Longtime toy store owner, attorney dies

STERLING – Wally Feldman spent years at his family’s downtown toy store, providing area children with dolls and trinkets to fill hours of their playtime.

For more than 50 years, he owned and operated Emil’s Toy Store. He also practiced law for more than 50 years, and owned and operated the Sterling-Rock Falls News Agency, which is still in operation.

Feldman, 84, died Sunday at his home in Sterling.

Feldman, a 1945 Sterling High School grad, served in the Army during World War II. He also was a member of the Sterling Police and Fire Commission for more than 20 years and an active member of the local Jewish community, serving as president of Temple Sholom at one time.

Amy Cytron, Feldman’s only daughter and his youngest child, remembers growing up in the toy store where her father also spent his youth. It was named after her grandfather, Wally’s dad.

“I would work in the toy store in the holidays, and I would put things on the shelf, help people find things,” said Cytron, 45, now of Minneapolis. “When I became 12, my mom sat with me and she taught me how to count change out in a muffin tin.”

Her parents eventually let her run the cash register. At 15, she worked shifts in the store.

“We always got paid, ...’” she recalled. “My dad said, ‘Go pick out the doll that you like.’”

Cytron said her father “always had a good word for everybody and everything.”

“He always smiled,” she said. “No matter what we were doing or how we are doing it, Daddy always smiled. That’s something I will always remember him for.”

When the toy store closed, Cytron said, her family was “heartbroken.”

“It was the end of an era,” she said. “It was very sad. It was his parents’ store.”

Shirley Feldman, Wally’s wife of 58 years, said her husband was a “very kind, very caring man.”

“He cared about the little people,” she said. “He was happiest when he came home and was able to help somebody who had a problem.”

Shirley recalled fond moments from family road trips across the country.