Heck's
former department store chain
Heck's was a chain of discount department stores based in West Virginia. It was founded by Boone County natives and businessmen Fred Haddad, Tom Ellis, and Lester Ellis and wholesale distributor Douglas Cook. The Heck's name was a combination of the names Haddad, Ellis and Cook. Haddad served as president, Lester Ellis was vice-president, and Tom Ellis was Secretary-Treasurer.
History
Heck's, Inc. was established in 1959 by Fred Haddad, Tom & Lester Ellis, and Doug Cook. The main office was located at 1012 Kanawha Boulevard, Charleston, West Virginia.
Heck's stores were discount, stand-alone department stores found in small cities throughout West Virginia, Virginia, western Maryland, the Ohio Valley and parts of Indiana, Kentucky and North Carolina. Its structure and product lines were similar to its competitors Fisher's Big Wheel, Hills Department Stores, G.C. Murphy's Mart, Tempo and Buckeye Mart Stores and Walmart.
Part of Heck's expansion into the Midwest came after acquiring a smaller discounter, T-Way Stores (Tradeway) of Indianapolis.
“Heck's” enters the record as former department store chain. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Heck's, former and department can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Heck's” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Heck's, former and department provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5696351. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959 and 1012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Heck's” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.