39 years is no Small achievement

David Small retires from 13 years as Glendale JCPenney manager and 39 with the company.GLENDALE -- One week ago, David Small was managing about 400 employees in one of the nation’s largest retailers.

Now, he is looking forward to playing golf at the La Quinta Resort Dunes Course. Small is free man.

“I’m going to be playing golf every day that I can,” Small said.

After 13 years as the store manager at the Glendale Galleria JCPenney, and 39 years with company, the 60-year-old has dealt with nearly a lifetime of long lines, sales, customers and retail holiday havoc.

But since Wednesday afternoon, when Small retired, he has been taking things slow.

“I want to lay back and enjoy life,” he said. “You know, when you’re in retail, you’re working six days a week when other people are off the week before Christmas. So I plan on enjoying life.”

And Small deserves it. Those who know him say he has spent his lifetime with a company diligently working to ensure the store and his employees’ success.

“We have had continuously achieved the company’s sales objectives and I think the most personal thing for David was teaching and promoting young people with careers in the company,” sales manager Dennis Hart said.

But as much of an integral force Small has been for the company, he didn’t always think JCPenney would become something of a second home for him.

Small, who moved to Glendale with his family when he was 5 and attended school in Glendale through college, originally wanted to be a certified public accountant.

After a year at Glendale Community College, Small moved to Huntington Beach and started taking classes at Orange Coast College to become an accountant. But in the meantime, Small needed a part-time job to fund his education.

He began working at the Costa Mesa JCPenney store in 1964, and after six years, he knew he wanted to stay with the company.

“I enjoyed what I was doing,” he said. “I was in marketing, I was in merchandise, I was buying and it was very exciting. And I said to myself, if I became a CPA, I’d be sitting behind a desk all day. That’s not what I wanted to do.”

Small never finished college, but his career at JCPenney was something of an education in itself.

Throughout his career, Small has logged about 450,000 miles, visiting 40 of the 50 United States on JCPenney business, he said.

“To me, the most striking thing is that he always stood behind his people,” said Rozik Keshish a sales auditor with JCPenney in Glendale. “He defended them always and he wouldn’t buy any word against his people unless he had solid, concrete proof. That’s genuine of a store manager.”

Small worked in many different roles with JCPenney, which relocated him and his family about nine times -- until he was appointed the store manager of the Glendale Galleria JCPenney in 1992.

He returned to community he grew up in.

“I was raised in Glendale,” he said.

That, coupled with the fact that the Glendale store is in the top 20 in volume and profits among the company’s 1,025 stores in the country, kept Small around for so many years.

“All the people there are a part of my family,” he said. “I watched their kids grow up and I prided myself with knowing them and their families.”

Small’s co-workers held a retirement ceremony for him Tuesday at the store.

But Small can’t seem to get away from JCPenney.

He is vice president of the Southern California Assoc. of Retirees of JCPenney, and will be president next year, he said.

“I love JCPenney,” he said.