Obituary: Fireplace retailer James Casserly loved the North Side

James Casserly was born and raised on the North Side of Minneapolis, not far from where he and his wife, Dorothy, raised their four children while he built a retail fireplace business that earned millions for many years.

But no amount of wealth, social unrest or street crime could force Casserly from his stately but modestly sized home at 1622 James Av. N., which he bought in 1957.

It took serious health troubles in 2002, at age 81, to dislodge him from the neighborhood where he attended school, was an altar boy at nearby Church of the Ascension and had made his home since 1921.

Even after being one of four Casserly boys who were in harm's way during World War II, he came right back to the part of town where his widowed mother worked hard during the Depression just to put food on the table for her five kids.

Casserly, whose first Hearth & Home outlet at Lake Street and Lyndale Avenue in south Minneapolis grew from its 1950s beginnings into a multimillion-dollar company that spawned Twin Cities Fireplace, died Saturday. He was 91.

"Dad just couldn't leave north Minneapolis," said son James R. Casserly. At one point, Dorothy Casserly nearly had persuaded her husband to build a new home on a lot they owned on Cedar Lake in Minneapolis.

"But he just couldn't do it," son James said. "It would've taken him out of the 'hood."

Trouble all around

The civil upheaval in many cities across the country during the 1960s reached Minneapolis and within a few blocks of the Casserly home.

"I heard all of the noise on Plymouth Avenue, right before my 13th birthday," Kevin Casserly said, recalling one summer's night in 1967. "I said to my dad, 'I wanna go down and look at it.' ... I wasn't bolting. I think I moved my right foot forward, and he put his hand across my chest."

Historians point to that night of violence as accelerating an exodus of residents and businesses from north Minneapolis, but the Casserlys remained despite a home invasion in 1969. Kevin Casserly said that burglar pulled the telephone wire out of the wall and fled in his mother's car with a television.

His father's reaction was not to pull up stakes, but to "sleep with the .22 under his bed."

Leaving home behind

One day in November 2002, James Casserly kept a routine doctor's appointment and never again called 1622 James home.

The doctor determined that he had suffered a series of mini-strokes, and that diagnosis resulted in him and Dorothy moving to a senior facility. A cerebral hemorrhage followed in 2003.

Now their son Shawn owns the home.

"Like anybody else, he always wanted to come home," the younger James Casserly said. "We talked it over on some occasions. ... We had some long discussions over that."