Entrepreneurship was a family affair for the Flato clan. When Edwin Flato first came to the Coastal Bend, it was to work for his brother in Kingsville at a lumberyard. Edward was just 20 at the time; sleeping in a lumberyard and eating his meals in a tent seemed just part of life, though he looked back on it as a “wild proposition” in his later years.
While there, the opportunity came to be one-third owner of a new venture, Corpus Christi Hardware Store. He rose from bookkeeper to president of the company in less than a decade.
The 1919 hurricane damaged much of downtown, but for Flato’s hardware business, it provided an opportunity to use his entrepreneurial acumen to expand his business. The store had been selling to everyone, including builders from the property on N. Chaparral. After the storm, the pictured location was renamed Nueces Hardware, and Flato’s wholesale shop moved to South Broadway…