Drake’s Little Super in Wayne Township, destroyed Thursday night by fire, has been in Thom Colley’s family for almost a half century, since 1962.

A Glenwood landmark, which Thom and his wife, Carrie, began restoring Labor Day 2006, was touched by fire before.

The current building at 24673 Burns St. was erected about 1919 after a blaze.

“It’s gone. It’s devastating,” Thom said Monday — especially after rekindling twice on Friday. “It used to face south, which was the main street. When it burned and they rebuilt it, it faced this way (east).”

“It had cold storage behind it — an icehouse,” Carrie said.

The Colleys named their first daughter, born last September as the store wrapped up its fourth summer, Drake.

The couple scrubbed rustic charm into the store, which was a bit of a museum, from Model City tobacco signs to the preserved Glenwood post office.

Thom’s grandpa, Emerson Drake, who passed away in 2004, would surely have approved of yesteryear touches alongside the modern kitchen where the staff made deli sandwiches and their specialty meat counter.

There was a walk-in beer cooler and Thom uncovered original tin ceilings and wood floors.

The couple, who were able to salvage the pot-bellied stove, created a seating area with a TV and checkers table.

Thom, who grew up in Dowagiac, worked in construction and the mobile home industry previously.

He learned meat cutting from his Uncle Richard. “Even though I was around it all my life, I never learned it. My grandpa was taught by a German guy and he taught his son.”

Thom met his wife while living in Cassopolis when he pulled her out of a ditch.

Drake’s specialized in specialty meats, such as 42 flavors of brats — the fiesta, with corn, black beans and Cuban spices; jalapeno; and tropical, with pineapple, tangerines and apple.

Eight contained fruit, including also peach, raspberry and blueberry.

Monday afternoon a steady procession of vehicles filed past like a drive-through visitation, their drivers shaking their heads sadly and mourning the loss of the landmark.

The fire consumed their trove of historical photos, which depicted a vibrant Glenwood with a sawmill, a pickle factory and a depot.

“It had a gorgeous downtown,” Carrie said. “When they rebuilt it, they faced it toward the train tracks and the railroad depot.”

While investigators have been unable to pinpoint a cause, Thom indicated it was likely an electrical fire, perhaps over the kitchen.

“It got so hot in there,” Carrie said, “it melted the tin ceilings. When I pulled in Thursday night, I parked out there and walked across the field. Neighbors were everywhere and it was just going, but the top was standing tall like it was going to fight, loud and proud as I call it. Then you could just hear everybody go ‘ohhhh’ when it fell.”

Thom discovered the fire when he returned to the store after forgetting to take out some ham and bacon for the weekend.

“He saw smoke when he crossed the railroad tracks,” she said.

“There’s a renter in a one-bedroom apartment with a baby, so he started beating on her door, luckily, because she was already sleeping. They were able to get out and then he had her call  911 while he went to Dave and Donna Taggart’s and had them call me” at Colley’s home on Mount Zion Street.

Dr. Frank Butts of Wayne Township Fire Department said the call came in shortly before 10 p.m. March 3, summoning five departments and 40 firefighters to extinguish the stubborn blaze.

“We always thought it was built from rough-sawn wood from the sawmill,” Carrie said. “You’d go in the attic and it was like real 2x6s, the big, thick, heavy ones. The first store looked exactly like this one, except it faced that way and it had more windows up top. It had like four. We had one. It was an attic. I stored the Christmas tree up there. When we remodeled it was like a treasure hunt.”

Carrie added, “It hasn’t been a fun weekend, but a long, long weekend. My dad drove me because I was upset — they live right next door to us — and when we hit Glenwood and Morton I said, ‘It’s gone, isn’t it?’ There’s a lot of history. They used to watch movies out here (on a sheet or tarp). They used to play baseball out here” in an open expanse across from the store.

“There was a Glenwood team,” she said. “We had a Glenwood baseball shirt hanging in the store that Jerry Proshwitz donated to us. He has a love for Glenwood. Watsons, a customer of ours, that’s where they met on their first date, the outdoor movies, and they’ve been married ever since.”

“We played softball here every Sunday,” Thom said, indicating home plate. “Glenwood had a bucket brigade for fires. Their buckets had their names on them and they hung on a pole.”

Proshwitz, born there in 1934, lived in Glenwood from 1942 until 1950, when his family moved to Dowagiac.

“At one time,” Proshwitz said, “Glenwood was bigger than Dowagiac. I still love that place.”

He remembers as a boy living by the railroad tracks, retrieving mail sacks and delivering them to the post office for a nickel, which he spent on a candy bar and soda pop in the store.

He also remembers making spending money running errands for German prisoners of war brought over from Hartford to unload vegetables at the cold storage facility.

His one-armed grandfather was night watchman at the sawmill.

Jerry’s father worked on the railroad, which cleaned switches at night with brooms and shovels.

Once, they witnessed the store being robbed and alerted the sheriff on the only phone in Glenwood so the culprits could be apprehended.

Baseball doubleheaders were played on Sunday, with an uncle pitching for Glenwood against such opponents as the House of David and Vandalia. Round Oak Stove in Dowagiac had a team in those days.

Jerry, who attended Glenwood School, which later became the Seventh-day Adventist Church, said two trains stopped each day, so he rode into town for a motion picture at the Century, later Woolworth’s and now Red Raven.

“There’s nothing left of Glenwood now but the Arctic Cat dealer,” Thom said.