Clyde Baker — whose wife Sue’s grandfather, Carver Rice, started the business in 1946 — is preparing to hand it down to their son Sam, who will be the fourth generation of the family to run the business.

Clyde and Sam describe it as a “rebirth,” akin to a Phoenix rising from the ashes, like the store did after a fire destroyed the building on a freezing December night in 1958.

After Carver operated the business for two decades, his son Bob Rice took it over. After Bob’s death in the early 2000s, his daughters Barb and Sue took it over with Clyde running the business.

“Really, Bruce Shanty ran the business all the time,” Clyde and Sam said in a statement.

Sam, left, and Clyde Baker stand inside Rice Furniture on Main Street in Saranac Lake. Sam is becoming the fourth generation in the Rice family lineage to run his great-grandfather’s business, as Clyde begins a slow retirement. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

Eventually, Barb stepped aside to pursue a career in government, working as Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Assistant Secretary for Economic Development and now serves as the head of the Adirondack Park Agency.

Now, with the retirement and hiring of several key employees, Rice Furniture is planning a reception at the store on Friday from 3 to 5 p.m. for hellos and goodbyes. It’s for longtime customers to bid farewell to longtime employees Bruce Shanty and Sue Blanchard.

Shanty has been with Rice Furniture for 44 years, staring in 1979. He’s now easing into retirement, working three days a week, but Clyde and Sam said “his work ethic cannot be overstated.”

Blanchard has been with Rice Furniture since 2007 and retired at the end of 2023 to spend more time with her grandkids. Clyde and Sam said her “warm spirit and eye for detail will be missed.”

Along with Sam, there are two new employees at the business

Daniel Bruce, who has been with the company for two years now, moved back to the area after spending 18 years in the New York City art world. His local art gallery “Stepmother Nature” is set to open in Bloomingdale later this year.

Clyde’s sister, Colleen Olson, recently retired from the Saranac Lake Central School District and is working at the store part-time.

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Family circle

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Sam moved from Albany in the fall, leaving a job with the state Liquor Authority to go into the family business.

“Miserable,” he said of the state office job. “When you’re just staring at a computer for eight hours a day, not even being able to get up really, it’s like ‘Alright, I need human interaction.'”

He likes being mobile and doing sales.

“It’s all customer service,” Clyde said of the furniture business. “That’s what we’re all about.”

Sam worked at the shop doing deliveries during summers in high school and college. He always had the option to come back, and it crossed his mind after graduating from law school, but he wanted to see what his options were first.

Sam has a background in sales, a master’s degree in law and a bachelor’s degree in film and media. He said becoming the fourth generation in his great-grandfather’s store “feels natural.”

Clyde, 60, said Sam is following a similar path as he did. Clyde was around 30, just like Sam is, when he came to the shop from working at the Adirondack Daily Enterprise and Lake Placid News.

Sam will slowly take over Clyde’s role over the next three to five years as Clyde slowly retires through a “much-needed exit strategy.”

“One thing that worries me about him being ‘done’ is that he’s not someone who has ever been able to sit down, relax and twiddle his thumbs,” Sam said. “So him being ‘done,’ I don’t know what that’s going to look like, because it might just look like him showing up here regardless.”

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Saranac Lake staple

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Clyde speaks highly of all their employees, like deliverymen Cory Coolidge and Eric Leaf.

“Cory’s ingenuity and reliability with Eric’s personality and uplifting attitude remain the backbone of the store,” Clyde and Sam said in a statement.

Most have been with the company for years, and some for decades.

Jimmy Goodrich, Rice Furniture’s longest serving employee, has been with the Rice family for more than 50 years and is still their “go-to guy” for installing window covers. John and Jeff Gates have been installing flooring for 20 years.

“People tend to stay around because we treat them well,” Clyde said.

“I’m the exemption,” Sam interjected. “As his son, I still get bullied.”

Being among the few places in this area where people go to to furnish their homes, their vacation rentals or their second homes, Clyde said people come back year after year and he estimates he’s been in nearly every house in the Tri-Lakes.

Rice Furniture is one of the older businesses in town. There are certainly longer-running ones with triple-digit years of operation, but they’re up there. And Clyde said the family has always been at the shop.

“When you have a family business, you have to have the family present,” Clyde said. “You can’t be absentee owners.”

They are the face of the business, he said, adding that being a family business and maintaining high customer service is what keeps customers around.

Clyde said seeing the store through the coronavirus pandemic was tough. After the store itself closed for six weeks, manufacturing plants were slow, so getting new material took a long time.

“You could have a dance in here, there was so little furniture,” Clyde said.

He worked at the shop alone and dropped furniture off on people’s lawns himself.

Now, he plans to spend more time with his wife and dogs. And when they finish their one-floor “dream home,” he’ll be going to his son to furnish it.