Plain Dealer Article
The History of JF Novak Company
For Jim and Eleanor Rusnak, the old way is still the best. Every working day for 50 years, Jim Rusnak has oiled the shiny cast-iron gears of century-old machines that embroider designs on such diverse products as police shoulder patches and priests' vestments.
The machines are 30-foot-long leviathans from another era stitched 170 Cleveland Police patches at a time. Both Eleanor and Jim grew up working in the small factory, where the company makes or designs emblems, banners, altar cloths and vestments. The JF Novak Company is one of the last of its kind, a family-run business at the same West Side location for 65 years. Novak family members still work the same machines, still walk the same wooden floors.
Eleanor started working in the shop when she was 5 years old. She would sweep the floors for a nickel an hour. Sharon, Eleanor and Jim's daughter, made a dollar an hour when she grew up working in the store.
Eleanor's grandmother, Elizabeth Horbol, and her parents started an embroidery business in Germany, in the 1890s. They came to the United States before the turn of the century and settled in Cleveland, where Eleanor's grandfather, Joseph Novak, was a blacksmith.
In the 1920s, Eleanor's grandfather went to New York and bought a pair of used Schiffli embroidery machines and had them shipped to Cleveland. With those two machines, her grandparents opened the business in 1931 on Trowbdige Avenue.
Soon the successful operation outgrew that building and moved to the present location, adding three more machines. Today, even Jim Rusnak is no longer sure which two of the five machines are the original ones. He keeps them all running with a huge supply of spare parts and a lot of care. If a part breaks, and he has no replacement, he has it welded back together.
Eleanor's grandfather ran the business with his sons, Joseph and Andrew. The widow of the younger Joseph, Eleanor, 86, still owns the business, works in the office and handles the books.
The elder Novak designed the Cleveland Police emblem found on every officer's uniform, plus many of the patches and emblems used by suburban police and fire departments.
During World War II, the Novak Company made emblems for the military.
Walter Goldbach, a 17-year-old family member designed the original Chief Wahoo for the Cleveland Indians in 1948 while working at Novak's.
Today, Jim Rusnak is the artist in the family and operates the massive panagraph machine attached to one of the old embroidery devices. He takes a large drawing of a patch or banner and tacks it on the panagraph. Then he traces the picture very slowly with a stylus that is attached to controlling rods.
xThe rods duplicate Jim's motion and simultaneously stitch thread in that pattern into more than a hundred patches at a time. One slip of the wrist and the whole batch is ruined. Jim rarely slips.
Eleanor said much of their business these days is in the sale of religious artifacts such as vestments, statues, prayer cards and Christmas tree ornaments. They have something for every faith. The JF Novak Company also sells flags from the United States and 150 other countries in sizes from 2 by 4 inches to 20 by 30 feet. Want a couple of flags from Bulgaria? No problem. Eleanor said that the JF Novak Company was the last place in town to run out of American flags this year during the war with Iraq. They sold every flag in the place. One day there were 250 people in the store wanting American flags.
One of the companies biggest customers are people of Polish descent with a huge appetite for their nation's flag, badges and other ethnic paraphernalia. Next are the Italians, followed by Serbs.
This historical report was published by the Plain Dealer.
