A little hardware store in Little Italy kept Paul Rinaldi alive.
“The customers at Chiarugi Hardware, the neighborhood, the people, that was his life, he adored them, that’s what kept him motivated especially in his later years. I’m telling you, he was a man with a mission,” said his wife, Carole Rinaldi.
Mr. Rinaldi died Feb. 20 from pulmonary disease. He was 77.
His life, from cradle to grave, played out in the store. He worked there growing up and bought it from his father, who bought it from another Italian immigrant family that opened the shop in 1924.
After moving to Mount Prospect in 1951 to raise his family, he made the 90-minute drive to the old neighborhood six days a week.
In recent years he drove a Chrysler sedan until he traded it for a minivan to make it easier for he and his wife to get in and out.
The store had four or five employees for a long time and was profitable, but when it moved down the street in 2009 to a scaled-down space, the staff was reduced to two: Mr. Rinaldi and his wife, who had just retired from a separate career.
In warm weather, the couple sat on a tiny cement slab patio outside the store at 1412 West Taylor Street, exchanging pleasantries with passersby until a customer walked in.
“Paul wouldn’t let them walk out of the store until they understood how to use a tool or do one thing or another,” said his wife.
“The last day we walked out of the store was Dec. 12 as we locked up. Then Paul got sick,” she said.
“We’re closing the store. We can’t run it without Paul. The doors will not open again at all. There’s no way possible. My son is an executive at a wine company and my daughter is a mortgage loan officer for a bank, and they have their own lives. I can’t do it by myself,” she said.
“I just disconnected the store phone. I think it’s the first time in over 100 years that number won’t be the hardware store. It was a hard call to make.”
It would be hard to find another business owner who’s built up the amount of social capital Mr. Rinaldi did in Little Italy.
He ran a cash business but routinely told new customers who were astonished he didn’t accept credit to come back with the money another time or send him a check in the mail.
“Nobody ever stiffed him,” said his daughter, Lori Rinaldi. “Can you imagine?”
Loyal customers who moved out of the neighborhood would make the trip back to support the Rinaldis.
“The current store, the shelves were a shadow of what they once were at their previous location, but you found yourself going there to buy what he had, just to support him because he was so beloved,” said Ron Onesti, a suburbanite who grew up in the neighborhood. “You can get paper towels or an extension cord anywhere, many of us would brave traffic jams on the Eisenhower or Kennedy to go buy one or have a key made by Paul.”
Onesti, an entertainment impresario and president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, said this summer’s Little Italy Fest will be dedicated to Mr. Rinaldi’s memory.
The store was also beloved in the Italian community for selling wine-making equipment that allowed families to carry on the traditions of previous generations in Italy who made their own wine.
“That shop, it was his lifeline, it really was. It would charge him like we charge our cell phones,” said his daughter. “Some people retire to Florida; my dad just wanted to be down on Taylor Street.”
Born in Chicago April 19, 1947, Mr. Rinald’s parents, Eraldo and Rose, spoke no English when they came to the United States. Eraldo found work at Chiarugi Hardware, originally at 1022 West Taylor St. The two brothers who opened the shop, Olinto and Ermelindo Chiarugi, were from the same part of Northern Italy that he was from. Eraldo later bought out the aging brothers and became the new owner.
Mr. Rinaldi described the store’s golden days in a story published last year in the Sun-Times. He remembered bicycles and motorcycles that were sold when he first started helping in the store as a young teenager in the ‘60s.
It was a turbulent time in Little Italy, with the new expressway, urban renewal, and UIC campus construction displacing many businesses and families. Chiarugi Hardware ultimately had to make its first move a couple blocks west, to 1449 W. Taylor St.
Mr Rinaldi was drafted into the Army and served two years in Germany — luckily avoiding combat in Vietnam — before returning home in 1968 at age 21 to help his dad at the store.
“And I got stuck,” he told the Sun-Times with a chuckle, in that 2024 interview. “But I couldn’t leave my father. He taught me everything. His whole life was Taylor Street.”
In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Rinaldi is survived by his son Paul Rinaldi Jr., and five grandchildren.
A funeral mass will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 27 at St. Emily Catholic Church in Mount Prospect.