought, that’s a bigger population than The Elkhart Truth serves.”
Using old photos he had, he put together short videos of Elkhart’s past. It rekindled an interest in history and something that happened when he was about 20 years old.
Chuck’s family was close with fellow Elkhart retailer and local historian Paul Thomas. Chuck says his grandmother taught Paul how to sell shoes.
“Paul always called me little Chucky Drake,” Chuck says. “We both adored each other, he loved my grandma and my dad.”
One day Paul called Chuck and asked him to come by and look at some old photos to see if he could identify what year they were taken in.
The photos were aerial shots of homes along the upper St. Joseph River. At first, it seemed like it would be impossible to identify, Chuck says.
“I said, ‘I really don’t think I’ll be able to help.’ But Paul was insistent,” Chuck says.
Paul told him to look at the boats. Pretty soon, Chuck narrowed it to within a couple of years by remembering when the boats had been purchased.
“We lived on the river at 2000 East Jackson,” he says. “We would water ski and sit along the river and you knew when anyone got a new boat because you knew all your neighbors’ boats.”
“That got me interested in the whole (history) thing,” Chuck says.
Once he started nearing retirement, he was coming back to Elkhart to visit friends. He began thinking about his family’s store and his ancestry.
When he finally moved back, it gave him the opportunity to dive deep into those stories.
Connecting to the past
From his home in Strafford Commons, Chuck stays connected to friends and the local history he’s become so passionate about.
Chuck says the history he researches about his family and their store, but also his friends and memories of Elkhart High School, get posted on the I Grew Up in Elkhart page.
“I don’t post about the store anymore,” he says. “I think I’ve posted about that enough.”
Chuck finds plenty of other items to post in the group through his visits to the local history section of the downtown Elkhart Public Library.
“I do it to share what I find out,” he says.
He looks through microfilm and old Elkhart High School yearbooks for pictures of friends to post.
“You can find a lot of stuff. Get on The Elkhart Truth microfilm,” he suggests. “For me, it’s a great way to collect my own (stories).”
Chuck says his grandfather came to Elkhart to work as an accountant at Elkhart Carriage and Harness Co., later Elcar. He began working on the side at Sykes Dry Goods. Eventually the Skyes family sold it to his grandfather and it became Drake’s.
He says while some people might think online searching can replace the library, the opposite is true for him.
“The internet got me into the library,” he says. “Don’t just stop when you’re searching online. Going to the library, finding the items physically, is just as fun. And (you’re) able to take pictures of them.”
After decades away, he discovered the fun of going back home.
“I thought I was going to be bored coming back. But it’s just the opposite,” he says. “It’s a lot of fun for this old man.”
Discover local history here or visit the second floor of the downtown library.