Henry Zupfer hung up his printer’s stick Friday after 56 years in the printing business.

Operating a one-man shop for the past 37years at 103 N. Broadway, Zupfer has been gradually easing out of the business.

He sold his two larger job presses about five years ago and this week he saw the last one moved out of his nearly empty shop.

“THAT PRESS is nearly 100 years old,”said Zupfer, “but with care it’ll be just as good for another 100 years.”

He also has gradually been disposing of his handset type faces to other area printers.

As he stood in the bare-walled shop, a man delivering handbills stuck his head in to say farewell to the familiar shop. Spotting the bill, advertising an upcoming event in town, Zupfer said, “There’s some of my old type now,” his eyes lighting up as if he had just recognized an old friend.

Stacked up in a corner were some posters, leftovers from the days when he owned an automatic press. His wife held up one of the bright posters, advertising a circus coming to town.

“Here’s one that Hank printed,” she said proudly. “That’s when he had the bigger press”

HIS DECISION to close up shop March 1came about when he heard the owners of his building were thinking of selling. Then when he had a chance to sell his remaining press, he decided to call it quits.

Zupfer, who will be 70 in April, says he plans to spend his extra time doing a little gardening.

“Printing has been my whole life,” said Zupfer.

He started out at age 14 in the newspaper business, learning the printing trade at New Ulm Publishing Co. He worked for 16years for Mr. and Mrs. Henry (Cap) Steinhauser who published the New Ulm Review.

The Review building at that time was where Pink’s store is now located. Zupfer recalls the printing press in the basement and newspaper office on the main floor.

“I never got to bed until 2 o’clock the night we’d printed,” he said. “And after that I had to bundle up the papers and get them over to the post office. I still remember walking to the post office in the dark, scared to death. You know the town wasn’t lit up like it is now.”

During the depression things weren’t going too well at the Review, said Zupfer, so he and two other printers, Joe Warta and Henry Oberlander, decided to strike off on their own. They set up shop in the rear of the Tillman Bakery building.

ZUPFER ADMITTED it took a lot of nerve to start a business at that time. His two partners left in a couple years and he continued the Service Print Shop on his own in his present location.

At one time he was printing dance posters for eight of the New Ulm bands, in addition to job printing of all kinds including business cards, wedding invitations, tickets and funeral cards.

He recalled it was kind of a lonely job-printing on his own-but he said he liked it because he could take more time with his work and didn’t have the newspaper pressure.

New Ulm Daily Journal

March 2, 1975