Wardecker, James T.: 2/1998

Wardecker, of the first block of Walnut Street, was the former owner of Wardecker's Men's Wear, a retail clothing business he had either worked at or owned since 1941.

 

Wardecker started as a clerk in the store, then run by Moses Blumenthal, and stayed on through 1963, when he acquired the store. The business is currently owned by his son, Fred, but the father continued to make daily visits until late last year.

 

Friends and colleagues yesterday remembered Wardecker as a fixture in the downtown business district and sports communities, and as a folksy historian who filled his store with photos and memorabilia of Carlisle's past and kept customers spellbound with stories to match.

 

'I always enjoyed my association with him at the store,' said George Bowen, a former Carlisle High School athletic director and baseball coach. 'You always had a good conversation with Muck, and he could substantiate so much about the past.'

 

Many of Wardecker's stories went well past Carlisle.

 

Several years ago, Fred Wardecker noted, production crews from NFL Films interviewed his father about Carlisle Indian School great Jim Thorpe as a part of a documentary series on early football heroes.

 

Thorpe and other Indian School alumni were frequent visitors to the store -- where they had lines of credit as students -- after leaving Carlisle, and Wardecker, one local Indian School expert noted, was the common thread who came to serve as a de facto alumni secretary for them.

 

'His store was the place where people would go after the Indian School closed to find out who had been through last and what was happening,' said Barbara Landis, an Indian School researcher at Cumberland County Historical Society.

 

'He was a person they could go share their stories with, and he kept them and he passed them on.'

 

But Wardecker made many important, often unsung contributions to his home community, noted longtime friend and retired Carlisle banker C. Richard Stover, who cited a range of beneficiaries from the high school athletic department to youth baseball programs.

 

'In my dealings with him, he was honest, dependable and reliable, and always dedicated to the growth of Carlisle commercially and athletically,' Stover said.

 

A Carlisle native, Wardecker attended Carlisle High School and Peirce Business School in Philadelphia.

 

He was a member of the Elks and the Cumberland County Historical Society, and a former member of the Greater Carlisle Area Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Carlisle Association.

 

He was the widower of Ann Davis Wardecker. Surviving are two sons, James D. and Fred W., both of Carlisle; two daughters, Ketrin Loney of Clinton, Md., and Gretchen McCarren of Newville; a sister, Doris Bowen of Carlisle; eight grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

 

Services will be held at 11 a.m. Monday in Hoffman-Roth Funeral Home. Burial will be at the convenience of the family in Cumberland Valley Memorial Gardens, West Pennsboro Twp.

 

Visitation will follow the memorial service in the funeral home.

 

Memorial contributions may be made to the Carlisle Town Band, 35 E. South St., Carlisle 17013.1