Wilmington's last typewriter repairman closes up shop

When Alexander Rybak was a young man, he didn't want the job at Scott Paper Co. that his dad had lined up for him.

He wanted to work in a trendy industry, one that represented a more dynamic future. 

Rybak wanted to repair typewriters.

It was the mid-1950s, and typewriters were exciting and always changing. Rybak wanted a piece of that.

Now, more than 60 years later, he's hanging up his ribbons and shifting down the keys for the last time as he closes his Eastern States Business Equipment Co. repair shop.

The typewriters that used to fly off shelves and be staples in every office now show up mostly in antique shops, often used as decorations in home decor.

And the main place you'll find them now is funeral parlors, where they're used to type out death certificates. 

"I think it's time," said Rybak, 81, who believes he was the last working typewriter repairman in Wilmington, if not Delaware. "Business went down. Down, down, down."

Rybak, who lives in Chester, Pennsylvania, said most days he sits and waits in his small office on Philadelphia Pike for customers' phone calls.

Thomas Russo, owner of the Museum of Business History & Technology, said he doesn't know of any other repairmen in Wilmington. 

"Most are long gone by now," Russo said. 

Rybak believes all the repairmen he once knew and worked with are now in "typewriter heaven."

His love of the tool that lets writers write almost as fast as they could think began in high school, when he was one of two boys taking a typing class.

The man who oversaw the typewriters noticed Rybak had a knack for them and asked him to help out after school.

When Rybak left college after one year, where he was studying art, Rybak asked the same man for a full-time job with Royal Typewriter Co. The company sent him to a repair school to learn about every part of the typewriter. 

"I like the work," he said. "I like to tinker with it. I enjoy going into offices and greeting people and meeting people, answering their problems."

A photo from early in Rybak's career shows him wearing a white button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a tie and a white apron — since the job could get messy. 

In the 1980s, Rybak decided to open his own business. His clients included local schools, companies like DuPont and courthouses. 

His sons credit Rybak's work to inspiring their career choices that involve working with your hands and solving problems. Two of his sons are electricians and one is a carpenter.

When they were children, Alexander, Philip and Thomas regularly took apart typewriters and put them back together. During the summer, they helped their dad repair and clean machines.  

"We were put to work," Philip said. "You saw what was going on and you jumped in and you got to play." 

Rybak moved into a small office along Philadelphia Pike about 10 years ago, because the rent was lower. No bigger than a standard bedroom, the office is festooned with photos of his 11 grandchildren and the diplomas of the various trade schools he's attended over the years. 

After all of these years, Rybak wears dress pants and a polo shirt, with his glasses in the pocket. 

He said he's in the same position as many electronic stores and camera shops. People now buy or fix their products with online services. 

The advent of the personal computer age didn't help. Rybak said he tries to avoid using computers.

"I leave that to the wife," he joked in a loving way. 

As the demand for fixing typewriters fell in the past two decades, Rybak began repairing more calculators, cash registers, photocopiers and copy machines. 

Days before he closed his business at the end of August, Rybak still had a handful of typewriters in his office. He wasn't sure what he would do with them.

It didn't feel right to sell them for a low price, he said. 

But Rybak, who never considered himself to be a writer, has no use for them either. It hurts his hands to push down on the keys. 

Rybak believes he and so many others have a nostalgia for typewriters because of the machines' subtle details — such as the "clack, clack" of the keys as well as watching words move from space to space and then down from "east to west."

He admits he's not sure what he's going to do in retirement. He has enjoyed coming into work at 9 a.m. and leaving at 3 p.m. He liked bringing the same lunch every day: A sandwich, fruit and tea in the same lunchbox for decades.

His daughter Maryrose Rybak doesn't think her dad will just sit at home and do nothing. It's against his nature; he's a tinkerer, she said. 

Since Rybak has no employees, there won't be a big celebration to mark his retirement.

Maybe a pizza party with his grandchildren, his wife, Rose, said. 

A week before he closed the shop, Rybak said he intended to do what he has always done. He'll come into work and wait to see if anyone needs his help.

"I'll just go out with a little whisper."

Contact Meredith Newman at (302) 324-2386 or mnewman@delawareonline.com and on Twitter @MereNewman.

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