Joanne Butler never figured a career in the jewelry business was her destiny, nor did she ever contemplate being a fixture in the Iola retail community for nearly 50 years.
“I was just looking for a job,” she said with a laugh.
Butler, owner of Jones Jewelry, is in the midst of her 48th Christmas shopping season on the east side of Iola’s downtown square.
She, like several other merchants in downtown Iola, will be open for extended hours Friday evening as part of the Sixth Annual Spirit of Christmas Downtown event.
Jones will be open until 7 p.m. Friday, while Butler will greet customers with warm cider, or some other refreshments.
Even better are the treats for the customers’ pocketbooks. Merchandise will be sold at a 30-percent discount.
Butler also has adorned her picturesque front window with assorted Christmas decorations, and a pair of gingerbread house creations as part of the Iola Area Chamber of Commerce’s Gingerbread House Walk, where customers can vote on their favorites.
“Technically, one of them is a gingerbread church,” Butler said in correcting a Register reporter earlier this week. “The other one is a Gingerbread Snoopy house,” made famous from the “Peanuts” comic strip canine, with the pooch sprawled on his back on the house’s roof.
Friday’s activities aside, Butler said business tends to stay moderate until the waning days before Christmas.
“It used to be on Christmas Even, I’d have men lined up in here, patting themselves on the back because they ‘barely made it in time’ once again,” she said with a laugh. “I’d have to remind them they were about to run out of time.”
Those days have changed, she said forlornly, indicative of a still stagnant economy, and the evolution of online shopping.
“People get online and they want something, they’ll have it the next day,” she said.
But downtown shopping offers several advantages over those who do their buying via the Internet, particularly with consumer control.
“Here, they see and hold the piece before they buy it,” Butler said. “I have the option, if she doesn’t get what she wants, she can come in and pick out something she likes better. That’s an important option they don’t have online.”
JONES Jewelry opened its doors in 1962 by Durwood Jones, the store’s namesake.
Butler, fresh out of college in 1968, was in search of a job, but not yet a career.
“I needed to find something,” she recalled. “I didn’t really have any ambition to get out and do anything yet. I just needed a job.”
She found what she thought was a temporary position at Jones, where another employee was away on maternity leave.
“The plan was for her to have her baby, then come back,” Butler said. “She never did.”
Butler’s part-time gig became full time shortly thereafter. She worked alongside Jones, her mentor, for the next 30-plus years.
He died in February 1999; Butler bought the store that July.
Butler offers a wide variety of diamond rings, wedding rings and other kinds of jewelry, such as class rings, mother’s rings, gemstone rings, gold chains and bracelets, silver trays and gift items.
She also handles service and repair for watches and jewelry, battery installation, ring sizing and stone setting.
Butler also is trained in repairing clocks of all styles, having learned the artisan craft from Jones.
TRENDS have come and gone.
“When I started, everybody was using white gold,” she said. “That went on for 10 or 15 years, when people switched to yellow gold, which I guess, looked richer to them.”
In recent years, the trend has returned to white gold. Sterling silver jewelry also has become more popular, in part because of the high price of gold.
Butler’s fashion sense also has changed.
“I guess I like necklaces pendants,” she said with a chuckle. “I used to wear a lot of rings, but as I got older and my hands got to looking funnier, I figured I didn’t need them as much.”
In addition to her extended hours for the Spirit of Christmas sale, Butler keeps Jones Jewelry open until 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and until 8 p.m. Thursdays.