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Checker of the Year
Unpublished Tribune photo from February 21, 1957

BUSINESS NEWS - Mrs. Nadine Gamet, 520 Hayward Ave., has been named "Checker of the Year," winning over all check-out girls in the Hy-Vee Food Store system of 34 company stores.  She is now competing in a regional contest, and should she win, would go to Cleveland, Ohio, in April to the national convention of the Super Market Institute which sponsors the contest.  Judging of the contest was based on customer balloting and letters written by the contestants.  In the picture, Mrs. Gamet is shown receiving her prize, a 17-jewel wrist watch from Roy Frizzell, Ames Hy-Vee Store manager.

From 1951 until 1961 the Hy-Vee Food Store located at 112 South Sheldon (across the street from Welch School and one block from West Lincoln Way) was the only Hy-Vee store in Ames.  When another Hy-Vee store (Ames #2) was started in 1978 at 207 South Duff (now the home of Salvation Army), the original store on Sheldon was known as Ames # 1.  In 1982, the second store moved south on Duff and operated as the Ames Save-U-More (a box-store format).  In 1998, when the Save-U-More concept was dropped, it relocated to 640 Lincoln Way and its name returned to Ames #2.  Today's Ames #1 store is currently the "West" store at 3800 W. Lincoln Way.

Tribune photo published October 4, 1951

NEW STORE AND FREE CAR - This is the Studebaker Champion that will be given away free in celebration of the opening of the Supply Food Store, the new supermarket on So. Sheldon in Collegetown.  Registration will take place for 30 days at the new store beginning tomorrow.  Opening day specials tomorrow and Saturday will include free food baskets, totalling more than $1,000 in value, to be given away at 9 p.m. each of the two nights.

The Hy-Vee stores operated as Supply Stores from their founding in 1930 through 1935. Then some of the stores in Iowa became Service Stores, but stores opened after autumn in 1935 used the Supply Store name.  This was because the two cofounders had been associated with the General Supply Company (based in Lamoni, Iowa), which operated from 1922 to 1932.  The company name was Hyde & Vredenburg, Inc.

There was an employee contest to rename the stores in 1952. Three employees submitted the name Hy-Vee with the "Hy" part from cofounder Charles Hyde's last name and the "Vee" from cofounder David Vredenburg's last name.  Stores began to use the Hy-Vee name in 1952, while the corporation changed its name to Hy-Vee Food Stores, Inc. in 1963 and to the current form of Hy-Vee, Inc. in 1995.

The arrow in this aerial photo (circa 1926) shows the site later occupied by the Ames Hy-Vee Food Store at 112 South Sheldon.  Note the lack of structures on both sides of the street.  Campus Baptist Church would later be located at 130 South Sheldon. Welch School is visible just below the arrow, between Sheldon and Hyland.  State Gymnasium, Clyde Williams Field, Lincoln Apartments, and Collegiate Methodist Church are also prominent landmarks in this photo.