Love's: Fifty Five Years of A Family Enterprise

By Bob L. Blackburn -- $29.95 In 1964, with little money to invest and a growing family to support, Tom and Judy Love opened their first store in an old service station in Watonga, Oklahoma. It offered few frills other than “the cheapest gas in town.” Fifty-five years later, Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores is the fastest growing chain of fueling stations in the nation serving a combination of car and truck traffic from coast to coast. This book traces the growth of that family enterprise. The story begins on the frontier with the Love family of Chickasaw refugees who moved to the Indian Territory in search of new opportunity. They found it on the wide open prairies of the West, where mobility often made the difference between success and failure. Tom’s great-grandfather, Robert Jeremiah Love, found his opportunity along a newly laid railroad where he became a merchant, banker, and hotel owner. Armed with confidence and this family legacy, Tom and Judy launched their little chai