Remembering 2008 Inductee, Elmer Karl
The South Dakota Hall of Fame extends our heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Elmer Karl, who passed away the evening of July 15 in his hometown of Gregory, surrounded by family.
Elmer Karl built one of the region's most enduring business success stories from a $2,000 note his father co-signed at the local bank, growing a single storefront into the Midwest's largest independent electronics and appliance dealer. He was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2008.
Elmer grew up on a farm near Gregory, attending a one-room school before graduating from Gregory High School. After two years of farming, he was drafted into the Army, where he trained in electronics and spent thirteen months stationed in Korea. That training set the course for the rest of his life. Following his service, he studied at DeVry Technical Institute in Chicago and worked as a TV technician for Marshall Field's, gaining the skills he would soon bring home.
Elmer never lost the pull toward Gregory. Betting on the promise of a technology still new to most of South Dakota, he returned to open a TV and radio repair shop in a small rented building, even though the town had no usable television signal yet. He opened in 1956 with five new radios and a used television set, and within months a Sioux Falls translator station brought the signal his customers needed. That same year, he filmed his first commercial, pitching black and white television sets to south-central South Dakotans who, just months before, couldn't tune in to a single broadcast.
From that first store, Karl's TV, Audio, Appliance and Furniture grew to 19 locations across South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and Wyoming, with Elmer still appearing in the company's ads decades later under the familiar line, "Your servicing dealer since 1956." His approach to business never wavered. He believed that once a customer bought a product, it was the seller's job to stand behind it.
Elmer's impact reached well beyond his stores. He served two terms as a Gregory city councilman and two terms as mayor, and held leadership roles with Toastmasters, Rotary Club, the Volunteer Fire Department, El Riad Shrine and the Elks. He was a past board president of both Midwest Appliance and Retail Television Association (MARTA) and the South Dakota Retailers Association, and a member of First United Methodist Church in Gregory. He helped found the Gregory Coin Laundry, Mats Inc. and the Homesteader Restaurant, purchased and preserved the town's movie theater and locker plant, and helped bring a Canadian manufacturing plant to Gregory, each move rooted in his belief that a small town could keep building its own future.
His contributions were recognized widely, including the South Dakota Retailer of the Year award, the Larry Blumenthal Award, the MARTA dealer award, the American Heritage Award from the Anti-Defamation League, and the South Dakota Sales and Marketing Executive of the Year award. It is for this lifetime of entrepreneurship, civic leadership, and devotion to his hometown that Elmer Karl was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame.
His legacy endures in the stores that still carry his name, the community he shaped one investment at a time, and the example he set for what one person's belief in a small town can build.