Apr 9, 2007

Retired gift shop owner to reopenBy Bill RadfordThe Gazette

So much for retirement.

Whickerbill Contemporary Gifts, a part of downtown Colorado Springs for nearly 50 years, closed last summer. “I’m just retiring, purely and simply,” owner John Eastham said then.

Now Eastham, 75, is going back into business with a new shop in Manitou Springs. Like his old shop, it will sell items such as glassware, china and pottery.

Retirement, he said Friday, didn’t agree with him. It’s too dull.

“I just decided that I really missed the business, I missed seeing the people, so I thought, ‘Well, it’s time to go back into it.'”

Eastham named the Whickerbill after a prairie bird that used to follow buffaloes. Eastham’s grandmother would call his grandfather “an old whickerbill” when she got mad at him. Eastham said he may keep the old name but isn’t sure.

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