TERRE HAUTE — When Ivan Wilkinson bought Parks Purity Pies from Thurston Parks a few years after World War II, the little pie-making business on Wabash Avenue had just three employees and made around 520 pies per day.
By the time Wilkinson sold the company more than three decades later, it had 31 full-time employees and was making around 12,000 pies per day.
“No pies out there could compete with our pies,” Wilkinson, 84, said at his home in Terre Haute. Parks Purity Pies were sold all over the Midwest, he said. Even at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“I was thrilled when I saw Clark Gable [who was making a movie at the speedway] eating a piece of my pie,” Wilkinson recalls.
Thurston Parks started his little pie company in 1925. Wilkinson, a Terre Haute native, started working for Parks as a truck driver at age 22. Less than two years later, Parks was ready to sell his business and approached his young driver with an offer.
Using a small savings for a down payment, Wilkinson became the new owner of Parks Purity Pies in 1948.
“We just continually grew,” Wilkinson said of his business. Eventually, he hired someone else to drive the delivery truck so he could manage the business full time.
Quality pies, with no preservatives and a special crust, kept demand for Parks Purity Pies strong, he said. Several other pie companies around the state went out of business while Wilkinson’s business continued to grow in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.
“We prospered right on through,” Wilkinson said. Parks Purity Pies were soon selling all over the state and as far away as West Virginia.
“They were delicious,” said Carolyn Burke, who remembers eating Parks Purity Pies as a kid growing up in Terre Haute. “They were the favorite thing in every kid’s lunch box at school,” she said.
“You actually got fruit in your pie,” said Burke’s husband, Maurice. “Their cherry pie was delicious.” The Burkes remember the pies selling for 10 cents.
Wilkinson’s is a true rags-to-riches story. Born in 1923, his father left his family when Ivan was just 2. He remembers his mother gathering coal at the railroad yards to heat his home. “We really had it rough,” he said.
By the time Wilkinson entered Gerstmeyer High School, he had lost much of his interest in academics, he said.
“I never took a book home in my life,” Wilkinson said. Only one subject seemed to interest him in high school – art. At one time, he even considered becoming a professional sign painter, he said.
Wilkinson wishes he had the chance to go to college, but it was not in the cards back in the 1940s. He learned about business and management – and more recently the stock market – on his own, he said.
Despite his lack of formal education, Wilkinson is proud to have been written up in three books about prominent businesspeople from the 1970s, including Who’s Who in Finance and Industry 1975-76. “I’m the only one in the whole book that doesn’t have two or three degrees,” Wilkinson said with a smile.
The secret to a successful business at Parks Purity Pies was pretty simple, according to Wilkinson. “Have a good product and take care of your customers.”
Wilkinson also takes pride in treating all his customers, large and small, alike. “I never did differentiate,” he said.
“We sold his pies for a long time,” said Hugh Cummins, who owned the Apple House grocery store in 12 Points and in other locations around town for many decades. “I thought they were good pies. They had a lot of fruit in them,” he said.
Cummins remembers selling small and large Parks Purity Pies. He would sometimes run specials on the popular pies just to bring customers in the door, he said. “We sold his pies for a long time,” Cummins said.
Two things may have kept Parks Purity Pies from becoming a nationwide business while Wilkinson owned the operation. First, Wilkinson wanted to be at the pie factory at 2452 Third Ave. whenever it was operating. As a result, he had no Saturday shift and no night shift.
Second, Wilkinson had a fear of going in debt, so he paid cash for everything he could, including a $50,000 freezer.
“I could have grown even faster except for that,” Wilkinson said.
Wilkinson said he sometimes regretted selling Parks Purity Pies in 1980, when he was 57. The transaction happened very quickly when Hollywood Brands candy company of Centralia, Ill., bought the business.
A Tribune-Star interview with Greg Martoccio, who was running the pie business when it closed in 1995, quoted Martoccio saying Parks was making just 1,000 pies per day in 1980 when Hollywood took over. Wilkinson, who was not interviewed for the story, said that was wrong and still seems a little bothered by the mistake 28 years later.
“We were making 1,000 pies in three or four minutes,” Wilkinson said. In fact, the Parks Purity Pie company was at one time making as many as 10,000 of the small, four-inch pies between 8 and 10 a.m. each day, he said.
In the end, Wilkinson is most proud of the taste and quality of Parks Purity Pies, something he says no other pie could compete with. He recently tried a cherry pie at the Grand Traverse Pie Company in Terre Haute. “It was good, but ours were better,” he said with a grin.
The recipe for Parks Purity Pies was very similar to how a pie is made at home, Wilkinson said. Except the crusts of a Park Purity Pie included a little extra vanilla, he said.
Wilkinson also is proud that his pies included no preservatives and no chemicals of any kind. “I made pies to eat and people would eat them right away,” he said. “I didn’t want them to last 1,000 years.”
Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.
Business
Former owner of Parks Purity Pies proud of three-decade transformation of his business
Company employed 31 people, made more than 12,000 pies a day
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