After 55 years at a Rock Hill feed store, local legend Rev. Rick Sturgis dies
If it grew in York County for the past half century, and fed people and tasted great on a hot summer Sunday in a grandmomma’s back yard, Rick Sturgis probably sold it.
But the preacher in the signature overalls, red neckerchief and cowboy hat at Rock Hill’s Farmer’s Exchange, Rev. Rick Sturgis, will not hand out seeds and advice and smiles anymore.
Sturgis, nicknamed “Mule,” died Friday at age 70.
He had worked at A.B. Poe’s Farmers Exchange for 55 years, starting as a teen. He never left.
“Rick Sturgis was a wonderful man,” said Farmer’s Exchange owner Bynum Poe. “He was a decent, caring person who loved everybody he ever met. And he met just about all of Rock Hill.”
Sturgis was the longtime pastor of Living by Faith Baptist Church in York who also recorded gospel music. But his public life in those overalls at the Farmer’s Exchange in South Carolina was even better known.
The feed and seed store on Cherry Road, which still in 2022 has grain silos in the middle of the city, is a landmark in South Carolina. It opened in 1939. It remains on South Cherry Road across from District Three football stadium, just a tomato toss from Main Street.
Anybody who wanted to grow butter beans or snap peas or tomatoes could, and did, ask Sturgis for his expertise. The place has uncountable numbers of seeds and plants and anything an amateur gardener or professional farmer needs. Sturgis always gave his time and his smile to the newest gardener or the toughest old farmer.
Repeat customers -- and there are many -- would wait for Sturgis to help them because he was as much a part of the store as the jars filled with speckled bean varieties or the sacks of seed.
Sturgis worked for three generations of Poes at the store -- always in those trademark denim overalls.
“He cared so much for this place and everyone.,” Bynum Poe said.
