Father-son duo expand auto body shop business with new Geneva location
Even though online business and digital transactions are the order of the day, there is still a place for old-fashioned, one-on-one interaction between a service provider and a consumer in need.
These sorts of business relationships remain vitally important to a community, particularly for services in which we need reliable and trustworthy help, such as fixing problems with our cars.
Derrick Crome is counting on fostering plenty of those car relationships as he takes over the former State Street Collision body shop at 802 E. State St. in Geneva under the name Bodylines, Inc.
Operating a body shop is nothing new to Crome and his father, Roger, but the Geneva location is certainly a shorter drive for Derrick from his St. Charles home. His previous commute was to their original Bodylines Inc. shop in Belvidere.
“We bought the shop in Belvidere in 2019, and things have been running good there,” Derrick said.
Roger had a connection with State Street Collision owner Bill White, having worked with him from 1992 to 2008 at a Bodylines shop in Campton Township.
Earlier this year, he visited White, who owned State Street Collision for 14 years, and learned he was planning to retire. White asked if the Cromeses were interested in buying his shop.
“My dad and Bill worked together well before I was born,” Derrick said. “Seeing as how I lived out here and was driving an hour and 10 minutes to work every day, we decided it would be good to expand into a new area, and that’s how I ended up at this location.”
At 26 years old, Derrick has made the jump from hanging around his father’s shop, pulling weeds on the property and doing other odd jobs as a youngster, to managing his own shop.
“Back when he was like 5 or 6 years old, I had a shop focusing on truck accessories, and he would be in the shop running around watching me do stuff,” Roger said of Derrick’s initial experiences in an auto shop.
“We would always take bolts and stuff out of the truck beds, and I was in the office with a customer one day and I heard the power tool humming in the shop,” Roger recalled. “I come out in the shop and Derrick had put a truck bed together, and I asked him how he did it, and he said it was just from watching me do it.”
Roger said he checked out the work and it was pretty good. “He was usually just helping with washing the cars and stuff, but it wasn’t long before he asked if he could take the car apart (to fix). I was shocked.”
It’s been more than a month since the Bodylines, Inc. sign went up and a new coat of paint covered the shop, which sits at the T-intersection of East Side Drive and State Street across from the Aldi Supermarket and CVS Pharmacy.
“I’ve been around this (body shop work) my whole life, and my dad started doing it when he was 16, and he’s now in his 50s,” Derrick said. “I watched him fixing cars, and then I told myself, ‘Hey, I can take apart and fix this bumper.’”
In that regard, Derrick says he “started small” but over time “got really good at fixing cars.”
“Now, all of the sudden, I am running a store and am in an office making sure everyone in the back has what they need,” he added.
Derrick lived in Sycamore for 23 years, graduating from Sycamore High School in 2018. He eventually moved to St. Charles with his fiancée, a teacher in the St. Charles School District.
“We will slowly remodel and modernize the office, upgrade the shop in the back, and have it clean and bright — making it a better place to work,” Derrick said. “The remodel is a big thing for us, because we want to make it presentable and nice for people waiting for their cars.”
With collision work being the main focus of the shop, Derrick points out that he has a worker on site who handles general car maintenance as well, working on brakes, putting on new tires and other tasks.
“I basically say we have a one-stop shop with the mechanic and then the collision work,” Derrick said.
The shop is open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday.
Roger, in the auto body shop business for 42 years, feels his son found his calling because “he is good with his hands.” And he knows that those types of workers, from carpenters to plumbers to auto repair workers, are becoming harder to find.
“But it’s coming back,” he said. “The high schools and community colleges are emphasizing vocational training, and with the cost of a college education, many are leaning toward those types of jobs.”
Custom cut to fit
Peter Leonard figured the family business of offering swim lessons in the pool at his St. Charles home created enough potential noise for neighbors, so he certainly didn’t want a squeaky door causing more.
But that squeaky door in need of a new handle, which Leonard admitted made plenty of noise when opening and closing, wasn’t going to be an easy fix.
“The screen door, requiring a new door closer to replace the original one from 1970, is the one on the back door of the house leading to the pool,” said Leonard, who has carried on the tradition of swim lessons for which his late mother, Joan, had become well-known.
“In the summer, my wife and I, like my mom and the family for 50 years previous, are in and out of that door constantly with lessons during the week,” he added. “The old one was leaking oil and lost its tension and made too loud of a noise when closing.”
Though the door is not used by students to enter the pool area, it was delivering the door squeak heard ’round the neighborhood.
The bracket that came with a new door closer would not work, Leonard noted, and he needed a custom fit. Thus, began an example of personal customer service for fixing things in our homes.
Leonard began searching for metal cutters in the area and came across DEC Tool Corp. on the east side of St. Charles. Turned out, this company was the only one that would attempt to drill holes and cut metal to make the closer work properly.
“Cutting this weird thing is not really their business at all, but they will help when you need it,” Leonard said. “Rob DeCore at DEC told me to bring in the closer and he would fix it.”
In the end, DeCore cut and drilled the bracket as needed, allowing Leonard to be “back to efficient access and a quieter business,” while attaining his goal of keeping the noise level down during swim lessons.
As much as anything, Leonard was impressed with what he considered a great example of a small business going the extra mile to help its neighbors.
Jeff and Rob DeCore have operated Dec Tool Corp. in St. Charles since 1982, after previously running the business in Bensenville.
“We have helped literally hundreds of homeowners in the St. Charles area figure out odd-job problems in which they needed metal cut to fit something,” Jeff DeCore said.
Clearing out crayfish
This one reminds me of my son and his friends looking for crayfish in Ferson Creek at LeRoy Oakes Forest Preserve more than 30 years ago. It was one of their favorite things to do.
The Kane County Forest Preserve District is counting on that type of enjoyment for its eighth annual Rusty Rodeo, calling it a free, family-friendly event focused on removing invasive rusty crayfish from the waterways.
Attendees are encouraged to bring their own dip nets to the event, though some will be available to borrow. The rodeo is held from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Aug. 15, at North Aurora Island Park, 4 E. State St., and Mount St. Mary Park, 79 Prairie St. in St. Charles.
Participants should wear closed-toe shoes and clothes that can get muddy. Volunteers will be wading into the water, the district noted.
No registration is required, but more information is available at kaneforest.com or by calling (630) 444-3190.
Rolling an ace in golf
How do you score a 1 on a par-5 hole? Everyone knows that is not possible, but somehow, I did it during a recent fundraiser outing at Aurora Country Club.
At this particular hole during a four-player scramble event, meaning you always want your team to finish below par, you had the option to pay $20 to roll dice.
If a 1 came up, you would get that score for the hole. I didn’t hesitate. And I rolled a 1. And that’s how you score a hole-in-one on a par 5.
Aside from that excitement, it was fun to add Aurora Country Club to my list of courses I have played.
Golf course architect Tom Bendelow designed the course, which opened in 1914, making it one of the oldest in the state. That’s 10 years before his design work on the St. Charles Country Club became a reality, but not as old as the Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton, which was built in 1892, showing off the work of architect Charles Blair Macdonald.
• dheun@sbcglobal.net