Opinion: Historic bakery coming back to life

The Roosevelt Brewing Company Tap Room becomes a part of Clovis history at noon on Friday.

That's when owner Justin Cole said he plans the next grand opening for the building at 515 N. Main St.

You know the place. It's been Sutton's Bakery since 1946.

If you'd like to go way back, the location was also home to Clovis Music Shop in the spring of 1930. That's when Denver Pettitt was doing "expert phonograph repairing, furniture refinishing and upholstering," according to a classified ad in the Clovis Evening News-Journal.

By September 1930, the music shop was out and Oliver & Oliver - a wholesale tobacco and candy house headquartered in Roswell - had moved in.

Oliver & Oliver was managed by T.J. Tipton, who still has relatives around Clovis.

By 1939, Oliver & Oliver was gone and Earl Skinner had moved in to operate the Ace Cafe.

But whatever else it's been in Clovis' history, today's generations of residents will always remember it as a bakery.

Even now.

And Cole is intent on keeping the building's history alive.

He has framed photos from the Sutton Bakery's earliest days on the walls of his brewery.

A Sutton family member provided the photos, which she said were taken in 1947.

Erby and Goldie Sutton will forever be a part of the place.

They met and married in 1927, Goldie wrote in a Clovis history book published in 1978.

Erby was already working at Amarillo Baking Co. back then.

In 1943, the Suttons came to Clovis to start their own bakery. It was Perfection - Perfection Bakery, that is, which was located at 118 E. Grand when it opened on May 22, 1943.

Three years later, they were able to afford new equipment and a new place from which to operate. In June of 1946, Sutton's Bakery opened at 515 N. Main, according to Clovis News-Journal archives.

The Suttons ran the place - specializing in pastries, but also producing buns and potato chips they sold wholesale to local restaurants - before retiring in 1971.

That's when they sold Sutton's Bakery to Frank Simmonds, who had worked for the Suttons since they opened on Main. Simmonds kept the name and kept baking until his retirement in 2011.

The standards didn't change between owners if you believe Andrea Basped, who left the following on a Facebook page six years after the place closed.

"This was the best bakery ever! A significant part of my childhood. I miss it so much. I wish I could have taken my children and grandchildren here, they would have loved it, just like me!," she wrote.

Cole bought it soon after Simmonds retired. He owns Roosevelt Brewing Company & Public House in Portales, and has longed plan a sister operation in Clovis - at the old Sutton's Bakery.

In addition to brewing beer, he plans to honor the building's history.

"Our intention is to restore the antique bakery," Cole said, "and commence some kind of bakery operation on that site in the future."

It's apparently a good place to do that.

David Stevens writes about regional history. Contact him at:

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