“From Beloved Beacon to Forgotten Relic: Unraveling the Astonishing Decline of Howard Johnson’s Empire”
Our story today begins with a middle school dropout not coincidentally named Howard Johnson. Born in 1897, as to why Johnson left school around 8th grade, his father, John Johnson, owned a cigar business, and, once his primary education was out of the way, Howard absconded to help run that business. This was something he continued to do for around 15 years, only taking a slight break, as it were, to serve in France during WWI. Unfortunately for the Johnsons, however, while the cigar business provided great practical lessons for the young teen in how to operate a business, market, sell, etc., with the rise in popularity of cigarettes, the company began to struggle, ultimately going into massive debt. Things only got worse when Johnson’s father up and died at the age of 57 in 1923.
Deciding to voluntarily take over his father’s debts and try to keep the company going, rather than just starting from scratch on a new venture, Johnson got to work attempting to salvage the sinking ship, but all his efforts were in vain. Unable to make the business profitable, he sold it within a year to pay off some of the debt, and otherwise worked odd jobs to try to pay off the rest.
But in all this, he also kept his eye out for a new venture that might be more lucrative, and in 1925 he found a possibility in a struggling little newsstand and pharmacy located at Beale Street in Wollaston, a part of Quincy, Massachusetts. Johnson was working at that establishment when the owner suddenly died. With the owner’s son little interested in keeping the business, Johnson negotiated to buy it for $2000 (about $35,000 today), drumming up the funds via a $500 loan from his mother and $1500 loan from a doctor friend.
