TUSCHHOFF SERVING FOURTH TERM ON JACKSON BOARD OF ALDERMEN

JACKSON -- On Tuesday, the first day of her retirement, Val Tuschhoff was still there among the fabric samples that fill her old shop on the square. She promised the new owners she'd help them out for awhile.

Slowing down is going to take awhile.

For the past 15 years, Val's Upholstery has been a place people stopped to talk about having their chair re-upholstered or to talk about city business. Tuschhoff is serving her fourth term on the Jackson Board of Aldermen, a position she says "is turning into a full-time job."

Besides her work on the Board of Aldermen, where she serves as chairwoman of the Street Committee, Tuschhoff also is the secretary of the Jackson Chamber of Commerce and is active in her church.

So Tuschhoff, deciding she'd like to reduce the pace of her life, has sold the upholstery business to Lori and Brad Haertling of Jackson. Her four employees -- Forrest Wayne Tuttleton, Don Stevens, Beth Wessell and Kevin Richard -- are staying and so is the name Val's Upholstery.

Tuschhoff dates her start in the upholstery business to age 8, when she made herself a dress on a sewing machine despite her mother's misgivings. She learned more from 4-H classes and eventually took an upholstery class at the vocational school in Cape Girardeau.

"From that time on I did all our furniture," she said.

Tuschhoff worked for some furniture companies at first and at one time ran her business out of a garage before moving to the square. In that period, she became known to antique dealers and antique-lovers alike for being able to restore a threadbare antique back to its former splendor.

"You've got to have an imagination and say, That is what it's supposed to be like," she says.

A museum in Oakaville, Ill., commissioned her to re-upholster all their antiques.

She intends to continue her community work and to travel.

She won't miss the pace the business requires, but says, "I will miss my customers and I will miss my employees probably more than anything."

Her husband, Norman, already is retired from the Jackson Police Department and had been helping her out at the shop. "This is his second retirement," Tuschhoff said.