John’s Grocery namesake dies

“In heaven there is no beer,” the popular Iowa Hawkeye victory song goes.

The lyrics may need to be amended.

John R. Alberhasky, the namesake of John's Grocery, the iconic Iowa City store known for its vast array of beers, died Thursday morning. He was 92.

“He passed away at 4:30, so retirement came at 4:31,” said grandson Doug Alberhasky, who also is the store's manager and “bier guy.”

John Alberhasky is survived by his wife of 69 years, Erma, and their seven children, plus countless other family members.

He was diagnosed with prostate cancer five years ago and given six months to live, Doug Alberhasky said. He went into hospice five weeks ago. While in the hospital one day, he asked for and ate an entire cheeseburger. Doug and his grandfather shared a beer just a couple of weeks ago.

“He definitely had a fighter's take on it,” he said.

After serving in the Navy in World War II, Alberhasky returned to his native Iowa City and worked in his brother's bar. One day the owner of a store came into the bar and told John he should buy it. He did.

John and Erma took over in 1948. John's Grocery has been at 401 E. Market Street, just northeast of downtown, ever since.

If you count the great-grandchildren who appeared in the black-and-white commercials in recent years, four generations of the family have worked for John's Grocery.

“It was pretty much our whole life,” son Jerry Alberhasky said. “It was a part of my life as long as I can remember.”

The store now offers more than 450 beers from around the world and 1,500 wines.

John's Grocery has survived as one of the few family-owned groceries in Iowa – and the only one in Iowa City – because it has a niche, great location and a family who spends every day at the store, said Jerry Fleagle, president of the Iowa Grocery Industry Association.

Stories about John Alberhasky are legend in the grocery business, said Fleagle, a West Branch native. Here's one: A chain convenience store wanted to buy John's Grocery in the 1970s. The bigwigs came to tour the store, look at the books and talk price. Once they saw how profitable the store was and how much Alberhasky wanted for it, they got cold feet, Fleagle said.

“John's does a terrific job with beer and wine and they have a great location,” Fleagle said. “It's been a successful family-owned operation and the key is that the family has been in there operating on a daily basis.”

The store earned the nickname Dirty John's in the 1950s after some junior high school boys stole a stack of Playboy magazines and passed them around school at a time when few Iowa City stores sold the magazine.

“At first I think he didn't like the name very well,” Jerry Alberhasky said of his father, “but as long as they (customers) came back and it put us through school, that was the main thing.”

John and Erma Alberhasky were big Hawkeye football and basketball fans. Doug Alberhasky joked that they stopped going to football games “when they couldn't take in their mixology kit anymore.”

The home page of the website for John's Grocery was changed Thursday to honor the store's founder. It proclaimed, “In heaven, there is now beer.”

But more affectingly, it suggested a tribute John Alberhasky would surely approve of:

“Please raise your glass and toast to a wonderful husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather and entrepreneur.”

Cheers, John.

Erin Jordan and Clark Cahill contributed to this report.