Lois Schupmann, a tenacious shopkeeper

Lois Schupmann of Robbinsdale would never give up Lila's, the north Minneapolis women's clothing store that her mother founded in 1938.

Not a nearby murder in broad daylight, or being rammed in a taxi cab by a fleeing car thief, deterred her from operating the store on West Broadway six days a week.

Schupmann, who sunnily helped her customers and remained open in the face of declining sales, died on April 6 in New Hope.

She was 80.

Schupmann grew up in Robbinsdale. She worked as a secretary after graduating from the former St. John's College in Winfield, Kan., and helped her mother at the store.

By the 1960s, she worked full time at the store, and became its owner in 1985.

Lila's red storefront was a landmark on the stretch between Bryant and Dupont.

After the February 2006 murder, she told the Star Tribune, "Really and truly, it's not that bad."

In February 2007, Schupmann was injured when the taxi cab she was riding in was struck from behind and then rammed by a car thief. Even so, she returned to work after a week.

"I've been around here my whole life, and I'm not worried about anything," she told the Star Tribune. "This is a good street. And it's getting better."

Two months later, she was found on the kitchen floor of her Robbinsdale home with blood around her head. Doctors suspected a delayed reaction to the cab incident.

Her store was liquidated, and she had been in a nursing home since May.

Even if her mother had not exacted that promise, Schupmann probably would have stayed open anyway, he said. She kept it running even though the store's fortunes had been declining since the late 1970s, and in recent years it had been losing money.

"It was all she knew," said her nephew. "If she would have left the store, she would have died a lot earlier.

"She lived for the store," he said especially after her husband, Martin, died in 2001.

She is survived by her sister, Phyllis Kurtzahn of Zumbrota, Minn., and many nieces and nephews.