Dayton Stories Project
Story Circle Session #090695
Biltmore Senior Center
Dayton, Ohio
September 6, 1995
How They Came to Dayton & Memories of the City
Facilitators: Faye Neace, Todd Williams Transcriber: Lindsey Kuziensky
Participants: Virginia Barnes, Joanne Bruetsch, Nora Chadwell, Denver Hall, Gail Hall, Judy Igleburger, Bernice McCormick, Willie Reynolds, Willa Samuels, Mildred Shemwell, William Turozi, Edward Wilson Sr.
This session lasts approximately 45 minutes.
The following transcription of the session has been edited, with repeated phrases or interruptions deleted to make the text flow more smoothly. It is suggested that visitors who find the text interesting take the time to listen to the audio portion of this session. A more detailed text will eventually be added.
Ed Wilson
I'm from Little Rock, Arkansas. I came to Dayton from Little Rock, Arkansas since 1956. I was in the deaf school and went to public school for one year. My mother, she was 32, my daddy was 70 and we had 20 kids. Two girls and 18 boys and we was just way out in the country. Called Mariflower, Arkansas. I have a twin brother, just look like me. We're twins. My brother and I, we were separated from my family for many, many years and it's kind of hard on us to see our family, our brothers and sisters. When I was three years old, I lost my mother in the hospital. She had a stroke and a sore throat. She was kind of sick very much. I was about three years old. I remember that and they went back home and the next day she was gone. We lost her. We be living in that home for years and years, until I got about six years old and they sent me to the deaf school because my speech is what you call tongue-tied. I can't hardly talk, but I could hear you. Words I could understand, I could hear you, but I can't speak out to you. I started talking when I was eight years old and it was hard on me in my life. Everything's okay now.
Bernice McCormick
I am originally from a place called Keyser, West Virginia. I've been in the city of Dayton since 1972. I had vacationed here about five years prior to coming to Dayton. I am the youngest of seven children. My father was 91 when he passed. My mother, 86. I am now 75 and they lived fruitful lives. Hopefully I will do as well. I came to Dayton because of my two daughters. They were living here and I was in West Virginia alone. Our customs were like most people. Nothing fancy. I wasn't from a fancy city, large city, it was more like a little town. But we survived. Our main occupation was, or is still, the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Mill. Then we had the_____ Corporation that was about 21 miles down the road, but it went defunct. We also had Kelly-Springfield Tires at that time and that went under. So, I came to Dayton because, as I said, of my family and I have been here ever since. I found employment in Dayton, which I liked, and I retired in Dayton and I am still here. I find the people very congenial, very hospitable and good churches. They're all nice.
Virginia Barnes
I am 95 years old. I was born in Franklin, Ohio and I came to Dayton in 1919. In fact, I was transferred from the Bell Telephone Company in Franklin to Dayton and I was here until 1927 when my husband decided we should go to Chicago. Well, we were there during the first of the Depression. We were lucky, both of us, to have jobs. He was working at the telephone company, too, and I was at the telephone company and we stayed there until 1930 and then we came back to Dayton. I hated to leave Chicago. I loved it there, but this I felt was close to my home and my parents, my mother died when I was 18 months old. In fact, she was burnt to death. My father was a butcher and he had his own shop and he would take the hides—he did his own butchering—and he would take the hides to Cincinnati to sell them and my mother decided that the power had gone out in the coal stove, so she poured coal oil on it and the blaze hit her and she lived just two weeks. So, there were four small children. I was the youngest and my oldest brother and sister went to my grandparents on my father's side and I and my sister next to me, she went to Miamisburg and I lived with my aunt and uncle in Franklin. I've been here in Dayton ever since, I guess. This will be my last.
Judy Igleburger
I was born here in Dayton in 1916. My great-grandfather built a house on Riverview Terrace which was Riverview then in 1830. The house still stands. He had a pork slaughterhouse there. I was born in a house on Salem Avenue that's a parking lot now between the Red Feather and the Unemployment. I was an only child. I married a man by the name of McDermott and I had five children by him. Two are now dead. I have seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Gail Hall
I from St. Louis, Missouri. We moved to Dayton when I was about 14 years old and I have one sister who's seven years younger than myself. My dad was a furrier and we moved around the country a lot. We finally settled in Dayton. I went to high school at Roosevelt and Julianne and Parker. Some of the highlights of when I was teenager was roller skating downtown. There were movies on every corner. There were so many things to do and I saw Ray Charles when he was just starting out at the roller skating rink. Johnny Ray sang at a night club on Main Street. It was just a fun time to be in Dayton and I can't believe how now, the kids have to search for things to do. Hank Williams, Sr. put on a performance at Sucher Packing Company when it was over on Oakridge, out in the parking lot.
Joanne Bruetsch
Our family came from Posen, Germany. It was destroyed during the war with the Nazis, so there's no birth records left there. My family came by steerage, the poor way, from Germany in the poor part of the boat and the one lady that started our whole family almost fell through and died. So, there would have been none of us and they settled, my great-grandparents, my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, in Memphis, Tennessee. They had a funeral home there. I forget the horse's name. He was like Midnight or something. He was a dark black horse and he would race the funeral cart to the graves. He liked to race.
My great-grandfather decided to go out West to look for gold so my great- grandmother carried on the funeral business but when he never returned—they don't know what happened to him. She got sad about it and she closed up her funeral business and retired and sent her two daughters, I don't know why, to Cincinnati, Ohio—that was far from Memphis—to an orphanage and then they came to Dayton, once they got old enough, and met their husbands, the two daughters, and one was Steinbock they became and one was May. A Philip May that one married and then Steinbock that the other one married. That's how we got to Dayton. The Steinbock woman had her daughter and then her daughter had my mother.
My mother was three years old during the flood that happened in Dayton. The 1913 Flood. They went up to Woodland Cemetery because their house was almost under water. They lived by Woodland Cemetery and my sister put some money in it to have a brick made with my mom's name on it, which is nice now that my mom's deceased and it's across the street, I think, from Children's Hospital, where the bricks are. It's like a wall of bricks and it tells how she was three years old during the flood.
I was born in Miami Valley Hospital. I'm from Dayton and I've lived all my life here. I was born in the sick ward with many people dying because my mother didn't have a cent at the time. They were real poor, my parents and my father wouldn't take me home. He said I wasn't his baby. He said I was a Jewish baby and that they had given him the wrong baby. So, my sister Alice had to come by taxi to take me home. I grew up in Dayton and I've had a nice life here.
Todd Williams
I grew up in Chicago and lived in Chicago and joined the service when I was out of high school and met my wife in the service and she's from Dayton and so now I'm living in Dayton with my wife who's a Daytonian and my daughter is a Daytonian. She's four years old.
Faye Neace
I was born in Eastern Kentucky and during World War II my mother worked at the old Frigidaire plant in Moraine and they had houses there for low-income families, right at the McDonald's there on South Dixie. There used to be houses across the road from that. My father was in the Army and my mother worked at Frigidaire and they were having a lot of problems between them and so they divorced and she took me and three brothers back to Kentucky and put us in an orphanage and then she came back up here and worked until I think I was 14 years old. So we stayed down there about eight years. The orphanage was okay. It was better than the home life that I had been used to because my mother's people were real mean people. They liked to fight all the time and beat on each other, so I wasn't around that. Then when she took us out of the orphanage, she had become disabled at Frigidaire and she came and took us out so she could get Social Security for the four of us. There was five of us. I had a little sister that flew out of a taxi cab and hurt her skull and that killed her, so that left four of us. Then when the first boy that asked me to marry him, I did and I came to Dayton 40 years ago. First and only one. I have two sons and a seven year old granddaughter and I've lived in the same house for 31 years over in Upper Dayton View off of Cornell. That's how I got to be in Dayton.
Nora Chadwell
I was raised on a farm in Stanford, Kentucky. I was born in 1919. I came to Dayton in 1938 and I've lived here since. I was raised in a Christian family. There was a large family. I had nine brothers and there was three girls with myself. I was the youngest. My father, he was a school teacher and he farmed to have enough food for the family I suppose. There is five of us living now. My dad lived to be 93. My mother, she passed away at 67. She had a stroke. My first job when I came to Dayton was NCR during the War. I worked at the Inland some. I worked in department stores. Kept roomers and boarders. I never was lazy really. I worked at two different drug stores. Sold Avon. I lived in Upper Dayton View on Philadelphia Drive since 1952 to 1974. Would have been 44 years had I not sold the place when I moved here. I moved here in June of '94. I have four sons that are living. One passed away. One son's a carpenter, one works for cable, and one works for a mortgage company, one works for Dayco. I have seven grandchildren. Four step-grandchildren.
Willie Reynolds
They call me "Sweet Willie." I was born in Alabama, way down south. We lived there for years and my mother passed when I was about ten years old and I went to live with my granddaddy and my daddy, he always get down and pick up [inaudible] and kneeling all the time. He left and finally we grew up. He used to send us clothes back down in Alabama. All kind of clothes. Kids didn't have anything like that. I lived with my grandfather and he was on the farm, farming. I couldn't even ride a mule or horse. I'd fall off. If they stayed there, well I could ride them, break them. I know all about farming and hard times. I know much about that. I love to fish.
My grandmother used to get me out of the field—my step-grandmother—my grandmother passed when my mother was a young girl and so I never get the chance to see her. I saw my father's mother and she lived awhile. I was about two years old, we used to slip off from the house, the log cabin and walk up to the house and she'd be up on the hill looking down and saying, "Come on baby." And I'd come on. Mother would come by looking for me and I'd be gone. Two years old going up there to Grandma's. I got a good memory. She'd be out there hollering and I had to go through a little cut, banks up on the side of the road to go up the hill and Grandmother hollered down there. She say, "He's up here." She said, "What?" She'd be looking everywhere for me. I left there and grew up and learned how to farm and all that stuff and I left and went to Florida after my mother passed and after I grew up. I went down there working on the Southern Railroad. Got my arm broke. Went to the hospital down in central Florida and stayed there awhile and then I fooled around and started going to church. I just loved to go to church by myself. I would go to church and I never did get bored. Never did fight me because I'd go in and talk to the boys first. They would tell me, you know, and they get around after I get in, well, it ain't any trouble. I'd go to church, I don't care where it was. I go to churches I ain't never been but one time. Many churches. One time. Didn't go back. I went to other churches. I came here in '53 and I've been here off and on. I went back. I had several barber shops and I was on way upstairs. I had a little trouble on the way. I didn't make it, but I was cooking.
Bill Turozi
I've been selling flowers 23 years. I came over to show a theater, the Mayfair, but the theater pulled it up. He wanted a convention hall, so he tore the theater down. So, I looked for another job. I got a flower job. That was in the spring of '68. Since '68 I've been selling flowers off and on. Flower business, romance. See nice people buying flowers. Pretty women. Nice men. Romance. But if you want to make a lot of money, don't try it. It's good for a little spending money. I was born in Cleveland, 1924, August. That makes me 49 years old. Sister in Cleveland. Sister in Arizona. I'm alone here. I'm a lone flower arranger. You've heard of flower men in a flower shop who arrange flowers, they call him the Lone Arranger.
Willa Samuels
I've been living here at the Biltmore for three years. I come from Asheville, North Carolina, which is the Tarheel state. I was born there in 1939, September, which I have a birthday coming up this month. And we moved to Dayton in 1945 and my sister and I started out looking for a church and we found one about two or three blocks away and I've been going to the same church ever since. Mt. Olive Baptist Church. I have five sisters and one brother. I lost two brothers and I have five children and 13 grandchildren and I've just happy to be here. I enjoy all the people around. My mother passed last year. My father passed in '69. So, it's just mostly cousins, children, grandchildren.
Faye Neace
I wanted to ask Gail Hall, there was high school in Dayton by the name of Parker?
Gail Hall
It's Parker Co-op. It's Patterson now. Another thing I remember when I was young, during the war, our mother's made our clothes out of feed sacks.
Faye Neace
My grandmother used to get the white ones and keep them and sew them together and make sheets with them. Flour sacks. And then when they started making the printed ones, she'd keep them for pillow cases and then make aprons and dresses. Then I can remember just a little bit during World War II how mother had those little stamps you got gas and shoes and things with. I was born in '37, so I was a little late, the Depression was just getting over then, but I can remember.
Woman
You remember when you used sale tax stamps from the store to get things. They had three cent sale tax stamps. Two cents. Whatever. You could pick things in the store with those.
Willie Reynolds
Back in my days, they didn't have dress shoes, they had Sunday shoes. You wouldn't put those shoes on until Sunday. It was bare feet all the week.
Willa Samuels
Then on Sundays you couldn't put them on until you got down the road to the church and then you could put them on.
Willie Reynolds
And then when it rained, you'd put them under your arm.
William Turozi
Do you remember the potato burlap sacks?
Faye Neace
We called them coffee sacks.
William Turozi
Wasn't a small one. It was a fifty pound sack. You could get fifty pounds in those days like ten pound now.
Faye Neace
I was born in Kentucky so we didn't use a lot of those coffee sacks or burlap sacks.
Woman
What part of Kentucky did you come from?
Faye Neacee
Close to Hazzard
Woman
I used to live in Lexington. My father was in the Navy so we were on the move until we got here. That's when we stopped.
Joanne Bruetsch
My dad's brother, Bricks, his name was Alfred Bruetsch but he was kind of a colorful character. He was thrown out of his home by his dad at 12 and Alice, the grandchild, she was our first in our family, she was the first born in my family, she said he came back at 14, all his muscles built up and he had stolen two bikes from the Wright Brother's shop. Later he became owner of all the speakeasies in Dayton and Al Capone from Chicago sent his men to him and told him that he could run them, but that they would own them and he said, "No," and they hung him up upside-down and beat him with tire irons and they thought they left him for dead, but somehow he got untied and got to Main Street and got some help and he almost died. He was kind of an interesting character. He was an engineer and he was an intern too where he would take people to surgery and once his great-great-grandmother was there and he said, "Great-great-grandmother, what are you doing here?" And she said, "Oh, they're going to take off my leg because I've got sugar." And he said, "Well, I have some medicine to mix some and some griswalks and you'll be fine." And he took her out of there and the surgeon had a fit because he took his great-grandmother out of there and she lived to a hundred and three with both legs and pretty good health.
Faye Neace
I remember this old guy that used to live over around Fourth and Hawthorn where Winter's Bank was over at Third and Broadway. There was this little old lady that lived there, Jenetta Hawkins. I used to have power of attorney to pay her bills and things because she couldn't get out to the bank and there was an old man that used to come to see her and called him Mr. Ted and he used to talk about John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd and some kind of dirty or finger something. Used to tell about those things. John Dillinger came to town and they took him out of jail. A judge let him go out of jail so he could go to this party where they had prostitutes and gambling and all this stuff. I guess they were pretty rowdy back then. He said that the judge let Dillinger out of jail and they went to this party over in West Dayton and he used to tell about how the men
used to come out, the lawmen or revenuers, whatever they called them and bust their liquor up and stuff like that.
William Turozi
Dillinger, I believe, robbed banks in Chicago. He didn't go for small banks. Big money. Do remember (inaudible) the commentator? He was famous during World War II and he made a special speech one night, he said, "We got bad news tonight. They caught a robber with big money." And I'm listening and they go, "It's big money." And I thought it was millions of dollars and he said, "No," he'd made a mistake. He made a dollar bill one inch too long.
Willie Reynolds
I've built a couple of houses in my time. I was on the Red Cross getting food from there and I found (inaudible), cut hair and people I cut their hair, they're working at the chicken factory and he would bring me a hundred chickens and I would cut his hair. I raised them chickens. I built a coop and put light bulbs in each end and feed them chickens night and day and they'd get into it and get piled up. They would kill one another. (Inaudible) Put that light in there and they'd get quiet. I raised 94 out of a hundred chickens. One time. I'd be cutting hair in the front of my house—I had one of them shotgun houses and I'd use the front room for a barber shop right there on the corner and I'd built a fenced-in. Put them chickens in there. I would sell 25 chickens on a Saturday and cut hair all day. A dollar apiece. Things was cheap back then, but I was on my way.
When I left that corner, I built a house. Moved in it. The barber shop had two fronts, one at the front of the house and I built a carry out. A small something you could just turn around in. I was selling sweet cakes, bread, lightweight stuff like that. Cigarettes, gum. They come in for canned goods. Every time they'd ask for something I'd put it down. After all of that, man come along one day and says, "You want a meatbox, you need a meatbox." I said, "How am I going to get a meatbox?" He said, "He'll bring it to you." So I said, "All right." Eight feet meatbox. They brought it and set it out there on the sidewalk. I called the man up and I said, "There's a meatbox out here. They didn't put it in." He said, "Well, I got a bunch of men down there and you give them a quarter bill a piece." And we rolled that thing in there and set it up and I'm an electrician and a carpenter and a plumber. I can do all that. Hooked it up and got it running. Piece by piece. Everything I was selling didn't hang around. Everything I had in that carry out was selling because that's what they was asking for. The name of Tennessee Avenue Inn in Nashville, Tennessee.
I built my daddy's house right across the street. I could make window frames. Didn't like to buy them out of the store from the window plant. I made all of his trim outside them windows. It be small windows, big windows. I made the frames according to the window. I learned how to do everything. I learned how to cook. Grandma learned me how to do that. Piece quilts, quilt. I do all that stuff. I built Daddy a house and everything.
Faye Neace
Does anybody remember that slaughterhouse that used to be on Rosedale Avenue?
Gail Hall
That's where Hank Williams, Sr. played. Remember their outdoor wrestling ring? That packing house was horrible. I had a friend that worked there and he took me on a tour. It was horrible what those pigs went through on those chains. They hooked them on one leg.
