SIOUX CITY | The day liquor became legal by the shot, Terry Prince opened Prince's Tavern. It was July 4, 1963.
Prince's son, also named Terry Prince, would follow his dad into the business 20 years alter.
This summer, Prince's Tavern lights 50 candles (or fireworks, as the date suggests), one for each year of serving suds and more at 1920 Center St.
Terry Prince says he and his late father owe their livelihood to the people in and around Sioux City, the people who stop by for happy hour daily, or the folks who come back to Sioux City every few years and make Prince's part of their return.
Kirk Hinrich, for example. The former West High Wolverine and current Chicago Bulls point guard has two jerseys from his Kansas Jayhawk days presented above the bar. Hinrich stops at Prince's when he's back in his hometown. He brought teammate Luol Deng here once, as well as former Kansas running-mate Nick Collison.
People are also reading…
"For Terry's 70th birthday, we went to Chicago and saw Kirk play for the Bulls," says Terry's wife, Joan Prince.
"Kirk has always treated us very well," says Terry, who is 74.
While Terry Prince isn't sure what brought his father to town from Illinois decades ago, he knows he rarely left once he set up shop in Sioux City.
"My dad tended bar down at the (Sioux City) Stockyards and did clean-up work," Terry Prince says. "And then in the late 1940s or '50s he ran Prince & Dudley's, which is now Rhonda's Speakeasy."
In the late 1940s, the elder Prince sold booze and tips, a precursor to pull-tabs.
Terry and his wife, the late Lorena Prince, then bought the Wayside Inn on East Fourth Street in Sioux City. The place was flooded in both 1952 and 1953. They bought the Log Cabin just east of Hamilton Boulevard near what's now the Siouxland Center for Active Generations and operated that business for seven years or so.
"The Log Cabin building needed some work, but my folks didn't own it," Terry Prince says. "This site on Center Street came up for sale. My dad bought it and the lot across the street."
Prince's Tavern had been Matz Grocery Store for years in the early part of the 20th century. It was still owned by a Matz family member in 1963, but existed as a tavern run by Jim Rose.
"Jim Rose wanted out, my dad wanted in," Terry Prince says of a time 50 years ago.
John Schultz built a bar for the Prince family. The bar remains today, as does the business and the family name. Although Terry Prince's parents are both gone, he's still serving drinks in their memory.
Before coming to work here, Terry Prince was a trader at the Sioux City Stockyards. He established P&P Trading, named for Prince & Prince and operated for more than a decade.
Did his father trade livestock?
"No," Terry Prince says with a laugh. "It was me and my dad because I didn't have any money back then."
Terry Prince, a 1957 Bishop Heelan graduate, says it was natural to follow his father into the bar trade. Both are people people, if that makes sense. And both boosted various teams, leagues and schools in and around Sioux City for decades.
"My parents and their friends were bar people," the son says while standing beneath a portrait of his folks that graces an area above the 50-year-old bar. "I think my parents went on one vacation away from Sioux City. They went to Las Vegas where there was a business convention going on."
Like his father, Terry Prince is married to his wife -- and married to his business.
He's very thankful that wife Joan and bar manager Jamie Marksbury are so ingrained in the business. Having such support makes his job all the more enjoyable. He smiles while remembering some high times, one about this time of year back in 1990. Perry Creek flooded and Prince's Tavern had more than one foot of water inside. The basement door, in fact, was blown off by the pressure of the rising water.
"We never closed," Terry Prince says. "There were people in here with their feet at the bar, just barely above the water."
A high-water mark for a family institution.
