DETAILS

What: Estate auction of antiques, collectibles, real estate

When: 1 p.m., today

Where: Proctor Supply Co., 101 E. Maryland St., Zeigler

Zeigler landmark on auction block

Proctor Supply Co. family owned, run for decades

THE SOUTHERN

ZEIGLER - Nary a squeak came from the old but well-constructed wooden floor as family members walked the nearly barren back room of Proctor Supply Co. in Zeigler Friday.

However, the echoes of busier days gone by were loud, and sometimes overwhelming. "We cry, we talk, we cry," Nancy Proctor said as she and her three daughters prepared to auction off the landmark Zeigler building and its contents. "All those memories …"

The wholesale heating and roofing supply business, a part of the Zeigler landscape for more than 75 years, closed earlier this year with the death of Proctor's husband, Bob.

"The business died with him," she said. "His father bought the business in about 1942 and Bob was here since 1956. All the effort, the hours, the labor that went into it, all done. Gone."

Business items were auctioned Friday, while the estates of Bob Proctor and his mother, Rachel Whiteside, will be up for bid starting at 1 p.m. today.

"We've been going through 70 years of stuff," Lisa Hopkins, one of Proctor's daughters, said. "So many generations lived in the same house and occupied this same building we don't know what belonged to who. I grew up running around here, but I've found so many things I've never seen before. I'm just amazed at what we've found."

For instance: a jukebox, circa 1930-something, filled with 78s; a sweat cabinet, perhaps a precursor to a sauna and apparently left over from the days Hopkins' great-grandfather, Dr. R.L. Whiteside practiced medicine.

For Proctor, coming across her husband's National Security Agency pin, was a startling and touching find.

"He worked at Westinghouse before he went into the Army. He worked on the bomb tests in White Sands and apparently he had to be cleared by the NSA. It made me realize there was a whole lot about him that I didn't know, that he never talked about," she said.

Among Hopkins' favorite finds were the bowls that once held ice cream for her at her grandmother's house.

"There have been so many things, but these really bring back memories," she said. "Going through all this stuff has been fun and it's been depressing and it's been stressful. When you grow up in a place, everything is just there and you don't think to ask questions until it's too late."

Other finds included what the family believes was Proctor's personal stash of marbles.

"We found a bag with a handful of marbles, a wooden top and a yo-yo," Hopkins said. "They were not the most valuable marbles we found out - some of the others are worth much more - but they obviously meant the most to him."

Hopkins also marveled at the number of shoes her grandmother owned.

"We don't think she spent all her money on jewelry, but on shoes. There are hundreds and hundreds of pairs of shoes from the '30s and '40s. She wasn't exactly Imelda Marcos, but she had her fair share," Hopkins said with a laugh.

Proctor and her daughters will attend the auction today, but they expect some sorrow at parting with items that hold cherished memories.

"Just to know that all of this, the things we all collect over a lifetime, will be gone someday is hard. All of a sudden here it is, at an end," Proctor said.

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