It's difficult to say goodbye to a mainstay in your community. After 90 years as a staple in Bay View, Groppi's Market finally closed its doors for the last time. There's a handwritten note on the door thanking customers for their patronage and simply stating, "It's time to retire."

To some people who live in this hard working section of Milwaukee, Groppi's was a lot more than just a market. To say Groppi's Market was 'unique' may be the understatement of the new millennium.

Until recently, the market was open only a limited number of hours during the day and offered a truncated list of items comprised largely of fresh meats and homemade sausages. In years past, it was a complete local store. One of the store owners, Mario Groppi, died last fall, raising the question of how long the market would remain open. Another brother, the late Father James Groppi, is best known to Milwaukeens for his Civil Rights activism during the 1960s.

Groppi's was located on East Russell Street and known as one of the oldest Italian food stores in Milwaukee. It was a cute market on a cute corner, situated in an area populated in the early years of the 20th century by immigrants who came from mostly from the Marches region of Italy, but also from Piedmont, Liguria, Venice and other northern Italian centers. They came to work in the rolling mills of Bay View. The Groppi family was from the Tuscan town of Lucca.

"It was the old-school place to shop," says lifelong Bay View resident Patty Pritchard. "If my parents wanted Italian sausage, it was Groppi's, there was no other option." Pritchard says to this day there really is no other option for that type of fare in the city. "It had some of the best Italian food in all of Milwaukee. I usually got a loaf of bread and some homemade salami when I stopped by."

As the grocery market intensified, Groppi's stripped itself down to what it considered the bare essentials: red meat, home-made sausages and salami. The reduction in offerings happened about four years ago. In recent days, there were a few Italian condiments like peppers, sauces and some fresh bread on the shelves, but little else. Coolers bore crude signs reading "cold beer" and "cold soda" but the refrigerators were empty.

The store sported well-worn hardwood floors, not the linoleum of today's supermarkets. Your senses informed you that you were in a butcher shop and for all intents and purposes, they were right. Two large glass cased coolers contained the deli meats. The shelves that once held rice, cereals, canned goods and other items are abandoned, the skeletal remains of yesterday. The owners seemed to have left them as a reminder of what Groppi's Market once was.

"It's a little sad because it was one of those places that you said, 'I'll get my meat and something else,'" Pritchard explains. "They ran a family business and I don't believe it's their life's blood anymore. The big groceries stores obviously put a dent in their business."

The pigeon coops atop the garage also hearkened back to earlier days. Until a couple years ago, a Groppi sister, who lived behind the shop on Delaware Avenue, kept a rooster. The Groppis were one of the last vestiges of a once-thriving Little Italy and Groppi's Market was the last corner grocery store in an area that once had many.

"Groppi's was a Mecca," proclaims Christine Ward, president of the Bay View Business Association.

"It will be remembered as one of the many hearts of Bay View." Years ago, the owners decided to close the store, but reaction from the customers was immediate. "We would not allow them to close," Ward says. Ward's first job entailed delivering groceries to older customers in the neighborhood. "I got a dime for the deliveries," Ward boasts.

As much as Mario Groppi has been missed in the neighborhood these past few months, so, too, will his family's long-lived grocery shop be mourned among Bay Viewers, Milwaukee's Italian-Americans and everyone that ever walked through the door.