How sweet it is

Martin Greer Jr. has a sweet tooth, a warm heart and a passion for perfection. He got them from his father, and now he's passing them along to his sons.

Greer's father, Martin Greer Sr., began making candy in 1924, cooking candy at home and selling it in town on Saturdays for extra spending money. He then honed his craft at a confectionery in Texarkana run by Greek candy makers.

Greer was born in 1939 in Childress, Texas, and by that time, his dad had his own candy shop but couldn't get sugar and other things he needed. The senior Greer closed down the shop and joined the Coast Guard, moving the family to California. After World War II, two of his many jobs were spinning stick candy by hand at Ranch Girl Candy Company in Fort Worth and producing chocolates at Striplings Department Store for the Price Candy Company in Fort Worth.

"It's rare that you have someone who is a hard candy man being a soft candy man as well, and Dad was both. I like to say that Dad learned the hard way, and I learned from him the easy way," Greer said.

Greer now owns his own candy company, Martin Greer's Candies, which has stores in Garfield and Bentonville. The motto of the business is "fine candy, a father to son tradition." His wife Jeanette and two of his seven children, Uriah, 24, and Joshua, 15, work in the business as well. Jeanette Greer said she's learned attributes beyond candy making from her husband, who has "so much patience, wisdom and knowledge."

"You'd love him if you met him. He'll talk your ear off for hours," Uriah Greer said. "He's got a passion for what he does in everything he does."

Early candy days

"When I was young, Dad would sit me down next to the bon bon pot with a dipping fork and had me dipping bon bons," Greer, 75, said.

By the time Greer was 15 years old, he was cooking caramel using a fire mixer, which is an open copper kettle that stirs the caramel while it cooks. Caramel is still cooked from scratch today at Martin Greer's Candies' main location in Garfield, using recipes adapted from Rigby's Reliable Candy Teacher, published in 1897. Greer said few candy makers cook their own, instead buying from big companies and cutting it into pieces or melting it.

In the 1950s, the Greer family, then operating a store in southern Arkansas, was asked by the Herschend family to supply candy for Silver Dollar City, receiving the invitation while the attraction was still a cardboard model.

"For about six years, I made all of the candy that was sold there in Silver Dollar City," Greer recalled, including peanut brittle, fudge, hard candy and chocolates.

"Back then, I was cooking over 500 pounds a day," adding that he worked up to 100 hours a week in the summertime.

"I was cooking peanut brittle, so much peanut brittle, that by noon I didn't have a dry stitch of clothes on me."

Greer noted that his dad didn't believe in eight-hour days.

"It was 10 hours. In 10 hours, if you cooked 50 pounds each hour, that's 500 pounds," he said.

"The thing I loved about candy making is I'm striving for the best quality I can possibly get. No matter what piece it is, I'm trying to do my very best to make it the best anybody can get anywhere."

Art beyond candy

Besides candy, Greer's other life passion is art. He first became interested in art when he was 5. He said by third grade, he was drawing people. He was the school cartoonist in ninth grade and still has some of those cartoons in his desk at the Bentonville candy shop.

He has done drawings, paintings and pottery over the years. His original paintings hang throughout the Bentonville location, and he is currently working on a painting featuring Santa Claus and his candy makers.

"Every single one of these paintings has a story," he said.

Greer wanted to teach art, but he said he didn't believe there were enough job opportunities for art teachers when he went to college in the 1960s. Instead, he focused his studies on elementary education. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in elementary education from the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville, a master's degree in education from Northeastern University in Tahlequah, Okla., and a doctorate research degree in education from the University of Arkansas.

When he finished his undergraduate degree in 1965, Greer was set to teach fifth-graders in Van Buren, but two weeks before classes started, the Van Buren High School principal called to tell him the art teacher had quit and asked if he wanted to teach art, Greer said. Through the late 1970s, he taught art and history and developed the high school's art program. His students were involved in making cartoon movies and puppet shows, and they raised money to fund the art program, he said. He noted that many students involved with them went on to become art teachers and commercial artists.

Greer's son Uriah said he believes his father was ahead of his time as an art teacher. He added making art is a creative outlet for his father, who is very practical and purposeful with his art.

Greer also taught in Fort Smith and was a principal at schools in Sallisaw, Okla., and Knoxville, Tenn. The last four years of his full-time teaching were 2000-04 in Purdy, Mo., then he taught part-time for a few years at Harding University, which had a Bentonville location at the time and is now in Rogers.

He also has written two books on art and teaching, Art Taught to Art Expressed and Animation in the Schools, Second Edition (1965-2005), available to purchase online as Kindle eBooks or at the Bentonville candy shop.

Over the course of his 40 years in teaching, he taught kindergarten through graduate school students, he said. His favorite part of teaching was all of the young people he taught.

"As long as they wanted to learn and they were willing to work, that was a joy."

Forming a company

Greer wanted to continue with candy making during his art career, though, because "this is my life. This is what I've done all my life." In 1978, his father died, and the younger Greer started Martin Greer's Candies in 1982 in Roland, Okla. He was serious about teaching, "but this is something you don't get out of your blood if you really enjoy it," he said. He wanted to create the business to carry on candy making traditions and his and his father's names.

Greer closed that shop upon moving to Tennessee for a job as a principal. In 2001, he opened the Garfield location, which is now where all of the candy is made, and 14 months ago, the Bentonville shop opened, he said.

"Everything is cooked is from scratch. We don't use any mixes, period," he said.

The company also makes candy using old-fashioned methods, creating much of it the same way candy makers did it 100 years ago, Uriah Greer said, using a cream beater from 1900 and a hard candy forming machine from 1853. Greer noted that peanut brittle is stirred by hand with a hard wooden stick. Everything is hand-dipped with a dipping fork, Greer said. There are 200 varieties of candy at the Garfield location and 100 varieties in Bentonville.

The top candy sellers are almond toffee and tempters, which are a favorite of 13-year customer Laura Daley, she said Nov. 28 at the Bentonville store. Tempters are typically caramel and pecan candies dipped in chocolate, but it is also made with other nut varieties, Greer said. One batch of tempters, which takes about two and a half to three hours to make, includes about 30 pounds of almost 400 candies.

Leaving a legacy

Greer stopped making candy full time about a year ago, most recently cooking a batch of peanut brittle about a month ago. He has problems with his neck and spine, and arthritis has set in, he said, so he now does bookkeeping and works at the Bentonville shop.

"When we get in a real bind, I can still do it, but it's hard for me," he said of making candy.

Uriah Greer has now taken the reins of all the candy cooking. He has been making candy for about 10 years and works full time in the Garfield location. His brother, Joshua Greer, also works at the Garfield location, waiting on customers and helping out with candy making, when he is not in school.

Uriah Greer said his father worked really hard at getting the techniques and recipes down to something that's understandable and easier to pass on. Martin Greer Sr. played things by ear, and Uriah Greer said his father took the time to standardize much of that, teaching him how to make the recipes as he made them. Over the years, Uriah Greer said he has learned on his own as well and improved the recipes, noting that they change a little with each generation.

As for favorite candy, the elder Greer said he doesn't have one.

"I'm the little boy that grew up in a candy shop. I can have a different one every day."