HENRY “SWANEE” FENENBOCK - THE ULTIMATE PEN MAN

Henry "Swanee" Fenenbock

by Len Provisor and Henry Fenenbock

 

He must have been born a Pen Man because, as he told it, from his earliest recollection he was fascinated by the written word. Not the words themselves, but by the devices that transferred men’s thoughts to the paper they were recorded upon.

As the youngest orphan child of seven siblings, survival, not education was the priority. His mother died at his birth in 1908 and his father before he reached ten. The lower Eastside of New York on Henry Street, which was his namesake, was a hard place to grow up. But without parents the kids each tended to fend for themselves.

Henry Fenenbock was a natural huckster and mechanically good with his hands. To make a few bucks for food his fascination with pens provided a unique opportunity. Pawnshops were a source of an unlimited supply of broken fountain pens. By re-claiming these pens, repairing them and selling them at bargain prices on street corners, he could feed himself and contribute some to his brothers and sisters. It was the start of a life long career in the pen business, which would take him eventually to downtown Los Angeles, a place where his career as a Fountain Pen Man really soared. But not before he took his pen repair skills on the road. Now a young man with wanderlust and a few bucks, he found himself traveling from city to city throughout the U.S. to see the country. After all, everywhere there were pawnshops with cheap broken pens and an unlimited supply of anxious buyers for the recycled writing instruments.

Of course, along the road to Los Angeles Henry was using his skills as an entrepreneur to create ideas, which would sometimes temporarily enhance his bank role. When he landed in Detroit in the early 1930’s he opened the first liquor store at the end of prohibition. Long lines of anxious buyers vanished when the store closed due to claims of bad liquor, a financial bust. Then came the Chicago World’s Fair. Henry became the “Turtle King”, selling thousands of the turtles by being the first to use the shell to create a World’s Fair souvenir. He hired an artist, his wife to be, to paint them and that enterprise flourished until a mishap occurred at the hotel where he kept the critters. It seems the weather changed and the hotel turned on the radiator heater, thus boiling the turtle inventory, which was held in a container above the heat source. Another financial disaster. He followed that act with ant farms and crickets as pets, but never lost his true calling as Pen Man extraordinaire and so when he landed broke in Los Angeles in 1936 he needed to start anew.

Henry scraped together a few bucks and rented a storefront on 8th Street in downtown Los Angeles. What he knew best was how to fix pens and a unique and cheap source was still pawnshops.

 

 

 

So began “Swanee’s Pen Hospital”. Henry set up his repair facility in the window at 315 West 8th Street and became a fascination to passers-by, who would watch, intrigued by the process. Business flourished. Repair and sale of the used pens was a good living, but the used pen business was not enough. Swanee (Henry loved the song “Swanee River” and it is believed that is the source of his adopted name) built a reputation, but it was not until a chance visit in 1938 by one Carl Priest of the Parker Pen Company that life really changed for Swanee. Carl Priest later writes, “ I shall always treasure my first visit to Swanee’s Pen Shop. Henry, there in a white smock --- Estelle, his wife in the front of the window painting or coloring a photograph --- and a sign that said ---‘complete overhaul 29 Cents--- with a bottle of Parker Quink free’ --- and then the first words I ever recall Henry say --- ‘Mom, look, Mr. Priest of Parker is calling on us’ ”. Then Carl writes, “We went up the elevator to a room on the third floor, I believe it was there where you (Henry) completely charmed me--- and at the same time made me sad when you pulled at that cigar box full of pawnshop pens and, with the first tear I ever saw trickle down your check, you said --- ‘I love the pen business --- I have all my life --- and why do I have to buy them from Hock shops.’ ”

It was at that moment things changed. A new sign went in the window. “A Complete Overhaul 39 Cents” (and no free bottle of Quink). Henry had become a direct dealer. In the ensuing years Henry became Parker’s largest dealer. In a 1960 letter to Henry, Parker National Sales Manager Graham Butler writes, “ Henry, I believe my first contact with your account was during the 1946 era when I was running the IBM department and you appeared as just another statistic to me until one day lights began to flash, buzzers sounded and the tabulator ground to a halt. Your purchases has actually had broken the capacity of our machine. We had been limited to a maximum counter space of five digits, 99,999.99 --- your purchases totaled $300,000.00. Thereafter we had to manually type your record”. Amazingly, according to Parker account manager Oz Verket in his 1960 farewell letter to Swanee he said, “The pen shop grew from a twenty nine cent repair outlet to the world’s largest pen outlet”.

Yes, the pen business was good and Henry and his family grew up at 315 West 8th Street, but life had bigger things in store for this Fountain Pen Man, all thanks to his love affair with writing instruments. In 1948, while still maintaining Swanee’s Pen Shop, he acquired ownership of a little know clock factory in Alhambra, California. Today Lawson Clocks designed by the renowned art deco designer, Kem Weber, are collectable, bringing a fine price on Ebay. But Henry had a factory and capacity that exceeded the demand for clocks. Again Henry turned his attention to the pen business.

Parker had a demand for onyx and black glass desk sets. Henry sourced the onyx material from nearby Mexico and contracted the fabrication of the unique and popular black glass.

 

 

 

 

This business also flourished and Henry produced tens of thousands of desk sets for the Parker factory. He cut, polished, assembled and packed the sets on his production lines and took great pride in servicing well the need of Parker to provide quality products to showcase their pens on the desks of executive offices across the country. In order to provide a constant source of desk sets, without receipt of purchase orders, Henry gambled that Parker would consume his production and in 1960 maintained a constant inventory of Parker desk sets in excess of $200,000. To enhance the desk set line, Henry developed a powerful permanent magnet assembly, which, according to the Parker Desk Set Catalog, creatively held the desk pens in any desired position on the desk sets. This system proved very successful and Henry continued to manufacture desk sets for Parker until late 1979.

Still never satisfied, Henry’s yearning to grow and explore new opportunities took an interesting turn in 1954, when he read an article in the Wall Street Journal about a new theme park being developed by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California. What an opportunity he thought. The park would feature a turn of the century street called “Main Street”, which would offer shops from Main Street American companies such as Swift, Carnation, Gibson and, why not Parker. So excited was he that he immediately called his friends at Parker and extolled the virtues of becoming a part of this wondrous fantasy of Walt Disney. Parker took a hard look at this project but ultimately came to the conclusion that a theme park might offer an unwarranted financial risk and though they thanked Henry for his timely referral of the Disney project, they would respectfully decline.

But, Henry had done considerable work towards the idea of a turn of the century pen shop on Main Street. The Disney folks were impressed with his tenacity and he had a big decision to make. He could walk away from the Disney project or, why not, step into Parker’s shoes and take on the Disney Pen shop on his own. Of course, to do so would require a great financial risk on his part, because Disney, who was short of funds, required lessees to make a strong financial commitment to building out their projects. Nevertheless, Henry was convinced that the Disney idea was a winner and so, with little regard for the risk, signed a contract to operate the pen shop without the Parker name associated.

 

 

 

Yes, this was a big risk, but Henry was a risk taker and was enamored with this idea. It reminded him of the hype that surrounded his days at the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair. And so it happened. Disneyland opened to a huge success thanks to Walt’s promotion of the park on ABC television throughout the development. As Walt Disney became closer to opening the park and money became scarcer for him, Henry hocked everything he had and took on all available space that Disney would lease inside the park. On opening day Henry not only had the Pen Shop on Main Street where he prominently featured Parker products, but also the Adventure Land Bazaar and Cantina, the Jewelry Store, the Tobacco Shop, the Coin Shop and all the cigarette machines in the park. Thanks to his love of fountain pens Henry was a Disneyland mogul.

For the next five years the pen shop and other Disney enterprises flourished for Henry and all the while Swanee’s Pen Shop in downtown L.A. bustled with activity, preparing and shipping souvenir pens to Disneyland, while still offering first class personal services to his customer selling and repairing Parker pens. Lawson Time focused on building desk sets for Parker, the clocks had to take a back seat. Swanee’s Pen Shop closed in 1960 simultaneously with the end of the five-year leases Disney had offered and Lawson Time terminated desk set manufacturing in 1979, when Parker found the desk set market in serious decline. Throughout his long career of repairing, selling, promoting and manufacturing for the Parker Pen Company, Henry reinvested all his excess funds directly into the stock of the company he most admired, the Parker Pen Company. As the company grew, so did his fortunes and at his death, he was the single largest non-family shareholder. Henry died of cancer in 1981.

What an unlikely career the pen business was for a kid from the lower Eastside of New York to aspire to. But Henry was a Pen Man from the day he was born until the day he died, always looking the next opportunity to sell a pen or design a new pen idea. But that’s another story.

A little known invention by Henry Fenenbock

 

 

© 2007 Henry Fenenbock All rights reserved by author.

This article compiled by Len Provisor for Pen Collectors of America article in 2007.

 

  2015 Len Provisor and Henry Fenenbock - all rights reserved