Furniture retailer Fred Pedersen Jr. dies at 91

Fred Pedersen Jr., who oversaw his family’s 122-year-old downtown Santa Rosa furniture store during a three-decade period of modernization and growth, has died. He was 91.

Pedersen, who co-owned Pedersen’s Furniture from the late 1940s to 1979, died Tuesday in Santa Rosa of complications from Parkinson’s disease.

He ran the business alongside his cousin, Bill Pedersen, when the present-day Fifth Street store was built in 1953. Before that time, the company operated out of leased space.

Fred Pedersen, who served as the company buyer, established a buying group with other independent retailers to allow them to compete with larger stores. He was among the first to display furniture in “room settings” rather than warehouse style. The practice since has become an industry standard.

“He was on the front edge of doing that,” said his eldest son, Ken Pedersen of Dillon Beach, who now co-owns the store with his brother, Paul Pedersen of Santa Rosa.

Fred Pedersen was born in Santa Rosa in 1922. His grandfather, Danish immigrant J.C. Pedersen, founded the furniture company 30 years earlier, in 1892.

Pedersen graduated from Santa Rosa High School and was briefly in the FBI before enlisting in the Army, where he served as a military policeman at the Presidio and at a post in Marysville.

He married his late wife, Winifred Cleaveland, in 1944. The couple settled in Santa Rosa and raised four sons.

Pedersen followed his father, Fred Pedersen Sr., into the family business. Before he came along, its location changed several times.

The original A Street store was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. J.C. Pedersen, a cabinetmaker, operated from his home before moving to the current site of Corrick’s stationery store on Fourth Street. When Bank of America wanted that spot, the store moved again, to a building at Fifth and B streets.

In 1953, Fred Pedersen and his cousin got a construction loan and built the current store at Fifth and D streets. It was the first time the family owned its own building. In 1974, they expanded, creating more warehouse and showroom space.

“It was a wonderful partnership,” said Bill Pedersen, who continued working about a decade after his cousin retired. “We had all those years of running a successful store. Fred was a big part of it.”

Fred Pedersen was the store’s buyer, traveling to wholesalers in Chicago and back East. He was energetic and social, making business calls by day and entertaining at night. His son, who started traveling with his father on business trips in the early 1970s, said he had a hard time keeping up.

“We would work all day in the marketplace and be out late drinking and dining,” Ken Pedersen said. “He would get up in the morning and run circles around me. It was hard for me to keep up with him, even at my young age.”

In the 1960s, furniture giant Ethan Allen wanted Fred Pedersen to be an exclusive retailer but he turned them down, opting to remain independent. However, he borrowed their “room settings” concept, making it his own.

In his spare time, Fred Pedersen was an avid hunter and fisherman. The family had a house at Dillon Beach and Pedersen and his wife spent fly-fishing season in Montana. Pedersen helped launch a boating program at Lake Ralphine in Howarth Park.

After his wife died in 2000, he moved from his Montecito Heights home to Spring Lake Village. More recently, he moved to his son’s townhouse, where he died.

“He lived almost his entire life in a five-mile radius around Santa Rosa,” his son said.

In addition to sons Ken and Paul, Pedersen is survived by his other two sons, Chris of Sonoma and Jay of Sebastopol.

The family is planning a memorial sometime in January at St. Eugene’s Cathedral in Santa Rosa.