Laundry industry pioneer Dick Lutts recently passed away at the age of 98.
Lutts, a former vice president of Salem Laundry Company in Salem, Mass., is widely credited with moving the company away from a strictly laundry delivery business model to one that also included the operation of coin-operated laundries during the early days of the laundromat industry.
After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Lutts graduated from the University of Maine with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and began his professional career with JCPenney in Caribou, Maine. He eventually ended up settling in his hometown of Salem, where went to work for Salem Laundry in 1958.
“Dick was a true gentleman,” explained Jeff Hooper of Salem Laundry. “He was always kind and helpful to me as I entered the business, and I will miss him.”
Lutts worked at Salem Laundry until his retirement in 1988.
“My father, John, and he were a great team, with each man’s strengths complementing the other’s weaknesses,” Hooper recalled. “Dick’s great skill was managing people. He was smart, compassionate and understanding, but also firm. Most of all, he was a consummate salesman. He possessed the natural ability to get people to buy into his ideas so that they chose to do things, as opposed to feeling like they had been told to do them.
“Dick was instrumental in helping to successfully guide Salem Laundry Company from a large family and commercial laundry into an operator of self-service laundries.”
The first laundromat Salem Laundry built was in 1961, according to Lutts’ son Richard.
“John Hooper had purchased a piece of land, and my father must have convinced him to try opening a coin laundry there,” noted Richard Lutts. “By 1989, the company owned 10 stores. As I understand it, John was the engineer – he designed all of the stores, and my father was the one who found the locations.”
Throughout his 30-year career in the laundry industry, Lutts was influential in the professional lives of numerous laundromat owners.
“Dick was my mentor in this industry,” said former CLA Chair Jim Whitmore, who owns Sunshine Express Laundry Center in Gloucester, Mass. “On many levels, he taught me all that I know, relative to the basics of being in the laundry business.
“He was very smart and committed to those whose paths he crossed. He was committed to their winning in life. He was remarkable in the fact that he would look into each person’s situation to see how he could support them in winning. He was very generous with his wisdom.”
Dick Lutts is survived by his wife of 74 years, Betty; two sons, Peter (Susan Weiler) and Richard (Louise Mears Lutts); two daughters Betsey (Edward Bennett) and Christine (Richard Girard); a sister-in-law, Nancy Lutts; five granddaughters, Corinne, Rebecca, Grace, Katie and Emily; and one great-granddaughter, Amy.
