Few Beloit businessmen have better epitomized the entrepreneurial spirit, community pride, generosity and strong character that John S. Spyreas displayed during his long and fruitful life. Born in 1886 in the village of Kalamata, Greece, he was the son of Spiro and Effie Papadapoulus Spyreas.

At age 15, he was one of many young men recruited by a Racine tannery to come to the United States to work. Early on, Spyreas discovered that he had been recruited to be a “strike-breaker” for the tannery. Whereupon he bought a train ticket to Beloit, where it was said that the Eclipse Windmill Company was hiring. For the next few years, Spyreas labored at molding parts for windmills.

He saved his money and in 1912 he purchased a grocery store at the corner of Pleasant Street and Portland Avenue. He operated the store for 44 years. The Spyreas grocery became a popular Beloit institution. Beloit College students frequented the store as a source for snack foods and other items, as did high school students going to and from their East Side homes. Often keeping the store open until 2 a.m.  Spyreas served hundreds of third-shift employees of Fairbanks Morse and other Beloit factories. Daily he drove his horse-drawn wagon to area farms where he butchered lambs and calves for meat to sell.

The Spyreas store was known throughout the community as a source for good fresh meats. Along with his career as a busy merchant, Spyreas built a row of small shops long Pleasant Street north of his store. And in 1913, he was appointed Beloit’s assistant police chief, during the tenure of Chief Charles Qualman. In another Beloit business venture, Spyreas purchased a tract north of Bayliss Avenue on Nelson and Dewey streets and developed the 50-lot Spyreas Addition.

During the Depression years, Spyreas willingly allowed Beloiters, without ready cash, to put their groceries on charge accounts. In many cases, he gave cash-strapped customers receipts showing their accounts paid, even though he hadn’t received payment. On one of his visits to his home community of Greece, Spyreas found that the village had no school and the children had to go to a nearby town for classes.

In 1963, Spyreas gave the village enough money to build a one-room school house with an apartment for a teacher. Spyreas was a longtime member of the Kiwanis Club and the Moose Lodge. He was an active member of the Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church of Rockford and was an organizer and patron of the former St. Mary’s Greek Orthodox Church in Beloit. In 1926, Spyreas met Helen Malleris, a native of Greece who was working in Chicago. He told friends that he met Helen on Sunday and on the next Sunday they became engaged. On the third Sunday they married. They had been married for 53 years when he died on July 15, 1979. They had no children. Two nieces, Helen West and Eleanor Johnson, are Beloit residents.