After decades of business, Brinkopfs close pet store

For Ramona Brinkopf, the words Sunny Hill have been a big part of her life. When she married her husband, Bill, in 1964, he was already running the Sunny Hill Feed and Seed. Later, she and her husband ran it together as it became the Sunny Hill Garden and Pet Center and finally just a pet store.

Then, most recently, after her husband died last August, she was running the business with her son.

Brinkopf worked at the pet store almost every day for decades, helping children pick out puppies, fish or birds.

"That was fun," she said. "To make a child happy when they bought a dog or a cat. It makes you feel good."

Now, the Cape Girardeau business that has roots that trace to the 1930s, has closed its doors for good as the family that has run the store for nearly five decades has decided to call it quits.

"We have just decided to get out of the retail business," said Ramona Brinkopf's son, who is also named Bill.

Sunny Hill Pet Center at 335 Christine St. closed earlier this spring. At the time, the Brinkopfs said they were closing to remodel and change the full-line pet store into an aquatics-only pet store. But Bill Brinkopf said they traveled around and saw other such pet stores and decided it would have been cost prohibitive.

So, instead, they decided to close the pet store permanently, remodel the building and lease it out to a new business.

"It was a tough decision," Ramona Brinkopf said. "But after analyzing the whole situation, we decided it was for the best."

The store had its beginnings in the early 1930s. Louis C. Blattner and Charles F. Blattner founded the Sunny Hill Feed and Seed Store at 240 S. Frederick St. -- across the street from the Sunny Hill Dairy. The store dealt mainly in seed, livestock and poultry feed.

When the dairy moved in 1941, the Sunny Hill Feed and Seed Store to 245 S. Frederick St. and eventually occupied the entire building, which had an address of 600 Good Hope St.

Louis C. Blattner quit the operations in 1943, and Charles Blattner operated it until his death in August 1943. Fred C. McGowan bought the store in 1945 from the Blattner family and operated it until Bill Brinkopf bought it in 1959.

Brinkopf kept it as Sunny Hill Feed and Seed until 1964, when he added a full-line pet store, including cats, dogs, birds and fish.

"We were the first kennels in the area," Ramona Brinkopf said.

The weird thing is that the Brinkopfs weren't really animal lovers, she said.

"We were garden people," she said. "We liked fish and we liked birds, but we just saw it as a business opportunity."

They moved the business to Christine Street in 1969, Ramona Brinkopf said, following the city's business expansion westward.

In 1992, they made another tough decision -- they sold the garden center portion of the business to Paul Schnare, who still operates Sunny Hill Gardens and Florists at 206 N. Kingshighway.

"Bill and I were getting older," Ramona said, adding that their son was interested in the pet part of the store.

Both Ramona and her son said they appreciated the years of patronage from loyal customers.

One of them was Stella Essner of Scott City, who has bought supplies for her two chihuahuas at Sunny Hill since the 1970s.

"It's sad," she said. "They were our good friends."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137