BUILDING ON SUCCESS

Paul applied all the knowledge and expertise he gained by starting Paul’s Billiards Supply and Repair, a true family business that his sons worked for. Gary’s brother, Raymond, was still living in Pennsylvania. Paul went there to see his son from his first marriage, who was working in a Caterpillar factory.

“My dad goes down one day with some tools in the trunk of his car to meet his son and says, ‘What are you doing at Caterpillar? Let’s go make some real money,’” Gary says. “He takes Ray out to a tavern, covers the pool table and gets paid $230 or whatever, and turns around and hands Ray 50 bucks. Ray says, ‘It takes me three days to make $50 working in the factory, I just made it in an hour and a half.’ And Ray is convinced to get out of the Caterpillar factory and start Ray Lucchesi Billiard Supply and Services in York, Pennsylvania.”

This is in the late 1960s. Ray had two daughters and a son, Steve, who sadly passed away a few years ago. Steve grew up in the business, and loved his grandfather, eventually took over Ray’s business. In tribute to his grandfather, Paul, Steve named his business The Ivory Billiards.

Gary is the youngest of his siblings, and his brothers have passed away. He and his wife, Ruth, have been married for 50 years, and have two daughters and granddaughters. But there’s more.

Paul bought an old Studebaker garage and that became the new Ivory Billiard Lounge, which is still open today and is operated by Gary’s nephews, Thomas and Paul III.

Making History

In addition to owning his businesses, Paul made an indelible impact on the industry in many ways, including his service as president of the Billiard Congress of America, and he was part of the BCA trade shows (now the BCA Expo) from the beginning.

“We had all been competing against each other for so many years that the idea of a trade show took time to really gel and come together,” Gary says. “And after my dad was president in 1977, 1978, the Expo happened. It was a great time going to the BCA shows, and after the Expo actually happened, it was the beginning of a whole new era for billiards. Things were going well in the industry, we all enjoyed going to the BCA Show, they were smaller venues, and we enjoyed the camaraderie of brothers in arms. We talked billiards all day long and then we’d go to dinner together and we’d be in the bar, all night, talking –eight or ten businesses would be sitting at one table.”

The Lucchesi family’s efforts in the retail world began when Paul Sr. opened Eastern Billiards in Somerville, Massachusetts, in 1960. After Gary’s brothers got older and started families of their own, they opened their own business, as subtractors to Paul, and opened Western Billiards.

“It was all very basic billiard mechanic stuff,” Gary says. “The main item there was the J.P. Stevens cloth he represented.”

In the late 1980s, Gary got what he calls “the pool hall bug” –his father owned a pool hall, his nephew owned a pool hall, and he felt it was time to open his own pool hall. He was an Olhausen dealer at the time, and they made him 26 tables that he set up in a 13,000-square foot building in Wilmington, Mass. He named it Boomers Billiards and Games, after reading about how the Baby Boomer generation was poised to make a big impact on the nation.

“I consulted with a few of the top pro players and ran several major tournaments to put the pool room on the map and get people to come in and know it,” Gary says. “We bought bleachers and we had $10,000 prize funds, and we kept it going for about five years.”

Wilmington was a dry town, and by the mid-90s, pool rooms started opening in surrounding towns. Gary saw the writing on the wall and decided to close up the shop. As he says, they were working for the landlord and adults were going to pool rooms that sold liquor.

“We closed the pool room in June of 1994,” he says. “Ruth’s family was down here in Kissimmee, Florida and we took some trips and looked around Florida and decided, ‘Let’s retire and move to Florida.’ And we did and we successfully went out of business, very successfully.”

They looked at other towns, but decided Kissimmee was the place for them. It was south of Orlando, and was close to Disney World, and Universal Studios was being built. The area was so perfect that instead of retiring, Gary and Ruth decided to open a store in Kissimmee with their nephew, Al.