Gone But Not Forgotten

Remembering the life of Pearl Kole

When Kole Imports began in 1985, we were lucky enough to have had our parents, Pearl and Art Kole as business partners. They taught us about business from a very young age and being able to build Kole Imports with them is an experience that we are and will always be very thankful to have shared with them.

Unfortunately, on December 29^th, 2003 our mother passed away after a lengthy, hard-fought battle with breast cancer. You may remember an article from the spring 2003 edition of this publication which detailed the steps that Kole Imports has taken to honor our mother and help the American Cancer Society. In 2000 we launched the Pearl Endowment for Cancer Research. The goal of the Endowment is to raise money that will be used to fund research to discover how to treat and hopefully prevent breast cancer. This Endowment was set up to thank her for being an amazing mother and all that she did to make Kole Imports a success.

Our mother was and will remain very influential in our business decisions. From an early age we watched our parents run a wholesale meat business, a sandwich shop and then become partners with us here at Kole Imports and the Dollar Store business. We were able to learn so much about hard work and how to treat people from watching them. We have tried to emulate their tremendous ability to really care about the people they worked with and those they did business with.

The years that she spent here at Kole Imports were our formative years and she did a fantastic job of managing our money, setting up accounting programs, as well as helping to hire and train many of the people that are still here today. She officially retired from Kole Imports early in 1999 due to another bout with cancer. Thankfully after retiring she and our father had a few good years that were cancer free, to travel, see the world and reap the rewards of all their hard work.

Over the last weeks of her life she was able to clearly recognize all that she had accomplished in her life.

Having been born to immigrant parents, raised in a tenement house and getting married with only $60 total between her and our father, she cherished all that her life became and all that she accomplished. She leaves behind a husband of 51 years, 4 children and 13 grandchildren. Her legacy will continue on through all the lessons she taught and the integrity and courage with which she lived her life until the day she died.

Kole Imports will continue to support the Pearl Endowment in the future and we urge anyone wishing to contribute to make a check payable to the American Cancer Society Foundation/Pearl Foundation and forward it to 818 8^th Street, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266.

More information about the Pearl Endowment can be found at www.pearlendowment.org on the web.

Learn more information about the dollar store company history at Kole Imports.