WARREN – Francis Jamiel did not want to let his father down.

The late Joseph Jamiel opened Jamiel’s Shoe World on Main Street some 73 years ago and, since then, the business has become a veritable institution in downtown Warren and, indeed, in the state as a whole.

When the recession hit, Francis Jamiel came close to closing the family store. And, when he sought financing during the last year, bank after bank refused him. “I was with one bank for 30 years,” Jamiel told the Providence Business News, “and they refused to help me.” He declined to name the institution.

But now, thanks to the federal economic stimulus package, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) in Rhode Island and, perhaps most of all, Coastway Credit Union, Jamiel is the pleased recipient of a $400,000 loan. His is the first small business loan granted in Rhode Island under new terms established as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Those terms include a 90 percent guarantee of the loan, shared by the federal government and the SBA, instead of the usual 75 percent, and a waiver of the $10,800 federal fee that Jamiel would have been required to pay as part of the loan application.

A small army of state and federal officials gathered today at Jamiel’s Shoe World to celebrate the landmark loan, including U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Reps. Patrick J. Kennedy and James R. Langvein, Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, Lt. Gov. Elizabeth H. Roberts, Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis and General Treasurer Frank T. Caprio. Elected officials from Warren and Bristol also were among the 100 or so people on hand.

In his search for funding to keep the family business alive, “to say that Francis Jamiel is persistent is an understatement,” said Mark S. Hayward, district director of the SBA office in Rhode Island. “He was relentless.”

Hayward and other speakers stressed that the loan to Jamiel’s Shoe World provides a perfect example of what the federal recovery package is intended to do – get capital back to the small businesses that make up the backbone of the nation’s economy. “This is an example of why President Obama’s recovery act matters,” Whitehouse said. “What is Warren without Jamiel’s Shoe World?” Kennedy asked.

Hayward credited Coastway Credit Union, based in Cranston, and its President and CEO William A. White with leading all others in Rhode Island in small business lending. “Rhode Island is about small business, and Jamiel’s is an important part of this community,” White told the group. “We are proud to have been able to put this package together.”

After the event, Jamiel said he searched for bank financing for about eight months. After closing his Warwick store, Jamiel said he incurred debts that had to be paid and accounts payable that had to be met, as his cash dwindled and his inventory almost disappeared. “People were coming in, and I didn’t have shoes to sell them,” he said. He was perplexed by the bank rejections because, he noted, he has plenty of equity in the form of the shoe store building itself. He did not want to close his business, and he kept fighting the idea.

Then a friend reminded him about Coastway. He talked to Coastway, contacted the SBA in Providence for additional assistance, and he reached out to Roberts’ office to obtain the tax permits he needed quickly. Jamiel called Coastway “an oasis in the middle of the desert.”

With $400,000, Jamiel said he intends to pay off some debts, build up his inventory, “freshen up the store,” and possibly bring back some of the employees he was forced to lay off in recent months. He now has eight employees.

But more than anything, he kept faith with his father. His father died about 26 years ago, but when Joseph was a boy, his father – Jamiel’s grandfather – “pulled him out of school” to begin the shoe store, Jamiel said, and he does not want to be the one who ends such a hard-won family tradition.

Jamiel’s loan is the first of what will be more issued with 90 percent guarantees as a result of the federal recovery act, according to Hayward. He said the SBA in Rhode Island has 12 more approved loans “in the works” that will be announced soon.