John Gras: John's Battery and Electric

It was during the Depression that John Gras started a business to feed his family. In so doing, he created a Zeeland landmark and legacy business.?

He was born in 1909. ?In 1932, with a few tools including a battery charger and a soldering torch, John opened a battery sales and service business in a rented garage in downtown Zeeland, a few steps north of the post office.

To announce his business opening, John mailed a penny postcard to everyone he knew. It read:

Dear Friends, I wish to announce that I have opened a Battery and Electric Shop located next to Isaac Van Dyke Co. Implement Store on North Church Street, Zeeland. I believe my prices will be of interest to you. Your battery recharged for 24 cents. Also, special prices on repairing generators, starters, batteries, and other electrical work. Genuine Grant Batteries at $4.95 and up, all guaranteed for 12, 18, and 24 months (according to size and price). Also have used and rebuilt for $2.50 and up. Your leaky milk cans soldered for fifteen cents each and cash paid for junk batteries. All work guaranteed and at ‘depression’ prices. Give me a trial and be convinced.

Car batteries weren’t the only focus of his business. Back in those days, gathering around the radio in the family parlor was a popular form of entertainment. But there were few radio stations. To enhance receptivity, people strung wire antennas between buildings or trees and grounded them.

But the people who lived outside of town had another problem: few rural homes had electricity.? So, in addition to the radio, country folk needed two sets of batteries: one set to charge while the other set was in use. In other words, when country folk came to town on Saturdays to do their shopping for the week, they would drop off their dead batteries and pick up the recharged ones.? John was targeting that customer.

In 1936, John moved his business to Elm Street directly behind the Zeeland Hotel, which at that time was located behind (on the north side of) the Zeeland State Bank.?

Over time, electricity became more accessible to rural folk. Because of this, electric motors became more popular. So, John began working on them. He also rebuilt starters and alternators for cars, scooters, and tractors, and sold their owners the batteries they needed to power the starters. In addition, he fixed electric washing machines and other appliances.

Needing more space, in 1952 he bought the adjacent house north of his shop on Elm Street, and on the driveway built a brick building. That building still stands at 41 N Elm Street.? The reason he needed more space was because having lived through the Depression, he feared running out of supplies to sell.? Therefore, he never threw away anything.

John even found a way to recycle oil.? He did this when he designed and built his own coal-burning furnace. To generate more heat, John supplied the fire with used motor oil, which entered the burning chamber through a tube.

The secret to John’s success was that his customers trusted him, and he trusted them. When John left the shop to make service calls or went home for lunch, he would leave the doors of his shop unlocked so customers could drop off what they wanted repaired or pick what John had fixed.

One of John’s nine children, John C. Gras, was born in 1955. John C. began working in the shop as a young boy. In 1976 John C. bought the business from his father, who by that time was 68 years old. Still, the first John stayed working in the shop for another 20 years.

As the new owner of John’s Battery and Electric, one of the first things John C. did was recycle the four tons of scrap metal his father had accumulated for the next Great Depression that, thankfully, did not happen. But in other ways John C. was like his father: he continued to rebuild starters and alternators for automobiles, sell batteries, and trust people.? And they trusted him.?

As John C. approached the age his father was when he sold him the business, John’s Battery and Electric was no longer rebuilding starters and alternators; instead, it was selling batteries to commercial customers, those who needed batteries for emergency lighting, lifts, scooters, and forklifts, and retail customers, who need batteries for cars, boats, RVs, and golf carts.

In 2024, at the age of 69, John C. sold the 92-year-old business.

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