John Conley’s knack for a deal turned into colorful life as he built Spokane’s iconic White Elephant

The war ended, and John Conley had $300 in his pocket.

He’d spent a couple of years building airstrips in the South Pacific, and before that a couple of years working the shipyards in Portland, building Liberty ships for Kaiser. He knew a thing or two about the military. So when his uncle sent him down to the Tri-Cities to buy military surplus toilet paper for his company, Conley Chemical, a light bulb came on.

With his discharge pay, Conley bought surplus “woodies,” wooden and canvas truck bodies no longer needed overseas, for $6. In Spokane, he sold them for $100. The White Elephant was born.

Within 20 years Conley, who died Thursday, was a millionaire. He took his employees to Hawaii. Traveled the world with his family. And he enjoyed the life of a successful and popular businessman.

“I consider Uncle Sam more than a partner in my business,” Conley told the Spokane Daily Chronicle in 1966, noting the surplus of war goods that flowed to his business after World War II ended.

Over the years, as any customer knows, the store expanded beyond military goods. Nowadays, the stores are stuffed with gear for fishing, camping and hunting. You can get tubes for floating the river. Squirt guns can be had, as can real guns.

Rich Conley, John’s oldest child, said his father expanded the store’s merchandise simply based on what his family needed. He started selling sporting goods because he was a sportsman and a local distributor, Jensen-Byrd, had a surplus of sports equipment it needed to offload.

“After he had his fifth kid, he thought, ‘I better start selling toys,’ ” Rich said. “After my sister was born, he thought, ‘I should start selling girls’ toys.’ ”

Was it business acumen that stoked Conley to sell more stuff? Maybe.

Or perhaps it was because he was an incurable pack rat, a condition that led him to buy the 280,000 unsold souvenirs left over from Expo ’74. The World’s Fair load cost him $28,000 and it was all for sale, of course, at his store.

“I didn’t sleep for three days, I was so worried about my investment,” Conley told The Spokesman-Review in 1984. “But we made our money back in six months.”

Ten years after the fair closed, Conley estimated he still had 30,000 glass ashtrays, mountains of teacups, tote bags and tie clips. Spoons, plates and pennants. Belt buckles and buttons. Plastic purses and salt and pepper shakers. Snow globes. Arm patches. Cream pitchers.

Conley kept the prices low at his store. The Expo goods kept their low prices – the same “as the day after the fair” and well below their price during the fair – for years. Every now and again, something would bring in more money than he expected. In 1979, he got $10 from a customer in Paris for an Expo cup and saucer.

The paraphernalia overwhelmed the warehouse, and Conley’s son began trashing some of the historic goods.

“I really have to keep an eye on them,” Conley said of his warehouse manager offspring in 1984. “They keep taking loads of them to the dump when I’m not paying attention.”

Pat Conley, another son, said his father was drawn to all world’s fair paraphernalia, not just Spokane’s.

“It didn’t start with Expo. … He bought the Seattle World’s Fair souvenirs, a lot of them,” Pat said.

When the kids were small and out of school for the summer, Conley would take them on road trips around the Pacific Northwest, looking for deals.

“We would go on business trips with him when we were just little tykes,” Pat said. “He’d go to these monster distributors and offer them pennies on the dollar for all their closeouts. And they’d take it. They’d have all these semis filled with closeouts and they’d say, ‘OK, John, we’ll take it.’ He’d pay them cash.”

Any relative’s spare room was good enough for Conley’s merchandise. The stuff would be “in the houses and garages and barns” of the extended clan.

“I was up in his barn just the other day,” Rich said. “There’s still a lot of (Expo) stuff up there. So much of the glassware.”

But he wasn’t just a collector and savvy retailer. Described as curious, inclusive, affable and giving, he tried to keep his employees and customers focused on the good life. He sold recreational equipment, and for a time took his employees on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii every five years.

He took 69 people on the last trip, in 1975. Some of his own kids couldn’t go, let alone their spouses. There were too many employees and their families.

In the mid-1980s, he bought an open-ended, round-the-world plane ticket. For 110 days, he jetted to Spain, France and Greece. He landed in Saudi Arabia and saw China. On another trip around the same time, he took 17 kids, his own and those of employees, to Disneyland. By himself. When his grandchildren were young, he took them to New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. As they grew older, he took them to Europe.

In the early 1970s, he went back to Truk, the last South Pacific island on which he had served, with some photos he had shot decades before. As a medic, he watched as some of the native Micronesian women gave birth. He found some of those children, grown to adulthood, and others he had known, and gave them photos from a time nearly lost.

“We try to have fun,” he told the paper in 1966. “That’s the whole idea.”

Conley was born in Newark, New Jersey, on May 4, 1927, and was raised in Manhattan. His father ran a cigar store in the CBS Building in New York City. After an unwise investment, Conley’s father moved his family to the Pacific Northwest.

In Washington state, Conley dropped out of sixth grade due to an eye injury from an air gun pellet. At 15, he left to work in the Portland shipyards. Two years later, at age 17, Conley enlisted in the Navy and served with the 29th Construction Battalion. Two years after that, the war was over.

It was his military work that led to his death. He sprayed asbestos in the ship’s hulls in Portland, and wrapped the asbestos around the ship’s valves. Though spots would occasionally show on his lung scans, it was only four weeks ago he was diagnosed with mesothelioma.

At 90, he leaves behind his wife, Mary, who is 88. They have 11 children, 46 grandchildren and 44 great-grandchildren, with a couple more on the way.

Though Conley quickly became a millionaire from his store, averaging $750,000 in gross sales within a few years of the store’s opening, he tried to keep things simple. In the early days, he put only a 10 percent profit on what he paid for the goods. He liked that customers helped each other find their way around the cavernous store. They even helped move the merchandise when he moved his store.

Through it all, he worked. Recently, he could still be found standing at the till, helping customers, or picking up cigarette butts in the parking lot. This year, 71 years after he bought those surplus woodies, he wrote the flag order for July Fourth.

His son Pat said his father was a “wheeler-dealer” and pious Catholic who attended church every Sunday. Sometimes Saturday too.

“There’s been so many rosaries said since he’s passed. He loved to say the rosary,” Pat said. “Knowing Dad, he probably asked the Lord for a discount on his wings. That’s Dad.”

With nearly 50 employees and $1.6 million in toy sales alone in recent years, Conley clearly had a knack for business. He just never liked to admit it.

“I never let it be said that I act like a businessman,” he once said.