Jul 7, 2007 By Al Owens For The 5 min read

Perhaps not many Uniontown residents remember the times Sebastian Spering Kresge (the founder of The S.S. Kresge Co.) came to town to drop off apples from his orchard and to take a look at his S.S. Kresge store at the Uniontown Shopping Center. Joseph Edward Antonini remembers those days vividly. “He would sell us apples from his car, and we would (in turn) sell them on the sidewalk in front of the store,” Antonini fondly recalls.

But a visit to Uniontown by the founder of the S.S. Kresge Co. is only part of the story. There’s a lot more. Antonini, himself, would rise from working as a young management trainee in Uniontown to become the president and CEO of K-Mart Corp.

Antonini related those experiences from his office in Bloomfield Township, Mich., where he’s currently the chairman of J.E.A Enterprises, L.L.C., an investment advisory service.

He concludes his story about Sebastian Kresge’s visits to Uniontown with, “Isn’t that a great story.” (A phrase he uses frequently and sincerely.)

Every one of his stories about his experiences in Fayette County was punctuated with those words – a clear sign he has some very fond memories of his work and his family life here.

“I have a lot of feelings in my heart for Uniontown,” he says. He’d been born in Morgantown, W.Va., and he graduated from West Virginia University – but he made frequent visits to the area long before then. “My grandparents lived in Footedale. My grandfather worked in the coal mines for about 25 years. It was a big thing to come to Uniontown and Footedale.”

He seems like a man who feels so strongly about the virtues of hard work, he may have easily become a coal miner himself if he hadn’t gotten bitten by the retail bug in his adolescence.

He worked in the O.J. Morrison Department Store in Morgantown in his early teens. “I learned what the customer wanted, and why they wanted it,” Antonini proudly related.

That experience gave him the desire to sell things. Shortly after he graduated from college, he got his job at the Kresge store in the Uniontown Shopping Center. That gave him knowledge that he took to the top of a corporation that’s among the largest retail businesses on earth.

He likes to tell the story of how it all began in Uniontown. He showed up for work in a business suit his first day on the job in 1964. He was immediately met by the store’s manager, who told him he was a little overdressed because he’d be working in the stockroom. He’d thought he was going to start in retail. Supplying the store’s shelves with merchandise, in blue jeans and a sweatshirt, only presented a slight hitch in his plans. He worked so hard in the stockroom that it wasn’t long before he got his opportunity to become what he’d always wanted to become – a merchant!

That’s where, “I learned about being a merchant. Mr. Carey (the store’s manager at the time) was a great merchant.” And oh yes, with that story he added, “Isn’t that a great story.”

Antonini’s management trainee days (6 months) in Uniontown represented the first stop in a career that would eventually mean he’d move 18 times as an employee of S.S. Kresge Co., and later K-Mart Corp.

By 1986 (24 years after he’d shown up for his first job in that business suit in Uniontown), he was named C.O.O. A year later, he was named C.E.O. and president of the company.

He served in those capacities until his “retirement” in 1995. That is, of course, if you consider retirement finding new enterprises of his own. “I never worked for anybody else except Kresge,” he says. But now, as the chairman of J.E.A. Enterprises L.L.C., Joseph Antonini puts his business acumen to work in his own ventures.

That’s probably a good thing for race car legend Mario Andretti. Antonini is the chairman of Andretti Winery in Napa Valley, Calif. (Andretti is the vice-chairman)

And all of this started for the 65-year-old Antonini 43 years ago in Uniontown. “You know what I liked about Uniontown, Connellsville and Morgantown,” he asks rhetorically, “They could relate to hard work, and educating children. That, to me, is what America is all about.”

There isn’t the slightest hint of a real retirement in his voice when he proclaims, “If somebody asked me would you start all over again, I’d say YES!” That yes was so modulated that he sounded like he was ready to go out and start a new business that day! “You can only play so much golf,” he declares. A way of saying that to Joseph Antonini, work – although serious – is really fun.

His energy is obviously infectious. He tells the story of how his son used to follow him from K-Mart-to-K-Mart many years ago, when Antonini would make in-store visits. His son, John, is now 30 years old, and since he graduated from the School of Business at the University of Michigan, he’s become the manager of The Sachs Fifth Avenue store in Boca Raton, Fla. Antonini proudly adds, “That’s a $90 million a year business!” And of course, he also adds, “Isn’t that a great story.”

That energy even rubbed off on me. I have to hurry up and finish this. I have a tremendous urge to run out and sell something!

Edward A. Owens of Uniontown is Webmaster of “Red Raider Nation: Where Champions Live.” E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net