CE Tyler's Red & White Comes Down
By Valerie Sliker, courtesy Wagener Monthly
Feb. 8, 2018
The building that housed CE Tyler’s Red & White grocery, one of South Carolina’s first and last Red & White stores, is in the process of being repurposed. Closed in the Summer of 2001, the store located next to Blizzard’s Funeral Home on Main Street, has remained empty and under the ownership of Charlie Tyler and LeMyra (Tyler) Young for fifteen years.
“We never felt good about selling the store until now,” Charlie Tyler, son of the building’s proprietor, told me recently as he and his wife Ann talked with me in their home in the room that formerly was a covered porch where his grandmother would sit and collect greetings from Wagener residents as they did their weekly grocery shopping across the yard.
“The store was like our living room and this house was like our living room; didn’t matter, you were home either place.” Charlie’s grandparents spent much of their time on the sun porch. They could sit and watch the people come and go and wave to the people who were calling out, “Hey Ms. Myra!”
“We live so close to the building and we will have to live closely with whatever goes on over there,” Tyler explained. After fifteen years standing empty, the sixty-year-old building that housed a ninety-seven-year-old store has been sold to its neighbor, Blizzard’s Funeral Home. “Wilson’s (Blizzard) daddy was in the store every day. He would either sit with my mother in the office or go back in the meat department with daddy and talk. We have a long standing relationship with the Blizzards. We’re like family. When Wilson called about purchasing the building, I didn’t have to hesitate. I feel like this is a perfect thing to happen to this piece of property. It’s been a blessing and an answer to prayer.”
