Chattanooga Florist owner Judy Hacker recalls the time an employee removed flowers from a church where he thought a customer’s wedding had taken place.  After discovering his mistake, he scrambled to redecorate the church in time for the marriage of another florist’s client.

“At the time, it was rather embarrassing,” says Hacker with a smile. “But we learned from it, so now we can look back on it and laugh.”

This year Chattanooga Florist is celebrating a commercial trifecta: its 75th anniversary, its status as the city’s oldest family-owned flower shop and a half-century at 1701 East Main Street. As if those milestones weren’t cause enough for celebration, Chattanooga Florist was the only florist in Tennessee to receive the Outstanding Merchandising Display Award for 2008 from Teleflora.

Hacker’s father, Charles Gregg, founded the business in 1933 with more years in the wholesale flower industry than the eight dollars in his pocket. Soon he married a waitress from the next door eatery, and Charles and Lou Gregg embarked on a partnership that lasted until his death in 1965.

Hacker was one of the Greggs’ five children who helped out in the shop. “I was eight years old when I learned to make my first bow,” she says. “Later I got to make deliveries to businesses downtown.”

The Greggs kept the store open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year—a tradition Hacker has honored. “People just don’t need flowers delivered Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.,” she says. “Things happen unexpectedly.”

In the shop’s early years on East 11th and then Market Street, people paid for their orders in cash – or didn’t pay, in some cases. “One time our delivery truck got repossessed because of people who failed to pay,” Hacker says. “But my father didn’t let that stop him—he just loaded up his flowers onto the city streetcars and made his deliveries that way. It was quite a sight!”

The family resilency manifested itself many years later when a car crashed through the Main Street shop entrance. “We  looked on the bright side and used the experience as a chance to remodel the store,” Hacker says.

Over the years, the store has responded to technological advances—such as the trend toward ordering online—and cultural changes.

Corsages, which declined with the rise of casual clothing, were once so popular that Hacker and her husband Bob spent the Saturday nights before Mother’s Day and Easter delivering corsages to customers’ doorsteps after 3 a.m. so the flowers would be fresh for Sunday services.

The sheffleras, spathophyllum and orchids in the Chattanooga Florist showroom testify to the popularity of house plants that originated in the 60s and remains strong today.

There are constants in the business too: floral arrangements for weddings, Valentine’s Day and holidays. Mixed flowers, Easter lilies, hydrangeas, and, of course, roses are still the most popular flowers.

Chattanooga Florist supplied the hundreds of orchids for a high society wedding in 2007, and last Mother’s Day a gentleman ordered 85 red roses, signifying the years of his mother’s life. “We had quite a time fitting all those roses into one vase,” Hacker says.

Lou Gregg owned and operated the shop for 36 years after her husband’s death. In 2001 the much-honored businesswoman turned the enterprise over to Hacker.

“It’s definitely in my blood,” she says, standing by a table scattered with greenery clippings from a bouquet of pink daisies and red carnations, dominated by a sunflower. “Growing up, I had always wanted the flower shop.”