When Walter “Marty” Harayda purchased the Sunoco gas station at the corner of West 220th Street and Lorain Road in 1957, a gallon of gas cost about a quarter.

Walter “Marty” Harayda (West Life photo by Larry Bennet)

His last week of business, the price was $2.74 a gallon.

Harayda, 75, has sold the station to GetGo, the gas station arm of Giant Eagle, which will open at that location in roughly 10 days, he said.

Harayda, who grew up in North Olmsted, said he began thinking about retiring about 18 months ago.

A resident of Olmsted Township since 1964, Harayda joked that he plans to spend his retirement doing “as little as possible.”

Actually, he plans to spend some time traveling to visit cousins he hasn’t seen in several years.

He said he’ll miss seeing his faithful customers, some of whom actually have been filling up at his station for all five decades.

“Not too many left,” he said of his original customers, “but there are some of them left.

“They’ve become friends instead of just customers,” he added.

Harayda said he has managed to stay in business so long thanks to being conscientious about providing quality service and following the Golden Rule.

This was especially true for mechanical work, he said.

“People knew I was going to be working on their car, not somebody they didn’t know,” he said. On occasions when another mechanic worked on a car, Harayda said he at least went over it.

The station, which Harayda purchased from the original owner, Bill Braun, has always been a Sunoco station.

“We always got along pretty well,” Harayda said of his relationship with the oil giant. “We always ironed out our problems.”

Of course, customers sometimes complained to him about rising prices even though they knew he had no control over them.

“‘Someone’s making money somewhere’ – that’s what they’d always tell me,” he said.

During the gas shortages of the 1970s, the station closed down at night because of limited supplies, he said. Twice the station completely ran out.

Harayda’s Sunoco was the last full service gas station in Fairview Park, he said.

“I never thought I’d see the day when people would be pumping their own gas,” he said of the introduction of self-serve gas in Ohio in the 1980s.

He was against it because it was yet another factor that diminished the margins that provided gas station owners their profits.

Harayda’s son Martin worked at the station in the 1980s. He has another son and daughter. His wife, Jane, passed away about two years ago.

Will he miss coming to the station every day?

“Oh, probably,” he told West Life. “I’ve been good to it, and it’s been good to me.”