Reposting this to let you know that my biography of Mr. Siegel is now complete and will be available as soon as it can be indexed and printed.
Friday, September 11, 1936
Ben Siegel Serves Bryan People Forty Years- Still Going
Ben Siegel celebrated his fortieth year in Bryan County this week with an open house at his store in Durant.
In the lifetime of a man forty years is a long time. In the life of a community forty years is but a day if that forty years is properly spent.
Forty years ago as a young man, Ben Siegel came to Caddo with a small but well selected stock of goods, suited to the needs of the then primitive, but growing, town and community.
Practicing rigid economy in his buying, Ben was able at all times to give the people a full dollar’s worth of goods for a dollar. His institution grew and grew with each week until his store became one of the biggest and best in the old Choctaw Nation. With statehood, still adequately serving the people by furnishing the people with goods they needed, Caddo I.T. became Caddo, Oklahoma.
From his first day in Caddo Ben Siegel adopted a motto that meant something to him and to the people whom he served: Quality for Quality, Price for Price, Ben Siegel will not be undersold by anybody. This has meant financial loss to him sometimes, for if his goods did not prove to be what he thought they were, he made them good. No patron of his ever had cause to complain of treatment, for from the start Ben Siegel recognized the fact that the customer must at all times be pleased.
With the coming of statehood Durant became the county seat; and a dozen years ago Ben Siegel, sensing an opportunity for better and larger service to the people, moved to Durant where he has prospered greatly by the same methods inaugurated in his first store.
A service of merchandising that Siegel has always done is that of extending credit to people who are worthy of it. In doing this he has enabled folks with salaries to buy all their needs ahead, charging but a nominal fee. When other did not cash warrants and other evidence of debt, Ben always was accommodating and thus enabled the people to get their money on those things.
In all his success Ben Siegel has never forgot the people of his first community, Caddo. He likes for Caddo people to come to his store and visit; he wants to make their headquarters at his store, wants you to tell your friends to meet you at Siegel’s in Durant- as everybody knows where that is.
Ben Siegel hopes to serve the people another forty years. If in the natural course of human events he is called away, he has a son, Allen, to carry on. Allen was born in Caddo and never forgets his old friends here.
Ben Siegel keeps his stock clean, never allowing old out-of-date styles or shopworn goods to be offered to the public. He makes good on his slogan “The Oldest Store with the Newest Stock in Bryan County”. When in Durant make it a special thing to go to Siegel’s.
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