Small towns are the heart of our country.

Family values, close neighbors – all of these things are found among these close communities.

But for one Illinois farming village, the nearly 800 residents were facing the loss of their town. Until they all stepped up to make a change.

John Winger owns the Royal Super Mart – the only grocery store in this town. A full-service store, it has everything the community needs and more since the nearest other store is more than 15 miles away.

Winger, 69, said he had been wanting to retire, but was scared.

“I was worried about leaving the local community without a grocery store to shop at,” he said. His parents had opened the store in 1940 in Sheffield, and Winger took it over in 1985.

The Sheffield community rallied to raise $500,000 to keep Royal Super Mart open. Photo by Royal Super Mart

With no other family members to take over the store, Winger considered selling it. However, he pulled the store off the market, concerned that whoever bought the market wouldn’t keep it a store.

“That’s why we kept operating,” he said.

Then resident Elizabeth Pratt came up with a plan.

I knew that the loss of the store would be devastating to a little town like ours,” Pratt said.

Knowing Winger wanted to retire, but wouldn’t because of his love for the town, she offered to raise money.

“It’s very hard in a small town to feel like you’re abandoning your community in that way. He was hanging on, as long as he could,” Pratt said.

Pratt runs Cornerstone Community Wellness, and began raising money through her nonprofit. Her goal was to not only keep the grocery store in town, but have it reinvest profits into keeping the store sustainable. The people of Sheffield would always have a place to buy fresh food.

The community didn’t disappoint the pair. Within months, more than $500,000 was raised, which was enough for the nonprofit to purchase the Royal Super Mart and completely remodel the store.

“Raising half a million dollars in a small rural community, that was huge,” said Mary Lanham, the village president of Sheffield. “People stepped up.”

The grocery store is the heart of the town,” she said.

Royal Super Mart first opened in 1940. Photo by Royal Super Mart

Residents of the town who donated, did so because they knew what would happen to the community and their economic development if the store went away. Once a store leaves, Pratt said, other stores suffer because people are traveling to another place and spending their money there. And the people who can’t, she said, face few options to find food nearby.

Pat Stier, 70, said that having fresh food in her town “means convenience, especially for us older people,” she said. Losing the supermarket, “would have been a hardship.”

But thankfully, the store now has a future.

Luke Lanxon grew up in Sheffield and is raising his two children there. He said he was grateful that the store would be staying.

“It’s an economic pillar that we can build our town around,” he said. “It’s a testament of our community that we can come around to one cause and all work together to make our town better.”

Winger, for his part, is glad his family’s legacy will live on, providing food for the small town he’s always loved.

“I couldn’t be happier,” he said.

For a look at the grocery store’s new look and the town’s progress, watch below.

Sources: Washington Post | WVIK