Champaign's only men's hat store calling it quits

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Dan's Hat Shop is the kind of store you don't find much any more, and soon you won't find Dan's Hat Shop at all.

Longtime owners Kenneth and Mary Mabray are closing the venerable store in downtown Champaign after 81 years in business. The store, founded by Mary's father, Dan Semmons, is expected to close at the end of March.

"We've decided to retire and sell out," said Mary Mabray. "We're one of the oldest businesses in town ... It's time we retired."

"I'll be 85 in September, and I want to stay in Champaign near my doctor," said her husband, Kenneth, an Oklahoma native who habitually wears a stockman's hat.

The closing will bring to an end a store that specialized in men's hats of every style and color: fedoras, homburgs, derbies, safari hats, newsboy caps, Mississippi gambler's hats, Greek fisherman's caps and more.

"I've always carried about 5,000 until this year," Kenneth Mabray said. "This year I ordered only a few different sizes."

Establshed in 1921

Dan's Hat Shop occupies a highly visible location in downtown Champaign. Mary Mabray said her father, a Greek immigrant who altered his name to Semmons, established the business in 1921 at another location. At the start, he didn't sell hats, but only serviced them.

"He used to clean and block hats, do pressing and the whole works," she said. "Now all we do is retail."

In the early days, the business offered shoeshines, and Mary's mother, Ruth Semmons, worked there. too. Kenneth Mabray bought the current site in 1954 and moved the shop there about 1963.

The Mabrays got involved in the shop when they returned from World War II. Both had served in the Marine Corps; Kenneth in the Pacific, Mary on the home front. They met at a PX at Oceanside, Calif., and got married in 1944.

"I came to Champaign on Jan. 20, 1946," Kenneth Mabray said. "My father-in-law was 70, and I was 28. He taught me to be a hatter."

Dan's boasted at least one famous customer.

"Count Basie wore the captain's hat," Mary Mabray said, pointing to a sample on a nearby hat rack. "Whenever he was in the area, he'd come down and get one. That was a long time ago."

"Every time he'd make a cross-country trip, he'd swing through Champaign and get himself a new hat," her husband said, recalling that the jazz musician took size 7.

"You'll find that we're one of the only businesses that never had a telephone," Mary Mabray said. "You can't sell hats over the telephone. They have to come in and try it on."

No telephone means Dan's doesn't take credit cards. "No checks. No refunds," a sign at the counter says.