Man enjoys entire career staring into face of time

The craftsman says his wife's made-from-scratch cooking keeps him healthy.
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Nicholas Yurchyk was just 11 when he first tried his hand at watch repair.
It didn't go well.
"I took my father's pocket watch apart, and I couldn't put it back together again," he recalled with a grin. "He wasn't happy about it."
Yurchyk eventually learned the meticulous craft of watch repair, and he's been making a living at it ever since.
Now 76 and in business for 52 years in downtown Youngstown, Yurchyk believes he's one of the last surviving watch repair craftsmen in the Mahoning Valley.
He should know. Yurchyk said he once counted 27 other local watch repairmen among his friends. Now every one of them has retired and most are deceased.
Retirement isn't on Yurchyk's agenda. He goes to work six days a week at his one-man shop, Vogue Jewelers on Federal Plaza. "I'm the president and janitor," he quipped.
He spends hours every day hunched over the worn wooden workbench he bought in 1951 with the earnings from his $18-a-week job as an apprentice watch repairman.
Doesn't stock inventory
Most of the hand tools he uses and his store safe also date back to those early days. The store's glass jewel cases, once fully stocked with jewelry and other merchandise, now display only a few watches, some watch bands, simple chains and rings.
"I no longer stock inventory. At my age I don't even buy green bananas anymore," he joked.
Walk-in traffic kept him busy during the 1950s and '60s when the downtown streets were bustling with people, but these days it's not enough.
He gets an occasional walk-in customer at his small shop, but most of his business now comes from six suburban jewelry stores that contract for his services.
The watch-repair business has changed drastically over the years. Pocket watches were commonplace when he started in the craft, and railroad workers brought their timepieces for an accuracy check every six months. Busy train schedules were timed around the conductor's watch, he said, so they had to be precise.
Now many consumers never use watch repair services at all, he said. They opt for inexpensive watches and discard them when they break.
Yurchyk still gets to repair an occasional pocket watch, always his favorite. Most of his work now is with quartz wrist watches, he said, or with timepieces damaged by a another repairman or by a retail store employee trying to put in a battery.
"It's a shame to see a good watch defaced," he said, shaking his head. "I tell my customers, when you have a toothache, do you see a plumber or an electrician? No. So why do you take your watch to somebody who'll be working in the shoe department tomorrow."
His background
The son of Ukrainian immigrants, Yurchyk was always fascinated with clocks and their works. He grew up on Youngstown's West Side, graduated from Chaney High School in 1944 and went looking for a job at a downtown jewelry store.
At 17 he landed an apprenticeship with Harvey Strotman, the head watchmaker at what was known as Best Jewelers downtown, and he spent five years learning the trade. His steel-worker father was "tickled to death" when his son managed to find work outside the mills.
Retail space was hard to find when Yurchyk completed the apprenticeship, so he persuaded an athletic supplies store owner to let him rent a corner inside a Glenwood Avenue shop.
Eventually he opened his own store at Market Street and Midlothian Boulevard, moving to two other downtown locations over the years before settling into his Federal Plaza shop in the late 1990s.
Other ventures
Always an entrepreneur, Yurchyk has supplemented his watch repair business with a variety of other enterprises over the years.
He likes to boast that his store once offered the largest inventory of polka recordings in the region, and he also featured ethnic head scarves and other clothing items. He has a small selection of Ukrainian Easter Egg dyes now, but he once carried a wide selection.
In the 1960s, when the Cold War made it difficult to get packages into the Soviet Union, he found a niche as a mailing service because of his ability to speak Ukrainian and Slovak. More recently he's worked as an outside sales representative for Pan Atlas Travel, although business has been slow since Sept. 11, 2001.
Yurchyk and his wife, Rose, have been married 46 years, and he gives her much of the credit for his good health. "She takes good care of me," he said. "Married for 46 years and I have never eaten a frozen dinner or pot pie. She's Hungarian and a very good cook."
The organic vegetables he raises at the couple's Liberty home might help too, he said. Yurchyk has a growing collection of prize ribbons his produce has won at the Canfield Fair, including several awards from this year's fair, but garlic is his specialty. He grows 15 different varieties.
"My wife says she's a garlic widow, so I'm gonna cut back this year," he said, grinning. "Usually I planted 2,000 garlic plants, but I'm gonna cut back to 1,000 this year."
vinarsky@vindy.com