At 4-foot-10 and packed with energy, Sheila Fitzmaurice personifies — small but mighty.
Sheila said she had become aware of her abilities in 2009 when “I moved outside my boundaries and realized I was much stronger than I thought I was,” when faced with two devastating realities.
Her father, Charles Young, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease that June. Five months later, her mother, Kathy Young, died just 32 days after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.
All the while, Sheila was in the midst of personal changes when the opportunity to fulfill a long-held dream to own her own business came up when a building just off the downtown square became available.
Fitzmaurice threw herself at the effort to renovate the building and opened Everything Fitz, a used clothing and household goods shop. Well-organized and neat, it was far removed from the atmosphere of typical second-hand shops.
Making it work on an abbreviated schedule was a balancing act.
By the 2011-12 school year, Sheila said she knew “I needed to spend more time with my father,” and quit her position as a paraprofessional in Humboldt schools.
She and husband Jeff have two children and two grandchildren.
Perhaps her heritage sustained Sheila, 52.
Sheila’s mother, born Kathy Bearpaw, was full-blooded Cherokee. Cherokee are a proud people, having withstood years of oppression when Europeans arrived in large numbers and seized Native Americans land for their own. Eventually the Cherokee were resettled from the Southeast U.S. to Oklahoma, including today’s home of the Bearpaw family in the Tahlequah area.
In October 2014, Sheila moved her shop to the east side of the square.
“I don’t know how I did what I did with the little shop,” Sheila says today, after moving into more spacious quarters, including a large mezzanine. Four months after the move, her father’s disease took its final toll.
Everything Fitz is an anomaly for the area, one of the few local places where men, women and children can find clothing, all at family-friendly prices. She is open Wednesday to Friday noon to 6 p.m., and the first and third Saturdays of each month noon to 4 p.m.
The shop is fed by nearly 700 consigners. An unwritten rule: What goes on hangers and shelves is there because former owners out-grew or tired of it, not because it’s distressed.
“It’s amazing how many people we have come in,” including from distant cities. “Sales in 2018 were fantastic.”
