Location of Interview: 10 Wilmington Avenue, Dayton, OH 45420

Interviewer: Chris Koester

Interviewee: George Sherer, Jr.

Text of Interview:

[Note: In the second half of the interview, George talks about two doctors, Dr. Beers and Dr. Veer. Due to their similar-sounding names, there was some confusion as to who George was referring to when he talked about one or the other. We asked for clarification, though it did not completely reduce our uncertainty.]

[Chris Koester]: [00:00-00:14] Hello. This is Chris Koester with Hannah Kratofil with the University of Dayton History Department’s Arcade Project. I’m here with George Sherer. George, would you like to state your name and your age please? 

[George Sherer-Jose]: [00:14-00:23] My name is George Sherer Jr., and I’m 93 years old. 

[Chris]: [00:23-00:37] 93. Also, we’re at 10 Wilmington place in Dayton, Ohio. Today is March 3rd, 2020. So George, where did you grow up? 

[George]: [00:37-00:41] Born and raised right here in Dayton, Ohio. 

[Chris]: [00:41-00:44] Any specific part of Dayton? 

[George]: [00:44-1:02] West Side. All over West Side. We were very poor. And we used to move every time the rent was due. I’d always tell everybody that we, we’d move quite often. 

[Chris]: [1:02-1:03] What did your parents do?

[George]: [1:03-1:23] My father was a laborer and he kept studying, studying, studying, and he got himself a job as a metallurgist, at Acme Pattern and Tool in Dayton. And that’s what he was doing when he retired. Still working as Acme. 

[Chris]: [1:23-1:27] So if you’ve lived in Dayton your entire life then?

[George]: [1:27-1:29] Except for when I was in army. 

[Chris]: [1:29-1:32] And when were you in the army?

[George]: [1:32-1:47] 1944 to 1947. I think that’s what my discharge is. I’ll have to look. 

[Chris]: [1:47-1:53] All right, so in regards to the arcade, what was your first memory of the arcade? 

[George]: [1:53-2:33] It was a very nice place, pretty as it could be, and my memories of it, we used to run through it. You could go [02:00] in from Main St. and run to Ludlow and come out the other end. 

We used to play down there quite a bit. They had nice places to get an ice cream cone because Dayton had, at the time, one of the most famous ice cream places, Gem City Ice Cream. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Gem City. They were right there… the company was on Third Street, and they had some great ice cream, good flavor. Yep.

[Chris]: [2:33-2:38] And so did you go to the arcade when you were an adult as well? 

[George]: [2:38-4:23] Every place you had to go just about led you through downtown Dayton back in those days, and you just automatically went through the Arcade because everything you could walk was on sale at the Arcade. All kinds of shops, things like that. The women had their, what do you call them, furriers, things like that in the Arcade [03:00]. 

And there were places that had women’s… that my mother would send me after things that were unmentionable and I had to get embarrassed going there to get them. [Laughter] and then on the second floor were the doctors. Dr. Veer was one of our doctors.

She was a German… she wasn’t a refugee but she was over here during the war and she stayed, but Dr. Veer was up on the second floor, and that was the first place I ran into any kind of an obstacle at the Arcade. Because in those days, when we would get ready to go onto the elevator, they would tell you, “stairway to the right, please,” and you would get off the elevator and walk around and up the steps to get upstairs and made sure you came down the same way you went up. 

And at the Kreske’s, the 10₵ store, they had a [04:00] soda fountain, not a soda fountain, a counter. So they had milkshakes and the like, and if you ordered a milkshake you can bet your bottom dollar you wouldn’t be sitting at the counter to drink it. You were told that you had to take that either outside or walk around inside the Arcade to drink it. 

[Chris]: [4:23-4:28] So what years did they do that and did they ever stop? 

[George]: [4:28-5:15] They did that all of my young life and well into the time I was married, and I was married in ’49 and when I came back home from the service, I remember I used to get off of work and stop there because they had a great delicatessen in there that sold nice sandwiches. I would take a sandwich home in the evening or some ice cream, stuff like that. 

And I would get them right there but they’d always wrap them up and give them to you in a bag to take with you. We could never [05:00] stop and eat it in there, and… it was a nice place to go except for the fact that you were always told you could not sit down at the counter and you can’t do this or you can’t do that. Yup. 

[Chris]: [5:15-5:18] So did you have any children?

[George]: [5:18-6:38] Yup! I have 1, 2, 3, Kimmy, Shelly, and George. I have three of them. I have the oldest daughter, she passed away about two years ago. She was mentally and physically retarded. And my other two are brilliant I call them. My son has his PhD from all those name schools along the east coast and my daughter has her, what does Shelly have [laughter], the president followed her to all the good schools. 

She got her degree from Wharton, Yale, and another place she got a degree from [06:00], and she rose in the Prudential from being just a… she came in there as just an assistant, not a recorder, what does her card say? Anyway, she’s now what they call a… oh, let me find my billfold. What is her title? But she goes all over the world for Prudential. She’s a principal. That’s what her job title is: a principal. And my grandson went to Harvard…

[Chris]: [6:38-6:40]  It’s fine if you can’t find it.

[George]: [6:40] Huh?

[Chris]: [6:40-6:42] it’s fine if you can’t find it.

[George]: [6:42-10:02] My grandson, he went to Harvard. He and my daughter have it out every year when it comes time for the Yale/Harvard game. Marcus [the grandson] is [07:00] about 6’10” and he fences, he was on the fencing team, and I always ask him… it surprised me that he’s a fencer. I says, “You’re such a big target!” He says, “Yeah, but look at my reach.”

 I said, “Okay, I hadn’t thought about that.” He says, “I got a reach on everybody!” So he does that, but then after getting all that education and things, my father-in-law had given him an old saxophone that he had when he was growing up. Well Marcus learned to blow that saxophone, he blows that all over the world. Pardon me, all over the world he blows that. 

Shelly and Marcus, and Mark rather, her husband, they are… I keep calling them, they are on top of the world with all the things they learned in school. He’s an accountant and whatever else, and [08:00] they drive back and forth, oh I’m sorry, they drive back and forth here, like they’ll be back here next week because he lives with their daughter, she’s in 11th grade at 6’5”, all of them are big. 

She’s made the all-state volleyball team for her school, and she’s… I watched her grow up, up, up, up, and the house I just sold before I moved in here I put a mark on the wall and she’s gone on up and before I left I was putting her mark over my head and I’m 6’3” and she’s 6’5” already in the 11th grade. And so she’s on the team. 

They played over in Sweden, they’ve played all over Europe. They go to the, oh I don’t know what the school is right this minute, but I’m really proud of Marc, my daughter, Elizabeth, Marcus. They are some special people. I mean they come to visit all the time [09:00]. They come in… in fact, I’ll digress a little bit.

When I got ready to sell my house, I had a house, another house, another house, and I had four automobiles, and I had all the things I wanted to keep in the house. Well I gave my daughter the key [laughter] and she got her hands on all of my paperwork and she has not let me see a spreadsheet to show me what we cleared on selling the house. 

And I don’t know when she’s gonna let me see all this. She just called me this morning telling me they’ll be coming through here on their way to some, east of here, for Elizabeth’s volleyball tournament. But she won’t tell me anything about how much money came out of selling the house [10:00]. I still think she’s tricking me.

[Chris]: [10:02-10:11] So, one, amazing children. But with your kids, did you ever take them to the arcade? 

[George]: [10:11-10:13] Who, my kids?

 [Chris]: [10:13] Yeah. 

[George]: [10:13-10:32] They went through there, but they never changed, but then it had changed the way it is now. You can go in there and sit down and have a milkshake or something. Yep. They don’t come to Dayton off of them enough to go down there. 

[Chris]: [10:32-10:36] No, when they were children, would you take them down to the arcade? 

[George]: [10:36-11:26] Oh yeah when they were little they would go to the Arcade because we never stopped going to the Arcade. We just knew what the conditions would be when we got there. Yup, because they still had Gem City Ice Cream which for me was one of the best ice cream in the world. That was good. 

And my doctor was there, Dr. Veer, and what was there [11:00]… when I’d get off from work headed home my wife, I rode the bus from Wright Patterson home and I would get downtown, stop at the Arcade, and bring a sandwich. Bring something; that would be the routine. But I would never stop going to the Arcade. I just knew there was a place I had to put my elbows on the bar and not sit down at the bar. 

[Chris]: [11:26-11:31] Now, did you ever go down during Christmas time? 

[George]: [11:31] Yes.

[Chris]: [11:31-11:33] Can you tell me about that? 

[George]: [11:33-12:19] They had a big Christmas tree in the middle. Do you know much about going into the Arcade when it didn’t have all the, I don’t know, the last time I was in there it seemed they had a bunch of cluster in there, more than it used to be. In the center, it was always empty and you could stand up on the balcony up there and you could look down. 

It was really pretty at Christmas time. Yup, it was really crisp, really pretty. And like I said I had a lady doctor, Dr. Katherine [12:00] Veer, V-E-E-R, and she was on the second floor up there and to go to her office I had to climb up the steps. That was awful strange when I think back on it. The elevator was right there, but they always told me “Stairway to the right. Stairway to the right.” 

[Chris]: [12:19-12:25] So when you were at the arcade where the majority of the customers, they’re white or black?

[George]: [12:25-17:25] They were just like the city population. They were… it didn’t stop people from going to the Arcade. No way! They had all the good food, they had all the ladies clothing shops; ladies fur coats and the ladies gowns and things. They were in the shops on the inside. From the outside, there was a drugstore, there was the shoe repair place, and the movie theatre. 

And in that one black there was everything, everything you wanted to do downtown. [13:00] In fact, this place here was the Dayton Insane Asylum back in those days. And my grandmother in August of 1950, my grandfather had to being her out to this place as a patient, and I had just bought a car, but never driven it before in my life. 

I had never driven before in my life. And he saw me coming and he was floored that I was driving a car, but he said I gotta take my grandmother, my grandmother’s name was Amanda, he said, “I gotta take Mandy out to the Dayton State Hospital. She’s being admitted out there today.” I thought “oh boy”. So we got in the car and I didn’t have any driver’s license or nothing, drove them out here, and the entryway wasn’t where it is now.

The entry to this place used to be around where Belmont School is. [14:00]The entry you went up 10 Wilmington Ave. and made a sharp right into the parking lot. Well, I came out here with my… when I was married that year and we stayed upstairs at my grandparent’s house, me and my wife.

 And so when I took her, took my [grandmother] in here, she says to me, my nickname everyone called me Sherry, “Sherry, I don’t like this place. Take me home.” That’s what she says to me, and I said, “Mommy, I can’t take you home because Pops is in there getting the paperwork signed up and you gonna stay here for a while.” 

Well that just tore me up so much I couldn’t stay no more. I had to leave them out here. But me and Amanda stays here right now. We had a big argument and he won’t speak to me anymore and I definitely will not speak to him again. [He] called me a… some bad name. Because he claimed this place was an army camp.

 I said it was an insane asylum [15:00]. He said it was an army camp. I got all the information to show him but he stopped speaking to me and I won’t even look his way right this minute because he went that route with me and oh he was, oh boy, he is a retired doctor. He had an office on Third St., sorry Fifth and Main St. and he retired, but now he claims that place was an army camp.

And I got a book from the Ohio Historical, whatever the thing is, it calls this place what used to be the insane asylum is now 10 Wilmington Place. Plain English it says it. He won’t let me show him that. I set it up on the table down there and he will not look at that. Won’t look my way anymore. I’m glad about it, good thing. I think about my grandmother coming out here and I think about the last [16:00] time I saw her, but what does he say, “irony is irony.”

Two Christmases ago, there was a Christmas parade, downtown Dayton and some lady of standing at the curb with me and she says, have you ever been into that courthouse building? I said, a long time ago, that must have been the last time I went in there. She says, if you ever go in there again, go in there and up those winding steps and you get to the top and there’s a table with a big humongous book.

That’s the only thing up there at the top of the steps. If Christmas parade, I went up there and there was this book. I opened the book and looked, it had Dayton Insane Asylum. This was a book with everybody’s name that was ever in the place, and I flipped through the book and it came up August the fifth 19 1985. I think it’s [00:17:00] 85, whatever it was.

And there’s Amanda Black, her name was on the book, and I sat there and just boohoo before I turned around and came back downstairs. But she was  in that book that they got down there. It was there two years ago. I don’t think they moved it out, but that was always something with me, me and my grandma. 

[Chris]: [17:25-17:33] So back to the arcade. Um, did different races go to different shops at the arcade? 

[George]: [17:33-18:24] The women were not allowed to try on the dresses. I remember that my wife, when she got ready to get married and had ordered that gown that she wore, she didn’t get to try it on. She had to take, hopefully, the right measurements for the dress.

She hoped that it was right and it was, yep, and she was a… [00:18:00] I get off the subject. she went to, she’s a alumni UD and I listened to her on this thing [his phone] every day cause she sang in the choir and she had a voice that would make you Boohoo. I do that every day. Oops. Do that everyday listening to her saying sing on this thing. Yeah. 

[Chris]: [18:25] That’s great. 

[George]: [18:25-19:23] And the year before, she passed away a year ago. For the UD, what you call that? Oh, alumni book. Where is my latest one? Whatever the book is, the man took.. he was at the end of the school year, year before last, he was coming out to the house to interview her, to put into the alumni book and when he came and she hadn’t had her hair done or nothing, she says, “you’re not taking any pictures of me and you’re not going to interview me”, and just didn’t let him. 

So [00:19:00] he interviewed me and I, by luck, I was in that one book out of, it was around his chair someplace, but my wife would ask why they should have interviewed her because she was on the rifle team, the basketball team, and in the choir at UD. 

[Chris]: [19:23-19:24] That’s great. That’s great. 

[George]: [19:24-19:27] I’m getting away from, again, from the arcade.

[Chris]: [19:27-19:35] that’s perfectly fine, George. Um, we’re the majority of workers at the arcade. Were they white or black? 

[George]: [19:35-19:39] White. They were white. They were white. Yep. 

[Chris]: [19:39-19:43] Do you remember any African Americans having jobs at the arcade?

[George]: [19:43-19:50]  If they were there, they worked after they closed the stores as janitors or whatever. Custodians. 

[Chris]: [19:50-20:01] So you’ve talked a little bit about this, but did you ever feel discriminated against at the arcade, and if so, what [00:20:00] time periods were they?

[George]: [20:01-23:10] Well, the reason I didn’t, I guess, was I went to Roosevelt back in the ‘40s.  Roosevelt High School then was just as segregated as anything in the world, and I was just used to it.

My parents had gone to Roosevelt when Roosevelt was built and they had been subjected to that same kind of feeling and Roosevelt when they tore it down the [building], what was there on third street now. I went with the photographer from the Dayton Daily News inside the building as they were tearing things out and he was talking about what was and wasn’t in the school.

I said, “no, there’s a swimming pool, and here the swimming pool. They had two pools, Olympic size swimming pools, one for blacks and one for whites. And it said this over the door in the tile the words. And Both of them were Olympic size pools, [00:21:00] had seats all around them, but when they built the school and saw that there were African Americans coming to the school, they blocked it all up.

You had to come in from a different direction to get into that and nobody, I went there from the seventh grade to the 12th when I graduated. And I never knew that that wall led to that door when they knocked that wall in there, that pretty marble entryway that says “Girls Swimming Pool” with only girls to swim in it, swam in it, were black girls and the black guys.

We didn’t, we couldn’t go into other pool. I didn’t know that all that good stuff existed till they were tearing that place down. And that and the other thing up third, everything on third street. As you look back on it, you just see something that makes you feel real bad. Gem City Ice Cream, some of the best sys cream in the world.

They had sold it [00:22:00] in the Arcade. They had a, that place out on the way home from work, stop there to get some ice cream from just Gem City, but they own all the property all the way almost to Roosevelt High School on Third Street. Making ice cream, but if it’s a light there, you had to be able to fight or run fast and on Third Street.

Now I’m that divesting  again a little bit, but all the restaurants up there close to Roosevelt High School, we couldn’t go in the cafeteria to eat at Roosevelt, but going up the street there were signs that says, if you were black and you wanted a Coney Island, you couldn’t go in the front door of none of those buildings.

You had to go around the back and there was a window cut in every one of them. You ordered from the window in the front and you had to go around to the back to pick it [00:23:00] up, and that’s the way. They had good, good Coney Islands, good food, but if you wanted any, you had to go around the back and they handed it out the back window to you.

[Chris]: [23:10-23:20] So with the arcade, would you consider the arcade better or worse or just about the same as these other establishments when it comes to [racial discrimination]?

[George]: [23:20-23:55] They were all the same up and down third street, they were the exact same and the big, they had all the big movies, movie houses downtown, and they were all the same way. You only could go one way up the stairs. Upstairs.

But then they said all that was Jim Crow. Yeah. And there’s a law that I didn’t know about that until this came up and I started reading about, I didn’t know anything about Jim Crow. I never heard the words until here recently. 

[Chris]: [23:55-24:10] So when you’ve had these different types of [00:24:00] experiences, were you getting discriminated against from the workers at the arcade, or did you ever get any from the customers at the arcade?

[George]: [24:10-24:23] Some customers, they would say something to you if you were caught sitting on one of those stools when they delivered a milkshake or something, the customers would remind you. Yep. They would remind you real quick. 

[Chris]: [24:23-24:25] Did the workers ever remind you?

[George]: [24:23-24:44]No, they let the customers do it, they didn’t. I can’t remember ever having somebody on that side of the counter see anything. They may have said something to the clerk that made alert the clerk to come and say something to you, but I never remember them saying anything. 

[Chris]: [24:44-24:53] Gotcha. Now, switching a little bit outside of the Arcade, uh, you’re talking to me earlier about how you knew W.S. McIntosh?

[George]: [24:53] Yeah. 

[Chris]: [24:53-24:55] Would you like to talk about that a little bit?

[George]: [24:55-25:15] No care at all. His son’s name is Jay J – A – [00:25:00] Y and he was… now he didn’t run around with the rest of the kids. We all lived in DeSoto Bass, but I don’t know who he ran around with at all. Cause his dad, it seemed like his dad got killed. 

[Chris]: [25:15-25:21] Are you talking about Ws McIntosh? Yeah, he got killed in the mid seventies he got shot.

[George]: [25:21-27:04] Shot down on main street. Yep. Yeah, he was . He lived two doors down the street from us. Oh, we lived at 1046 Robeson place. Yeah. But I think back on all the things that Dayton, I went to Roosevelt High School and in Roosevelt on the first day I was there. I’m digressing again, I was just looking at my book right over here someplace.

The first [00:26:00] person I met was a girl named Pat [Mumall]. And me and her were signing, getting our paperwork signed up to come into the school. We were called into Ms. Ross office as assistant principal to be told there’ll be none of that stuff in this school. None of that I want you to know.

And that’s what she told us for the next six years. Pat and I were good friends, but she told us it wouldn’t be none of that and I didn’t know what the heck she’s talking about. That’s what’s funny. Cause when I went to grade school, that’s really strange. I hadn’t thought about that to now. I went to Willard School, a school on the West Side down Germantown street.

Willard school was segregated, but it was back when we went to Willard School, it was mixed. The teachers were mixed. I think that was the first school to have black teachers in the city of Dayton. Yup. [27:00]

[Chris]: [27:04-27:12]  Now in 1964 do you remember the protests at the Arcade barbershop? 

[George]: [27:12-27:21] I remember of it. I wasn’t down there demonstrating or whatever they call it in it. No. 

[Chris]: [27:21-27:24] But can you talk to me just a little bit about it? Just what you recollect, even if you weren’t there. 

[George]: [27:24-27:44] All I, recollected was, it wasn’t a place for me to go because I knew that if anybody got in trouble, if you got in trouble, your voice wasn’t going to be heard. It was not going to be heard.

[Chris]: [27:44-27:49] So how about the, uh, do you remember the protests at Rike’s Department Store in 1965?

[George]: [27:49-28:06]  I remember this. They were walking with the signs. Yeah. But I don’t know about what it was about. I think it had something to do with putting on clothes as you’re getting ready to buy [00:28:00] women. But I remember vaguely that.

[Chris]: [28:06-28:11] Do you ever remember going to Rike’s Department Store at all? 

[George]: [28:11-28:19] Oh, I’d go to it every other day, pretty much. You went to all those stores because there’s no place else to go. 

[Chris]: [28:19-28:23] Would you get treated better at the Arcade or at Rike’s?

[George]: [28:23-29:09] Man, it’s funny, I never paid any attention to how I was being treated. Of those two places Rike’s was the better place. The only reason I say that is because that’s where my mother worked, at Rike’s. 

And at Rike’s, she was hanging up clothes, putting stuff like that, and she’d always meet me there with something they’ve stopped and bring, take home when I went.But no, that’s the only reason I would say Rike’s because the Rike’s… Oh, . [00:29:00] Seemed like McIntosh got into something right there near Rike’s. Right there near Rike’s.

[Chris]: [29:09-29:17] He led a protest because there was a labor dispute. They were discriminating against hiring black workers. 

[George]: [29:17-29:36] Yeah. It was something like that. I know that he was always advocating something like that. Sumpter McIntosh. His wife was really quiet. He had a son named Jay, Jay something or other. 

[Chris]: [29:36-29:47] So how, in your mind, how was the city of Dayton, in regards to civil rights issues? 

[George]: [29:47-30:13] Well, back then I didn’t pay it much attention except that as they say, know your place. You knew your place and you knew you didn’t go too far out of your place. And of course, if you did, you had [00:30:00] your parents first to go through before you had to go through anybody else. They will say, you know better than that. You should know better than that. 

[Chris]: [30:13-30:20] So can you talk to me a little bit about the Dayton race riots in 1966?

[George]: [30:20-32:09] 1966 I didn’t, I lived out in the country in 1966 and I didn’t go into town when all that was going on. Yeah, I lived out in Jefferson Township. That almost caused some riots. You know, things haven’t changed much. I’m going to divest again.

The sheriff department. Behind me, I had, we had two and a half acres of yard in the back down by the creek and the house that had a backyard that came up to [00:31:00] ours they had a little problem with their oldest son and he came over and claimed the heel and down into the creek and my backyard is, he claimed that as he is.

And I went out there and said something to him about it. And next thing I know he’s over in my yard going “pow, pow, pow!”, shooting the pistol. I called the sheriff and the sheriff comes out. He’s investigating me like I’m a criminal. And when I went back to the Sheriff’s office.. oh boy, I’ve forgotten some of this stuff.

And went back to the Sheriff’s office and the sheriff didn’t answer, had the door locked. This was in Jefferson Township. We had a, it’s own independent police department. He came and finally unlocked the door and stood on one side with us and on his pistol and the deputy was on another side with his hand on a pistol and asked me “what do you want, boy?”[00:32:00] I never get over that. Never invited me to come into the building. Never. And that was in recent years.

[Chris]: [32:09-32:12] What year would you think that would be? 

[George]: [32:12-33:13] That would be maybe about eight or nine years ago. I have think of it. Which car was a driving? It had to be eight or nine years ago. Yeah. Cause it used to be, when we first moved out there, they had black policemen and then all at once we were under the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department. We had Sheriff’s out there and, but then everything was something different.

But then, when I called the police to come out there about the boy out my backyard shooting the pistol, he’d come out there investigating me like I was the [00:33:00] the criminal walking around looking all over the place, asking me about things in my house he didn’t have any business looking at? Yup. There were some weird things going on. 

[Chris]: [33:13-33:23] You know, speaking of living situations, you said that you were born and raised in West Dayton. Would you like to talk about your childhood in West Dayton? 

[George]: [33:23-36:03] I grew up on Western Avenue in the Western Avenue area. Oh boy, I’ll go into some more things. My mother used to make sure I took care of my two sisters as best I could because I wasn’t a bully and I was always running from the bullies and one night there was something going on over at Roosevelt High School.

Again, always there, and mother told me to go over there and get your sisters and bring her home. And I went over [00:34:00] there to get my sister Edith. And on the way before we got around the corner, off Third Street, heading down Gros Ventre toward our house. Here comes the police with sirens going and we did the natural thing: we start running toward home. 

Well, when we got home, and I hit the porch, my mother and dad was sitting on the porch. The cop was right behind me when he pulled his car up to the curb, jumped out, I ran all, my father was sitting there with his feet up on the railing on the porch, and I remember knocking the chair out from under him and he said some bad words, “What in so-and-so is going on?”

And then after I trampled him, the cops trampled him too and snatched me out of the house. And took me downtown, no they didn’t take me downtown. They took me down Fifth Street to under the Fifth Street bridge because I wouldn’t tell them where the rest of the guys went. They said, “you don’t know your alleys like these other [00:35:00] guys did, do ya?”

Again, same info, same words. Those same words came up. And so it ended up I had to go to juvenile court. And the other guys that they caught that night ended up going to juvenile court and had to go to the detention home up in Columbus. 

And the only reason I knew they were there, we all played softball together and we went to Columbus to play the, what they call them, the prisoners, and they, the ladies had to sit in a cage like a, some chain, the chain-link fence around this thing, the watch the game, and we played the game and the guard asks, “When did you get out?” He said, “Everybody knows you in here. Everybody’s speaking to you. When did you get out?” My wife was embarrassed. Yep. All those little [00:36:00] things just happen like that.

[Chris]: So when you were, when you grew up and you got married, did you remain in West Dayton? You said you went to the Township for a while. Where, where did you live? 

[George]: We were married, we bought a house on…everything is a different episode. We bought a house in, in Edgemont part of Dayton. Alright. We went and got the…went to Dayton Power and Light to get the lights changed over to our name and all that stuff, and went to the, the Citizen Federal Loan Company to get the paperwork for our deed thing filled out and the man inside holler, I told you so and so–no loans on the West side, no more. I said, I wonder who he’s talking about, but that’s what the Citizen Federal said about us getting a loan to move there.

Then when we [00:37:00] moved in, the people was across the street would throw bottles through our windows. This is over in the Edgemont. We moved into Edgemont, 373 Bolander Avenue and the people throwing rocks at the house, calling us all kind of names. And we endured there and pretty soon all the, we, I didn’t know this thing about buying a house.

The deal, the realtors got a thing they call blockbusting. Then, I, we were a blockbuster. This is a blockbuster, we can get them in there, we got the whole block to sell and that was exactly what happened. We bought it and next thing you know, for sale signs were all over the place and the houses were all sold in the [unintelligible] time.

But that’s where, that’s where we lived in Edgemont. Right close not far from here. Yep. Yeah, the, but the man, I remember all of these names. His last name was Och, O-C-H, [00:38:00] but he was being chewed out and I bet they would, sitting down laughing while he’s chewing him out. So I can hear, I told you no more sales over there, not any. Yep.

But we and, and, and doing all that, they, people threw rocks through the window in the house on Bolander and we couldn’t, the police would come out there and they just walk around like, you don’t need a house like this, you, this is your house. That’s the way they’d walk around the house acting like we had done something to whoever did it to us.

But we learned to live with all that and moved out into the township. That was a really something too. We moved out there and there were no people like me out there at the time. All it was was big farms and the man was selling the McClane’s subdivision, he called it [00:39:00] and then I heard those words all over again: I told you not to let any loans out in that area. I’m sitting outside there waiting for the paperwork to be finished, but they were saying the same thing then. But the good part about it, we built that house. We didn’t build that. We bought that house, but then we sold it and built the house. The house we built was like, what do we pay for that build that house for at the time? About $18,000 and it sold for almost $200,000 when we finished it because it was a big, it’s a pretty house, it’s a beauty. I hated to leave it. It was a, my basement would make any house look like something else. Basement. I finished it with carpeting. My bar and I’m, oh boy, I just thought of that. My bar with all my liquor is still down there, it was [00:40:00] sold with the house. Oh! Cause I stopped drinking some time ago. Uh, and my bookcase full of all my school books, they’re gone. I hadn’t even given that a thought till now. 

[Chris]: So where did you go to college? 

[George]: Right at UD.

[Chris]: And when did you graduate? 

[George]:  [laughter] 1956. [laughter] I think that’s the right year. My wife graduated from UD at ‘50, no, she graduated in ‘49 cause I was still in the service I think. I was just looking at all this stuff…I was looking at this yesterday. That’s our…class of 1944 we had [00:41:00] a class reunion and that’s how big our class was. 

[Chris]: He’s talking about Roosevelt High School right now. 

[George]: That’s Roosevelt High School down the street, it’s not too far. 

[Chris]: So what, what was your job when you were still working? 

[George]: Well I was a financial manager in the life support systems project office, they call it. And that’s another case of some funny things, ha! For some reason or other, things just seem to work out for me. And I don’t know why I worked in a place…that didn’t want me when I, when I was forced on them. And one year, that year it snowed real hard and only two people made it into work was me and Elsie, a lady that worked in the office.

Well, nobody was showing me how to do the job at the time, and I had bumped somebody else to move into that job. Well… [00:42:00] Elsie, and that one day when we were snowed in, she told me where everything was that I should have known by where it was. We just talked about everything, well it proved to be her downfall cause she, they just railroaded her right out of the place and she ended up in California, I bought her something to go on top of her car to carry her luggage in. But she taught me a lot, and that day it snowed. And when they found out she taught it to me, it was too late for ‘em then cause I just took over my office. It was mine cause I was the chief of the office, and before that they had me doing things but weren’t giving me any credit for doing it. And, and we had this one general from…come in from Washington and somebody had to always give the, the…go over the program with him when he came. Well, General Alder came [00:43:00] in and I’m always joking with somebody. So since I’m the financial manager, I put on a sport coat, that was all plaid, plaid, lookin’ like ragged thing, and get up there and I introduce myself and start my lecture. He said, what’s this joke you playin’? [laughter] Oh, he says that, that coat, that doesn’t, a financial manager wouldn’t be wearing a coat like that. I said, that’s the best I can afford, they won’t give me a raise around here, and that next thing I know I got my raise I should have gotten, when I first moved in there, all the little incidents like that moved me right along and when I, later on, all the, we played poker all the time, all the guys in office, and I think of Dr. Beers, he was a full colonel. The general, when we’d get ready to have the briefing, I had to brief the [00:44:00] generals four times a year and he’d always say, what’s George wearing today? I’d wear a raggedy sport coat, stand up there and talk about money we need it, we’d get the money. And it, it was, it was fun after a while. Cause then after Elsie and Barbara Jean and two of them come out to see me now to have lunch. Oh boy. But after they…it was with some fluky thing with the weather that always happened, and only one person or two people would get in there and they showed me how to do all the things I needed to know to do my job.

And from there was just history. I look at all the people or the, the things that in my other in the bedroom, all the things that they signed when I left, but I got lots and lots of friends. And Mr. Whalen, do you remember [00:45:00] Mr. Whalen at UD?

[Chris]: Name sounds familiar 

[George]:  …talk economics, he…

[Chris]: That might’ve been before my time.

[George]: Okay. He was a long time back, Mr. Whalen. He taught me some things about how to…oh, how to get along with people. He taught me something that, I don’t know how to even describe it, but it worked. And the next thing I know when we had a job audit, all the guys had gotten a raise, but me, and lo and behold, the guy doing the job auditing was a guy that was in my class at UD.

One of my…UD guy, he says, where’s the work you do? I says, they took it out of the file cabinet when they knew you were coming. So the next day, I know, I hear him in there fussing and demanding to see all the records. He got all the records and when he finished with them, they had to raise me to the same [00:46:00] level they were, and that’s the way it went from then on, everything like that just went my way for some reason and the general coming down from Washington, every, every, every quarter. We had a quarterly review. He say, put George on first cause we know he’s going to have some kind of outfit on let’s get us started. I’d have a plaid, a plaid sport coat [laughter] or anything like that, but the other guys wouldn’t read the manuals, they wouldn’t do none of that stuff that should’ve been done. And I do it. But no, I enjoyed my job so much before I retired, but one of the people, Dr. Beers and I went, his wife wanted me to be a speaker at his funeral. He, he and I, pardon me again, we’re sitting next to each other at a staff meeting one evening and something hit me and he says, [00:47:00] what’s the matter?

I said, heck, I don’t know what the heck just happened. He says, I think I do. And he called the base ambulance and they took me to Saint Elizabeth hospital and I stayed there about a week. I’d had a heart attack and he instantly put the paperwork in [unintelligible] not been retired as long as I have, because he put the paperwork in to get me retired he said, no, we don’t have, don’t have any more of that. And since then, that’s been, whoa boy, that’s been at least 25 years ago. [laughter]

[Hannah]:  Real quick, what, what was the name of the company that you worked for? 

[George]: I worked with Wright-Patterson. Yeah, the life support systems project office. And when I got ready to retire, and I was just looking at all this stuff, all the, my retirement papers are signed by lieutenant general so-and-so, general so-and-so, and they even gave me a invitation, a certificate for my wife and they, same people signed that. She [00:48:00] didn’t like one of the things they’re, they’re a bunch of junks, uh jokers later on, but they would have, one of the things they said, he had a heart attack, but we can give him another heart attack. Give him, Valerie was her name, and had a cutout thing, a life-size cutout of this Valerie, it says that’ll take care of your, your, your, uh, what kind of problems? They had a name for it. Oh, I can’t think. But it was…had my retirement was over to the officer’s club, everybody said that’ll never happen, that’ll never happen, because Jim, the general before he came to town, they would never let me eat over in the officers in the, in the executive, as they call them, workers. I would never be allowed to eat in there. I had to, they’d all go around there and I’d go down the other way every time, and he was there. He said, where are you [00:49:00] going? I said, I’m going to lunch, I can’t go over there. He said, who says you can’t go over there? Come on we going in there. From then on, I ate in the executive dining room. I said, all these things just fell into my lap for some reason. Boy. 

[Chris]: That’s great. Um, so back to the Arcade a little bit. Um, why do you think the popularity of the Arcade declined?

[George]:  Survived? 

[Chris]: No. Declined in the 80s. 

[George]: Oh, I think the law made it decline. I think it never woulda decline because people were comfortable with the way it was. And even me out. That’s the only way I knew it to be. Just come go in up the steps the way you’re supposed, supposed to and get the ice cream cone. You don’t sit down, you stand with one foot on that little [00:50:00] little step up, just sitting there at the counter and I just do that and go ahead, outdoors and eat.

[Chris]: So just to clarify, you think racial integration helped a little bit of, of white flight move away?  

[George]:  I don’t doubt it at all. And I think they were building new houses all around the Huber Heights and all those places were springing up and they had to have people to buy the old houses that people had been living in to move into their new houses and that’s the way they filled them all up. Yep. 

[Chris]: Do you want to talk about suburbanization a little bit about Huber Heights or Beaver Creek and all of these suburbs that have grown out of people moving from inside the city and moving out because…

[George]: Yep. There’s, the one that comes to mind real fast, and I can’t think of what it’s called, it’s over towards, oh boy. [00:51:00] Are you familiar with anything over near Wright-Patterson area C call up? Used to be…oh, what’s the name of that the restaurant is, has two tall, tall timbers…is a place called Tall Timbers. Uh, the bar that everybody used to stop after work and go in there and have a drink before they’d head home.

That was a place that the guys, me and my…the guys I worked with played poker together every other month in one of our… basements, and we’d go over there to the Tall Timbers, that’s the name of the dang-busted restaurant, Tall Timbers. Go over to the Tall Timbers. Now seeing me come in the place by myself, it would not have worked with all of my gang [unintelligible] they see them all come in, we’d all sit down and nobody said anything to me about it, but [00:52:00] one, just once, I went in there before the rest of the gang got there and somebody mentioned it, so I had to go outside and I told them what happened. They said, we’ll, we’ll stop here and eat first before we go over to whoever’s house it was we were going to play cards, but this will be the last time we goin’ here to eat. And that was the last of that, but then Charlie and the guys, they would do strange things in the neighborhood. Charlie Clark was one of our buyers and his wife, Bonnie, that we all went to each other’s house all the time. And when they were getting ready to go on a vacation at one year, they lived out in Huber Heights, and I’m doing way over, in, oh boy, over in Jefferson Township, they gave me the key to their house and wanted me to take care of their swimming pool while they’re gone over in Huber Heights. Now that’s going to be a no, no. [laughter] So I went over there. Nobody home, but Bonnie, [00:53:00] Bonnie, and me there. She’s showing me how to do everything on that swimming pool, and I’m looking around to see how the neighbor, how the neighbors are reacting. [laughter]

Ah, yep. Boy. And I think back, I had some of the best years of my life working in the life support sport, Wright-Patterson, the best people I ever worked with. And we went every place, went to all the ball games together. We played cards at each other’s house, visit with each other all the time. And there was jus’ lots and lots of fun.

[Chris]: Well, that’s great George, and I’d like to thank you so much for your time. I have one last question for you.

[George]: Okay.

[Chris]: Which is, what was your favorite and least favorite thing about living in Dayton? 

[George]: Whew. [laughter] Dayton. Just livin’ in Dayton was my favorite thing. I love Dayton. My least favorite one was…[00:54:00] It always seemed to, wherever I went, I was given some walking rules and rules. I can remember the first day I went to Roosevelt High School in 1930…6 or whatever. Anyway, Ms. Roth, the assistant principal. She calls me into the office and tell me what they would have none of at Roosevelt High School, and that was fraternizing with the young ladies. For me.

But as it turns out, I didn’t flirt with them, they flirted with me, which is not [unintelligible]. I had a lot of fun with everybody, every place I’ve ever been. And I enjoy people a lot. You can tell that I’ve, no…like I said before, this place here, is that the best thing that could’ve happened to me.

[Chris]: That’s [00:55:00] great. I also kind of lied a little bit. I got more questions for you if you don’t mind George. 

[George]:  Oh, I don’t mind.

[Chris]: So you’re talking about your doctor Catherine Veer. Was it spelled with a V or a B? 

[George]:  Doctor? Once I got a one that start with a V, Dr. Veer, Catherine. She was a lady and a B, Dr. Beers. 

[Chris]: So B-E-E-R-S?

[George]:  Just like an old glass of beer, yep.

[Chris]: Gotcha. And how long was Catherine Veer, how long was she at the Arcade? 

[George]:  No, she wasn’t at the Arcade. She was at the base. 

[Chris]: Oh, gotcha. Oh, so Dr. Beers with a B was at the Arcade? 

[George]: Yup. She took care of me big time. 

[Chris]: Also, if you, if you can think back to any specific names of restaurants or stores that were in the Arcade?

[George]: Yup. Let’s see. There was, I think [Unintelligible] was here. It may have been [00:56:00] further down Main Street though. [Unintelligible] was in this one, but not this building in the Arcade building. Oh boy. On the corners of the big buildings…Liberal Market was in there, grocery store, and that restaurant that sold, sold sandwiches. But all the stores in there were, had the front two on the Main Streets cause Main Street, and then they had a back entrance into the Arcade and on Ludlow, same way back entrance was on, in the Arcade. But you can come in from the front, so if you didn’t want to be insulted, you could go in the front and come out the other end. 

[Chris]: So was there any [00:57:00] crime at the Arcade that you noticed? 

[George]: Not…everybody sort of accepted it. That was it, so you live with it. 

[Chris]: How about in, in your later years, did you notice any more crime in the area around the Arcade? 

[George]: No, the only time I ever went in into that area at that point, at this point in my life was to go on over some legal papers, and that’s the only time I’d be standing at the window looking down and out of sidewalk. But no. I know Dr. Beers, Beers, Beers and Veer, Dr. Veer closed her office up. Dr. Catherine Veers. Hmm. That was my daughter and my oldest daughter’s doctor, but she closed her place up…and goin’ to the [00:58:00] movies, that was always a doozy. Go to the movie, the steps…that was just crazy. You could only sit in the back two rows in the balcony, the rest of the balcony and the rest of the downstairs you didn’t go into it all anyway. But that was the way it was upstairs, but that’s the best place to go [unintelligible]. [laughter]

[Chris]: That’s great. Um, so talking about your Army experience a little bit, what was your reasoning? Why? Why did you enlist in the Army?

[George]: Cause everybody my age was already in there or getting drafted. So, my buddy Kurt and my buddy Paul and myself sit there, stood there one day and decided if we enlist, we’ll get to stay together. So we enlisted, 1540-00 -66, -67, and -68 our serial numbers, and we [00:59:00] got on the bus to go to Columbus where we were going to be stationed, and we got to Columbus and we were stationed together for one whole day. One day. [laughter] Kurt…no, let’s see. Kurt and I– Paul went to Fort Benning, Georgia. Kurt and I went to Fort Leonardwood, Missouri, that’s right Kurt went with me, and what happened, and that was another tricky thing that happened. I’m talking too much. [laughter] At Fort Leonardwood, uh, oh boy, somebody in our company, while we were taking basic training, had gotten a 126 on the, the IQ tests. They figured it couldn’t be me cause I looked the wrong way. It had to be someone, that guy from [unintelligible] or one of these places, looked like they were white. That’s what they figured. So [01:00:00] the rest of the company went to Japan. They were gone. And me and another guy were still there because they decided, determined that they’d made a mistake it was me that had made the 120-something on my IQ tests. So now I got a chance to go to OCS. Well, I had seen, do you remember Joe Lewis? Joe Lewis, Jackie Robinson, those two guys. Jackie Robinson was a lieutenant. Joe Lewis was a sergeant. They had to come around to the back gate to get a donut, and I saw all this going on and they were talking about going to OCS and I told the guy, if I go to OCS, that means I got to stay in another year or so, you got to sign in for a little longer, he said, yes, indeed you do. I said, well, I’ll tell you what, take it off my name. I don’t want to go to OCS. I’m not gonna to do that. I’m gonna [01:01:00] take my…

[Chris]: What’s OCS?

[George]: Officer’s Candidate School. And Jackie Robinson was one of those that stood at the back gate, stood at the back gate where every evening, the ladies, what do they call them ladies? Not Girl Scouts, but they would have donuts and coffee at the back gate for the soldiers and they’d be the ones there at night…officers out there shouldn’t be doing that. Officers had Officer’s Club if you were anything but black. Well. I looked at all that and I started weighing that and I said, now that’d mean I’d have to stay another six months cause you have to sign off for at least two years plus you’ve got to stay in the service. So I said, I don’t need that, I wanna get out fast as I can. And so I told them I didn’t want to go to OCS. So Kurt ended up going to Japan. Paul went to Fort Benning, Georgia, and I ended up at a [01:02:00] outfit getting ready to get on the boat, going to, Europe, and that’s the way I got to Europe and got there first thing starts seeing might as well be at home. The GIs had told all the fräuleins, those are the young ladies, had told all the fräuleins that at nighttime, those guys over there got a tail that comes out, cause you’d be stay away from them, them they’re, they’re, animals. Okay. The girls told all the guys all about that, but we hadn’t…dig the latrines and stuff. It was just a mess. And then, down in North…South Carolina, when I was stationed down there, before I went overseas, there had been a lynching. A lynching had happened, so that locked down, the camp sent us, I didn’t know there were swamps down there like there, we were in a part of the camp back in the [01:03:00] swamps. They sent us back there to stay till the, the noise died down with this, what had happened in town, and they wouldn’t issue any passes or anything for us to go into town. But. I said, now, that’s teaching me a lesson. I’m a stay on camp, I’m gonna to stay right in this darn building. And so from there we went through these swamps.

I didn’t know we had that many swamps down there in the South, South of the, Southern part of the United States, we went through the swamps down there going to get on this boat to go overseas and boy, oh boy, a little puddle jumper. Yep. And get, when we get over there, I think I told you that they told them, had told the fräuleins that at night that guy, their tails come out so you be careful about them.

And we had to end up digging [01:04:00] slit trenches. You ever heard of one of those? 

[Chris]: No. 

[George]:  A bathroom. And that’s what we ended up doing for the first got on the shore over there in France and toilet paper going on a limb off of a tree that you cut. That was it until we were stationed someplace and they had told everybody about what was happening to us when nighttime came and they walking behind you and looking to see what’s gonna happen to you.

[Chris]: So, um, Hannah, do you have any additional questions? Well, George, I really appreciate you spending so much time with us. 

[George]: I’ve talked too much. 

[Chris]: No, it’s great information. So thanks again, George. I really appreciate it. 

[George]: Well I am glad that you came and I’m glad I got to say all these…I just got it off my mind. I think I talk too much.

[Chris]: No, thank you.

[George]: Yeah.

Date of Interview: February 29, 2020

Interviewer: Ryan Reed and Sarah Eyer

Interviewee: Pauline Clauss

Text of Interview:

[00:00:00] [Eyer] Record. Today we would like to interview you about your memories of the Dayton Arcade. We would like to start with some general questions about life and then move on to your memories of the arcade and its place in Dayton. So this is Sarah Eyer interviewing Pauline Clauss at 10 Wilmington place of room 156 East February 29th of 2020. So Pauline, when and where were you born?

 [Clauss] Dayton, Ohio Miami Valley Hospital. 1935 May eighth.

[Eyer] What were your parents’ names and what did they do?

[Clauss] John T. Pierce and Julia Francis Pierce, and really at the time, he was out of [00:01:00] work during the depression, and then he was hired and maybe in 39 at Wright Patterson field, and he went into maintenance there and then, I guess, to Millwright, and that’s all. And mother probably went to work during World War II Inland Manufacturing Company and on West Third Street, and she enjoyed talking about making parts of guns and about the war effort. So, and then after that, she went to work in an envelope factory on East Second Street. [00:02:00] And my sisters worked at the same factory and my dad said, all they did was make envelopes at home. It’s all he heard. And since you know this part, so. When Inland called mother back to work, she had promised when she got the job at International Envelope, she would stay there. So she lost her opportunity for working for GM. And so, so that’s where she retired from. So, I don’t know. That’s it.

[Eyer] No, that’s great. [00:03:00] So, where did you go to school? High school. Grade school.

[Clauss] I went to Huffman School. And it has been renovated now for senior apartments. And my sister lived there, and it was on Huffman Avenue. And probably six, seven blocks from where I lived on 14 Carl Street. And then I went to Stivers High School and graduated in 1953.

[Eyer] So you were married as we were talking about before, so tell me how you met him.

[Clauss] Okay. I met him when I was 14, freshman in high school. [00:04:00] At Skateland downtown at East Fourth Street. Maybe it was Fourth Street and Ludlow Street, and I’d see, him every Saturday night down there. And then we’d dated during high school, and he went to Roosevelt High School, which was on West Third Street. And, and then he didn’t graduate. He went to work, and then when he was drafted into, oh, the last part of the Korean War. We married in 1953 on one of his first furloughs. And, and then he [00:05:00] transferred to Germany. I stayed at home with mom and dad. So, we had two children, which was Rebecca and Rob Jr. and so.

[Eyer] I’m sorry. I forgot to ask what was your husband’s name?

[Clauss] Robert Joseph Clauss.

[Eyer] Thank you. Alrighty, so you have two children, Rebecca and Rob Jr.

[Clauss] Rob was killed in an accident about 11 years. So still have Rebecca and four grandchildren and Rob left two boys, which just graduated this past year. [00:06:00] One graduated as a nurse from UC, and the other one is the Dayton School of Design and Graphic Design. And, and then the two oldest. One is in Columbus. He graduated from Ohio State. And he has a family. And then we have a granddaughter here, and she’s 31, and she just had her second baby, and she has the two. And her husband, let’s see, is Matt Jones. And [00:07:00] Nathan is my oldest there at 36, him and his wife, Sarah Cox, and they have two girls one four year old, and the youngest is probably about 20 months old. So just enjoy those grand… great grand babies. Now I happened to be there at all their births, and I just enjoyed the experience.

[Eyer] Wonderful. Okay. I just need to reset up my headphones here. They slipped off. Ah, sorry.

[Reed] You got everything?

[Eyer] I got everything. You can set that down. Alrighty. So, one question about just [00:08:00] Dayton. What was… What did you enjoy most about living in Dayton? What was it like?

[Clauss] I don’t know what to say here at all. When I, when I think. I hate to say how much my mother enjoyed Woodland Cemetery, and so many memories, you know, that she would talk about there. And, just enjoyed going around the different places in the area. Heard so much about mom talking about these buildings, [00:09:00] older buildings in Dayton that’s been torn down now and the Art Institute and Eastwood Park. Ah, the swimming pool out there, and going… dad would drive us so much out at Wright Patt called Patterson Field in those days, and meeting my husband on Courthouse Square on Monday evenings. A boyfriend then, and they’d be, boys would be, high school kids would be sitting on the wall down at the [00:10:00] Courthouse Square. And… I meant just… I just can’t think of all the, the things that were, were and. Oh, Lakeside park, amusement park, and I think there’d be a nickel night on Wednesday nights out there. I’d go to skating, roller-skating at forest park. And, so this, this is all I can think of right now and seeing Hank Williams in the [00:11:00] fifties. I really don’t know where he performed down, down town some, somewhere around Chaminade High School, and we had seen him in Springfield maybe the day before, and then he looks out. He sees, he sees us, but his guitar player had taken up with my sister in Springfield walking around wherever we were in the park. And, so this is… I think about seeing Hank Williams. I think about the Memorial Hall. And can’t remember going there as [00:12:00] much as a child or growing up. But I mean, we always reverence that place since it had, you know, a soldier out in front with this gun. And probably going downtown with mother. She always went in on Saturdays, like most mothers did to do their shopping at the market places and going into McCrory’s and having a 50 cent lunch, which was turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes and naturally a roll, little [00:13:00] cranberry cup, a cup full cranberry sauce, and probably a Coke, so that was always a treat. If, if I went downtown with my mother. I’m sure she probably stopped every Saturday for this lunch. But, so this, I can… I graduated from NCR’s auditorium where most of the graduations were held in the days I grew up, and, um. Whether I can think of anything else, I don’t know.

[Eyer] Yeah, no, you did great with it. Alrighty. So what are your first [00:14:00] memories of the arcade?

[Clauss] Okay. My first memory… Really, I’m thinking more about my high school years; instead of… I probably went through it with mother, and you know, now we’d pass through it going into McCrory’s all the time, and mom would, mom would shop there and buy her a pound probably of peanut butter and in a paper or cardboard carton with the wire handle. And naturally, I remember the [00:15:00] the Walkers, a fruit stand with those 15 cent chocolate malted, a frosted malt and served in a little cone cup. And 15 cent orange juice and probably other juices. Culp’s being in there. And I knew… I, I went in there when I worked downtown Dayton to eat at Culp’s Cafeteria for the…We’d have a cold meatloaf sandwich. And Noll’s. Can’t forget those large oval shaped bread sandwiches [00:16:00] probably five or six inches long and ham and Swiss cheese and a brown mustard and 35 cents for those. And this would have been in the, oh, 54, 55. And like I said, there was a fish market that smelled up the place around it. And I don’t know what other businesses were in there. I can’t remember. Can’t remember at all.

[Eyer] That’s okay. So you, uh, visited it often when you were in high school?

[Clauss] Pardon me?

[Eyer] So did you visit it often when you were in high school?

[00:17:00] [Clauss] I don’t know. I don’t know, because we would… Whenever we went downtown, we always pass through the Arcade. Even I think after… I worked for a short time in the 70s, even after it was… whether it was renovated at that time or if it had closed down yet? I don’t remember, but it seems like… I had worked on Ludlow Street and seemed like I passed through the arcade when I’d go to catch a bus on Third Street. And, and I… you know… I don’t know for sure, but I know I can remember passing through. And [00:18:00] so one other memory I have of it, I had gone to church with a woman. She, she had lived in apartments above the Arcade. Well, when I, you know, when I got to know her, and she’d tell me about living downtown above, above the Arcade. So any other memories? I don’t know.

[Eyer] Do you remember the woman who lived in the Arcade’s name?

[Clauss] Mary White. And I don’t know how many years she lived up there and, and she worked [00:19:00] up on East Third Street. I think the homes that are still there now are called Harshman Homes. So… So that’s all I know about Mary White, but she’s gone now.

[Eyer] Do you remember anything she said about living there? Like what it was like, did she like living there?

[Clauss] She liked it. She liked it real well. And so probably when they closed down, she moved to the Dayton, Dayton Towers. She lived in the same building as my sister did.

And so, [00:20:00] so that’s all I can remember her liking that so well down there. And that’s all.

[Eyer] That’s wonderful. Alrighty. So just a few more questions here. Do you, so you remember what the arcade looked like before it was renovated in the 70s did you want to… do you have anything to say about that?

[Clauss] No, but I can remember. Okay. What do you call the?

[Reed] The rotunda? The glass…?

[Clauss] The rotunda after it was renovated, and how, you know, impressed I was when I took my mother in to see it. I didn’t, uh, how big, immense it seemed, you know, to us. Yeah. And. [00:21:00] the color of the skylights and the glass. It’s just a beautiful, beautiful place. And um, and those, my husband would always fuss about Dayton getting rid of all their landmarks and how they kept them over in Germany and for hundreds of years, and we get rid of them, all of them. And so… But, but the Arcade was a beautiful place, and I’m looking forward to getting in there again when it’s finished. And like you say, 18 months, couple years and it’d be open again. So it will be [00:22:00] nice.

[Eyer] What are you looking forward to most about the arcade being open again? Do you want to go shopping or do you just want to like pass through and like, you know, see some old memories?

[Clauss] Just passing through as a tourist and just enjoying the place and probably memories again. So it will be… It will be a very, very pleasant experience and a beautiful experience. Yeah.

[Eyer] That’s wonderful. Okay. I think to finish up here, we’ll ask one more question about your life in Dayton, and that’s a kind of…this will be about like more of your life now. What’s life like in Dayton now? Like has anything changed since you were younger that you don’t like? Has anything changed that you do like?

[00:23:00] [Clauss] Well, I don’t know what, what to say. I was just thinking this morning, as I was out walking cause I do every morning in front of the building, the buildings downtown are, as the sun was shining on them as you go down the front step here of this building, and it, it was just a beautiful sight to see all of those buildings lit up by the sun, and it was all a very small area between the trees. As I [00:24:00] walked, I’d think the trees are hiding it, and I was… My, my son-in-law works downtown now at Third and Main Street and Gem City building, I think it’s called. And we were in that building last Thanksgiving and watching the parade. And I’m just, just enjoying and you know the sites downtown. And even my mother would, when she saw there was one building, I don’t know what the name of it is, was the top floor shows green at night. And when mom looked down Third Street and seeing that building, she asked me, you know, what building was that? [00:25:00] And so I probably drove her down through to downtown area to see them, and I can’t remember the name of the building now that I answer her. You know, we just thought hard our city was such a big city. And, and my cousins lived in Louisville. And, and mother would act like that was so small compared with us. When I thought back, how big Louisville was when we visited, and our little downtown area was about six blocks of square maybe. And, and the department stores being just two or [00:26:00] three blocks apart, and yet this was our city. I enjoyed living in Dayton, so, so what else?

[Eyer] Did you (Reed) have anything else?

[Reed] Not necessarily. Did you say that you’re a grandmother worked… Has she worked in the Arcade?

[Clauss] Okay. My grandma did work for Culp’s a short time. Yeah. And washed dishes for Culp’s Cafeteria. Yeah.

[Reed] So that was just a short stint?

[Clauss] Yeah. So she was on old age pension, they called it. $30 a month and lived with my aunt. And, [00:27:00] so, so this… Did they tell you anything else?

[Reed] I’m trying to think what we had discussed. No, I think you’ve covered it.

 [Clauss] And I had worked at Third National Bank, and that’s gone now. I worked there when they were just opening up branches, and the first branch was on Salem Avenue. And, so it was a much more simpler time, you know, that I came in, and still now I can’t get used all the prices and everyone going out eating out so much and getting out their credit cards. I hate to eat and pay [00:28:00] for my meal after it’s gone. I don’t want to use my credit card to buy groceries and the next month pay for it. I can’t get used to the new age. So this is, this is me. I’m back like my grandma was. You know, from the nineteen hundreds and used to living in the 50s and 60s. So, so this is me and my simple way of living.

[Eyer] That’s wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Pauline, for having us come interview you. You did great. Alrighty. So I’ll stop the…

[Clauss] Make sure to stop and see George. [00:29:00] He’ll have more.

[Reed] We’ll go see George.

[Eyer] Alrighty. We’ll stop recording.

[Reed] I think you have to hit “Stop.”

.

Location of Interview: 10 Wilmington Place Assisted and Personal Living Dayton, OH 45409

Interviewer: Kevin McDougal and Seth Dewitt

Interviewee: Bill Burnett

Text of Interview:

[00:00:00] [Seth Dewitt] There you go.

[Kevin McDougal] All right. I am Kevin McDougal. I am interviewing Bill Burnett. Um, it is March 4th, uh, Bill, can you give us a little background of where you are from?

[Bill Burnett] I’m from Dayton, Ohio. Uh, Oakwood, grew up in the Oakwood area and all my life and um, briefly after graduating from Iowa University, I, uh, moved to, or, um, the Orlando, Florida area and, uh, pursued other avenues in real estate. And, uh, trying to find out where do I want to go and how I’m going to pay the bills and all that sort of things.

So, I migrated, uh, Los Angeles, California from, from there, and, uh, additional studies, uh. Uh, back to work and, uh, working in real estate and, [00:01:00] uh, insurance and working for, uh, Proctor and Gamble and umm. […] Kind of getting a feel for how the real world is away from school and, uh, seeing other, uh, types of business that I feel I’d like, or are modified to make it that I do like it.

So other than that, uh, after staying in California for about five years, I moved back to Florida. And, uh, again, I was bouncing from company to company. Um, you, you don’t find the right shoe in the store, it takes time to try them on, see how you like them and, and, uh, see how the temper or the temperature of the water is pretty much.

[McDougal] So [00:02:00] Bill, you grew up in Oakwood. Did you go to Oakwood High School?

[Burnett] Yes, I did.

[McDougal] Okay. When you attended Oakwood High School, would you and your friends ever go to the Dayton Arcade?

[Burnett] […] [inaudible]
[McDougal] Oh, when you and your friends, were in high school, did you go…

[Burnett] Oh yeah, it’s a small school or 110, 120 uh, in the class. And people from all around the local Dayton area had moved to Oakwood. And [inaudible] the school systems is, uh, the finest, uh, in my opinion, uh, that are in the area. But, um, that’s just my opinion.

It was a great experience, a good learning experience of just getting along with a classroom environment and doing your homework and being disciplined and all those kinds of things, uh, [00:03:00] get, get the grades and move on to other, uh, strategies.

[McDougal] What’s your, uh, what’s your earliest memory of the Dayton arcade?

[Burnett] Uh, was, um, uh, a bunch of small shops, um, crafts. Um. I remember, uh, an Oriental restaurant in particular that I’d go down to and a family, mom and pop type of restaurant, uh, take-out orders and upbeat environment. Uh, it was, uh, there was a, there’s son that, uh, was just finishing out of high school, was working there and he’s in, uh.

[…] On PBS for a program called Simply Men. [00:04:00] And, uh, he had, has helped his parents hands-on in the, uh, day to day, or, um, [inaudible] I’m trying to, […] uh, Chinese food and how to prepare IT and how to greet customers and make change and work around the, the other businesses as they would grow the, the arcade area, uh, they would in turn grow and get more, uh, more business.

[McDougal] Now Bill, your dad and grandpa actually lived in Dayton, is that correct?

[Burnett] Yeah, so my grandfather lived in, uh, North Dayton, and, uh, moved around the time my dad was born, but they, [00:05:00] uh, moved to Oakwood and had a, a home built on Greenmount Avenue, or Boulevard. And, uh, that’s where dad was impressed by all the new buildings. It’s a time where all new and, and, uh, uh,[…] those are the days of the 1925 was, uh,[…] when, uh, uh, the, the movement took place. So, uh, it was just an exciting time.

[McDougal] And did your grandpa or dad ever tell you any stories or ever mentioned the Dayton Arcade to you?

[Burnett] […]
[McDougal] Did your dad or grandpa ever talk about the Dayton Arcade?

[Burnett] Have their own business?

[McDougal] Or did they ever just talk to you about…

[Burnett] Oh, my dad worked out at the base on top secret airplane projects.

[00:06:00] Oh, and there wasn’t a day that it wasn’t, gone, gone by that it was an air aviation and that type of, uh, uh, discussion. Whether it’d be, at the dining room table or in the living room or whatever. But most, of it, uh, the top secret projects that are worked on or, um, fairly common cause it has his, uh.

[…] Um, passion was dealing with, with new airplanes and, uh, going from start to finish, uh, with the pricing and get all the details together and maintain a staff of people to, um, do research. Uh, so, um, that’s what [00:07:00] dad did, top secret airplane projects. Uh, that’s all I can remember. Uh, the discussions were eliminated because I was [inaudible] to be, uh, uh, proprietary information and, and uh, not to mess with it.

[McDougal] And then Bill the Chinese restaurant you were talking about; you were talking about that a little bit before the interview. Do you remember what your favorite item was from the restaurant or what, do you remember your order, what you would like to get from there?

[Burnett] Well, egg rolls were the quick in and out, but mugu gai pan was a, um, um, Chinese dish I really liked.

And, uh, you gotta [inaudible] here in the Dayton area there’s other restaurants. China Cottage is a Chinese restaurant here in town [00:08:00] that I like very much and look forward to going.

[McDougal] Um, in the Arcade, Bill, there was different stores and boutique shops; they’d have like specialty items, small stores that you were talking about.

Do you remember if you would ever go there to buy shoes or get a haircut or do you remember why you would ever decide to stop in at the Dayton Arcade?

[Burnett] Um, not so much, uh, in bookstores. Uh. I don’t know, as far as the small shops still have to have a cashflow for whatever business they’re in. And throughout the week, you know, people can’t, uh, it’s, it’s really a challenge to maintain a business during the week, during the day. You know everybody else’s hunkering down with their, but you know, their job, their business, and, uh, going to an [00:09:00] outside.

Um, who the situation like, um, the Arcade, uh, may have to consider, uh, other, uh, hours of, uh, the afternoon might be better than the morning. Other than a cup of coffee and, uh, uh, uh, jelly donut or something from a [inaudible]. A little bit of change of, uh, what you can offer, unless it’s tailored to the, on the, on the road, uh, uh, types of customer.

Uh, that isn’t burdened so much by um, uh, the timeframe of just do your job and do the best you can. And if you want to take a coffee break, or just don’t take a long one. Just [00:10:00] break up the day and uh, go get a cup of coffee. It’s hard for me even, and I’m um, uh, partially retired uh, I, uh, get my breakfast in the morning and, umm.

[…] Do what I have to do in that’s, [inaudible] keep on reading the Dayton Daily News and what’s going on in the area and new movies and just what’s going on.

[McDougal] So, when you were growing up and you saw the Dayton Arcade, did you view it as something that was helping the town? Was it thriving or was it something that was kind of dead, no one was really coming around to?

[Burnett] I think the, the takeout was, um, uh, one pursuit that seemed to be working out and, um, [00:11:00] and having the sit down, uh, by having the noon lunches and, and, uh, take out. Um, some people are, if they’re working downtown or, uh, on a tight. Uh, […]

tight on uh, time on, on the watch. Um, it may not be so apt to, to eat in and maybe, take out or whatever. But it all just depends, all different, uh, timeframes.

[McDougal] Now, if you decided one day that you wanted to go to the Mandarin restaurant and to do take out or even go to the arcade, how would you get to the arcade?

[Burnett] The arcades a beautiful structure uh, wherever it would be, but right in the center of downtown Dayton.

And so that’s a very attractive structure. [00:12:00] It’s weathered a lot, a lot of years, and, uh, holidays and special events and, um, right in the heart of the architectural, uh, the old Dayton atmosphere.

[McDougal] Yeah. Um, do you have any questions, Seth?

[Dewitt] Ask him about the current…

[McDougal] Yeah, that’s what. And then did you hear about the current project with the arcade?

[Burnett] I’ve heard a little bit about it, but it’s, um, a friend of mine was, um, an artist and did sketches on, uh, the, the, like the Dayton Art Institute and schools around the area, did our artwork with pen and ink and watercolor. And, um, I, there was a packet of information that David Smith, that’s their artist.

[McDougal] Mhm.

[Burnett] Who [00:13:00] would produce groups rather than have a per sale at places like Dorothy Lane Market and, uh, and the Art Institute, I believe even has had some of his work. But, uh, those are momentos that, uh, come to mind.

[McDougal] So the university of Dayton has just committed $10 million to renovate the Dayton Arcade, downtown.

So, do you think this is something that could bring people from outside of Dayton back into the city, or do you think that this would could just be another failed project?

[Burnett] No, I think it’s something that many people like myself on the edge of the fence. Anxious, I would come through and move on and, and the Dayton Dragons, a ball team, but there was a lot of waiting around, [00:14:00] to get the field together, guys sharp.

Everybody just could hardly wait to see it. And, uh, it’s a success story of filling every seat in the house. Every ticket sold. Uh, do the whatever has to be done to complete the project for the Dayton Arcade. The people will come, uh, the people that have lived here a long time, like myself or, uh, just people visiting or.

Uh, other parents come, coming to visit their students at UD, uh, a little trip down to the arcade and the, and, uh, and the downtown Dayton. And, uh, gives a feel for a historical preservation and, and concern for holding on it. So, um, I feel that, uh, that’d be [00:15:00] a big plus.

[McDougal] Seth, any more questions from you? Um, one last question for myself.

If you could change one thing about the date in arcade, do you think that they should have more restaurants, more retail stores? What do you think that the city of Dayton needs to make the date in arcade successful?

[Burnett] I think, uh, if you have a variety of, say three or four that would deliver. Fast food Chinese, um, […]

A good breakfast, uh, location would be a big plus. Uh,[…]

and […]

a Italian restaurant would be good.

[McDougal] [inaudible]

There’s so many different avenues you can go, but, [00:16:00] I think the, the, the Chinese, uh, the Italian. Um, those are just some that come to mind.

[McDougal] I just wanted to thank you for your time and letting us interview you. Um, we really appreciate all the information you gave us about the date and arcade.

[Burnett] I appreciate it. Thanks for inviting me.

[McDougal] Thank you. Thanks, Bill.

[00:00:00] Nate Sikora: Good. Hello. Hello. Alright this should be good to go. Alright, my name is Nate Sikora with Chandler Mote and Bill the Barber and Grady…Grady the shoe shiner…Is that your former profession… Grady the shoe Shiner. We’re here at 110 North Main Street here in Dayton, Ohio. Today is April 23rd, 2019. We’re here to talk about some final questions.

We’ve interviewed these two gentlemen a few times in the past, and my first question to you, Bill, has to do with talking about kind, as you mentioned, kind of how the arcade was an area of foot traffic. You know, people kind of walked in and out as kind of a busy center, and so my question was that you talked about how the people that went into the arcade usually had jobs Downtown and they kind of came in there for lunch or for maybe groceries at the end of the day maybe. So would you consider, and kind of during that period of time, and you can maybe explain maybe when that puttered off, that the jobs that were downtown the people that employ people downtown were vital to the Arcade’s kind of success in business?

Bill Clark: Yeah, they all helped each other. Yeah, they would do to buy groceries take them home. There was a store in there. It was jewelry store. I mean, it was pretty self-contained complex about eight or nine buildings all combined and each one of them had a little something to offer, and it was nice. It was nice. It was a nice thing for Dayton.  

Nate Sikora: And would you consider at that time say so…for both of you. What was like your greatest experience or time that kind of immersed in the arcade was in the 60s 70s 50s?

Bill Clark:  Late 50s early 60s was probably the prime time for myself.

Nate Sikora: And for you, Grady?

Grady Cross:  Middle of the 60s and early 70s.

Nate Sikora: Okay, and so Bill did you experience when you were there in the in the 50s and early 60s kind of the Arcade Market Under the Dome? You ever kind of go through the Dome and could you kind of explain kind of how that looked and because to me the way I look at it. I mean it looked like a really complex maze of like different stores and kind of how they were kind of just put up together very kind of short, you know short and sweet and that’s kind of just how it was. Can you kind of explain how that experience was?

Bill Clark: Yeah. It was It was kind of it was kind of open, but you know, they sold…they sold chickens over there on the right and poultry. Then you had you know, the Friedman’s fish market and then Culps and there was two Culps in the Arcade and it was just it was just a hub of activity is what it was. We had the American Way. You get a hot dog stand up eat a hotdog drink a Coke and actually for a young person at a time, it was a place to meet girls, you know, you come downtown to try to find a girlfriend.

Nate Sikora: So…so my question and that’s a great follow-up is…some of the research that I’m discovering as a kind of get some hair off of the booklet here is the way it kind of the arcade marketed towards women specifically is kind of what I what I researched in the stores that they offered a lot of jewelry stores, florists, clothing stores hat stores, this is kind of what I’ve seen in terms of research or do you can corroborate that or kind of confirm that what do you think that kind of was like the main draw for many of the stores besides kind of the classic kind of food aspects.

Bill Clark: It was kind of like fast food, you know, just something.

Bill Clark: You kind of ate on the run, you know, and some of the stores for some reason. I can’t remember there was some that I forgot about.

Grady Cross: The stores that you are naming, they weren’t in the Arcade. It was the building like at the corner of Third and Main. And then you go all the way around come out at…Whats that street?

Bill Clark: Fourth Street.

Grady Cross: and run into…Main Street ….*inaudible*…. Third Street when you come when you get around there with us. They had a jewelry store. They had McCrory’s, Kresge’s, and Woolworths going down Main.

Nate Sikora: That’s right down Main Street, right? Right down Main. Those outside stores next to the arcade.

Grady Cross: You make that turn to the right and on the next corner with what you call that place? Glasses? And in the middle of there there was a shoe store, Bayls. And then you come around the corner and you had the fish market and then the next thing you know you were right back on Third Street.

Nate Sikora: Okay, so those stores specifically there we are speaking of weren’t necessarily within the Arcade kind of Under the Dome…

Bill Clark: They were in that complex.

Grady Cross: See, they talk about the Arcade like its one section. It’s not one section. Its buildings that were built back to back, and the Arcade was between them all with the big dome and everything. So some of the stores down there made interests from their store into the arcade.

Nate Sikora: So everyone kind of piggybacked off each other in terms of business.

Grady Cross: Yes, yes. Off of Third Street there between Frisch’s and what what what Frisch’s was over here, wasn’t it?

Bill Clark: Well, Frisch’s was in the Arcade, too.

Grady Cross: Yeah. Well, that’s what I meant. Frisch’s, and… Liberals

Bill Clark: Liberal came in after…Liberals came in later on on down from Frisch’s there on Third Street.

Grady Cross: Right, right. And they did that with the rest of the when you go in the quarter where you see that giant man across the window you had a shoe store. What’s the name of it? Windyls

Bill Clark: Windyls shoe store.

Grady Cross: And then you had a jewelry store on the other side when you go down the hallway. They had shops about as big as this *referncing the size of Jesse’s Barber shop, the interview location* on both sides of the hallway.

Bill Clark: They had a barber shop in there, too. An Arcade barber shop.

Grady Cross: They had shops about as big as this size *mentioning Jesse’s Barber Shop where the interview occurred* and it goes all the way down to the end inside the arcade to get to where you can look up at the dome and it had the balconies around and you look down you got to Culps and was another place down there.

Bill Clark: Well the American Way…

Grady Cross: Well it had something for everybody, anybody, black, white, poor, yound, and old. And the jewelry store, was it Mayors?

Bill Clark: No…I can’t remember the name of the jewelry store.

Grady Cross: The one on the corner of Third and Main was Mayors.  And they had a tactic for young men and young women because we go down in this into music downstairs.

Bill Clark: And they spun records of new 45s. Yeah, those songs. You just came out you got in a booth and listened to it. It costed a dollar for a 45.

Grady Cross: This guy what’s the name of the got to do with this building?  He bought Arcade, and he opened it up to most anybody to afford it to put a shop in that little hallway? I don’t know what happened to I don’t know what. Well I feel like what happened to it is that all the jobs left down here. Mead, and NCR, and all these people around and this area. They left. Ain’t that right?

Bill Clark: Yeah, yeah downtown took a downturn, you know, and I was thinking about to mid-70s

Nate Sikora: You’d say the mid-70s is when things really went down?

Grady Cross: Malls took over. The malls took over. Stores started moving out to the malls. Rikes closed. Met closed. Everything closed. But Pack’s bothers is still over there. You know, that contributed to the downtown Dayton falling and the Arcade too.

Bill Clark: It used to be where you could ride a bus down here from your neighborhood. Like I grew up in Old North Dayton and the bus would be full. I mean, there were sometimes you couldn’t get a place to sit. You’d have stand up like, like in the Subways in New York or something and they let out dow here and it was people would like 25,000 people work downtown. It was like the World’s Fair down here.

Grady Cross: You walk across there right down here on this corner you walk across the street from noon to evening it is elbow to elbow, and  you didn’t where Levi’s or somethng down here liked you [00:05:00] worked in one of them kitchens. You got dressed. We might have to take a bath, comb my hair…Because it’s downtown.

Nate Sikora: So downtown was an event?

Bill Clark: You come down here downtown on a Saturday to go to movie, you wore a suit a lot of times and your shoes were shined and your hair was parted and what have you and you know, you look good you sharpened up.

Grady Cross: But downtown was downtown. You got RKO at almost every other block then you go over on Jefferson you have movies, you got that store metropolitan..*inaudible*…  Elder & Johnson, Sears, and Roebuck, and you all got to come through downtown. That made it plenty plenty busy. You had Mead over here, and you had…What was that other big Company downtown that left?

Bill Clark: You had McDonald’s

Grady Cross: Yeah, they left!

Bill Clark: We had several, quite a few Fortune 500 companies down here. And now we have none.

Grady Cross: Then all of a sudden…what was the first Mall? Salem? Salam Mall opened up and then the kids ruined that. So they all moved out further and that is where all the business are and we just had a flux is going away down at Austin’s Landing, but the people need nothing down here and went down there.

Bill Clark: You know, but it was a it was a great place to go to. It really was. You know, you could go down there and just meander around half a day. You can go into into the stores and the shop.

Here’s a cute little story. I think it was…I think it was McCrorys. They sold birds like parakeets and minor birds and stuff and somebody had taught this minor bird how to say, “man stealing,” and this minor bird… you’d be walking back here shopping and all of a sudden this bird, unbeknownst to you it waa a bird, it would say, “Man stealing! Man stealing!” Then you would turn around look see who was stealing, you know… It was a crack-up.

Grady Cross: You could get anything you wanted as far as merchandise, it was a great place. And then we had very little racial problems down here. We worked down here. We shopped down here. You know, Mr. Beerman…about the Elders on the Elder and Johnson. He helped everybody. He is a great person. And then the Arcade…it opened up to all kinds of people. They’ve even had a shop in there that made toilet seats. Clear toilet seats, not not big fancy toilet seats.

Nate Sikora: Just toilet seats?

Grady Cross:  And the back of it was clear and it had…some had dollar bills inside of anything and boy I loved that shop.. But I could never afford to buy nothing…*inaudible*…They gave you an opportunity that Arcade gave people an opportunity to shop on the side like this. It was just like this hallway here.  It was great, but I still don’t think it was a hook. I just think it was one of the better places. That and what’s the restaurant was over here?

Bill Clark: Virginia Cafeteria? That was a good place to eat too.

Grady Cross: Yeah, they had eateries all over there.

Bill Clark: Yeah, we had about ten or eleven theaters down here. I told the professor a couple stories trying to remember you probably don’t want me to repeat them, but I can’t…now I can’t remember them now. But you know, it was just it was just a neat place to come down to. Downtown was the place to come to come down here and buy clothes. We had great clothing stores, buy hats anything you wanted.  

Grady Cross: The thing about the hook is that it’s the best stop from all four directions, but Northeast shopping with in the sitting here. This is the center of the heart of Dayton right there. Stores accumulating around I need to go you can walk down here from the west side. And then I look over there for Brown Street you were walking over there because it comes out right up there and it was very well located. I’d walk from North Dayton down here just to save my bus money to spend more money at the theater. I save my bus fair to go to one of these movies down here. They will go 25 cents what I’m going to move it down here.

Bill Clark: Yeah, it was kind of honory but we used to chip in and pay one guys way in and he’d open the door and let the rest of us sneak in.

Grady Cross: Yeah, the side door. Then they left. All the RKOs left. What was the name of the street that had all the cheap movie theaters? Jefferson?

Bill Clark: Yeah, Jefferson had the Rialto, the Ohio, and the Columbia Theater. They were the cheapest in town to go to like second run movies and Westerns, a lot of Westerns. You could come down here with 50 cents and have a pretty good time. You’d get in the movies, buy popcorn, have a pop and candy bar.

Grady Cross: We would take a dollar. That’s bus fair, hot dog, popcorn, and a big old sugar daddy candy bar, then still have time to catch the bus and now you going to be in a movie with a dollar they want to know what you want. You want a glass of water? What do  you want the hobo special glass of water and a tooth pick.

Nate Sikora: So on that note, with all this conversation saying shoulder to shoulder, buses are packed, that downtown Dayton, as you say is centrally located, was kind of just a really big hubbub and a public sphere for people to come and commingle essentially, right. Would you say, because we you know, when we’re doing our research here, we’re assessing what changed to make it go away, right?  I know you talking about the malls that’s kind of a mentioning type of more development in neighborhoods…

Bill Clark:  Loss of jobs, big jobs, with good earning jobs. That had a lot to do with it.

Grady Cross: I said malls but it wasn’t their fault. I say that the changing trends,  just like right now, you know. We’re changing our trend and we are doing the same thing now to the malls that the malls did to us back in the day. Everybody’s coming back [00:05:00] downtown. The key to that is gas. You know, you used to be able to fill up a car for what, Bill?

Bill Clark: Oh, it used to be five dollars you could fill a tank up.

Grady Cross: Well not its nearly five dollars for a gallon of gas! So you can get up on the West Side and drive out the Dayton Mall, Salem mall, and all of that, but now everybody is coming back.

Bill Clark: the trend now is the the millenniums, you know, and they’re coming downtown and living in condos and stuff and they don’t want yard work and they don’t need they want their time to be there. They want to read a book. They read it. They don’t worry about mowing the yard.

Grady Cross: That’s what I believe more so than the Arcade. The Arcade is going to be a beauty. But I believe you got these rich people buying all around here. They ain’t got nowhere to go. We need retail wholesale, motel, and all that mess. Motels popping up down here, you know.

Bill Clark: The worm has turned, you know, it’s coming back.

Grady Cross: It’s going to be just like it was before the malls came, see.

Nate Sikora: So that’s my exact next question. I think thats the kind of conversation we can end on, I think, is the future of downtown, especially in downtown Dayton.

Grady Cross: It is going to be great. I am 77 years old. If I was just 57, I’ll be happy because in about 10 years just you know, I’ll be 87 come up three years for mine. I might not be this is people make it every now and then, but I don’t know but what I’m saying is it’s great. I would love to be able to see it. It ain’t going to be right now like these people. Everybody want anything right now. You got a build, and it’s building. I mean, I remember when I first went down there all there was were these condos you see and all through there, there wasn’t nothing down there besides the welfare office and factory, but downtown was booming. Then all these factories of buildings out there. We have factories from where…from Third and in Springfield at the B all the way out all over toward Third Street, and then they close all that down.

Now, instead of going on at looking at a bunch of dead-ass buildings, what you see? These folks got doors. They got a yard about that big, but they got and then they are building down the river. They got to go somewhere, man! We need a we need some theaters. We need some what we do the same things we had in the beginning! That is what we need down here now.

Bill Clark: We need a grocery store

Grady Cross: Ain’t nobody gonna get up and go all the way to whatever to get breakfast, man. We gonna have all that down here. We got it going man. All it was worried about was that building over there. They say that’s the key. I said every downtown again. It’s already. That all that out there and you got guys have got backyards on the river and then you got the now you want to talk about some talk about Fifth Third. So we got all kind of watersports over there with all we need is this this here center. The hub. All we need is the center and put something in here. You know, you got… You know how many empty buildings are down there by the Arcade?

Chandler Mote: Yeah, a lot.  

Bill Clark: Well, you have U.D. behind it. That’s a big that’s a big Pusher right there.  

Grady Cross: The new got they got ain’t playing. It is talk to you about today. You want it open in the open?

Bill Clark: Have we run our mouths enough?

Nate Sikora: No, no, this has been great. It’s a great conversation, you know, well it’s good that you guys have a hopeful message for the future, which is what we’re looking for

Bill Clark: The worm has really come around. It has turned it’s happening down here now a lot of people are coming down here. The theater gets plenty of play down here on Fifth Street, and and the Arts are all doing well you know it’s happening. I’m glad. I’ve been downtown person most of my life

Nate Sikora: So how long have you kind of work this barbershop? How long have you got to work downtown around here?

Bill Clark: I have been working as a barber since 1980, and I’ve been a barber for 50 years, but I have been coming down town ever since I was probably eight years old my brother bring me down here. He was older. He was 2 years or minimum come down here. I [00:10:00] didn’t know any better. I thought we was in New York or Chicago because it was just…It was just shoulder-to-shoulder people. We discovered Reich’s department store, which is one of the best department stores in the Midwest and you know, we rode the elevator until they told us to quit

Grady Cross: *inaudible*…get on them stairs…that was new to me! I am 77 years old. When I was 10 years old, you get on stairs and I like to see *inaudible*

Bill Clark: Little did I know that I was going to get to know David Reich and a lot of the big people in Dayton, you know that movers and shakers of Dayton. Which was really pretty neat too, you know people behind it.

Grady Cross: One thing helps another, see what I am saying. Now, everybody down here wearing that, I got some on myself…*inaudible*…that I love the Air Jordans, Michael Jordan, and why did you choose this so you gonna pay two-hundred dollars for Stacey’s….and Johnson and Murphy numbers and then when the hill run over you ain’t gonna want to get it fixed.  So you get the next best thing since these talking about oh Mike them, but when they get to that push your shop now we need everything down here. We need that. I used to sit and stand like that didn’t go have it look like the top of that.

Over there, he had a barber shop for about 20 years. How long?  The kids he had a bomb when he moved out here. I had two chairs sitting in it and, hey, man, a hundred dollars a day was nothing. A hundred dollars a day now is good now. Anyway, I know shoe but it’s great man. It’s going to help the downtown a lot. But I’m gonna tell you but you taking a selfie with you need to think like this: what made the arcade all of a sudden so important?  

Then come down to Third and Main, right here just next corner and look this what you see…*inaudible*… That’s why. This is going to be here because is the arcade open like they going to open it and it’s if you notice it’s more of you and Sinclair and all of our state students and apartments and that business area down there, they trying to redo that. The arcade is going to be the great, but the taste was out here on the edge and you just think you could bend the stuff that value on it. But before these people bought all around this area, it has just been sitting here just like the rest of the buildings. But now you got a chance to have business.

Nate Sikora: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’ll be it. Yes, sorry if we overstayed our welcome, this is perfect. Sorry if we overstayed your welcome, this is great. This is excellent. This is wonderful. Oh, yeah, this is wonderful information. Yeah, this is great.

And oh, yeah, you know that we finished up right now. So this is a great thing to end on. Thanks so much. No worries.

Uhlman, 4-8-19, Grady Cross and Cynthia Rand

Location of Interview:  Jesse’s Barber Shop at 110 N Main St #145, Dayton, OH 45402

Interviewer:  Dr. James Todd Uhlman

Interviewee:  Grady Cross and Cynthia Rand

Text of Interview:

[00:00:00] This is Todd Uhlman. Again. Dr. Uhlman on the 6th, no the 8th at 110 North Main Street and here I’m speaking with what’s your full name, sir?

Grady Cross. 

[Uhlman] Mr. Cross we’re going to talk to you today about the city of Dayton the history of the city of date. And I’m going to ask you some questions about your memories of it and also most particularly the arcade, but first I’d like to ask you a few questions.

You said a moment ago that you were born in Dayton. Miami Valley Hospital. Are your parents from Dayton?

[Cross] They all we are all I’m from, Alabama. 

[Uhlman] When did your parents move here?

[Cross] When I was born.

[Uhlman] What year was that? 

[Cross] 1942.

[Uhlman] Did [00:01:00] your parents move here to work in the factories during the war? 

[Cross] They came in 1942 simply because my mother was 13 and it was an embarrassment to the family and we left the rest of family there and brought her here to have  the baby.

[Uhlman] Okay, and were your mother and father married later or during that time? 

[Cross] No. 

[Uhlman] Okay, so you grew up in what part of the city?

[Cross] West Side What neighborhood particularly?  Fifth. [unintelligable], [unintelligable], Norwood.

[Uhlman] Were these communities largely people of color, African American? 

[Cross] All of them. All of them was colored. The rest of them moved out as we moved in, so we had the whole area.

[00:02:00] [Uhlman] Do you remember this the migration of people away from the community after you moved in?

[Cross] Yes, I experienced it. I watched them. They moved from the West Side to Westwood, from Westwood to Residence Park. 

[Uhlman] And what’s your earliest memories of? Yeah, I guess earliest memories, all together, in your life.

[Cross] When I was six?  I can start there.

[Uhlman] Yeah. 

[Cross] What you want to know?

[Uhlman] Tell me anything you want about when you were six.

[Cross] When I was six we lived at …  518 Mound and I went to Garfield school, grade school. Then I went from Garfield to Weaver. I mean from Garfield, to [00:03:00] Willard, and from Willard to Weaver. Those are the grade schools that I went to. The West Side was full of what you call neighborhood schools.

Great. We do didn’t have but one high school. I was on some of the now Paul Lawrence Dunbar. It was the name of the school with Dunbar. That’s the only high school we had. And then, um. they start seeing us to Roosevelt High School.  And when we got to be in the majority rules in high school, they closed it down.

[Uhlman] They closed it down?

[Cross] When it became a majority black. We start taking all the, uh. contests, sports event. We could beat everyone except Chaminad are and they closed it down said it was inhabitable the any turn around and actually and pull the police station College [00:04:00] stuff in there. They want to say. Biggest high school in city.

And then we went off on from there. It did a lot better part of the education system. From there we went over to [unintelligable] and stuff, and then we had the racial tensions, [unintelligable], black and white gangs we was, ah … a lot of it nonsense.

[Uhlman] Hm, did you do any of the sports when you were in school?

[Cross] I played basketball, I played basketball.

[Uhlman] Not for Roosevelt though.

[Cross] I played for Roosevelt. I started  playing for Roosevelt and I found I liked it, and I was fairly decent and then at that time, you know, we didn’t know, when I say we I mean blacks, didn’t know nothing about scolarships or just stuff like that.

So one day someone informed me about them and said you do good good you go to college, but we didn’t go nowhere but Wilberforce and [00:05:00] Central State. But anyway, uh, I asked coach Willis, I think, I forget his name, I asked him about the scholarship. He shall have to go to the black high school. Talk to the black coach to get a scholarship.

So I told him, I was in 11th grade, that’s so him by got to go to Dunbar to get the scholarship, I wasn’t going to go play Roosevelt, I wasn’t goong to play for him. I’ll go play for Dunbar and he told me if I left school I would not playing no more basketball. So I left school and went to play for  Mr. [unintelligable], playing center, and I played that, and we won all kinds of [unintelligable.

I was a center for recreational things and helped them … a lot of the kids down there where we live to stay out of jail and some of them went on the college. He told us everything from swimming the boxing, chess, checkers, [00:06:00] horseshoes, we did it all down there. And they closed it.

[Uhlman] When did they close it?

[Cross] I don’t even remember, but I remember I was mad because they closed it down and and that that center did more for blacks than any organization in the city, in the city, you know, then they closed the Y. I don’t know, then they tore down our history, you know the Classic was the first black theater, it had a ballroom and everthing, and then they tore it down. When they put that pool in over there.

[Uhlman] When they put what in?

[Cross] [unintelligable] They got some social things over there now, I don’t know what it is. They shut that whole area down, they tore the Classic down and um …

[Uhlman] Was that, [crosstalk] was that over there by where 75 is now? Is that …

[Cross] That what they did, they tore all that down and put that up there. They tore my mother’s damn house down put that up there.

[Uhlman] So …

[Cross] They paid [00:07:00] them good this time though.

[Uhlman] So they they did the the demolition of that area on the western side around 1957 and 1964. Do you think it was in there?

[Cross] I don’t know dates. I know when they … when … you know when the highway went through, then you know date.

[Uhlman] Yeah.

[Cross] They come through there and they bought up all the land of people at uh … and they put the highway and then went [unintelligable] up there and put it up third, and cut the whole West Side Up.

I want to talk to you about that now rather than going on to the Arcade. I want to ask you about that about that. What was the experience like for the people over there to have that land taken and, um, cut up like that with the highway put in?

Well, the first group with Mr. Bachus and … what was that other guy? And they took it all, and they cut, they took that but after Bachus got on [00:08:00] TV and talked about them like a dog and he couldn’t hide it they um … When they come back they got my mother’s and other peoples property the paid them well.  My mother had a three bedroom two the two three bedroom shotgun house, you know straight through and they gave her life 50 or 60 thousand, and it wasn’t worth … they paid but 18 for it.

[Uhlman] Um, what street was that?

[Cross] Spragg.

[Uhlman] Spragg?

[Cross] Spragg Street. Is that Spragg still there? Or did they get rid of that?

That’s the highway. They got ride of Spragg, Bank, and Sunshine corner, right there at that corner. When you come across the video used to be a street called Bank and then they had a street, Spragg … then they got rid of anyone, well Spragg.  I think, you know [00:09:00] what I just thought of something, Spragg you got some Churches over there that churches is still there today.  RTA got it. 

[Uhlman] Um, do you remember that the street number for your grandmother’s on Spragg?

[Cross] My family?

[Uhlman] Your family.

[Cross] I forget what that was … I know we lived in 117 Norwood, 518 M[unintelligble] and I forget that address … 35. It was small number, 35  or something like that. Right there between Third and …

Yeh, that was the area then, then we moved on up from there. That’s where we started because we started their [unintellible] and then we was going up toward Westwood … the migration was going on then.

[Uhlman[ The migration, you mean [crosstalk] …

[Cross] White moving out, and the blacks moved in.

[Uhlman] Could you say that one more time for me?

[Cross] The whites were moving out as the blacks moved in.

[Uhlman] So that would have been, like, the 60s? [00:10:00] 50s?

[Cross] It is 50s.

[Uhlman] So you grew up at this time you were and how about the other people in the community as I mentioned before how did that did people feel about that? They did they understand that … why it was happening, of course, they understood why it was happening but was it expected and and accepted?

[Cross] And that time, at that day and time, we all knew what was going to happen. And then, and then, my people, they are they always moved in where the Caucasians, that’s where they got better everything they got groceries. They got the drugstore. They got cleaners they got … bars and grills and resteraunts, it was full of restaurants and things and then we come in we took it over, you know, they sold to us and then after a while they started selling 25,000 dollar houses for 40,000 … to [00:11:00] the black.  And then went on with on and on and on and on.

[Uhlman] So that many African Americans when they moved into those communities they were they effectively were being charged really a high rates for the houses?

[Cross] If you bought, but the thing of it is we had a man, gentleman here called those [unintelligible] Rubenstein and he helped a lot, he bought property and that you paid through the store, he bought … he’d get businesses open for us and everything. That’s what was going on when the riots came through and we’re doing great when the riots came through.

[Uhlman] Do you mean uh, the riot, the riot of 1966?

[Cross] Yeh, were doing great then. .  it was August.

[Uhlman] So who was this man again? Who helped you and …

[Cross] Rubenstein. We called him dude Rubenstein?  We had Mike Greenburg. We had a Joel Leavy. We had Gentsom. Mr. Gentsom.  These were all Jews and they [00:12:00] all caterd to us.

They helped lead the way to buying properties and then …

If we couldn’t … If we worked.  The dude would buy a property.  And sell it to us. Now only we pay instead of going through, which we couldn’t hardly get no financing and stuff, you got to be one of those great great jobs. They haven’t started the factories over here yet and, uh, he helped the common man, the brick layer, … whatever, full-time job, janitor, working at Biltmore Hotel all that. He helped us get property. He helped us do things, he had a clothing store, furniture store.  And then we need to get there if we couldn’t get it there. Mr. Emhoff had the furniture we could get stuff that we could not normally navigate because if you from the West Side, you couldn’t go downtown and get no credit, no loans and nothing [00:13:00] like that, not all of us now, I’m just saying the regular people couldn’t you know people that worked to keep the TV on and then … they gave us job, Joe Leavy go the clothing store and he always hired the blacks from the high schools to work his store. They gave us a chance and we’ve never happier.

[Uhlman] Do you think that that was because they were against the discrimination that African-Americans experienced here?

[Cross] I don’t know what their reason was, all I know was that they helped they didn’t lean on us, they didn’t play us. They didn’t work us and give us less. Everything was [faith] buying and [unintelligable] anybody else on the reason. Well, they were good people.

[Uhlman] At that time what were the majority of jobs available to many of the people in the neighborhoods?

[00:14:00] [Cross] I don’t know the name of the bus company but back then but they were full, everybody, but mostly your Mama and your Grandmama, and some of your dad and uncles, they was working for the people in Oakwood and Kettering.

[Uhlman] As um, domestics?

[Cross] That is exactly what it was. The buses was full, five dollars a day and car fare.

[Uhlman] Five dollars a day …

[Cross] And car fare. A decent job back then would be called working down the street here at Biltmore Hotel and they had a lot of us and they and they pay regular rates, you know. 

[Uhlman] Did people work for NCR or any of the GM plants?

[Cross] [unintelligable] At that day … [unintelligable] yeah, I know NCR when I was nine. They gave us a great deal and they gave some of us good employment. And then plus they have a show for us every weekend. They had it [dance for boys.] They gave us the movies every [00:15:00] Saturday at NCR, whoever owned it.

[Uhlman] What about the movies on Saturday? Where was that?

[Cross] They had a movie for us every Saturday and we all over there, kids and they would give us move they give us candy stuff after the movies. On Christmas day. He was like every child in their silver dollar.  And see that was great for us

[Uhlman] That that was at the location of the factory over there …

[Cross] At the auditorium.   And then they moved. 

[Uhlman] Did many of the people I’ve spoken to talk about working in the GM plants?

[Cross] uh, I …  I don’t know the year, but all of a sudden. They started hiring … Afro-Americans as you’ll call them … uh … next thing you know dag-on near everybody over [00:16:00] there … but we had foundaries that they can work at, we had JH and R, they had Dayton Steel, we had days till we had [unintelligible]. We have [inintelligable] and we have founderies. Dayton Tire and Rubber.  They had descent jobs around here for us.

[Uhlman] So, okay. let me now switch and get us closer to the Arcade. But first before we get right on that tell me a little bit about what it was like to be downtown to be just generally and then to be African-American in downtown in the 50s 60s in the 70s.

[Cross] Downtown Dayton was off limites. Downtown Dayton was before …  I wanna go, I wanna talk about before Mister,  … uh … whats his name? Arthur Beerman, they had the Home store. They had Smiths, they had of Rikes, the [00:17:00] Metropolitan. Donappeals. All these stores around down here.

[Uhlman] You weren’t allowed to go into those stores?

[Cross] Well, you can go in and but you can’t get no, if you can’t [unintelligable] you can’t get no jobs, you work in the back, you working there, we worked in there and come down here, downtown. Half the restaurant downtown didn’t want us in there, uh, the only resteraunt that didn’t give a dang who didn’t treat you like dirt was Frisch’s. 

[Uhlman] So when uhg, when you would go into … How did they … they weren’t officially segregated? But how did how did they …

[Cross] Because, if you go in the store … Christese, McCrory’s, Woolworths downtown. We had one over there on third street that was all right. Everything was to go. 

[Uhlman] They wouldn’t seat you.

[Crosss] And then after that and we started to have problems with them and then you [00:18:00] know Christies they killed a couple of … I think his name was Chris and kills a couple guy from moving in there beating on the security with beating up blacks in there for little or nothing. They killed, Mr. Deans, and they moved and became K-Mart.

[Uhlman] What what year was that do you think?

[Cross] I don’t know no years … don’t have idea about years … [unintelligable] a big black man. I can remember the bad. I remember the good. So what you want to know about and I can tell you what I seen obviously I know that we came downtown rarely, we got dressed to come downtown the pay the Dayton Power and Light and finally when we did get down here there was nothing down here.

[Uhlman] By the time African-Americans were welcome … [cross talk]  Okay, so that brings us then to [00:19:00] the Arcade. Yeah.

[Cross] Arcade, been there.  We seen it, first we only went in there because that was the biggest establishment downtown that we could eat. Sit down and eat.

[Uhlman] At the fish … Culps?

[Cross] Yes. I know what I’m saying. And then after that, they let us all the way in and I mean it wasn’t a long time that we found it that we got down there that the people that ran Arcade, uh, … the last owners I know was BG [unintelligable]they they was very fair. So that’s where we started going.

[Uhlman] Okay. All right.

[Cross] Yeah, they had a pool and everything then, then, then what really made a great … then, then … they had, you know you department over here on third street that was with showrooms, you know, this place, stores, and they put a lot of stuff in there, Harvey’s, not Harvey’s,  the shoe [00:20:00] store … darn I been goan to that store 90 years. I forget the name. But anyway, they had the shoe store there then they got this hallway coming off there where they got the giant man out their inner. It’s a hallway or down up and they got shops on both sides and there was just as many black shops as Caucasian.

[Uhlman] Okay, okay and. So when you were going there you were probably in your teens or 20s when you first started going there.

[Cross] Arcade?

[Uhlman] Yeah.

[Cross] I started going to the Arcade I was in my late teens, as I worked worked at that … I had an uncle worked out here where Kulps was at that there by the guy he had us come in on weekends and anyway, I never did go in then. But then I started going in then after all going to Kulps then again, they say that I got a job over here. The [unintelligable] and and I started going over there and get the sandwiches and … I mean we, we, they didn’t give [00:21:00] a damn.  If you was a good customer and you had the money. If you was green or orange you was treated as if you was a customer. 

[Uhlman[ Okay, so there was …

[Cross] At Frisches too.

[Uhlman] So I’m guessing that’s probably around 1962-63 based on …

[Cross] 62, 62, it was before that, it was all too early 60s and the late 50s.

[Uhlman] Yeah … before and an aside here while we’re on this topic. You know, tell me about your memories of the civil rights movement and its impact here in the city of Dayton.

[Cross] You sure? 

[Uhlman] Yes, please.

[Cross] I have no understanding, I am 77. I had three kids [00:22:00] and that was happening. I have no understanding why it happened. So I really can’t speak on it. There was nothing here going on in Dayton that we needed some people from New York and around, coming in here on TWA, first class, going to our meeting, talking about burn this mother down what they don’t alllow that we had everything.  The General Motors was working us … ugh, Tate Manufacturing was working us, [unintelligable] Dayton was working us. GH and R we’re working us, Mercer [unintelligiable] I’m naming only the job the pay good money. I ain’t talking about the other jobs we had scattered around. Why they burned and rioted here I have no idea.  I hate to talk about I get bitter because we … going [00:23:00] down from Third Street bridge going west, when you cross over what they call the Freedom Bridge, I don’t know why they called it that because we weren’t allowed on it during the riot. We couldn’t cross no bridges. They fence the whole west side in and that them fools tear it up. 

[Uhlman] So so you’re when you’re talking about this, you’re not … Are you referring to the rioters and the 66 Riot or? But how about the NAACP and people like …?

[Cross] What about them? They didn’t do nothing, there wasn’t nothing to do. We had Bank. We have drugstore, pharmacist. We have Barbershop, beauty parlor, clothing stores, food store, everything.  We didn’t need them. So yeah. [uintelligable] Brown and [00:24:00] his crew coming here on a plane and went up to Wesley Center the show us a picture of a black man hanging, that none of us blacks knew and a white man hanging hanging him that none of the white men knew.  It started a riot.

[Uhlman] so you’re thinking of the … that’s not the race riot though of 66 …

[Cross] How many race riots you think … I lived here for seventy years.  Tell me you know whats you talking about?

[Uhlman] Yeah. Okay. Alright, so other events is what …

[Cross] I’m talking about the riots of Dayton.  A black man got killed on the porch … on fifth.  They thought the two white guys, a white guy and white girl did it. When they let the white guy and the white girl go, because they didn’t know no better, they came right back over the bridge and was going whereever they was [00:25:00] going and then somebody saw them and here we go. That’s the first. 

[Uhlman] Okay.

[Cross] Now you got years, I don’t got years. The first. And we did a little damage then, over the next one come along, was you here?

[Uhlman] Oh, I was just born at that time. I didn’t live you. I wasn’t I’m not from around here.

[Cross] Okay, I got the same answer you do what your answer is. You don’t know what happend right.

[Uhlman] Yes, the the …

[Cross] Well my thing is …

[teleophone ringing] [unintelligable][Uhlman] okay, okay.  Hold on one moment. We got a pause here. There we go. Sorry …

[Cross] The riot …

[Uhlman] of 66 the that took place with the white car load of white man shot. I can’t remember his name and …

[00:26:00] [Cross] It never happened.

[Uhlman] Oh tell me about that then. 

[Cross] A man got shot on the porch. They blamed it on couple of white cats with girls or whatever. The arrested them, everybody went downtown. They didn’t have no gun or nothing. They were just some like I did when I was young. I used to get in the car go through the white  neighborhoods to see what was going on. That’s all they were doing that started the first one, the next one, what you call next one? What you asked about was started by people, SNCC, and all of them other suckers coming in here mad.  And there was no car load of whites going down Fifth street. I was out there every night. This is 3 a.m. In the morning. What’s his brother doing out on the porch at three am sleeping?  [00:27:00] That was bull and then when I got through with that they got you stirred up , here come that other thing, you could tell me about that, I don’t even know what started that other one.

I mean when we was burning up Fifth street, we was burning up the neighbor, it just odd to me that Dayton full ghettos, [unintelligable], [unintelligable] apartments.  That’s why I don’t get.  See people don’t understand this, there was never a riot in a ghetto. All right, was in places, Florida, California, Ohio where Negroes was doing great.

You see the riots tearing down store windows and taking out clothes and running out with TVs. They were no … in the ghetto where we could barely get a bowl of beans, poor kids sitting out in the yard, playing in the mud … [unintelligable] … rather where they rioted [00:28:00] in was where the blacks were doing better. From Third Street bridge going west you didn’t know if you was leaving downtown Dayton to not. Going east you don’t know when you got to downtown Dayton those Third Street had everything, we had everything. I mean everything, I an’t nick nameing it, and I ain’t calling our names on sending like a mean it, everything and that’s where the riot was? 

The people that was helping us, that’s where they rioted at. Cause they didn’t have sense enough to think for themselves. How you going to sit on a plane and tell me they holding you down at white man got his feet on your thumb. He won’t let you go and do nothing.  When everything he had on the other side of the bridge we had on our side. It was instigated by some of them [00:29:00] [fiddle-faddle] mother-fuckers, excuss me.

I just don’t like talking about it. I don’t see what we rioted about, and then after the riot … we got nothing, that was the point. 

[Uhlman] So you said that to shift it back to the arcade? You said that the arcade was a pretty good place for African Americans to go to

[Cross] Arcade was good for everybody. They hired. What you do, they hired you if you could  do to work, they paid you for what you did, if you could have afford a shop, they let you shop, they wasn’t on, you, you none of that crazy stuff.

They have doors on the first floor going in the door off a Third Street and a had as many black shop owners as they did caucasian. It was a great place.

[Uhlman] Did you work there?

[Cross] I worked in the basement over there by the Kulps will we go, where shipping and they the trash, you know, all the people, I did, I wasn’t on pay roll. [00:30:00] I was a little guy just got hustle. 

[Uhlman] So the business you’re in now the …

[Cross] I shine shoes. I been shining shoes since I was twelve. I had good job other than that, but I always come back, sometimes I work the job and shine shoes.

[Uhlman] And you didn’t do that at the arcade though. It handles. Yeah. Okay. And so when in your memory the sounds like the arcade was a great place, but it started to have trouble in the I would guess in the early late 60s early 70s. What’s your sense about that about the decline of the downtown perhaps if it’s connected to that.

[Cross]Just the arcade in general.  How old are you?

[Uhlman] 54

[Cross]  even at 54 I am [00:31:00] twenty-three years old in years.  I want to ask you a question.  Have you ever been in a segregated City? Listen to what I’m saying, I ain’t through, a segregated city and I get integrated and what’s the first thing that happen?

I mean you go on the radio you Jordan has good. What’s the first thing to happen, in a school, and in a city, and a neighborhood what’s the first things that happens? The people that built that shit, leave. And that’s what happened downtown Dayton, NCR left, Rykes closed.  Ell … ain’t nothing down here.

[Uhlman] So you think that that it was the it was it was the end of the segregation or not end, but [00:32:00] because Staton is a terribly segregated city today, but but but the. The integration more integration brought …

[Cross] Where do you think the malls come from?  When we got out in downtown Dayton all of a sudden malls start popping up because we couldn’t get out there.  Did you see lately here when they were trying to stop RTA from on putting the stop out by the mall?  They don’t want us out there.

[Uhlman] I remember there was a there’s a case about the arcade that the people in the 1980s.  They wanted to they wanted to make the Arcade a private place so that they could exclude people and there was a bus stop out in front of the Arcade.

[Cross] On Third Street?

[Uhlman] Yes.

[Cross] Yeah, they moved it. 

[Uhlman] And and do you think that that was again racially motivated?

[00:33:00] [Cross] Life is racially motiveated.

[Uhlman] Got it.

[Cross] Hey.  You got people here in this city.  All over, nobody wants to be themselves. They want to imitate the others. I mean right now it’s going both ways.  And , and, and that’s what the problem is. Some of the southern white men tell black folk to stay in your play, they take as an insult but me as a black man shining shoes, what I look like out there at the Opera?

[Cynthia Rand] [walked into the Barbershop moments before] I know I look pretty good.

[Cross] You said four o’clock and look at the time. 

[Rand] I know, I was …

[Cross] You got, she can tell you, we were raised up together. And, and, [corss talk, unintelligable][Uhlman] I’m  sorry. So who are you ma’am? 

[Rand] My name is Cynthia Rand, R, A, N, D. And well, I don’t know, I, I [00:34:00] grew up where I went to Memorial Hall that was for concerts. When they say field trip. We went to the ballet, we went to Memorial Hall to I listened to classical, so I listen to classical now, you know, we, we went ice skating I went to [Great state green?] grade school. Y

[Cross] I forgot about that.

[Rand] yes.

[Uhlman] So are you a you born in Dayton as well?  And did your parents, had they lived here all their lives, or … ?

[Rand] In Xenia, and then they moved to Dayton my dad, Paducah, Kentucky.  And my dad [00:35:00] was a deputy sheriff.  And he owned his own business. He was a contractor. He Built Homes out in Kettering. So and I. Speak differently than other people if you notice I enunciate and I say Dayton I don’t say Dat’un. I say Dayton.

So that’s the way I was brought up.

[Uhlman] Grady was telling me about the Arcade. Do you have memories of the Arcade?

[Rand] Ow my gosh, I used to say as a little girl when I grow up I’m going to live up there in one of those apartments. 

[Uhlman] Okay, tell me, a please tell me about the apartments because we’ve met very few people who can tell us anything about the apartments.

[Rand] Well, I had never been in one, but just to see you knew people lived there, on the upper level, and there was a little balcony, it was it was gorgeous, the tile, it was it was gorgeous.

[Uhlman] Do you know? Our [00:36:00] understanding is that a lot of the people who live there were like single people like younger people who worked in a downtown. 

[Rand] you know what I wouldn’t know. My mother would not allow us up there, those were people’s homes. So we came through the arcade which we loved places to eat.

You know it was.  You could get to a lot of the store, the department store, stalls, Doninfeld. You can come through the Arcade and go through McCrory’s or whatever and end up out there on what is that Third?  You know, and Main, yes.

[Uhlman] And how old were you when these memories you have of going into department stores in walking to the arcade. How old were you and what year would that have been?

[Rand] I was probably about 3 or 4. I can remember way back.

[00:37:00] [Uhlman] So, so

[Rand] I’m 72 now.

[Uhlman] You’re 72?.

[Rand] yes

[Uhlman] Okay, so I can’t do the math. [laughter][Rand] That would have been in the 50s, in the 50s. Right? And mr. Grady told me that that the arcade was a very welcoming place for African-American.

[Grady, background] Yes

[Rand] It was. You know, I didn’t know that. People didn’t like you because of the color of your skin until I was in high school.  Everybody welcomed us, just like I said, my dad was a contractor. He built homes out in Kettering and we played with the children, we go with him out there as he would go inspect what his workers did and we played, I didn’t know people didn’t like you because of the color of your skin.  You know, it was amazing to me.

[Uhlman] The restaurants in the 50s then and and I guess you continue to maybe go there in the [00:38:00] 60s and 70s, at the Arcade. The restaurants were welcoming.

[Rand] Yes. They where. Smallys pretzels. I love that. I still go over here off, off Wayne at what is that? Whatever, Xenia Avenue, off, over there and buy pretzels they used to cost two for a quarter, and now, you could probably get a little piece about two inches for … [laughter][Uhlman] And, and the do you remember some of the festival things at the Arcade like Christmas?

[Rand] Oh Christmas at the arcade. Basically, I remember Christmas at the department stores at I remember Elders. Then there was Biermann’s and there was Rykes, you know.

The different department stores and they would say especially Rykes the windows up because Dad would let us [00:39:00] walk around and look like I said, you know, I grew up in Dayton. I didn’t know people didn’t like people because of the color of their skin. I’d never been down south until I was an adult.

[Uhlman] Did you grow up on the west side?

[Rand] Yeah.

[Uhlman] Whereabouts over there?

[Rand] Behind Home Avenue on Elwood. 

[Uhlman] so, okay, there’s so many things. I want to talk to you do you guys about but.  Did you know any people who worked at the arcade?

[Rand] No, I didn’t I didn’t I didn’t know anyone that works there. My mom and dad might have. But we were we were brought up in an era where children kept to children’s place, you know, if I had seen [00:40:00] one of my parents friends I could say hello, but we didn’t converse with strangers. 

[Grady] or … we didn’t get into, like these kids today, like, you know mama’s spoke, daddy spoke, any adult in the areas spoke, we, we …

[Rand] That’s right. [cross talk] children now have no respect. We were raisded by adults. Listen to adult conversation. That was it wasn’t for us. And we didn’t have to be told. We just knew that we weren’t supposed to be there. They weren’t talking to us, you know. 

[Uhlman] Mr. Grady, before we end I know you want to go here, but can you briefly tell me a little bit [00:41:00] about, do you have memory, this is on different project, the one about the arena and what I’m interested in is you would talk about your wanting to play basketball and things. What was your sense of the University of Dayton the, the significance of that, Dayton basketball for the city of Dayton or for the black community or anything?

[Grady] What, what, what, University of Dayton got to do with athletics, part of our people?  They were doing a school thing. They built a place over there, before they build over there, we call it Welcome Stadium then.

[Rand] Right

[Grady] and we went over there to play ball and I didn’t know gym, we learn to drive it over there. We play little outdoor football. No, that’s all

[Uhlman] in the fields over there. Yeah.

[Grady] Yeah, what, … that is were the schools played.

[Rand] The High Schools. It had …

[00:42:00] [Grady] That is what it was.

[Uhlmna] Right so Welcome Stadium was built in 1948.

[Grady] It was there when I got there.

[Rand] that is right.

[Uhlman] Okay. Okay

[Grady] so UD, UD, as far as the [unintelligable] and I like basketball, but when I was coming up, I didn’t know nothing about Ohio State, I liked UD because they recruited in the area and they had a lot of Caucasians, ah, caucasions, they had a lot of afro-americans went to  UD.

[Rand] and you know, UD was Catholic and they went, like I said, I didn’t know about prejudice

[Grady] and  when I meet prejudice, I didn’t know what I’ve seen it on TV what’s new I seen a TV, we heard about seeing on the paper and Dayton we was kind of in an [00:43:00] area and property on and store owners white and then, you didn’t have none of that crazy stuff that you see in the news and then, you didn’t run into any of that until high school.

[Rand] That’s when I learned prejudice.

[Grady, in background] That is when I learned too.

[Rand] My friends were Hungarian. We all went to grade school together. We spent the night at each other’s homes back and forth at lunch over there. I get to high school. They tell my friends they can’t sit with me in the cafeteria. So we started eating at the Teddy Bear or the Rose Bowl where we could eat what we wanted to eat and sit where we want it to sit.

[Uhlman] What school  was that mame? 

[Rand and Grady] Roosevelt.

[Grady] I went to Roosevelt before here and when we got the Roosevelt we didn’t even take gym together. 

[Uhlman] The gym classes were segregated.

[Grady] Yeah. We  [00:44:00] didn’t take gym together, they had a double gym, I ain’t never seen a bigger gym.

[Rand] All right, they had well, I don’t know about that because I my gym class consisted of everybody and Olympic swimming pool …

[Grady] that was after we come through there and then they had …

[Rand] in door track

[Grady] they have downstairs swimming pool, they had all that but we didn’t get to use it as she did. But then when we got the Roosevelt, when we went to Roosevelt over.

[Rand] You were about four years.  ….

[Grady] we could eat at the table there, or the Sugar Bowl children when we ate at B and D …

[Rand] we could … [cross talk][Grady] when they got there …

[Rand] I didn’t know like I said, I didn’t know prejudice.

[Uhlman] So you graduated maybe 60 to 63.

[Rand] No, that was my sister, 65

[Uhlman] you graduated 65, and then you would have been …

[Grady] I would like 55, 64. Okay, when they got there.  Dunbar [00:45:00] High School had toured the Teddy Bear up and that’s how he started letting us in.  Now B and D was always happy to let in everybody, now the Sugar Bowl was on the corner.

That’s what we got Roosevelt [unintelligable], but when I went to Roosevelt my principal. Who was your principle?

[Rand] I don’t know.

[Grady]  My principle was Natalie B. Roth.

[Rand] no, I didn’t know Natalie Roth. [crosstalk] they did Roth high school after here

[Grady] when went to Roosevelt, Natalie Roth, Mr. Humble and the try to smooth it out with a black guy, what was his name Commings?

[Rand] yes, Mr. Commings.

[Grady] but, but Natalie b. Roth was the principal and every fifth word taht came out of her mouth was the n-word.

[Rand] See, I didn’t know.

[Grady] you didn’t experienc that

[Rand] We went there, see first, Roosevelt high school was so uppity. That was … [00:46:00] [crosstalk]  They were the only high school that recruited like college. You won’t be a high intellect or good Sportsman to get in Roosevel, if you’re black.

[Rand] Yeah. I don’t know. My mother said I was resonably intelligent, I stayed on the Dean’s List. My mother was a genius he can tell …

[Uhlman] You so I know you guys are probably going somewhere so I don’t want to keep you so I guess I have to be satisfied with that but …[crosstalk]  okay, great. I can ask you some more questions. I’m going to have lots of questions to ask you and in ma’am, if you know anybody else that we can talk to about we’re doing the specific reason. I’m talking to mr. Grady today is because of the arcade we’re writing a history of [00:47:00] the arcade.

[Rand] ow, it was, I liked how you could walk downstairs, that was where they had little resteruants and things down. It was, now you, you hear how I speak, my mother and father they were very elegant people and, we didn’t go out to eat a lot, you know my mother grew up on a farm and she cooked, daddy cooked, and we ate at home, you know, it wasn’t if we went out we went to family, now we might catch a hot dog or snow …

I’m telling the story. We weren’t even allowed to eat bologna or hot dogs. We weren’t because she grew up on the farm. She said she knew what they were made out of but I used to love, augh my gosh. I get a Coney and then be sick. [00:48:00] [crosstalk][Uhlman] Yeah, that, that, would be at the arcade?

[Rand] Yeah, because we couldn’t eat that. We didn’t eat it at home. You know when your body is not used to something. It kind of rejects it

[Uhlman] and the favorite restaurants and places there in the arcade were for you.

[Rand] the favorite place for me was like I said Smally’s pretzel company, I loved that place.

[Grady’s] Mine was Culps

[Rand] You know what? I can remember that, but I never ate. You know, we ate it home.

[Grady] and everybody went to the fish market. Yes.

[Rand] Yes everybody. They fry your fish for you. Oh gosh, that was good. Yes Whiting, Perch, whatever they had that you wanted they would cook .

[Grady] That place was so good and when they closed the Arcade they moved in over here somewhwere.

[Rand] right [00:49:00] on First Street. [crosstalk][Uhlman] so just it won’t work. Why do you think that the arcade closed? 

[Rand] The stores began to close you. downtown … They start they what they did was they built malls in the suburbs and free parking and there you go. Because you had to pay to park downtown you had to park at a meter or parking lot.

There was no free parking so you can take your family to the mall and   park your car and get out and walk to all the same stores, basically, that we’re downtown and that’s what happened. You know, they deserted downtown. That broke my heart, but I’m not going to tell a story. I don’t even know how to ride a bus.

[Uhlmna] So one you told me you really like the apartments when you were a little girl. You wanted to live in. Can [00:50:00] you tell me why?

[Rand] it just. They were fancy and they had that little you can look down on to the arcade that little walkway. It was like a balcony, you know, and I used to say, because then you could look out into downtown never knowing downtown would die, you know, yeah [crosstalk] and the arcade that broke my heart, you know, I’m telling you if I had had money I would have purchased that just to refurbish all of that the ceiling all of it was just gorgeous.

[Grady] And when you was coming from the west side, in our area, and going in that place down there when you come down the hall and look up it looks like the stuff we used to see in the Roman pictures. It’s just sketches and arches and all the colors …

[Rand] just gorgeous. It [00:51:00] was gorgeous, you know

[Uhlman] all the woodwork on the ceilings and the carvings? 

[Rand] yes.

[Grady] and the balcany, ah my God.

[Rand] You know children, well younger than me, even in their 50s. They don’t know how to appreciate.

Unless they were raised by parents like us they don’t know how to appreciate. You know, I appreciate the leaves in the spring, the blossoms that come, I appreciate all that, but my mother taught me that you know, and I taught my children, is something that … If you don’t … become aware of it. You just passed right? You know …

[Uhlman] One last thing I know I keep saying that one last thing. How about the glass Dome?

[Rand] Oh, that’s what I love … gorgeous. Just gorgeous.

[Grady] I reminded of that glass by going to … around these churches down here, and [00:52:00] I just love it. I love stained glass anywhere and I like the way the … uh .. Arcade the way … [crosstalk] it shaped.

[Rand] you could come in one area and exit another you could come in on Third and your exit on Fourth.

And yes, you could go out on Main, but you would walk through McCrory’s or whatever … Greens I think there was a little five-and-dime name [unintellible]. You have to forgive me. I don’t remember a lot of things. Something stick with me, but I lost my son and house fire and I taught school [crosstalk]

I lost a lot of memory. I’m sorry, and that was night. When was that 2004? So I [00:53:00] see people they talk to me. But it’s all right. So if so.

[Uhlman] Your parents were from Xenia. My mom was okay, and my dad was from Paducah, Kentucky. So do you know where their parents were from my grandmother?

Dating on your father’s side my mother sigh. Okay. My father’s parents Paducah, Kentucky. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.

Fatima Alfaro: It is April 12th, 2019 at 1:10 p.m. My name is Fatima Alfaro and I will be interviewing Lynn Gathagan. So today we would like to interview you about your memories of the Dayton Arcade. We would like to start with some general questions about life and then move on to your memories of the Arcade and its place in Dayton. So when and where were you born?

Lynn Gathagan: I was born in 1957, in January in Suffern New York, which is a small town outside of New York City. My parents had gotten married and graduated from college and my father went back to pursue a second degree. So. He was going to school and working and my mother was pregnant with me and that’s where I was born.

Fatima Alfaro: What were your parents’ names? And what did they do?  

Lynn Gathagan: My father is Henry Grant Gathagan. He was a pastor for many years then became executive director of retirement communities, and retired from Friendship Village, Dayton, Ohio, which is what brought us to Dayton in the first place. My mother is Carol Jean Love Gathagan and she was a school teacher for a very brief time and then her profession was making a home for her husband and five children and then when my youngest two sisters were in high school, college years, she went back to work part-time as an insurance coordinator for a dentist, and she also worked downtown.  

Fatima Alfaro: Where did you go to high school?  

Lynn Gathagan: I started high school in Chicago, Illinois. We moved in the middle of my freshman year to Pueblo, Colorado and I graduated from high school in Pueblo, Colorado.  

Fatima Alfaro: Do you have any memories of your grandparents and if you could tell us a little bit about them and what you remember about them?

Lynn Gathagan: My grandparents, my father’s parents, my grandpa and grandma Gathagan were both born in Pennsylvania. My grandfather was a coal miner. He also did some blacksmithing, and was a barber and was, from what I remember, a pretty handy guy as far as helping with people with electricity and those kinds of things. By the time I knew him, as I remember, he was retired. My grandmother was a school teacher as I recall in those days, they went to what they called normal school. It was for teachers and she taught for a while back in that Pennsylvania area. They lived in the, the Beccaria, Pennsylvania is where I remember them living and she had taught school, I think until she was married and then I think if I recall correctly she didn’t teach after they started having children. My mother’s parents, my grandpa and my grandmother Love, my grandfather Love, I recall meeting him once. My grandmother and he were divorced long before I was ever around.  He worked in the steel mills in Pennsylvania. They lived outside of Pittsburgh in a small town called Freedom, Pennsylvania, and he work in the steel mills there and work got scarce. So he went back further East and my grandmother, Louella Barnes Love was also a school teacher and they had gotten married rather late in life and they had children and she had a support system in the area.

[00:05:00]

Her mother and her sister lived in Pittsburgh and for whatever reason, and this was never clear to me, she was not interested in moving back East and by the time, as I recall the story, by the time he had a place for them to go to, she wasn’t interested in going. I don’t really know what happened. It’s one of those things that was never talked about. He did remarry, I don’t know any of the story, but my grandmother was then left with three boys and a girl to take care of by herself while teaching school to the support people.  That answer everything. Okay.

Fatima Alfaro: Do you have any stories or lessons that either of your grandparents kind of said or told you as a child that have stuck with you?

Lynn Gathagan: I would say my grandmother Love although, I don’t know that it was a story that she told but she was very interested that my mother, her only daughter, have an education. Which again she taught school, but probably went to what would be called a teacher school or normal school, so probably not a four-year degree. She was very, sure that my mother needed to have an education and she and her mother my great-grandmother made sure that my mom was able to go to college. She went to Geneva college which is in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, so she was able to live at home and go to school and she met my dad at college. But my grandmother’s take, and I’m extrapolating a lot but I think her take was that a woman needed to be ready to take care of things and having an education and being able to teach school was a way that her daughter would be prepared no matter. Just as she had been prepared. My great-grandmother Barnes lived in Pittsburgh. My great-grandfather I have no memory of at all, he was long dead by the time I was around. But my great grandmother Barnes and my great aunt Becky were both women who worked. My great grandmother and her husband before he passed had a store, very small store. My great aunt Becky, although she was married, she never had children and she went to work. I believe she worked for a while road somewhere in an office, and they all three of those women were women who were supporting themselves, or at least partially supporting themselves. And they were living in a time when that was, when that was maybe a little less normal, a little less prevalent maybe and they all lived into their 90’s so, they had a lot of years without living husband’s whether because of divorce or because they passed away.

So I’ve always felt that I was fully capable and should be prepared to support myself no matter what the rest of the situation was. My paternal grandparents had a much different life. They lived out in the hills of Pennsylvania. They did not have running water, ever. When we went to visit there was the outhouse, water was warmed on a coal stove, that’s how they heated their house coal stone coal stove and that’s how they heated the water. Their life was difficult, but it was a family. They took care of each other. My grandparents both worked very hard. My grandmother didn’t work outside of the home as long as I knew her, but I knew that my grandfather had done many things in order to provide for his family.

[00:10:00]

And so I think my grandparents example to me was, you support yourself, you take care of yourself, you take care of your family and it’s not always necessary but you should be ready to do that.  And you don’t expect someone else to do it for you.

Fatima Alfaro: Some great lessons from your family. So with that, what are some of your earliest memories as a child, or as a preteen, some of the things that kind of stick out when you look back?

Lynn Gathagan: We moved frequently. We lived far away from relatives. So our immediate family was very tight. There wasn’t holidays with other family members. That was always just ourselves. Christmas was always a big deal. Not that there was a lot of it, but it was a big deal. My mother had a quilt.  I’m not even sure where it came from. I know she did not make it, could have come from her mother, could have come from my paternal grandmother, but this quilt was brought out only for special occasions put on the floor in front of the fireplace. And I remember Christmas Eve on this quilt, which she normally kept in her cedar chest, so it always smelled really nice. It was made of pieced fabric, little bits and pieces of this and that, most of it corduroy or velvet and the back a dark green taffeta all done by hand, with this wonderful Cedar smell. And it’s on the floor and all the kids, there are five of us are laying on the floor in front of the fire, at Christmas opening our little stockings with nuts and little wrapped candies and an orange. And that was just so exciting. Christmas, like I said was a big deal.

We always had a live Christmas tree and presents were a secret. Although I had siblings who loved to pry. I did not want to know. I like to be surprised. But those were good memories. We lived in a house for a while that my parents rented that had a fish pond in the ground in the back and in the summer the landlord had a grating over it so that no one would fall in. But in the winter, he took all the water out and all fish and over the winter kept them in his basement. And so wintertime, we would walk around the outside of this supposedly empty concrete in ground fish pond, but it would fill up with snow and then it would melt and then it would fill up with snow and it would melt, and it was inevitable that at least once per winter one of us would fall into the fish pond in the. And that was, it was just kind of like, why?

Fatima Alfaro: Are you or were you married, and if you were could you tell us about your spouse?

Lynn Gathagan: I was married. It did not last long. I got married when I was, let’s see, 36 maybe, yeah, 36 and he was considerably older than I was. He was about 20 years older than I was. Growing up I figured I would get married, but it wasn’t a thing that I focused on. I dated, I had boyfriends. I was engaged, I broke the engagement. I was almost engaged a couple of times, but I finally at 36 got married. It didn’t last long and I don’t know that I would do it again.

[00:15:00]

Again, I can take care of myself. I don’t need anyone to take care of me, I am kind of a solitary kind of person being the oldest of five kids. There’s a lot of commotion and noise and people and I really like my quiet space, and I was interested in having someone to share things with. But that turned out to be not the case with this individual and afterwards I was happy to be into my own quiet space again.

Fatima Alfaro: So, what did you do for a living, or what was maybe perhaps one of your first jobs, first career?  

Lynn Gathagan: I’ve always worked in an office of some kind. I’ve worked at a sheet metal and roofing company. I worked for insurance companies I worked for, worked for a newspaper. I’ve worked at a museum.  I worked for big corporations. And I worked for a brand new start-ups a couple of times, but I’ve always worked. Sometimes as an office manager, sometimes as an administrative assistant or an executive assistant.  So that’s what I’ve done through my career.

Fatima Alfaro: And what do you like to do in your spare time? Do you have any hobbies?

Lynn Gathagan: I like to read a lot.  I’m not crafty by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve tried different things I can so, I don’t enjoy it.  I can knit but I don’t really enjoy that either. I’ve done needlework and embroidery. Not really my thing either, so. I do love museums. I like to go to museums.  I enjoy movies. I travel some, but mostly to visit family. And, but, you know nothing really too unusual. Although I did go skydiving one time. I enjoyed it very much. But after the critique of my jump, I decided I was lucky I haven’t broken anything and I should just walk away. And those were in the days before tandem jumps. You just went out to some jump place out in Greene County and they put you through some training in the afternoon and then at the end of the day you got up in a plane with a parachute on, and they tapped you on the shoulder and you jumped out of the plane. So, like I said, it was an experience I’ll never forget. It’s the most quiet, peaceful feeling I’ve ever had. But yeah, I’m not athletic, that was really pushing it for me.

Fatima Alfaro: So you said that you travel to see family. Are you and your siblings fairly spread out across the country nowadays?

Lynn Gathagan: Yes. I have a sister in Princeton, New Jersey. I have a sister in Leawood, which is a suburb outside of Kansas City, Kansas. I have a sister up in Cortland, New York and a brother out in Hawaii.  So I think that’s everybody.

Fatima Alfaro: So we’re going to get into some of your memories from Dayton and from the Arcade. So first is, what are your first memories of the Dayton Arcade once your family did make it to Dayton?

Lynn Gathagan: I think that the earliest memories I have of the Arcade by then, by the time we moved here, I’d finished my first year of college and I didn’t make the right choice as to where I went to college and it was not someplace I wanted to go back to again.

[00:20:00]

And I decided that I was going to stay out for a while and work. And so, I finished my first year of college, we move to Dayton that summer and so we were all brand new to Dayton.  And in those days they had employment agencies, and through an agency I got a job eventually in July of 1977 at Travelers Insurance Company. Now I had worked for a small sheet metal roofing company in Dayton starting in 1976 when we first moved here, but that was kind of down off of Perry Street down towards Miami Valley Hospital. It was a small company, family owned, and we didn’t get out much during the day.  When I took the job at the Travelers Insurance Company, it was in what is now the Grant Denow out on Ludlow and Fourth, and it was a huge open office, it was a big office. And you could look out the window down onto the street and see the walkway from the middle of our block over into one of the entrances of the Arcade, the South entrance on the Arcade onto Fourth Street. And I remember standing there looking down seeing, is it raining, do people have their umbrellas, because I’m going to go over to the arcade and I just need to figure out what it is that I’m doing. So going to the arcade at lunch time is the first memories that I have of the Arcade.  And it was a busy place. There was a big area where they had seating, if I recall correctly, where you could get food from the vendors that were there and go and eat in this area. And I think it was underneath that big glass rotunda area. In the Christmas season they would have people who were selling things out of small push carts, kind of a predecessor to a pop-up spaces that we have now in downtown. There were food vendors around. There was McCrory’s which was a five and dime. You could go in there and eat at the lunch counter if you wanted to. There was an art gallery on, or at least a place that sold art and did framing work, on the second floor.

There was a place called the Red Radish which was, well it’s not a Sur La Table, but it was a higher end shop that sold kitchen linens and decorative things for your kitchen. And whether they carried Le Crouset or not, I don’t know, but that kind of cookware. They were on the second floor of the Arcade. There was a restaurant that I went to several times in those days. Most of the time I brought my lunch, but I was out looking, shopping. There was a lot of shopping downtown and if you cut through the Arcade you were covered from the elements, because then you could go across to Courthouse Plaza where Elder Beerman was or over to what was Lazarus. Or wherever shopping you want to go. So the arcade was a place to go grab something occasionally, but it was a shortcut, but it was also a place where you could shop seriously for things. I remember the floors in McCrory’s were the old wood floors like.

[00:25:00]

And I can remember feeling like I was just sounding like a horse walking across those wood floors, and thinking to myself, oh when I move out this is where I will go to find these things that I will need at McCrory’s. Because their wares were kind of a throwback to an older time even then in the 70s.  I remember purchasing a Christmas ornament for my sister at a push cart in the Arcade. It was a little hand painted little girl on a sled made of porcelain or bisque or something and I remember thinking to myself, I love this ornament, but it is a gift. I will give it away, I will not keep it for myself. But the arcade was, it was where you would go to. I remember getting some artwork framed, a couple of small oil paintings that we gave to my parents for their anniversary one year. I remember getting it framed at the Arcade in the second-floor place where you could go get things framed. I hope my sister still has the ornament. I know by parents still have the pictures that we got framed.

It was always full of people. Later on, my, one of my younger sisters worked at a place that sold gyros. So she worked in the arcade.  I wasn’t working downtown. I’m not sure if I was in town or not later when they redid it, and it was more of just a food court, and they didn’t have any other shops and they didn’t have nice restaurants. It was just kind of pick up stuff. I wasn’t around for that very much. So that really wasn’t anything that I’m too familiar with. I was just familiar with the Arcade in the late 70s.  But it was, to me always attractive. I thought, what would it be like to live in one of the apartments around there? Because you could look from the office window across and every once in a while you’d see lights in the other windows that were in the upper floors and I always wondered what the apartments look like inside there, wondered what it would be like to live in there. I’m a city girl. I always wanted to live in an apartment in the city. That was kind of my thought at the time.

Fatima Alfaro: So along the line of the apartments, were they pretty desirable apartments in the late 70s, 80s, for younger people?

Lynn Gathagan: I don’t really know that I can answer that. I can give you my impression. My impression was even in that day, they were not actively, the impression I had, they were not looking for renters. Maybe these people had been there for a while. I really don’t know. That’s just kind of the impression that I got because I wasn’t at a point where that was something I was ready to do, so I wasn’t really looking, so. Did I see streams of people walking in and out going home? No. I’ve got the impression that it was not very populated after hours.

Fatima Alfaro: Back to your comment about it being busy. So throughout the late 70s and 80s, when you were visiting the arcade, did it stay that way pretty consistently? Where there any ever, was there any ever like whispers or kind of impressions that something perhaps was declining at the arcade?

Lynn Gathagan: No, because as long as I was working downtown, it was a very vibrant place for the most part. Yes it, and if you think back about it, there were some consolidating in the stores, where you know all of a sudden.  Of course, it wasn’t Lazarus by then what, Rike’s or Rike’s Shillito or whatever it had become at that point.

[00:30:00]

Maybe it was Rike’s before Lazarus, maybe it was Rike’s, Rike’s Shillito, and then Lazarus. Hmm. I think that’s really it. There were a lot of floors in that building and I think as time went on there they were consolidating and not using some of the upper floors. And now I’m starting to not really, I can’t really say that this happened while I was there, because I shopped down there a lot, even when I wasn’t working downtown and so my timeline gets a little fuzzy. But I think, thinking of it now, the idea that some of this consolidation and the stores was happening probably was a precursor of what was going to happen. Because when I was downtown, downtown Dayton days were still huge, you know where you were out and everyone had stuff out on the sidewalks and you shopped every day at lunchtime for a week. At least that’s what it seemed like.

Of course, I shopped a lot. I shopped a lot. Even when I wasn’t working in the Grant Denow tower, I worked over in the Montgomery County Medical Society building over on Perry and Fourth, and would walk over and shop on my lunch hour a lot. My boss and I had the time liked clothes a lot and we were similar size, and so we were always shooting for the petite departments, but we were doing our best to keep the economy downtown going. But thinking back on it now, there was some consolidation happening. I don’t remember this happening to the arcade simply because I think at that point it wasn’t working downtown when that happened. Because I remember coming back to town, because I had moved away at one point Indianapolis, coming back and seeing what they had redone with the arcade and the new food court, and I was like totally unimpressed. Sad to say. I just thought it was it could have been any mall in America, but that’s what they had decided to do to keep something going and that’s fine. But I wasn’t living in Dayton at the time. I wasn’t working downtown. So I didn’t really, other than a visit or two, I didn’t really see that happen.  

Fatima Alfaro: So in the late 70s when the Arcade was still fairly busy, what was that atmosphere like downtown? Not only the Arcade, but just around the surrounding area.

Lynn Gathagan: There was a lot there is a lot going on. People were out at lunchtime a lot. People were downtown after work a lot.  I remember the Courthouse Square had what they called An Affair on the Square on Fridays after work, and there would be food vendors and they would have something going on and you could buy tickets and exchange them for beer or wine or whatever. And at the time, it was a different time. But at the time I was working in Kettering Tower, only it wasn’t Kettering Tower then I don’t think I was working for an insurance agency and they would buy tickets. The company would buy tickets on Fridays and hand them out to the staff and we would go over after work to have a beer or wine after work with the people that we worked with. And it was something that happened every Friday in the summer. But there was a lot.  There was a lot of restaurants downtown, in the main core. There was a lot of business downtown. A lot of shopping downtown. There wasn’t much in the way of places to live downtown at the time.

[00:35:00]

But there was a lot of activity. The closest probably was the Oregon District as far as housing, and then South Park, and then across the river, you know, up into where I live now which is Grafton. That was kind of the housing that was around downtown. There wasn’t much actual living downtown. Which is why I think I saw that space above the Arcade. And there used to be, when the weather was gray, and you would want to turn your lights on during the day. There was a residence I believe, on the top of a building that was on the northeast corner of Main and Fourth and I’m pretty sure there was someone living there at the time and I would see that those lights come on in those gray afternoons and think yes, I would like to live downtown in a city someday, and maybe I can do that in Dayton. It didn’t happen, but it could happen now.

Fatima Alfaro: So you talked a little bit about some of the shops you would hit up. But were there any in particular that you definitely remember and you were consistently frequenting, and then we’re there any that were just popular among all of the crowds that would come in?

Lynn Gathagan: Well, obviously what I now know is Rike’s. Rike’s and Elder Bierman were big obviously, but there was Donenfeld’s downtown and there was the Metropolitan downtown. Those were over close to where the Victoria is now, not at the Victoria obviously, but there’s theater space above where Uno’s is now. That was the Metropolitan. And they had a store there and Donenfeld’s had to store downtown too. In fact, I went and worked at Donenfeld’s part-time at the Salem Mall for a while when I was still working downtown, just because I got a discount. But yes shopping at the Metropolitan, Donenfeld’s, Rike’s Shillito, Rike’s or Elder Bierman was the big ones that I can recall. And since Rike’s and Elder Biermann’s carried men’s clothes too, then there was a lot of men there. But Donenfeld’s was women’s, children’s, Metropolitan, I’m not, I think women’s. And of course Price Brothers, Price Brothers has been around forever. Those are the main ones that I remember.  

Fatima Alfaro: And within the Arcade, any popular ones, or any popular food places that you would consider kind of Dayton staples that were really frequented and enjoyed by the public?

Lynn Gathagan: The restaurant in the Arcade was kind of like a big place to go. It had a nice, it was, depending on where you were seated in the restaurant, you would be at windows that kind of looked out over it. That was kind of cool, but that was, as a young working girl, that was not something that I could afford very often. I was there a couple of times but, I enjoyed it, it was good. The worst thing is that I don’t remember the name of it anymore. I think someone has said, it’s Charlie’s Crab. I think that’s what it was.  But there was also a restaurant at Courthouse Square in the lower level, and I was thinking that was Charlie’s Crab, but I’m not sure, maybe they moved. Used to be, Courthouse Square, you could go downstairs and there was just a restaurant down there below ground level. It was odd, but it’s the way it was. But Charlie’s Crab was I think the one that was in the Arcade and that was, it was kind of aspecial place to go.

Fatima Alfaro: And then could you tell us a little about who you would visit the Arcade with?

[00:40:00]

So obviously co-workers at times, but did you ever visit with the family? Did you ever see family units or was it more of a place for younger adults working within downtown?

Lynn Gathagan: At the holidays you would see more young kids that weren’t in school, there with their moms.  But I was not there in the evenings very much so I couldn’t really speak to that. So when I down there, it was mostly business stuff. Now since I did come down sometimes and shop with my family, I’m sure others did the same, but since I pretty much shopped things to the extreme during the day, during the week, there really was no reason for me to come down in the evenings or on the weekends. And that’s when there was an Elder Bierman Northwest and the Salem Mall, so if it was the weekend or the evenings, that’s usually where I was shopping because I had already scoped everything out during the day downtown.

Fatima Alfaro: Could you tell us a little bit more about the Arcade around Christmastime because it seems to be a recurring theme in our interviews, that around Christmas time the downtown area, and specifically the Arcade, were just a whole different environment.

Lynn Gathagan: Yeah. There was a lot of decoration. As I mentioned earlier, these little push carts that people could rent for the holiday season, where they could sell things but they didn’t have shop space in the Arcade that they could sell it there. But yes, they would have it decorated with garlands and stuff for Christmas time. And the windows, of course. Rike’s had their animatronic things in their scenes and stuff like that. Since I was college age by the time we moved here, I don’t have childhood memories of looking at those windows. I had, when we first moved here, obviously seen the windows, but it wasn’t a part of our family tradition to do that. Our family tradition was walking around in our neighborhood, which was an upper Dayton view, Golden Triangle, Salem, Catalpa, Cornell, Philadelphia area. A lot of the tudor older style houses, and they were decorated, and our tradition was walking through that neighborhood on Christmas Eve to look at all the decorated houses. And I will tell you this, I have never in my life been downtown for the parade the day after Thanksgiving. Which I know is a big deal to a lot of Daytonians, but it just wasn’t ever for us. But yes downtown, a different thing in the wintertime and that Christmas season especially.

Fatima Alfaro: So you talked about some of the consolidating that you saw, you know now thinking back to it in the Arcade. Do you remember any other issues in the Arcade? Do you remember if it was a relatively safe building, safe area, or do you think that it was pretty well kept, well maintained?

Lynn Gathagan: I don’t. I have never in my life felt uncomfortable walking around Dayton, day or night, downtown, ever. I had a sister and a brother who worked in high school doing maintenance cleaning in the evenings in offices downtown and I would be down there and pick them up or drop them off. So I was around all hours and never afraid, never felt unsafe.

[00:45:00]

We lived in an area of town that many of our peers felt to be, especially their parents, would have concerns about and it never made sense to me. And maybe that’s because I lived there, it was familiar to me.  I had friends and friends of my siblings who would say their parents would say, oh, you’re in goes to visit the Gathagan’s, make sure you lock your car doors. It was not something that I ever felt. It’s not something my siblings ever felt. This wasn’t, it wasn’t a concern of ours and I don’t, I don’t know why people have a perception, but I never felt it.

Fatima Alfaro: Once the arcade did close, you probably weren’t working or living downtown at the time. But do you remember, perhaps did you see any immediate ramifications or effects that it had on the downtown area?

Lynn Gathagan: I mean, I would only be extrapolating and say I would assume that other places of business  got the lunch business, that shopping, of course shopping eventually disappeared in a big way and that made a big difference downtown. But as far as, I didn’t experience it because by then I wasn’t in Dayton at the time. So I can’t really, I would just be guessing at that point.

Fatima Alfaro: And, so when did you move into whichever neighborhood or city that you, you live in now?

Lynn Gathagan: Where I live now? It’s called Grafton Hill. I live on the corner of Forest and Grant, not, well within sight of Grand View Hospital. I moved there about 16 years ago.  Well, my, we were painting the inside of my, I bought a condo I had closed on my condo the 31st of August. And when 9/11 happened, I was working and I came to my condo because my mom, my sister, and a friend were painting in my condo. I hadn’t moved in yet and I went there to let them know what had happened because they were, this was before people really had cell phones. And so it was yeah, so I’ve been in that neighborhood , for 16 or 17 years now, I guess 18, something like that. Yeah.

Fatima Alfaro: So what are some of your favorite things or were some of your favorite things about living in Dayton?

Lynn Gathagan: Well,  they’re still my favorite things. There is always something to do in Dayton. I mean I’ve lived in Chicago. I’ve lived in Colorado. I’ve lived in Indianapolis. I know what city living is and I know what small town living is. In Colorado there were still tumbleweeds blowing through and by nine o’clock everything was closed. So I know what small town living is. In reality, although Dayton is somewhat small, it is not a small town at all. With the arts scene that there is, with the you know, you have the Dayton Art Institute, which I’m partial to anyway.

[00:50:00]

And there’s just, I mean there’s something to do all the time, and there are restaurants, independent restaurants, everywhere. It’s easy to get around in Dayton. Truly easy to get around in Dayton. I was in Indianapolis couple weekends ago for a visit and I was like, I was ready to tear my hair out. But it’s relatively short drive to do anything that you want to do. It’s a good standard of living. There is a wide range of housing options. It’s a very livable city. I think it’s a good city to raise children, although I don’t have any to raise. But I like Dayton, I do. And I’ve moved away and I’ve come back several times. So I do, I like Dayton.

Fatima Alfaro: And just to finish up, what do you think the Arcade meant to the people in the city of Dayton? And as these plans to bring it back or bring back a newer version of it are being hashed out, what do you want to see from this new Arcade or really hope that it brings back?

Lynn Gathagan: I think the fact that they’re putting in, at least they’re planning to put housing and office space there, is a good idea. I think it helps stabilize a building in that respect. I hope that, because it is a beautiful, I mean there are parts of it that you don’t see, but there are a lot of interesting architectural features to it. And I think it’s a very interesting complex of buildings. I think it’s a touchstone for a lot of people and that’s always a good thing to have in a city. I hope that, I hope that there’s some retail and restaurant space in it. I think that will help people re-integrate it into their life if there’s a reason to go, and I think it’ll help downtown. It’d be nice to have more retail downtown. I think that be a good place for it.

Fatima Alfaro: Lynn, thank you so much.

Lynn Gathagan: You’re welcome.

[00:00:00] [Brody Hannan] Today’s date is April 26th. 2019. I am Brody Hannan. My partner  is Makailah Hill. And today we are interviewing Joanne Granzow. Today we would like to interview you about your memories of the Dayton Arcade. We would like to start with some general questions about life and then move onto your memories of the Arcade and its place in Dayton. So first when and where were you born?

[Joanne Granzow] I was born in Miamisburg, Ohio.  Do I have to tell you when? In January of 1928.

[Brody]What were your parents names? And what did they do?  

[Joanne] My parents were Dorothy and Hubert known as Dot and Hub. And my father spent his life working at the NCR.

[Brody]Where did you go to high [00:01:00] school?

[Joanne]I went to Stivers High School here in Dayton.  

[Brody] Do you remember your grandparents?  

[Joanne]Yes, I do.

[Brody] Can you tell me about them and do you remember any stories they used to tell you?

[Joanne]I remember my grandparents. My grandfather was a grocer in the small town of Miamisburg. He was the pillar of the Methodist Church. They were very gentle kind people. Grandmother was a gardener and my grandfather gave food to people during the Depression if they could not afford it.

[Brody]What is your earliest memory?  

[Joanne]My earliest memory is riding a little horse like Pony like tricycle on the sidewalk in front of our house in [00:02:00] Miamisburg.  

[Brody]Did you have a nickname?

[Joanne]Not then but through the years. I’ve been known as Jo.

[Brody] Are or were you married?

[Joanne] I was married.

[Brody]  Tell me about your spouse.

[Joanne] My spouse was a lawyer that is deceased.

[Brody] How and when did you meet your spouse?  

[Joanne]Oh my we knew each other from the time we were 15 years old. We lived in the same neighborhood. And had a lot in common in that we were working class families.  

[Brody]Do you have  children?

[Joanne] I have four children.

[Brody]How about grandkids?

[Joanne] I have eight grandchildren.

[Brody] [00:03:00] What did you do for a living?

[Joanne]  Very early on many years ago. I was a school teacher. But once I was married, I was a homemaker and mother of those children.

[Brody]What do you like to do in your spare time? Do you have any hobbies?  

[Joanne] Oh, yes. I like to Garden. I certainly like to read and I still like nine holes of golf.

[Brody] What are your first memories of the Dayton Arcade?  

[Joanne] My memories of the Dayton Arcade are going in with my mother because she had a relative who worked at one of the kiosks in the Arcade. I forget if it was selling cheese, I think.

[Brody]How often did you visit the Arcade?

[Joanne] [00:04:00] Oh, not frequently, but as a high schooler, we used to walk through there and get Smales Soft Pretzels with mustard on them after school.

[Brody] Why did you  visit the Arcade?

[Joanne] Well, I in my teen years I really didn’t have much reason to visit the Arcade and then it changed dramatically as we know because the malls were such competition that I think the Arcade was not that popular. Although we used to go there when they had this the restoration in the 80s. We used to go there for to Charlie’s Crab, which was a wonderful restaurant.

[Brody] Other than the pretzel place and Charlie’s Crab, do you remember any specific shops or restaurants in the Arcade that you used to visit?  

[Joanne] Well, yes, there was Knowles Sandwich [00:05:00] Shop while I didn’t visit them. There were many things or bread and cheese and vegetables. Oh wonderful fish market people came from all over for the fish market.

[Brody] Can you describe what the Arcade looked like on the inside?

[Joanne] Well, it looked very much as it is pictured today with that wonderful rotunda and the glass dome except in those days, the floor was intact, but in the 80s, they removed some of the floor and that made a big difference.

[Brody]Do you remember any of the people who worked there or were would be there when you visited it?

[Joanne] Only this one relative of my mother’s and I cannot remember her name.  

[Brody] Did you know anyone that ever lived in the apartment buildings above the [00:06:00] Arcade?  

[Joanne] Yes.  A very senior lady I believe. Her last name was something like Rossiter and we visited her once when I was a girl, but I cannot tell you much about that. I was very young.

[Brody]Tell us about the people with whom you visited the Arcade.

[Joanne] Well, first my mother, of course when I was younger. Later walking through teenagers, but I really did not do much business there myself.  

[Brody]What’s your strongest memory of the Arcade?

[Joanne]  I guess my strongest memory is the rotunda,the glass dome, the beautiful railing on the second floor. The architecture [00:07:00] is the impressive thing.

[Brody] Can you think of any specific events at the Arcade, such as Christmas time?

[Joanne]Well when there was the restoration in the 80s, yes, they decorated for Christmas and opened some of the shops that were still open. And I think it’s called Holly Days or something like that. It was very active for a period in the 80s.

[Brody] Do you recall encountering or seeing any problems at the Arcade such as segregation or crime?

[Joanne] I do not.

[Brody] What did people think about the Arcade and did this meaning change over time?

[Joanne] Well, of course it did change over time. Initially It was a wonderful Market. It was a wonderful place for people in the city to do their shopping. But as years went on [00:08:00] the malls were competition and the rest of your question was?

[Brody]Did the meaning of the Arcade change over time?

[Joanne] The meaning of the Arcade did change in time. I think they were people who did not go downtown any longer and weren’t sure the downtown was a safe place. Although I disagree with that.

[Brody]What do you think the Arcade meant to the people and the City of Dayton?  

[Joanne] Well initially, it was very very important. To the City of Dayton but as times changed the interest in the arcade and what was their diminished.

[ Brody] So in 2007 you guys formed an organization Friends to Save the Arcade. Can you describe sort of the process that went into creating that organization and what you were trying to do?

[Joanne] Yes, a [00:09:00] gentleman  named Leon Bey, a retired librarian, walked through the Arcade in a terrible state of disrepair with the man who owned it at that time, but he saw the significance of the buildings and their history and their architecture and decided it was essential that we try to save that as a wonderful architectural site in Dayton, Ohio. So he said about , he asked  Maribeth Graham and myself to join him in an effort to save the Arcade and we had many many meetings on the subject. We conducted tours through the Arcade and sold items for fundraising and we worked hard at that for several years until it appeared that nothing was going to happen.

[Brody]What kind of things did you sell to raise money?

[Joanne] We sold [00:10:00] t-shirts with etchings of the Arcade on them. We sold buttons with the picture of the Arcade on them. We sold notecards of drawings of the Arcade which had been donated to us by David Smith the noted Dayton artist. We had fundraisers. We had a tea we had tours which helped our fundraising.

[Brody] Did a lot of people show up these tours?

[Joanne] The first tour people were literally lined up around the block Fourth Street 3rd Street, Main Street and Ludlow. And we had several successive tours and they were all well-attended. But we had to be very careful about cordoning off areas where the citizens could walk in safety.

[Brody]So in 2009 the arcade sold to two Wisconsin developers who promised to reopen the [00:11:00] arcade shortly after they bought it by early 2013, but they never got started on the work. So what was your impression of their ownership?  

[Joanne]I think they were very sincere, well-meaning gentlemen. Who saw the potential in restoring the Arcade. Unfortunately, the funding was never. Possible for them. They never made enough funding in other words enough backing to even begin the process seriously.

[Brody] So what is your impression of the current restoration project that’s going on at the Arcade?  

[Brody]Well, I think it’s very very exciting. The fact that there are three companies who have very fine reputations who are involved. I believe it’s going to be a centerpiece for downtown Dayton.  

[00:12:00] [Brody] So now some questions about Dayton in general. How long have you lived in Dayton?

[Joanne] I have lived in Dayton most of my life since I was eight years old.  

[Brody] When and why did you move to Dayton?

[Joanne] We moved to Dayton for my father’s job at the NCR. But of course I was born in a small town. Very close by.

[Brody] Tell us about what Dayton was like when you were younger.

[Joanne]Dayton was a beehive of activity. The downtown during the War years was open every Monday and Wednesday night there were people. All over the you know people to people across the sidewalks. It was a wildly busy. This was because again, we did not have the malls or competition. There were shops and stores downtown. [00:13:00] There were very very successful and thriving City.  

[Brody]When did you move to the neighborhood in which you currently live?

[Joanne] I moved to Oakwood in about I have to stop and think it would have been about 1960.  

[Brody] What changes have you seen in your neighborhood since you first moved here?

[Joanne]Well, Oakwood is a fairly static community because it’s only a 2 square mile Community with its own government its own school system. So frankly, it’s like a throwback to the 50s. I don’t see a lot of change.

[Brody] When you were younger, what did you do for fun in Dayton?  

[Joanne] Of course. I had the fun of going to high school, but I also worked Mondays [00:14:00] and Wednesday night’s downtown at a famous department store called the Rike-Kumler Company and then after work, there was a place downtown called Club Co-ed where students from all over this town could come after work and get to know each other and we had a wonderful band. We Danced.

[Brody] What neighborhood in Dayton did you grow up in?

[Joanne]I grew up in Walnut Hills, which is East Dayton.  

[ Brody]And what was that neighborhood like?

[Joanne] It was a working-class neighborhood of older homes. But in those days we had a working middle-class people cared for their homes, even though they were very modest and you walk to school regardless of the distance. It was a Dayton School system.

[Brod] What is your favorite thing about living in Dayton?  

[Joanne] [00:15:00] My favorite thing and living in Dayton is the beauty of our area the fact that I feel safe and secure and could be anywhere. I want to be in 20 or 25 minutes where wonderful water supply which isn’t the case in much of the country and the world. So I think it’s a beautiful place to live and by the way, Right outside the window today is Springtime. It’s gorgeous.

[Brody] And what’s your least favorite thing about Dayton?

{Joanne] What is my least favorite thing about Dayton? I think when you say least. I wouldn’t exactly call at least favorite, but I’m unhappy about the fact that we no longer have the wonderful Industries we had which have moved out and which made it possible for the middle class to have working jobs that troubles me.

[00:16:00] [Brody] Is there anything else you would like to tell us that we haven’t asked you about already?

[Joanne] I think the main thing I would say is that we are thrilled that University of Dayton is taking an interest in the Arcade and that they’re going to occupy some of that space. In addition. I think UD is one of the the best things about Dayton right now. Truly their activities their research their philosophy. It’s terrific.

[Brody]Thank you.

Walker & Gesuale, 3-8-19, Doug McGarry

Sound check.

Today’s date is Friday, March 8th 2019 the interview group consists of myself. John Walker and my partner Jack Gesuale and our interview subject today is Doug McGarry. So Mr. McGarry, thank you for agreeing to do this. We appreciate your input to the Dayton arcade history project and I would just like to get started with a few topical questions about you know, your life and Dayton where you grew up and then moving in with specificity specificity towards the arcade. So for the record, could you please State your full name where you’re born and where you grew up?

Thank you John. My name is Douglas McGarry. I Grew up in Dayton Ohio lived in a house oh a couple miles north of downtown Dayton and very familiar with the arcade. 

Thank you. And who were your parents if you don’t mind me asking?

My parents were John Leo McGarry Junior and Myra B. Miguel. My father actually operated a number of stores in the arcade from early 50s through their closure and I would say about the mid-70s.

Okay, you mentioned that your father operated multiple stores in the arcade where they. All together in one area or dispersed throughout the building.

The main store that he operated was the food market which was right off of Ludlow Street, but then he also managed the nut stand and health food stand which was actually located on the east side of the arcade in the arcade proper. Close to the entrance to McCoys. 

Okay, so they were all food related stores?

Yes, so. What was the context of your father opening the stores in the arcade had he operated a business prior? Just could you give you a little more history on how he began there

Boy real rough. My father was in World War Two after World War II went to the University of Dayton. And as far as I know one of his first jobs was working for the owner of the arcade. Mr. Shapiro, and that’s how he got into that the arcade business. 

Okay, so your father opened the series of stores in the arcade where they did he open them all at once or one after the other?

Actually, my father did not own the store. So he worked for the arcade. I believe the food market was the first store and then several years after that’s when the health food store and the nuts stand opened up as far as I can remember they were always there. 

Now when you mention your father working in the main food market, I guess I was hoping to understand specifically what sort of food was a sold there. Was it a deli counter dairy products fruits and vegetables?

5 Mins

No, actually what my father opened. Operate it was really more of a traditional grocery store back in the 60s and 70s. There were numerous specialty shops. There was a meat stand of fished and poultry stand. She’s dead. He’s sold more basic grocery Staples canned goods soap detergent beer and wine. Just more of a mom and pop type of small grocery store. Not the kind of grocery stores. You see today like a Kroger is really like that. But really a place where you would stop to after work to pick up a few staple items to bring home in order to fix dinner. Also, we self cans of pop potato chips things of that nature that he would sell to vendors are workers who wanted something quick for lunch. And then he sold beer and wine to a number of folks who were downtown at the time. 

And now we were led to the impression that you began work for your father and helping to work in those stores in 1965. Is that accurate? And or if it’s not when did you start and how old would you have been?

When did you start working there? You know, actually my first recollection of the arcade was more that my father would take the bus to work every day. And on Saturdays, I would go to the arcade late five o’clock six o’clock with my grandfather. He drive a car down we go pick up my dad and also pick up groceries for the family for the week. So and even then you know as he was closing up, I would actually have to start doing certain things maybe sweep up back. Then there was people return pop bottles for example and stack the pop bottles and do things of that nature. Officially, I began working probably about 10 or 11 and that really first involved doing the inventory once a year you would do an inventory of all the items in the store on a Sunday myself and my sisters would go down there and we just begin counting items fishing on the payroll. I was probably about 11 years old 1966 and work there after school and on Saturdays. Until I went off to college which was in the round ’73.

Where did you go to college?

I went to college at Ohio University in Athens

Okay, so you mentioned that your siblings would Aid you in taking the inventory at the store. Could you tell us a bit more about them number names age relation to you? 

Seven kids. I had an older sister Molly next to me was a younger sister Amy. And then my other brother Pat.  A Brother Bill a brother Ed and a brother Dennis in terms of Molly myself Amy Pat Bill and maybe Ed all worked in the arcade my youngest brother Dennis. He was too young by the time the arcade clothes and my dad had closed down the store as well as the overall arcade.

So you mentioned that your father close down the food stores in the arcade when the rest of the arcade was starting to close by the mid? What did he do afterwards after it closed?

I had a number of jobs but his primary job was he was a deputy with the Courts office.

So one of the things I wanted to return to that you mentioned was that your father had the Food Mart the nut Stan you mentioned and then also a health food store. I guess health food stores and something I would necessarily think of when I think it was a the 1960s, but could you explain a little bit more about that? Like what sorts of items were sold there?

10 Mins

The arcade had a little bit of everything in it back then. If there’s anything that would be comparable to it would be that kind of the Second Street Market, but fewer more just places on people to buy food as opposed to where you would eat. Of course. There was a couple of restaurants health food store was real small stand, but it’s sold vitamins. I can remember the most and that was primarily was more vitamins. Books things of that nature some juices Natural Foods like that, but you know, actually natural foods and all that really came into being more in the 60s weren’t as common as today, but there was a still marketer and a number of places downtown actually that or so-called health food stores.

Now your father operated a number of these Food Markets down in the arcade, but would you say that there were a number of other stores operated by others who were in competition?

Well, it really wasn’t competition per se because people specialized goes from memory coming on entering the arcade from Ludlow Street you first entered the market and so there was the market there as you left the market to your left was the fish stand as still sold fresh fish across the aisle from the fish Stand was tasty bird poultry that sold fresh chicken poultry things as well as would actually cooked chicken, so they would sell fried chicken pieces and so forth as you went East just past the fish market was the butcher that sold fresh meats and again kind of like what you would see in the deli stand that was fresh meats and you would pick out your steaks and hamburger. So forth straight ahead. You actually ended the main kind of Isle of the arcade. So if you went left you crossed an ally that was called the Gibbons arcade, which is another section that connects to Third Street right there at the entrance way was dishes cheese so that they sold cheese and so forth. So today when you go to the grocery store, you may see a case that has all of your Deli Foods you have maybe fish you may have meat and cheeses here. They were actually operated by Independent Business people if you turn to right walking towards Fourth Street, there was the entrance to McCrory. Which was kind of a five-and-ten-cent store that span from the arcade to Main Street. You went further down and there was I want to say Smalls pretzels where they which is still in business on Xenia Avenue, but they had a little scan where they sold soft pretzels first potato chips. Next was I want to say probably where the health food store and the nut Stand was then there was a Walker’s hot dog stand which was kind of like an open-air hot dog stand. That’s so hot dogs and hamburgers and so forth across and then you actually reach the 4th Street entrance across from Walker’s was culp’s cafeteria, which was a restaurant that had a bunch of. Stools and tables and in the center of the arcade where the big rotunda is was kind of a general store type of things that sold everything from magazines to Cosmetics to just whole menagerie of items and Sundries and things of that nature.

I want to thank you very. Much for going to such detail that’s extremely helpful. But aside from the stores you were there after school and on weekends. What do you remember of any sort of?  entertainment atmosphere like weather ever musical acts the arcade or any other entertainments that struck stuck out to you or were notable or even just occurrences that did happen?

15 Mins

There really wasn’t formalized entertainment the arcade I would say where the entertainment of the arcade came was the diversity among that very customers that came through there and that was probably. The thing that stands out most of my mind that you really didn’t think about it back then but you reflect back that when you go shopping today, whether you go to a mall or you go to the Second Street Market or you go to or Kroger’s you really don’t have the diversity that you would see in the arcade and when I say diversity you had. Everything from doctors and lawyers were many doctors who actually had Offices Downtown you get the lawyers, but then you also had domestic workers you have restaurant workers, you know, that downtown was truly The Hub of the city and. A lot of people use transportation and so the transfer point was downtown as well as many people work downtown. And so you had this Rich diversity of people men women black white. Everything was in downtown in this kind of the Hub of all that was within the arcade. The other thing that was existed in its thinking back. It’s really quite amazing, but even. In the arcade and these were more along the outside areas is there was probably at least four bars and and most of the bars were just bars. They wasn’t was it like big dance and all that dancing or entertainment all that. It was just different bars. There was the blue Lounge was on Ludlow there. The Cozy which was inside the Gibbons arcade, which was primarily a black bar you had boy another bar that was outside by mclaurys on Fourth Street that I couldn’t remember you had a bar on Third Street called The Press. Which was primarily a bar that a lot of the Pressman from Dayton Daily News went to. The thing I remember most was also all of the workers in the bar were union members. There was a Mindy steak house next to that and probably the think it was the most amazing back then most bars. Do not serve food. All they serve was alcohol. But when you went to the Press Box, they had a little pass-through window to Mindy’s steak house next door. And so you could go to the Press Box order your food and they would literally pass it through this window one of the few places downtown Dayton and where you could unless. I’m talking just bars not restaurants, but very few bars actually serve food. So Mindy’s was the place to go if you wanted to get a sandwich and a beer and then last but not least. There was a the Marine Embassy which was across the street from the arcade on Ludlow Street that also was a bar neck right next door the Dayton Daily News.

[Jack] So besides going to the arcade with. Your grandfather on Saturday what other stories from your childhood about the arcade do you have? 

One of this, I guess one of the things I learned about business was in the arcade that talked a little bit about the arcade proper, but there was also the Gibbons arcade and one of the vendors in the Gibbons arcade had a little small produce stand and on occasion if he needed help. My father would dispatch me dispatch me to work for him often on a Saturday. This kid was a old-school Italian vendor in a little shop. That was probably less than 200 square feet and when you worked for Vinny.  There was no prices anywhere, but he would sit on the stool in the corner with a cigar. And your instructions were to wait on the customer get them what they need and when they ask for the price turn around and look at me and I’ll tell you what to charge.

20 Mins

Fine first guy comes in. Well dressed looking sharp and he wants some apples and he says well I want an apple and look at Penny and then he says well. Was charged in 20 cents for that Apple, but you’re a good customer. Nice guy. I’m going to charge you 15 cents. Like I said, well, there’s a deal I’ll take two so bag them up walks out about 45 minutes later working guy comes in. Says to me how much are the apples? I looked of any and Vinny puffing on a cigar says 10 cents guy says Fine great gets his Apple towards the end of the day older. Black woman comes in obviously, you could tell she was domestic and she’s looking around and looking at the various items at the store and she says boy those apples really look nice. How much are the apples? Of course? I look at Vinny and Vinny says five cents. And the woman grabs one apple and hands it to me and I go to bag it up and he looks at her and says, you know, it’s the end of the day, it’s Saturday. Some of these apples aren’t going to make it through the weekend. Tell you what can you do me a favor and take two more of these apples they’re just gonna go bad ruin all the other apples and so he said Doug can give her the two of those apples and go and grab those apples and handed to her she leaves and we’re closing up for the day and I said Vinny, you told me early don’t ask no questions. We’re closed how much were the apples and then he says well. Tell you what, the apples were 10 cents.  They cost me 5 cents, but my mark up their 10 cents for everybody. Yes L that first guy that came in and I charged him 15 cents. Well, he is a tightwad lawyer who lives in Oakwood is always wanting something on a discount. And so I charged him. 15 cents but told him that the apples were 20, so he walked out of he thought he had a deal. One guy came in 10 cents. That was the price women at the end of the day. Well, she works hard. She works as a maid and she pop one out. Well, she has three kids and so I wasn’t going to send her home with one apple that she’d have to cut up for three kids and besides that lawyer, the tightwad he didn’t know it but he bought that woman apples for her two kids. So everything works out in the end that was really  the arcade. It was you know, kind of that old school type of. Of business that you treat your customers fairly and you remember who they are. They’re your friends not just customers.

That’s an amazing story. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. So getting back to the period when you started to work at the arcade so mid to late 60s. I understand that was also the period the date and started to experience its own race riots. Could you tell us a little bit about how that impacted the arcade or if that impacted the arcade or how you?

That time what I remember is really the riots probably ethic was 1968 and how that impacted the arcade and I would say all of downtown it is when many people became afraid to come downtown and began that overall decline of the arcade and led to the closing. I would also say at that same time was also when overall you saw the rapid expansion of suburbs and more and more people moving out from Dayton as and businesses following them to the suburbs so to speak.

So you noted that there was a deterioration of downtown life when the riots. Because of fear but by the early 1970s, would you say that other factors such as the oil crisis stagflation and specifically in Dayton the building of I-675 had a negative impact.

25 Mins

Well, I-675 my recollection actually came much later. I would boy, I would say more early 80s what did occur in this is actually when you know through late 60s early 70s was the opening of Route 35 and I can actually remember watching that being built went to high school downtown at Chaminade. And so you could see the development of Route 35. I would just the the other Factor was is that’s when NCR there was there was a large strike at NCR or NCR occupied lot of the land now that University of date is on so that was huge. There was also I want to say the closing of Frigidaire the calls and so is more the factory closings more than anything else that. Really had the largest impact on Dayton and the overall economy.

Would you be able to tell us where those factories went? Did they move to the suburbs to other cities or did they just closed period.

NCR actually eventually left but really began phasing out of the cash register business as I recall and the production so forth and we really moved to more of what they look like today and more of Information Technology things of that nature so began phasing out. Actually started getting to like money machines. So to speak boy Frigidaire pretty much closed down all together. GM began relocating and consolidating plants. If you look now, it’s on the Eastern edge of downtown where the Dragon stadium is mental says all those buildings were all part of GM, delco and Delphi and so forth. So the first phase was to move out of downtown proper and move more to the suburbs such as Moraine. There was a GM plant out Vandalia there was plants out. Close touch on North side of Dayton closed between Dayton and Huber Heights. And so that was literally what you saw that phase out of downtown per se and again what came first was that the people moving out the factories moving out it all kind of happened at the same time. The other thing that that also I say it would say impact the Dayton housing per se was throughout the 60s. When you really saw the development of Kettering as a suburb Kettering was pretty much Farm country throughout the 50s, but then in the 60s, that’s when Kettering grew as a suburb swells Centerville Englewood a lot of the Beaver Creek that’s where new houses were going up people, a lot of people had loans from GI Bill home loan. And that’s where the growth went. 

[Jack]So with people moving away from downtown into those areas you just talked about do you think that was a huge factor in the arcade losing business or did those people that moved away still came back? 

People moving out was the factor. So it’s not only was it where people live but also that’s when you started to see businesses move out you started seeing department stores, like Elder biermann’s building stores in the suburbs Reich stores in the suburbs grocery stores everything moving more to the suburban area less people downtown. And less Shoppers, I think you know, we still had big department stores downtown then but you could see the writing was on the wall that things were changing the shopping centers became malls and now here we are. We’re debating. What are we going to do about the malls and downtown is growing. So maybe it’s just that that Circle coming back again.

30 Mins

[Jack]So you said your father closed shop in the 70s was that due to the arcade closing or was that or did he leave prior to that as?

Downtown was declining. So was the arcade and the business just wasn’t there. There was a decision made to redevelop the arcade make it more mall like so to speak and so everything closed in the arcade Redevelopment took place, which took probably three or four years. So at the point where they closed down, The arcade to do the Redevelopment is when my father left the arcade and close down the stores.

[Jack]And was you or your father ever involved in trying to restore the arcade in the 80s or 2000s?

Not really. I’ll tell you though. My father was at the arcade for 27 years before close when it reopened again. However, he worked for date municipal courts in the clerk’s office. So with spent a lot of times going over there and. This part of the Redevelopment there was a food court with a lot of restaurants kind of like what you would see in a mall and so he would spend a lot of time in the arcade and was so was still even though didn’t operate a store there was pretty much a fixture there that you would see at lunchtime every day if I wanted to see my dad and eat lunch. I knew that we’re going to the arcade.

Okay. A question I have specifically about the apartments that still existed in the arcade where you ever did you ever enter that area of the arcade or have any interactions with the people who lived in the apartments in the arcade?

One of my duties when I worked for my father was to deliver groceries to select customers there was back then there was a theater group that operated out of Memorial Hall called the Kennelly players. The Kennelly Players were you know, Jim Nabors Gomer Pyle play there Sally Fields. Al Gabor we would do deliveries to them in the hotels. But then there was these select few customers who still lived in the apartments of the arcade and that we would they would call up my dad would do the shopping for them and you’d carry the shopping bags to the customers people who lived in the apartments and everyone loved to do it because they would tip. I guess another funny story. I heard about that. There was one woman. I cannot remember who she was but elderly. Who just had these enormous breasts. And whenever you went to deliver her groceries. No fail her robe would open up and her breasts would come out.  Well, there’s a new guy working for us one day and we decided to give him the opportunity to do delivery and he was all excited because wasn’t quite sure. Because generally it was those who had the so-called seniority is the one who did the delivery got us out of the store and we could get a tip. Well, he went into that delivery and he came back and whiteface not saying an absolute word. And of course we pretty much knew what happened. But we say, well, you know, how was it she give you a tip blah blah blah, which you know, what’s her apartment look like he said, I don’t know what to do I don’t know what to do and I go what? He goes, her robe came open and everything came out everything came out and what would you think he goes? I peed my pants. True story.

Thank you. That was good.

35 Mins

Today, all you really see is people that look like you or of the same economic status as you generally speaking the arcade was you would see everything and in the end. I’m not sure how to put this but you know back then and I was downtown every day.  There was no homeless people there was mean it’s a weird phenomenon. The only people who were close to what you would call homeless were these old we call them why knives and they would come. To the store buy a little half pint of wine every day new hall.  you know can tell you a little bottle of white port 51 cents for the half pint and 3 cents tax if and you know and they were homeless I would say more by choice met most of them were vets and the probably needed the story in the other thing that would happen in this is the homeless situation was when it got real cold in the winter.  They would come in and they’d say call me a Blue Cab. And back, then the main cab company was yellow cab. Blue cab what that meant was call up the police department. They’ll pick me up. I can go to jail and stay there. That was where home was with the other go to jail or go to the VA because most there was almost I would say there was like probably ten men maybe one woman but no no homeless kids you never saw homeless kids and it was like it wasn’t until sometime in the 80s that you really saw that I became aware of homeless people which is probably. Yeah, I mean you saw everything downtown I mean, but you never saw homeless.  There’s no shelter. Didn’t need to have  a shelter. So as yeah, so that’s probably an important Point. Yeah. Yeah. 

So when you mentioned diversity specifically you mean both? Racially and socioeconomically?

All levels it has today when you go shopping. It’s often times what you really see are people that look dress same statuses. As you know, big difference arcade was completely different, you know was black white young old. Some people drove many people rode the bus the diversity was absolutely amazing. The other thing that I can remember most vividly or don’t recall probably the more correct statement was even though I was downtown probably first 10/15/18 years of my life. You never really saw homeless people like you do today that if anything that was close to what you would call Homeless was largely men who pretty much a chosen the life to drink alcohol. We used to call them the Winos and they would come in to three times a day and get their little half-pint of wine. But again the youth. You never saw homeless families. Occasionally the Winos would have a woman or two with them, but you never saw children. And the other thing that was probably more indicative of the absence of homelessness was when it got really really cold out. These gentlemen would come in and tell you to call them a blue cab. Blue cab that meant police department and they would come and they wouldn’t want to spend the night in jail. In order to stay warm. The other option many of the guys were veterans. They would call up and say I need a cab to go to the VA, but that was our homeless shelters back then it was men went to jail or the VA not because they did something wrong was because they wanted to get warm.

It’s very interesting like how you describe that because it’s so different to what I think of or like you or I might think of of the homeless situation today, but you mentioned that there would be these as you call them. Why knows who would come in to buy alcohol in the arcade?  Would they just come in to buy alcohol or would they remain outside or elsewhere in the city? Asking for money or panhandling as we might say.

40 Mins

They would they would Panhandle that was not unusual effect. I remember one day my buddy and I were working and we were I don’t know just not wanting to work too hard and it was a rainy kind of damp, Dayton, Ohio day, you know those days and one other. Gentleman came up to us and even his buddy needed some money for bottle of wine and offer to help us unload the truck if we give them a bottle of wine afterwards, of course, we jumped at the opportunity and they were unloading the truck and so forth and lo and behold we turn around and because my dad comes out of the store want to know what the hell is that guy doing with his Inventory and we told him well, you know, he said he needed some help what he offered to help us and that you needed a little bit of my money little bit of money and my dad just starts cussing and shaking his head and said I pay you to do that stuff. Don’t be getting the customers and cutting these deals and of course fine fine. The guy standing there and he goes what about my wine? Of course, we had to give him his fifth the white port.

So on behalf of both myself my partner, Mr. Gesuale A and the entire date and arcade history Department 91.3 why so and the University of Dayton I would like to formally thank you. Mr. McGarry for agreeing to participate in this endeavor.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Location of Interview: Dayton Metro Library

Interviewer:  Nora O’ Connor

Interviewee: Lori Rotterman

Text of Interview:

[00:00:00] All right. It is, um, March 11th, uh, at 1:00 PM, uh, 2020, uh, this is Nora O’Connor, and I’m, uh, interviewing Lori Rotterman. Um, so, uh, I just want to get started with some warm up questions. Um, so when, uh, just to get some background information on you, like when and where were you born?

[Lori Rotterman] I was born in Marion, Indiana in 1955.

[Nora] Um, what were your parents’ names? And they do for a living. [Lori] Um, my father was Paul Kramer. He was a civil engineer built, involved with precast concrete construction. So buildings, parking garages, bridges, things of that nature… And my mother was a stay at home housewife as I was growing up. Um, later on, she did work for a while for Goodwill industries. Scheduling, transportation, pickups of furniture, and other donated items.  [00:01:00]
[Nora] Um, where did you go to high school or school in general?

[Lori] Um, well, the first three years of high school, I was at Riverside Brookfield high school in, uh, Riverside, Illinois. Um, my senior year of high school, I was at Daniel Hand high school in Madison, Connecticut and then I attended UConn at Storrs for four and a half years after that.

[Nora] Um, do you remember your, uh, grandparents and can you tell me a bit about them? Uh, do you remember anything that they, any stories that they told you growing up?

[Lori] Um, yeah, so I knew all four of my grandparents. Um, my father’s parents had moved to Florida when I was just a baby. Um, my grandfather worked for the city doing like Maintenance and construction on like the electrical systems, you know, like streetlights [00:02:00] and, um, that kind of thing. Um, and then they also at one point, managed a small mobile home park. Um, my mother’s parents stayed in Marion, Indiana, and, um, had a small farm that they rented. And my grandfather also worked for Anaconda wire company. So he did his farming before and after work.

[Nora] Umm.  … So could you tell me like, what ended up bringing you like to Dayton because it seems like you’ve like moved around quite a bit in your life.

[Lori] Well, we did move around quite often. Um, generally based on my father’s jobs, he would either get transferred within the same company. Or decide to leave that company and go to work for a different one that was located in a different city. Um, so they had actually moved to Dayton while I was at college. And so when I was done with [00:03:00] college, I came home to Dayton and even though I have never been here before in my life, um, and ended up meeting my husband here and settling. My parents moved away. Um, they eventually came back. Um, at one point, my husband and I moved away and then we came back. So … Dayton feels like home. I’ve lived here longer than I ever lived anywhere else. Um, and it has a real … welcoming and homey feel to it, to me, compared to living other places.

[Nora] Um, so, uh. Tell me about your spouse, like when were you married and all that?

[Lori] I was married in 1981, um, my husband’s a musician, um, … plays guitar, writes songs, um, and at various times also worked for music stores doing guitar repair. [00:04:00] Um, we moved to California where he went to work for a, um, guitar manufacturer. And then, um, that company was going to move to the desert and we didn’t want to move there. So we came back home. Um, and he now has his own, um, repair shop here in town.

[Nora] Um, … What is your earliest memory as a kid?

[Lori] My earliest memory is probably my grandmother that lived in Marion, Indiana. Um, she did a lot of cooking and baking, and I can remember being in the kitchen with her. For instance, when she would make a pie, she had a small tart tin that she would make a little pie just for me. Um, that was just like the crust and then cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top of it. Um, and so she’d have me help her roll out the dough and all of those kinds of things. And I can remember [00:05:00] doing that when I was probably four or five years old.

[Nora] Sounds really good. Um, do you have any hobbies? Like what do you do in your spare time?

[Lori] Um, my biggest hobby? Well that’s kind of a tough, so I love to read. I read constantly. I always have multiple books checked out from the library. Um. I read while I’m on the bus, I read while I’m eating lunch at a restaurant. I, you know, read while I’m watching TV. Um, but my biggest hobby that I actually do actively is genealogy research. Um, I’ve traced quite a bit of my own family. I’ve also helped other people with research that they’re doing, and I’m an active member of the genealogy society and teach beginning classes and that kind of thing.

[Nora]  Uh, so I just want to like, get more into like how we’re just talking about like your connections to the Dayton Metro library. Uh, I believe you’re like a [00:06:00] volunteer here, and I’m assuming that you like are involved with a lot of genealogies and that’s a huge, like a part of like the Dayton Metro library that I think is really interesting so I just want to hear more about your connection to the library here. 

[Lori] Okay. Actually, I’m an employee of the library. That’s okay. Um, I work in the special collections department, which includes genealogy, local history, um, government documents and old newspapers and magazines. Um, and all of those things are things that fascinate me and that I would actually spend time doing or hanging out with or volunteering if I wasn’t working here soI actually get paid to do what I love,So.

[Nora] Um, so now to get more into the topic of, uh, the Dayton arcade, I just want to know. Um, what your first, uh, first memories of it and your first like connections, uh, with the Dayton arcade?

[Lori] Well, I’m moved to the Dayton area, um, after I left college, so it would have been [00:07:00] in, um, I guess 78 and, um, started working downtown in an office and would often go to the arcade for lunch. Um. And I just loved the building. I thought it was so beautiful, the dome and the, and the arcade hallway out to third street and so forth. There were several different restaurants there that I enjoyed patronizing, um, and getting fish from arcade seafoods um, so it was always one of my favorite places to be and to hang out and just to sit and people watch. Um.

[Nora] Yeah. Is that like where you usually went for lunch or what was like your favorite place? Like, I think that’s what you just were saying, but would you go anywhere else in the Dayton arcade for lunch or..?

[Lori] Mmm, there was a Chinese restaurant there. I cannot remember the name of it. Um, the, it was later on, a show on PBS called, [00:08:00] um, no, I can’t think of it either. Any way that the gentleman who did the show on PBS, it was his parents that owned that restaurant in the arcade. Um, and so I would often get lunch from them as well. Um, but, um, in the popcorn at McCrory’s,

[Nora] um,how often would you like visit the arcade for lunch and, uh, like what were, uh, those years like?

[Lori] I would say I was probably there once or twice a week. Um, it was, I didn’t go out for lunch every day. Um, but generally if I did, that was where I was going to go.

[Nora] Um, what drew you to the, getting lunch there? Like, why did you like visiting it?

[Lori] Well, I’ve always loved all the buildings that showed their history. Um, and to me, the arcade just epitomized that the, the, um. Plus your [inaudible ][00:09:00] work around the edge of the dome, the turkeys and cornucopias and so forth. Um, the marble floors and rod iron staircase railings and all of that. It, it just oozed history and just drew me in somehow.

[Nora] … Um, So right after you like move to Dayton and, uh, did you, where did you work? Did you work here since then or like where, like what was your like past work experience like?

[Lori] Um, when I first moved to Dayton, I worked at, um, Price Brother’s construction, which was also where my dad worked. Um, and I was a draftsman there. And then, um, later on I worked at several different restaurants. I worked at, uh, he offs, [sp?] which was down. It was in courthouse square down in the lower level. There’s like a [00:10:00] half circle hole that’s in courthouse square. There were two restaurants down there and that was one of them. I also worked at the engineer’s club for quite a while. I worked at, um. I think at the time it was called the Daytonian [sp?] , and it, it the hotel that’s there at Third and Ludlow that kept changing names. I think it was probably the Dayton Grand Hotel when it finally closed, but I worked there in their banquet area for quite a while. So I was most of those places I was doing waitressing and occasional bartending.

[Nora] Um. Did you, you had a very variety of jobs in Dayton it seems like. And uh, how did, uh, you like your variety of jobs and Dayton and, uh, how did you like, um, enjoy your coworkers and get more invested in the like or the Dayton community? Sorry.

[Lori] Mmm, I got to know several. I didn’t really get to know people at Price Brothers all that…  well, I was only there a [00:11:00] short time and most of them were older than me and married with families and so forth. Um, but definitely in the restaurant business, you got to know people and would hang out together after work, or when somebody would  move on to a different location, then you’d go patronize the restaurant they were at, and they’d come back to the place where they used to work and that kind of thing. So it was kind of a community of, um, people who worked in that industry who supported each other. And…

[Nora] Um, yeah. Would you go with anyone in particular to lunch at the arcade at all? Um, or is it just like you visiting those like restaurants?

[Lori] It was mostly me by myself, um, I tend to be kind of a loner kind of person anyway. And so, um, and the timing of when my lunch break was didn’t necessarily coincide with someone else’s. So sometimes coworkers from shops would go, we would go, a group of us would go over there together, but, [00:12:00] um, generally I would just go by myself.

[Nora] Umm. Do you have any memories that you still hold on to from the arcade when you like go there for lunch or visit it?

[Lori] Nothing specific. Just. Just the general ambiance and feeling of the place and, and feeling like it was kind of the center of downtown and … kind of the reason the city existed in my mind, you know, I mean, I learned later and learned that it wasn’t built until long after the city existed, but to me it was kind of like the, the beating heart of the city, you know?

[Nora] Yeah. Um. Do you remember like what the inside of the arcade looked like?

[Lori] Definitely.

[Nora]  Yeah. Just got the Dom and everything. Um, I know that you talked about the guy who had, uh, the PBS show on his parents had, uh, the tiny, [00:13:00] the restaurant in there. Um, do you remember any of the other people that worked at the arcade?

[Lori] Mmm. Not specific individuals, you know, I remember certain locations, but not necessarily the people who worked there.

[Nora]  Mmm. Do you know any other people that happen to like live in the apartments and the buildings?

[Lori] I did not … and actually I think by the time I was in town, most of the apartments had been closed or were closed shortly after I moved here and all of those people were forced to move out. They were going to update and renovate those apartments, so they kicked everybody out and then they never did the work. So nobody ever moved back in.

[Nora] So I know that you, uh, I was wondering since like my personal topic is on the, like, friends with arcade, if you [00:14:00] knew like anyone that was very, like strong with like the preservation upwards[sp?] of like, uh, remodeling the arcade.

[Lori] Um, yes. So because after I came back from, moved back from California, um, is when I started working at the library and I was very disappointed when I moved back to find that the arcade had been closed and was sitting there empty for all that time. Um, another gentleman who used to be an employee of the library, but later did some substitute work here and also presented programs, whose name was Leon Bay, Um, started doing a series of programs about the arcade and how important he felt it was to preserve it and not that there was a fear that it would get sold to cover back taxes and then get torn down and turned into a parking garage or something. And so he, he and a group of his friends got together and created this group called the friends of the [00:15:00] arcade to try and maintain public awareness about the fact that the arcade was there and also generate funds to hopefully do something towards the preservation. And so I joined that group and, um, participated in several of the different fundraising activities they had and that kind of thing.

[Nora] So you knew him like while he worked at the, uh, library?

[Lori]  Yes.

[Nora] Okay, cool. Um, can you like, tell me just more about like that experience and like what the fundraisers were like and all that?

[Lori]  Yeah, we, um, we had a variety of different products that we sold, t-shirts and tote bags and pins and different things of that nature that were, you know, fundraising-Type items, you know, we charged more than what it costs to make them kind of thing. Um, and then also we started getting permission from the city to [00:16:00] actually open portions of the arcade for tours on the urban nights that were held twice a year. Um, and … then there were also a couple of other events that took place at other times rather than just during urban nights. So those tours, we would charge a certain amount to the public to come through and see the portions that the city would let us let people into because the building had been empty for so long, certain of the areas were not deemed safe for public entry.

[Nora]Did you get to give any of those like tours to the arcade at all?

[Lori] Yes, I did. I’m, I attended several of the tours. I gave some of them, um, and tried to help answer people’s questions and that kind of thing. Yeah.

[Nora] Um, I know that like, uh, certain holidays at the arcade were like very like, um, momentum, like, um, like we’re very like, uh, [00:17:00] well people have memories of that. And I was wondering if you had any, like, with like, Christmas or anything at the arcade, if any likes or like what your favorite celebration or like time was at the arcade?

 [Lori] Um, I was never at any of those celebrations. I think they probably, some of those I know took place after I’d moved to California, um, but if there was any kind of, you know, I was a poor, young, struggling, um, person when I was here in Dayton the first time around so any evening events that were, had any expense involved with them, I wouldn’t have been able to attend, you know, if they had any Gale[inaudible] of festivals or something would have been out of my price range. So I didn’t really participate in any of that kind of stuff.

[Nora] Uh, what was your, uh, favorite fundraiser to take part in with the friends of the arcade?

 [Lori] Um, the one year we had a fundraiser that included, uma, like a [00:18:00] Victorian tea that was catered by, um, the shop that’s in Oakwood, it’s a tea shop. I can’t think of the name of it either. I’ll get that to you with that. Um, cause I want to advertise them. Um, and it was held in the Coons building, which is right next door to the arcade. Um, and then, and everybody drank stuff in their fancy, you know, Victorian clothing and so forth. And we had a bunch of different, we had a, like a slide show that was running, it showed pictures of different places inside and stuff. And then we would take people in, in small groups up to the second and third floor, which is not an area that we’ve been able to take tours on previous to that. So that was kind of neat that people got to see that extra aspect of it that was above and beyond the public tours that we had normally done. I think that was probably the most fun event that I participated [00:19:00] in.

[Nora] Um, so when did like these like tours like start to like, uh, slow down, like stop with like how I currently am constructing it and everything?[inaudible] I was just like wondering like around the time frame of like when these tours were happening? [inaudible]

 [Lori] um, this would have mostly been in The mid two thousands, um, once the property went up for auction and was purchased by Gunter Berg, um, the friends kind of felt like, okay, it’s in safe hands now. We don’t have to keep raising the interest because here’s somebody that’s going to do something about preserving it and, and saving it properly and so the activities or the friends kind of dropped off after that. Um, and then as it turned out, Gunter wasn’t able to raise the funding and actually do any of the preservation work either. So again, [00:20:00] it sat empty for a while, but the friends never really reformulated or tried to get anything else going. Oh. The other fundraiser that I forgot to mention was that we did publish a book. That included a lot of photographs and interviews with people who used to have businesses there or used to live there. Um, and so all the people who participated in the book donated their time. Um, so all of the funds raised from selling the book went toward the friends.

[Nora] Yeah, Did you, uh, give any of your time to help with that book in any way?

 [Lori] Yes, I did because I was here at the library and had easy access to the city directories. I volunteered to be the person that would go through those directories and try and identify people who were living at the arcade and then track them forward in time [00:21:00] after they were … After they had to leave the arcade to see if we could identify how to get in touch with any of those people currently so that we could do the interviews. Um, I didn’t have a whole lot of success with them because trying to track living people is not easy and it’s not a skill I learned then. Um, but I also did put together some databases that were lists of the different businesses that were there in different timeframes. Um, especially not just the stuff that surrounds the dome, but the other buildings that are part of the complex. Um, several of those had businesses in the upstairs floors that were people like seamstresses or barbers or, um, jewelry dealers or, you know, just a whole variety of piano teachers. Um, so I was able to put together a list of what kinds of things were there and learned, I felt like [00:22:00] I learned a lot more about the building and what the activities were like there on a daily basis by doing that research

[Nora] And are like all the, um, those like, uh, lists still like available to like the public And is that like through the library or is that just stood out like through the book itself with the donations that were given to the book?

[Lori] Um. I may still have information somewhere if I do, I have no idea where it is other than what things I passed on and got published in the book. You know, I kind of set everything aside at that point, and I’ve moved several times since then, so I have no idea what box it would be and if I did still have it, but, um, the city directories are still available if anybody else wants to do some other research themselves.

[Nora]All right. Um, let’s see. Other questions? I have. Mmm. So what was your, uh, like, uh, favorite thing about, like so far about like, living and dating all over like these past [00:23:00] few years?

[Lori]  I think the thing I most appreciate about Dayton is that the downtown is being revitalized. When I lived here before, you know, between 1980 and 1990, I could see that things downtown … there were a lot of empty buildings that when I moved here, and by the time I left, there were twice as many empty buildings, and it just seemed a shame that all of this prime downtown space was being just left to sit, abandoned and, and wasted pretty much. Um, I, I thought at the time how cool it would be to buy one of those little two or three story buildings and have a shop downstairs and live upstairs the way that the buildings were originally built to be used. And at the time the city’s attitude was, well, nobody could live downtown. That’s zoned commercial.[What does zoned commercial mean] [00:24:00] So it wasn’t even on anybody’s radar. And now when I came back from California in 2003 all of a sudden there’s new housing going up downtown and old buildings being renovated and turned into loft spaces and the ball park went in and businesses moving back downtown, restaurants, and just the fact that downtown has become, rebecoming the center of a thriving business community, I think is wonderful.

[Nora] Uh, now do you, uh, live in the downtown area or one of like the suburbs?

[Lori] When we first moved back, we moved to Kettering basically for the school system. Um, but a few years ago I did move downtown. I live now in the Dayton towers apartments, which are on fifth street across from the post office. So it’s at the very fringe of downtown, but I still consider myself a downtown resident. Um. Working here at the main library [00:25:00] downtown. It’s a 15 minute walk door to door from my commute. So.

[Nora] um, so, uh…

[Lori] Another thing I really enjoy about downtown is all of the festivals that are held at river Fest or riverscape over the summer, you know, the Celtic Fest and the German festival, and the Hispanic festival and you know, all the different events and the Levitt pavilion that’s gone in and has, you know, the whole series of concerts. I think those things, bringing people downtown is another real benefit to the area.

[Nora] Okay. I believe that’s, is there anything else you’d like to share with me about the arcade in particular?

[Lori] Well, just then I’m thrilled that it is now finally being renovated and reconstructed. I was just, yeah, the fact that it [00:26:00] sat empty all that time and that because it was empty and the electricity … copper wiring had been stolen out of the building, so that meant the electricity was off, which meant that the sump pumps in the basement were not working, which meant that mold was growing. Um, and when windows would get broken upstairs, you know, from a bird flying into him or whatever, they wouldn’t get replaced. And so, you know. The whole building was starting to fall apart. And so the fact that somebody was able to come in and rescue it before it got too late to save it, I think is a wonderful thing.  And the plans that these current developers have for what Is all going to be going in there, that it’s going to be a mixture of, um, businesses and Spaces that are for entrepreneurs and classroom spaces for UD and Sinclair and apartments. That’s the way the building was designed initially, was to be [00:27:00] that hub of everything going on in the fact that it’s going to be, that, again, I think is just a wonderful. Full circle. Yeah.

[Nora] Do you see yourself, um, like going back there for lunch in the future Once it like reopens?

[Lori] Definitely and I, I could easily see myself living there once the apartments there open up as well.

[Nora]All right. Well I think I’ve run through my list of questions and a smile. Thank you for, um, taking the time to talk to me about the arcade.

[Lori]Sure, no problem.

[Nora] Okay.

Date of Interview: April 4, 2019

Interviewer: John Walker and Jack Gesuale

Interviewee: Eileen Thomas

Text of Interview:

[00:00:00] [John Walker] This is John Walker conjunction with Jack Gesuale, conducting our oral interview with Eileen Thomas. And now for one minute of Silent Sound Check.

… [00:01:00]
[John] Hello, my name is John Walker here with Jack Gesuale. And uh … could you the interviewee please state your name for the record?

[Eileen Thomas] My name is Eileen O’Hearn Thomas.

[John] Thank you and uh … to get started uh, I would just like to ask where you were born and uh where you grew up?

[Eileen] I was born in Dayton, Ohio and grew up in the Dayton View neighborhood.

[John] Okay… uhm… so… so… uhm… what was your home life like? Who were your parents? Did you have siblings?

[Eileen] …I had my mother Betty O’Hearn.  Uhm. She’s a Dayton native and my father, Eddie O’Hearn, that’s what we called them. And my mother [00:02:00]  went to St. Joe’s Commercial and my father went to Chaminade High School. There were six of us, Irish Catholic. We have four girls and two boys. All of us attended either Chaminade or Julienne or CJ. Currently, we all have college degrees, one has a PHD and two have Masters and we are all still professionally oriented and we’re still working on careers. Uhm …My father worked at NCR and it closed and…uhm, before he died he told us, “Please get your education and don’t end up like me.” and Each one of us took that pretty seriously. Most of us paid for college, and uhm two of my brothers got a caddy scholarship through Evans Scholars.  They were caddies at Moraine Country Club and they got this scholarship by their grades, their volunteerism, and their SAT/ACT scores. 

[John]  [00:03:00] Thank you…  now… uhm, When we spoke over the phone, you mentioned specifically that you grew up… uh, in the Dayton View neighborhood during integration specifically. So could you tell us a bit about when that was… uh, year-wise and what it was like for you and your family and the neighborhood if possible?

[Eileen] Well prior to probably [19]64/[19]65, uhm it was mainly… Irish, German families, Jewish families and a lot of them were starting to flee because… uhm African-Americans from the West Side were coming into Dayton View. So it was difficult to see friends and family leave our Parish, but we remained there because my dad worked in the factory and there were six of us, so … uhm.. in the beginning my mother was very active in integrating  [00:04:00] and finding housing… for folks.

uhm…I was involved in a group called Litter-Getters where we would pick up trash in the neighborhood. So I feel very proud of my neighborhood and even then it holds a very special place in my heart. We remained…uhm… in that home until 1970, but we moved to what I think they consider Upper… uhm…Riverdale near the old Colonel White High School and Dayton View Library.

So, while we had to leave because of some of the violence, we did not want to leave that area of town. 

[John] Alright. …uhm.. Would you say that your response to integration, to uh embrace it I’ll say, was that typical of your neighborhood or atypical of your neighborhood?

[Eileen] I think it depended on sometimes your parents’ education… [00:05:00] uhm whether they were lower middle class upper middle class, whether they were Democrats or Republicans, and we… All of us knew each family’s politics. I mean there were six kids to a house or 10 or 12 and we played together all the time. So, I’m sure each of us spouted our own parents’ philosophy. …I would say that I was open to it, but it was hard. I wasn’t sure what was to come because we had seen riots on television and that was pretty frightening.

I think that civil rights impacted me more than women’s liberation because it was very difficult to see dogs attacking humans and having them hosed down and so …uhm, it boded me well because it opened me up to another culture which continue and has continued throughout my life. 

[John] All right… lets see… So ….

[Jack Gesuale] [00:06:00] So you mentioned the… violence and the riots when/as you were growing up, so can you talk about that? You have any memories about it?

[Eileen]I have particular memories. … As the neighborhood became more and more integrated, it was harder to play outside. So they made our grade school playground a neutral place every evening where all of us could gather and there would be no fighting and we could play games. …uhm, We did have a riot in Dayton. I think I was maybe 8 years old so maybe [19]63/ [19] 64 and… almost… uhm two blocks away was the dividing line between where the National Guard stood and where we lived. So my older siblings…,uhm,  a sister and two brothers got to stay in the neighborhood, stay at home and my mom and dad sent me to me and my two sisters and I [my two sisters and I] [00:07:00] to my grandmother’s in East Dayton.

 So I remember thinking how long is this going to last; who’s going to get hurt. Uhm  …My sisters were shot at when they played in the backyard. So there were stray bullets at times and… when I was in high school I was walking… uhm down Salem Avenue to get to my job in the Arcade and I was jumped by like ten kids on Salem Avenue. They had a chain. They pushed me and nobody stopped to help me. So I went into the grocery store where I work for Leo McGarry and he could see I was crying and he goes “what happened?” and I told him and he was upset for me.  He was the father of like six or seven. He was like “what do you want to do?”  and I said “it’s your store, you tell me what you want me to do,” but he let me go home and as I went back to the house those same kids were at… Colonel White High School and they had no idea it was me, but I knew they, who they were.[00:08:00]  We used to have a joke that we all look alike. Well, it’s also in reversal. So later on at one point, I worked at Good Samaritan Hospital and I recognized some of the kids who had beaten me up and I waited for about a year to try to establish a relationship with some of these… females and did. And then told them this is what you did to me back in the neighborhood. “Oh that wasn’t us.” I said, I could name their streets, I could name the location and they were chagrin(?) and said that was back in the day. And I said, yes that was back in the day, but… we whites thought black people all looked alike. Well, I think you thought we all look alike too.

[John] So if we could turn to the Arcade, then you mentioned you worked at a grocery store in the arcade run by a Leo McGarry. So could you …give us the name of the store and then provide us a little context of… what you did;[00:09:00] how long you worked there? 

[Eileen] uhm …It was Arcade Food Market, I think. I never really paid attention to the name, but it was… on Ludlow Street. And I started in the fall of 1971 and I was there till the fall of 1973. So given my background in Dayton View, working the Arcade was like…uh, Grand Central of Dayton, Ohio. So… I worked for Mr. Leo McGarry and…uhm  he had a son named Doug and a daughter named Molly and they would would recruit their friends and so forth and then the next friend would.  I got recruited by my friend who was an originally… uhm her sister was a friend of Molly so they brought Chaminade and Julienne high school kids into his store. He also had nephews… and there were various other guys that were there but Doug and I worked together. We’re the same age. He was at Chaminade and I was at Julianne.

…Mr. McGarry was really Irish. [00:10:00] He had signs in the store that said “Irish need not apply.” I worked as a cashier, but honestly, I just think I was a nice person because I don’t think I even know how to make change and I was pretty nervous. So every day I made it through my shift.I would steal Bluebird pie. He knew it but he didn’t say anything so…

he had Gourmet items he had health food and then he had the basics and… the types of people that I dealt with of course first were the vendors in the in the Arcade and we knew we’d go to their different… uh booths or stores and buy things. uhm

We knew the customers. … Uhm … We knew the residents who lived upstairs in the apartments. We delivered food to them. I got to meet the columnist of the Dayton Daily News and was written up in an article one time about Julianne moving down to Chaminade on Ludlow [00:11:00]and what did I think of that and I said “parents need not worry. This is the real world”.

I also got to know the Pressmen when they would come in with their newspaper hats on. Uhm I got to meet Kinley players. They were… former Hollywood actors/actresses. Uhm Mr. Kinley would bring them in for a show. It could be any type of Broadway show. So they’re probably by the time they came to Dayton at that time, they were probably like B-actors. You know, their careers are either, you know settled out,  fiddled or fizzled out or you know that it was just their gig… and I also worked with Street people and that was… I learned a lot but they mistook me for innocent, an innocent because I wore my high school uniform which was navy blue with a white round collar blouse. And I looked sweet but I pity the fool who ever tried to touch me.

[John] [00:12:00] I appreciate that Mr. T reference. I appreciate it very much. Uhm Now you say Street people… so [inaudible] could you just elaborate a bit on that? Like, what specifically you mean or ah like, you know characteristics of these… street people, their relationship to the Arcade, how they might have impacted business and and so forth.

[Eileen] Well, we had a lot of Winos because Mad Dog 20/20 was the drink of the day. Folks were black and white. They would often come in and try to steal. Uhm There wasn’t so much homelessness then… so but they would walk the street they were at… there was an alley between 1 building and another and uhm…Just, indigent. I don’t…, I can’t say I knew where they lived. There are also vendors on the street. Like there was a man from the Dayton Daily News that [00:13:00] was famous and he would come in and years later, I even saw him at the other end of town when we moved to uh, my husband and I moved to East Dayton after we got married, so…

I knew all of them. When we’d drive down the street, I would point them out to my friends and sometimes I would talk to them. And you know, depending how they treated me, but… I did have a gentleman that was called Dancer, a very short African-American man. He loved his Mad Dog 20/20. So I was in the store and I saw him go back to the wine area and I thought “okay he’s going to do something”. So he picked up his pint and I walked around and he pulled his knife out on me and I put my hands up and my Julienne uniform mind you and said “I don’t use weapons.”… And he just started laughing because he had come in the store all the time and he just put the Mad Dog 20/20 down. So, you know, that’s, that’s how  how things happened  [00:14:00].

There were another time there were other Julienne girls working in the Arcade. There’s a big Discount Center… like Pharmacy or whatever and a gentleman was kind of harassing her and a security cup came by to try to move him along and he threw the security cop through a plate glass window. Well, my boss is walking back into the store, and he goes “stop ‘im.” He always had a stogie in his mouth,my  my boss.

So I did. I tripped him and picked up a nut rack, you know, package of nuts and threw it on top of him and held him down. And he goes “why did you do that?” And I said cuz I’m more afraid of you than him. He had… Mr. McGarry had a gruff exterior, but he had a very big heart. He just… you know, I was intimidated but not I know that he liked me.

He never called me by my first name. He always called me Miss O’Hearn. He knew my family and that I was Irish and that was good enough for him. I think. [00:15:00]
[John] So… thank you for sharing that story about throwing the nut rack on the guy. …, so I understand that that continued into court and went to court. So could you tell us a little bit about that?

[Eileen] Yes, I went to court to testify and Mr. McGarry went with me. And again, I was in my Julieanne uniform and… he got off. And later when I was at the register, he walked in the store and walked up to the counter and he says “how you doing” and I said, “I’m fine” and I stared him down and he just walked away.

[John] Brilliant, just brilliant. I’m loving this. So to return to the subject of the building itself. So I understand that, you know during World War II the glass dome[00:16:00] of the Rotunda was blacked out and so… It’s my understanding that that wasn’t corrected until the renovation in 1980. So… when you were working there was the Rotunda Dome still blacked out?

[Eileen] Yes, the arcade had not been updated or remodeled at all. So you can see the wear and tear of the years… even in the grocery store. So it was kind of a bleak atmosphere… yet people were drawn to the specialties… of the vendors who were there, there were a lot of… loyal people and a lot of wealthy people would come in because there was a fish stand, cheese stand. It was part of their growing up so you could see the very… the most impoverished person and then you could recognize somebody who was very well off using the building.

[John][00:17:00] So, I guess one of the biggest questions I would have about the Arcade in your era of working there and frequenting there is: how is the Rotunda space utilized like you know, was there entertainment there, community events?

[Eileen] Not at all. It was just, it was the stores that were still operating or some would be closed, but it wasn’t certainly wasn’t like a pleasant place to be and there was no community activity. It was still just wearing at the end of their being, you know, a Dayton market downtown. So it was pretty it was pretty grody. It was pretty you know, we had rats in the building and… the upstairs residence, their apartments had deteriorated. I got to go a couple of times but Mr. McGarry thought the boys were safer going up[00:18:00] than me delivering their… food to them. Actually the last day I worked there I had known so many people I got $100 in uhm tips and I loved it. I went to New England on that.

[Jack] … So before, you brought up your husband, I was just wondering like who he is and if he was also a Dayton native?

[Eileen] He is a Dayton native and he went– he’s Catholic and went to St. Rita’s and then Chaminade High School. … I met him during the time I worked in the Arcade so I could tell him stories and… but I was also dating somebody else who was a city planner who’s a retired city planner and… we would, on our dates and stuff look at buildings and we would talk about the Arcade and we’re still friends to this day. So I think he might have submitted my name. I’m not sure but I’m still friends with him[00:19:00] and his family and they still live in Upper Dayton View and the College Hill section.

[Jack] And what was his name?

[Eileen]His name is John Gower.

[John] That makes sense. So you… mentioned specifically knowing about the Arcade fish market. …So could you tell us a little bit about that? Because that’s proven to be a popular topic of conversation.

[Eileen] They had the most wonderful fish and every Saturday I worked I would treat myself and I was 95 pounds wet and I would buy a dozen shrimp and…French fries and go behind the stacks in the store and just salivate and inhale it… so… I also rode my bike from my high school that was in … off North Main Street.

So mind you it’s the 70s. So it’s women’s lib. I’m wearing construction boots. I’m wearing aviator glasses. [00:20:00] I have a backpack. I was pretty independent as a kid, so I didn’t want to wait on a bus or someone to pick me up. So I think Mr. McGarry got a kick out of that as I come in the door left my bike up take it toward the back and put it behind the stacks and sometimes if I take the bus home in the winter, but sometimes I think he felt sorry for me because “Douglas take Miss O’Hearn home.” So he had an old DP&L car that he bought for Molly and Doug and that’s what we used to get home.

So they weren’t far from… they were in my parish and they weren’t– this is when we moved to… near Colonel White. They have lived closer to Corpus Christi. My original Parish was Saint Agnes. So… so he got a kick out of that.

I think I think he saw me as a strong but nice person… always treated his customers very well. And I think he liked that and I’m sure that that cash register drawer was never balanced at the end of the day because I wasn’t really good at math so, you know, but um,  Yep[00:21:00], shrimp I love shrimp to this day and it was and I think when they closed the Arcade, they moved to another… building downtown, … probably near City Hall… So… It lasted for a long time. 

[John] Is it really true that you couldn’t remember the name? It was just the fish market.

[Eileen] I just called it the fish stand or whatever. I mean, I knew it. I think if the family’s name began with an S, but you know it wasn’t important. It was the food, it was the fish. 

[John] So you’ve… mentioned the fish market, so could you tell us a little bit more about other like places to eat? In the arcade, you mentioned Culp’s restaurant specifically.

[Eileen] Yes, so I didn’t enter the arcade just as a teenager. My grandmother and great aunts would take us to Culp’s… restaurant where we could eat. I think there was… a big counter but I remember thinking we were sitting at tables too[00:22:00] so they would frequent that area and I do have a family connection.

My husband’s name is Dan Thomas and his uncle… well actually his aunt in-law and her family owned a store in the Arcade. I don’t remember her last name. She’s deceased. So… not… not too long after we got married… we went to visit his aunt and uncle and she came into my room. The guys were downstairs and shared all this memorabilia about their time in the Arcade. So it was pretty amazing to have that connection with her.

There was a nut stand too and somehow Mr. McGarry might have been connected to it– I remember getting nuts. I remember shopping in the discount center odds-and-ends makeup cover girl, you know with my money. I made $1.65 an hour and that was pretty good back in those days and after two years saving I was able to pay[00:23:00] for a whole year of college… so… Good stuff.

[Jack] Where did you go to college?

[Eileen] I started at the University of Cincinnati in speech and hearing then I got married because that’s what you did in the 70s. Not because I really wanted to be married as much as it just happened. He was the right person and I said I’ll marry you but I have to finish school.

So we moved to Cleveland then we moved to the Chillicothe and I traveled 500 miles and waited for three years to get my degree at The Ohio State University.

[Jack] And what do you do today after college and everything?

[Eileen] Well for 20 years I worked in the library system– public and college libraries, and then I transitioned into being a patient advocate in hospitals– County and Wilmington…

There was a hospital in Wilmington.[00:24:00] That’s… I’m showing my age. Then I worked at Good Sam and I currently work at Kettering Medical Center for… and I’ve done this for 23 years. So I think knowing all those people as far back as Dayton View, in the Arcade all the international people I met at the University.

When a patient walks into my office, I .. I don’t have any commute. I just kind of know what I’m going to say or do just by looking at their clothes, skin and their eyes. It gave me a real intuitiveness that I think is my gift and my cross. 

[John] I can understand how it would be a gift but… little curious how you think of it as your cross.

[Eileen] Well, I, I read too much. I mean, it’s like I can, I get bombarded with… not that I know what they’re thinking or anything but…I just take a lot of information in and that’s wearing after you do that all day… And so we have a date night every Thursday night and I place myself looking out the window[00:25:00] because I don’t want to read the room.

[John] So you wanted to tell us a story about Doug McGarry?

[Eileen] Yes, I worked with Doug, we’re the same age and  another gentleman named Mark. And you know, how can you say it? A new girl on the line. On the wire and… they’re pretty nice to me, but they would throw grapes at me and pummel me with things and… once Mr. McGarry saw Doug do it or I told him, and he goes, “ah my Douglas, he has a little man complex.” You know, and that was his father. I’m thinking. Oh wow, but… He was protective… I mean I admired him because he would go home and take all those kids to the Phillips pool…It was… they belonged to and uhm but he was protective of us. He would watch people coming in and what they would do and then the boys would also stand behind[00:26:00] the the stacks for the… they would slide the Soup cans down and sometimes people would walk by and I could hear one of them say “buy me, I’m chunky beef.” So we shenaniganed and and it was fun. 

[John] So… other than say the street people, for example, what other people or groups of people did you notice at the Arcade who… made an impression on you while you were there?

[Eileen] I think after living in Dayton View. I became more aware of the Black Culture. Not that I think I’m black, but I was fairly entrenched in it. What struck me was the maids who had worked all day in Oakwood and would take the bus and come into the Arcade and sometimes I felt really like “wow, how does it feel to be in a beautiful home all day” and then they would come to the register and we talked and they would pull out of their bag items that their employer[00:27:00] had given them that they were proud of and and they were nice things, and just talking with them….

And… and then I remember as a child driving through Oakwood with my family and we wouldn’t see the maids arriving. Not that you know would… it would be randomly that we do that but that struck me a lot because if they were they were older. They’re fairly, you know… they had to be at least in their 50s I would think but… I thought that was just pretty amazing and wondered what that all entailed every day. Were they friends with their employer? Was it, you know, so I always caught… caught my interest.

[John] You mentioned that the maids would like to exchange or share items given to them by their employers. Uh Do you have any idea what those items were?

[Eileen] Most items were clothing. So[00:28:00]…  they would show each other or they would show me and they always seem to have a big shopping bag.

They always carry shopping bags. I imagine. I don’t know where they had to wear and make clothes in the home and then they could change into their street clothes. It would be something I don’t think you’d want to announce but that was the culture and that to clean people’s homes. It was women. 

[Jack] And do these women live in the apartment complexes at the Arcade–no? Okay. I just thought I’d ask, just curious. 

[John] On that note. However, did you uh … know who lived in the apartments at the Arcade and could you tell us anything about you know, who they were generally or what they did if there were any trends.

[Eileen] Mainly elderly really I didn’t know their names. They would just come in and talk a lot of them were frail[00:29:00].

Their apartments are really hot. That’s all I remember. I don’t know why I guess because they were older and it was up higher and probably the Dome didn’t help. They were apartments are pretty run down but didn’t. The boys got to go up there more so I only met them in the store and really those were the people that day that I left for college that tip me, you know, because I had you know, talked to them all the time. I didn’t know their careers or anything or specific names.

[John] You said they were elderly. Single or couples?

[Eileen] To me. It seemed like they had lost spouses or were single. I, I didn’t really remember couples. The boys didn’t mention, he meant mainly mentioned single people older.

[John] So the arcade uh got a remodeling job done right around 1980 [00:30:00]. So when was the first time that you really saw it after had been refreshed the Dome had been, you know restored and uh and so on?

[Eileen] Probably about the time when it actually happened and they had an opening as I told you earlier. I did go visit. Mr. McGarry, but when I saw it remodeled, I thought wow, this is incredible. This is a space where people can gather and they did and I was proud that our city restored it. And devastated went and it went into ruin and watched many people try to purchase it and revitalize it. But I know this is… big. April is the defining moment for financial support and to get it finalized. So I’m holding my breath. I always feel like I tease John Gower and say I know that you saved the Arcade for me.

[John][00:31:00] I’m curious because in 1986 they did another remodeling and cut a hole in the floor of the Rotunda and put in a food court. Uh I was kind of curious about your thoughts on that.

[Eileen] I thought it was pretty tacky. It’s like trying to make a inner-city mall and it just really didn’t fit in with the character and uh it’s disappointing.

[John] So um we’ve never really heard much about any sort of like tension or conflict at the Arcade itself. So could you give us a bit of a explanation of at least in your day the sort of ethnic area breakdown of the city and where the Arcade fit into all of that.

[Eileen] Well, I grew up in Dayton View as I said and originally after the 1913 flood a lot of the Jewish folks settled in that area[00:32:00]. Homes were beautiful, streets were named after colleges and I had the great fortune of having many Jewish friends that, because we came from a family of six, and they only had one, two or three and they, we felt they you know, something their parents are more liberal. They would have us go with them places to make their kids behave. But we got a great education out of there because we used to go to Yellow Springs and Antioch College. Things that my family, my parents wouldn’t be able to give us, outings and so forth.

And then on the West Side um originally, my mother-in-law was German. There were German and Hungarians. Germans on the West Side below Dayton View, near an area called Suckers or a Dayton Tire a lot of Hungarians lived there. So, we were not a cohesive City. They were, the races were separated and especially by the river. That, that’s the um big thing because that’s the point where now that becomes the [00:33:00]west side, which is primarily African-American.

But one thing about the Arcade is, for as much as much, as much as diversity was in Dayton, wasn’t like Cleveland or other larger cities, the Arcade is a place with everybody kind of met and there didn’t seem to be any discourse or and if there was it was usually like I said by the Winos or something, but everybody got along, rich poor, black white.

And I never felt unsafe there. I just knew how to handle myself but it was interesting to see the variety of people that came through there and just learning from them taking it all in. So in summary as much as I was scared of making change and I still have PTSD from the cash register I can’t deal with money to this day, but It was a remarkable experience[00:34:00] and I’m, I’m glad I had a chance to do it. It’s really, it really is a huge part of my history and really impacted my life.

[John] On behalf of myself and the entire Dayton Arcade History Project. I would like to thank you for… giving us your time today and, uh.. you know, being willing to share these stories with us, which have been so incredible and I just wanted to thank you for that.

[Eileen] My pleasure, it’s my city, and I’m very proud of it.