SO MANY STORIES TO TELL ORNER BILLIARDS CONTINUES A FAMILY TRADITION OF EXCELLENCE IN INDIANAPOLIS By Anthony Stoeckert Steve and Tom Orner grew up around pool tables – literally. As their parents grew their business, which today is known as Jay Orner and Sons Billiard Co., the family’s home served as a showroom, and tables could be found throughout the house, including in sleeping quarters. “And in our bedroom, where my brother and I slept, there was a pool table in the room, and we had bunkbeds and in order to sleep on top, the only way to get down was to get on the pool table,” Steve Orner says. More than 80 years after the brothers’ father, Jay, and grandfather, Hugh, took their first steps in the billiard industry, 28 | BCA INSIDER • EXPO ISSUE 2020
the family enterprise is still thriving as Orner Billiards provides Indianapolis and its surrounding areas with the best American-made pool tables, shuffleboards, foosball, air hockey, bars and barstools, lighting and more. “It’s just been one heck of a ride and we still love it, we still enjoy it,” Steve says. “The fact that we have employees that have been with us for 20 or 40 years, that says a lot.”
on an old, beat-up model and got to work restoring it. “They spent months sanding it down and fixing it up, and they took the table up and some people saw it and wanted to buy it for $200,” Steve says. “That started a chain reaction that is still going on to this day.”
IT ALL STARTED WITH ONE TABLE
Jay and Hugh kept on restoring tables, building an outstanding reputation in the process, and after about 10 years, they opened a pool room with six tables, and they also refurbished old Brunswick tables in the back, selling about 40 to 50 a year.
In 1939, Jay and Hugh decided they wanted a pool table, so they spent $100
“That was pretty good back in those days,” Steve says. “When my dad met my
