La-Z-Boy inventor dies in chair at 90

But the man who left a legacy of leather-bound leisure was no lounger himself.

"This is a guy that wanted to be productive every moment," says Matthew Switlik, director of the Monroe County Historical Museum. "Mr. Shoemaker was in no way ready to lounge around - he had to be busy."

Shoemaker died March 15 at his winter home in Arizona.

Shoemaker and his cousin Edward Knabusch built La-Z-Boy from a struggling, Depression-era enterprise operating out of a Monroe garage. Together, they produced an American icon of sorts - "the bubba chair," as Nancy Butler, recliner writer for the tr

AP PHOTO La-Z-Boy lounge chair inventor Edwin Shoemaker died this past March at his winter home in Arizona, while taking a nap in one of his famous recliners.

ade publication Furniture Today, puts it, "a guy with beer in one hand and the remote in the other."

In 1928, while tinkering with pieces of plywood and a yardstick, Shoemaker and Knabusch fashioned an austere, wood-slat reclining lawn chair. After a buyer for a furniture store refused to buy the chair unless it came upholstered, they added that feature.

They knew they were on to something. But what to call it? They held a name-the-chair contest, and La-Z-Boy beat out the Sit-N-Snooze, the Slack-Back and the Comfort Carrier.

Thirty-three years after the first La-Z-Boy, all the work really paid off. In 1961, Shoem combined a platform rocker with a recliner. The result: the La-Z-Boy Reclina-Rocker. It was the right chair at the right time. Television's takeover of America's living rooms was nearly complete.

"I don't think there's any doubt that the recliner and the television are the perfect marriage," Butler says.

Despite the name, La-Z-Boy executives insist that their chair is not meant to encourage, well, laziness. "There's a fine line between relaxation and sloth," says John Case, vice president of marketing. "When it starts to move toward the sloth side, that's when we take exception."

Still, some models make it quite easy to spend life with your feet never touching anything but a padded footrest. Sore muscles? Turn on the massager nestled in the cushions. Can't make it to the phone? Here's a built-in speakerphone. Want to check your stock prices online? Plug your laptop into the chair.

The interesting thing is that Shoemaker was not the sort of guy to put his feet up for very long.

Up until his death, the man with an eighth-grade education served as executive vice president of engineering and vice chair of the board. In his later years, he spent much of his time working with the La-Z-Boy museum director on the company's history, and went into the office two or three times a week when in Michigan.

"His concept was that everybody put in a good day's work and should be rewarded with a relaxing chair to sit in," says his son, Robert Shoemaker.

04-02-98