The Ukrop family arrived in the United States in 1900 from the then-Czechoslovakian town of Dobra Niva (it means “good meadow”). Stefan and Anna Ukrop came through Ellis Island. They were of a mining family and first settled in the industrial city of Pittsburgh.

The Ukrops moved to a 500-acre farm off Charles City Road in 1914, near the present site of Richmond International Airport, where Joseph Ukrop was born. The family ended up returning to Pittsburgh in 1925 because, says grandson James E. Ukrop, “They weren’t making it at the farm.” At 13 years old, Joe Ukrop started working in a grocery in Pittsburgh. Education wasn’t as important as finding a place in the working world and establishing the family in its adopted country.

By 1932, the family had returned to the farm due to a scarcity of jobs in Depression-era Pittsburgh, and 23-year-old Joe managed the meat section at an A&P Grocery Store on West Grace Street, near present-day Virginia Commonwealth University.

A customer came in to the A&P to inquire if the store manager was interested in getting a small space on Hull Street, at the time a bustling retail district. The manager declined the offer, but young Joe asked about it.

Then he went to Stefan and asked for $1,000, an enormous sum of money, to bankroll his dream. The immigrant Ukrop mortgaged the farm to aid his son.

This was 3611 Hull St., near Broad Rock Road between 35th and 36th streets in South Richmond. The size of a two-car garage, it stood beside a 3,500-square-foot Safeway store. Joe had married in 1935 to Varina High School valedictorian Jacquelin Ldevia Beadles. The couple lived next door to their store.

The store underwent several additions, including, after the Safeway moved in 1941, an expansion into its former space. The elder Ukrop demolished several houses for parking. Jim Ukrop says, “I think that sometimes my father had more interest in construction than the grocery business.”

The expansion of the Ukrop enterprise matched that of a growing family. Joe Ukrop opened his store in May 1937, and first son James came in June. “I’m glad my father opened that store,” Ukrop says. “I was born with a job.”

He told his father at age 14 that he wanted a paper route. When the father asked the son, who’d been working around the store, why he wanted another job, Jim Ukrop replied, “They pay.” His father took him on at 50 cents an hour.

In 1942, Joe Ukrop made news by shuttering the store on Wednesday afternoons and sending the five employees to assist regional farmers in bringing in their crops. World War II had caused severe labor shortages.

“It started because my grandfather needed some help on his farm,” Jim Ukrop elaborates. “Then other farmers came around, ‘Well, Joe, we need some help, too.’ Somehow or another, an [Associated Press] photographer came and took a picture, and it was circulated all over the country.”

Joe Ukrop enlisted in the Marines in 1944 and served in the Pacific Theater. Jacquelin and her staff minded the store until his 1946 return. In February of that year, tragedy befell the family. Joe Jr., 5 years old, was struck and killed by a car on Hull Street.

The store expanded to 10,000 square feet in 1953. Between 1955 and 1960, without a cent of paid advertising, the Hull Street Ukrop’s sold the highest volume among Richmond’s grocers.

Jim persuaded his father in 1963 to open a second store, which he managed, and two years later the Walmsley Boulevard branch started. The Ukrop family by 1972 was operating five stores, with Jim’s younger brother Robert S. Ukrop as manager of the franchise.

The first store closed; it’s now a welding shop girded by fencing. Jim Ukrop is chairman of the company and First Market Bank. Robert is president and CEO. Ukrop philanthropy and civic leadership is known throughout the region.

When Joe Ukrop died in 2002, the chain embraced 27 stores (now 28), a central kitchen and bakery, and a regional specialty store on Libbie Avenue, Joe’s Market. Jacquelin passed away in February. They built their business on good sense and customer service.

One time, a customer bought a truckload of topsoil that was parked in front of the first store. A short time later, he returned to complain that the soil was full of rocks and sticks.

Jim Ukrop remembers of his parents, “They closed the store, they went to his house and raked out the topsoil, and they finished up around midnight. Not many people would do that.”