Letter: Muenzer’s closing had help from schools
I read your opinion column about the closing of Muenzer's after 102 years. You wrote a very nice obituary and basically that it died of natural causes, but I would like to point out that it had a lot of help from the school systems in San Benito County, and based upon how you want to look at it, it may have died from anything from an assisted suicide, all the way up to Murder 2. For many years Muenzer's worked closely with the schools of San Benito county to sell their Physical Education uniforms, and for many years made donations back to the programs at the local schools, but beginning about six years ago one by one each of the schools abandoned them beginning with Rancho and ending with San Benito High School. Having been the Physical Education department chair at San Benito High School for several years I worked closely with Jan and Jerry to have them be the exclusive supplier of our Physical Education uniforms, but one by one schools thought they could make more money by bypassing Muenzer's and selling their own P.E. clothes. I also blame the school boards who no longer supported Physical Education departments in mantaining a specific uniform for physical education, (but that is a whole different letter). Either way removing Rancho, Maze, Anzar, and San Benito High School P.E. uniforms hurt them tremendously. I would argue that most people went in and bought two uniforms, a lock, maybe socks and tennis shoes, and probably a sweat shirt. I would guess anywhere from $30 to $150 each fall, multiplied by thousands of families who came in and you have, in my opinion, the critical mass that pushed it over the edge. I hope all those who slowly choked Muenzer's out sleep well at night.
