By ARNOLD PICKMERE and ROSALEEN MacBRAYNE
* Shopkeeper. Died aged 86.
George Shalfoon's father Antony, and uncles George and Steve, started the Shalfoon Brothers general store in Opotiki around 1899.
It began an era for the town which lasted more than a century.
The Church St hardware and grocery store was run, right up to George's gradual retirement last year, without a computer system to keep track of goods and customer accounts.
A 75-year-old cash register was still in daily use and the "office girl" of 15 years, Cecile Harris, who finished up on Christmas Eve 2000, aged 80, used a 65-year-old Remington typewriter.
She once told her boss: "George, if you ever get a computer, I'm leaving."
His reply: "If I ever get a computer, I'm leaving."
Ironically, Cecile now has a computer and sends emails all over the world.
The Lebanese brothers started the store when Opotiki was a thriving little town. A stone's throw from Opotiki's main wharf, the shop expanded steadily, stocking a wide range of food and household necessities, including furniture, drapery and crockery.
George started work in the shop when he left school at 15.
"We used to service people down the coast at places like Omaio and Te Kaha," he recalled in 1980. "We had two launches which used to bring people to town for free if they shopped with us, then take them back."
George and his brother-in-law, the late Edward Francis, took over the store under the Shalfoon and Francis name in 1936.
In his earlier years, George was a keen member of the local hunt club and also loved ballroom dancing. He was a life member of the Opotiki Volunteer Fire Brigade.
In its latest years the store became a kind of tourist attraction full of curios.
The "roller coaster" Matai floors were the result of rotting wood piles. And the counters were long slabs of kauri, made when a furniture factory was part of the family's business portfolio.
A fax and Eftpos machine were among the few very late concessions to new technology, but customers' accounts were still filed in a big pigeonhole cabinet.
Among the dust and cobwebs of a back storeroom was one of the firm's delivery trucks, bought new in 1938 and last used about seven years ago.
"I got sick of cranking it up," George said two years ago, when he favoured a modern car instead.
He also knew he should have installed computers about 10 years ago - "but I was 75 then and I didn't think I'd be around much longer".
George Shalfoon is survived by a large family of relatives. The old shop remains as he left it and has been taken over by the next-door museum.
<i>Obituary:</i> George Shalfoon
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