MOODY, ERNEST LUTHER JR - Tulsa County, Oklahoma | ERNEST LUTHER JR MOODY - Oklahoma Gravestone Photos

Ernest Luther Jr MOODY

Memorial Park Cemetery
Tulsa County,
Oklahoma

May 7, 1925
May 24, 1989
Spouse:
Mildred LoRayne Nichols

Ernest Moody Jr. founded shop by chance by PHIL MULKINS World Business Writer Tulsa World Thursday, September 19, 2013

Ernest Moody Jr. got into the clock repair business in 1944 at age 19, and traveling jewelry salesmen set him up with enough stock to expand his shop into a fledgling jewelry business that 70 years later is one of the nation's leading independent chains.

That's the origins of the business as described by his son Kevin Moody, who today is president and CEO.

Ernest Moody's parents had moved to Picher in far northeast Oklahoma in 1926 to start a steam-powered laundry that served the lead and zinc miners there. But the Great Depression hit their business hard and it folded, so the family returned to Tulsa when Moody was 4.

Over the next 10 years his parents suffered illnesses, and Ernest's father died when he was 14. As a junior in high school, Moody spent much of his time pulling a wagon around the neighborhood picking up neighbors' laundry for his mother's laundry business, which brought in just pennies a day.

They had an alarm clock that he needed for getting up on time for school, and one day it broke. She sent him with the clock to Gil- more's Repair Shop on North Lewis Avenue, but having no money for the 50-cent spring it needed, Moody took the part-time job that "Mr. Cupples," owner and chief repairman at Gilmore's, offered him as a way to pay off the repair.

Working after school, Moody fixed his own clock and learned the watch repair business. He continued this job for years, developing a love for clocks and repairing them.

Moody contracted tuberculosis when he was 17, and when his Tulsa doctor couldn't help him he underwent experimental treatment at a U.S. Army hospital in Colorado. One of his roommates there was also a watch repairman, and during Moody's 18-month recovery they joined forces to form a hospital watch repair service.

Surviving TB, Moody returned to Tulsa to resume his education at Rogers High School, where he learned he had received a Cornell University engineering scholarship. This would have qualified him to move into an emerging technology field that interested him keenly - television. But fate would not have it that way.

When Moody excitedly hurried to the repair shop to tell Mr. Cupples of his good fortune, the owner congratulated him but dropped a bombshell that would change Moody's life. Cupples told him he had to give up the shop and move out of state to care for an ailing family member, but he wanted to sell Moody the business.

Moody said he had very little money - just $106 his mother had saved for him. Cupples shook his hand and said, "Sold!"

Moody changed the shop's name to Moody's Time Service, and later added gems to its inventory. It was 1944 and Moody was 19.

His store - Moody's Jewelry - proved to be as durable as the diamonds it has sold through the years.

Contributed on 11/20/13 by tslundberg
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Record #: 29385

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Additional MOODY Surnames in MEMORIAL PARK Cemetery

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Submitted: 11/20/13 • Approved: 11/21/13 • Last Updated: 12/3/22 • R29385-G0-S3

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