Sarah Belk Gambrell

Lives in:
Eastover

Family: widowed;
daughter, Sally Gambrell Knight
The Belk department store chain, which opened in 1888, is a mainstay in the Carolinas and an important part of Sarah Belk Gambrell’s life.
Now in her 90s, Belk Gambrell is the only daughter of the store’s founder.

While she studied history at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, she’s also the recipient of four honorary doctorates, from Erskine College in South Carolina, the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Furman University in South Carolina and Johnson C. Smith University. But she said her most important classes weren’t at an institution.

“After World War II, my father set up a training program for me and my brothers,” she said.

The curriculum included finance and real estate. While her five brothers were tutored by male teachers, her father hired a woman to be her instructor.

Despite her family connections, she began her career at Belk at the bottom of the ladder, she said.

“I just did whatever needed to be done for the stores,” she said.

She would go on to join the store’s board, serving as the president of 25 stores for more than two decades.

She and her now-deceased husband, Charles, split their time between Charlotte and New York City, where she still maintains a Park Avenue apartment. There, she was part of the city’s fashion scene while her husband served as the vice president of the Irving Trust Co. of New York. She helped develop Belk’s women’s wear and cosmetics departments, “but of course they had a man involved,” she said.

Belk Gambrell wouldn’t discuss her life’s challenges. “I don’t think about them,” she said. She describes herself as an optimist.
“You have to work with whatever opportunities you’ve got,” she said.
Even though she’s a nonagenarian, she’s active on boards and said she feels “like I’ll never get everything done.”

Her face still lights up when she recalls serving as a page during a Daughters of the American Revolution meeting as a teenager in the 1940s.

“We sat on a platform in our little white dresses and passed notes to people on the stage,” she said, adding that her grandmother was one of the first members of a local chapter and that her mother served as a state regent and national vice president for the organization.

Her advice to the people of Charlotte: “Enjoy life.”