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Dayton Memories >
Rags
Rags
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hawk
3 posts
Jan 04, 2009
7:39 AM
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Does anyone remember the man that we called "Rags". I believe he is from the 70's. What do you remember about him. I remember he use to spend a lot of time at the downtown Library.
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SeeDavid
137 posts
Jan 06, 2009
5:30 PM
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hawk: Go to Search our site on the right and type in RAGS and it will tell you about him. If you go to DAYTON NOSTALGIA if you click on links on the right, you can find a photo of Rags and other Dayton Folks. Good Luck.
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carlatm75
4 posts
Jul 09, 2009
12:28 PM
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I used to work at the Dayton Daily News in 1973-76 and Rags would come into the front lobby sometimes to get warm in the winter. He stayed to himself and never bothered anyone. I remember the rags he had wrapped around his feet in lieu of shoes, hence his name.
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delcodude
28 posts
Jul 19, 2010
7:07 PM
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He used to sit with his back up against the library building in the summer, depending on which side had the shade. But he wouldn't sit for long, and he'd be off for a walk. I spoke often but Rags would hardly speak back. I often witnessed students from Patterson (as I was) making fun of him while waiting on the bus. He seemed used to it. I always wanted to talk with him but he never granted me the pleasure. I always respected Rags and learned early on not to pity him. I felt I owed him that much. Because from the time I was four or five I remember my Grandma giving me a lesson about respecting others, as Rags served as a good model. So he was basically an icon to me, as with others I'm sure. RIP
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bigbob
127 posts
Jul 20, 2010
8:24 AM
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I was told that it came out that Rags was from Columbus and was actually a wealthy man but gave up on live and ended up in Dayton. Does anyone know if this is true?
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Mikey
101 posts
Jul 20, 2010
8:35 AM
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I like "gave up on life, so he moved to Dayton!"
circa. the late seventies, when we were installing the NCR organ at the Victory Theater, we often had the stage loading doors on the First Street side open. Everyone knew "Rags", so we would allow him into the stage area to sit and talk. He was quite intelligent. I never saw him drink (alcohol.)
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Mikey, Gatlinburg, TN
Last Edited by on Jul 21, 2010 11:45 AM
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Expat
16 posts
Feb 27, 2011
7:42 AM
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The first time I saw Rags, Mom was taking me to the downtown library. I caught just a glimpse of him and thought, "Whoa--that's the oldest hippy I've ever seen!"
Several years later, I worked at the ElBee shoe store on 3rd and would see him fairly often, and learned he wasn't a hippy. :)
One day I was walking up to the Rainbow Gallery after work and got caught in a cloudburst. Rags was sheltering in a doorway, quietly laughing at soggy me.
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Perry401
24 posts
Feb 28, 2011
7:54 AM
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I saw Rags fairly often in the downtown area. I never spoke with him more than to say "hello". I hope people won't get me wrong when I say this, but towards the end of his life, he did sometimes smell. That's not too surprising considering that he probably didn't have a way to bath much of the time. I do remember that he occationally would spend long times in one of the restrooms at the library, and I was told by one of the librarians that he used the restroom to take sponge baths. I also remember that later, the library started cracking down on the homeless -- their security would hastle those who appeared to be homeless, telling them they couldn't loiter. If the person sat holding a newspaper, magazine, or book, the security man would make them read a few lines -- throwing them out if they couldn't read.
The odor I remember that Rags had was more like that of an elderly relative who had a bad bladder and kidney infection. Perhaps he had a similar infection during his last days.
There was another homeless(?) lady who used to hang around Cooper park (library park) in the mid 1980's. One year a co-worker got her some coupons for food from Wendy's and tried to give them to her on Christmas Eve. When he tried to give them to her, she was insulted that someone would assume she needed help. She insisted she was fine and that she choose to live the lifestyle that she lived. I think Rags had the same acceptance of his circumstances -- whatever caused them -- he was fine with his life and with the exception of finding places to stay warm and accepting a little money now and then for food or coffee, he had few other demands on society.
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AllenN71
161 posts
Feb 28, 2011
10:53 AM
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One thing about Rag's story is that back in the day, homeless folks like him were rare enough that common folk such as us could spare some time or fundage for them. I don't know about Dayton, but here in the DC area we've been hip-deep in homeless since I got here in 1973.
It's sort of like in the poem "On Golden Grove", when the little girl Margaret is crying because all the pretty leaves are turning brown and falling off the trees. The adult narrator says: "Margaret, are you grieving/over golden grove unleaving?/Leaves, like the things of man, you,/with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?"
"Ah, but as the heart grows older/it will come to such sights colder,/by and by, nor spare a sigh/tho' worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie"
Sort of like Rags yesteryear and what one sees today. But folks shouldn't be so smug, for as the narrator warns Margaret:
"It is the blight that Man was born for.
It is Margaret you mourn for."
Indeed.
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pie8me
99 posts
Mar 01, 2011
10:39 AM
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Did a little digging, DDN article:
3:10 PM Thursday, October 7, 2010
“That Rags was quite the charac-ter,” said Bernice Law, a North Dayton woman I was having a conversation with recently. “He is the only recluse I ever met in the Miami Valley who became famous and didn’t like it one bit.”
It’s an unusual story and Law pointed out that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the mystery man’s death.
The day he died hardly anyone in the Dayton area actually knew his real name.
He was a reluctant folk character of sorts. Few will argue that he was one of the most visible, yet mysterious street characters of our generation.
Rags lived in Dayton for approximately 10 years, and he collapsed, fell to the sidewalk outside an East Third Street restaurant downtown on May 5, 1980, and died the same day in a local hospital.
Sandy Kimmey, who then was a waitress downtown, called the ambulance. I checked some stories in our archives and found Sandy’s words: “Rags was poor and ragged. But there is no sin in that. Don’t say anything bad about the poor soul. He was a human being, you know.”
For years there were humorous stories and rumors about the man who had deep soulful eyes framed by scraggly unkempt hair. He always wore the same clothes and pieces of soiled cloth ripped into rags were wrapped around his feet. Even in the depths of winter.
One rumor, never confirmed, but passed around a lot, was that one day a Cincinnati policeman brought him to Dayton in a police cruiser and dropped him off.
He did not talk much about himself. I approached him one day as he sat on a bench outside the public library downtown. Our eyes met, and there was a long period of eye contact without conversation.
Finally I broke the ice. “They say all kinds of things about you. People are genuinely interested in you. They want to know about you.”
His only response was, “No one needs to know of me.”
From time to time, some folks reported that he did speak of sports teams, the Reds, and said he was glib and discussed politics and the environment. He spent many hours in the library reading.
Rags slept in doorways, in alleys, under bridges, but never in homeless shelters. On the night of the big blizzard of ’78, a clerk at the Reid Hotel, a low-price place on East Fifth Street that now is gone, said Rags paid for a room there with a new $20 bill. The clerk said, “Some nice lady would meet him and give him handouts from time to time.”
The stories continued even after his death. Dayton police officer Tom Sammon, with the help of the FBI, determined his name to be Elias Joseph Barauskas, and said he was born in Waterbury, Conn.
A brother was located and said he left a hospital, disappeared, and was never heard from until after his death.
Thanks to donations from citizens, there was an elaborate and packed funeral for Mr. Barauskas.
The CBS news program called “Sunday Morning” came to Dayton to tape a feature on the man and the funeral.
Hundreds sent letters and poems and some art work of Rags to the Dayton Daily News.
One 13-year-old boy, Jamie Porter of Smith Junior High, wrote that he would miss Rags.
“Why can’t they put some kind of plaque in front of the library?” Jamie asked. “Seems like we should do something to remember Rags.”
It’s quite a tribute to the man that these years later, so many people still recall the mystery man with rags wrapped around his feet.
Dale Huffman wants your suggestions and story ideas. He’d like to share a story about you, your family, or a friend. This column is for you. Send e-mail to dhuffman@DaytonDailyNews.com or write to Dale at 1611 S. Main St. Dayton, OH 45409. Fax: (937) 225-2489. Phone: (937) 225-2272.
Not the interview I remember. I did find another article that may be the one I am thinkng of but it is on a site you must pay to use. Not gonna doit...
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delcodude
100 posts
Mar 01, 2011
10:17 PM
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Great find pie8me. Thanks for pasting!
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luv my dayton
138 posts
Sep 11, 2012
12:25 PM
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Believe it was the mystery of the man that made him a legend. Never heard of any wrong doing by him and remember seeing him walking along Main st. I'd yell hello to him and without looking up he'd wave his hand and just kept going. I remember when one of the banks downtown placed a huge painting or mural up of him and there was a protest.Have no idea what ever happened to that painting. Maybe he wasn't worthy because of lacking a pedigree, but did touch the hearts of many and as you can see we haven't forgtton him after all these years.
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Rebecca Hawes
12 posts
Mar 31, 2014
3:20 PM
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I remember Rags on my trips to Downtown Rikes with my grandmother-I was 12 and 13 then.
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Rebecca Hawes
13 posts
Mar 31, 2014
3:24 PM
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bigbob: There was a homeless man downtown in the early 80's when I worked there that was actually very wealthy, from what I understand, but chose to live on the streets. He would come in a lot of mornings and buy a few of the female salesclerks a donut or pastry and talk with them for awhile.
Does anyone else remember anyone like that? Never knew his name
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Curt Dalton
756 posts
Apr 01, 2014
8:19 PM
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Due to character limits this will be in a couple of parts. "Finding Rags' ties took a bit of doing"
John Schaefer stopped in the office the middle of May. "Ever since Roots," he said, "there has been a resurgence of interest in tracing families. I have decided to find out who Rags is."
Rags at that time had been dead a week, and many were speculating who he was. John's visit was to find an Ad Lib about Rags written two years before other columnists around town found him good copy.
John is a genealogist and therefore, a kind of detective. When he was in charge of locating the 250 members of his Roosevelt class of 1932, he found all 250 members. It is impossible for a class reunion committee to beat that record.
John has developed special techniques for locating persons. Whenever he wants to find a local person who has disappeared, he starts with the address at which he lived while he was in high school, information available from the school records. Then he checks the city directories until the family disappears in the listings. If there is no new listing at another address, it is likely that one member of the family has died.
Next he visits the bureau of vital statistics. If one of the family has died, by narrowing the death date to the two years covered by the directory, he can find the exact date. This information enables him to find the death notice in the newspaper. The story usually gives the names and addresses of survivors or the undertaker can give him a clue.
For the Roosevelt reunion John had trouble locating a classmate named Pott. He tried his usual method without success. Later he learned that when his classmate's father died, his name was misspelled in the obituary notice. One of the classmates recalled that Pott's mother had remarried someone named Busch and that the family in the past had spent summers at a fishing resort Pott's uncle owned in Three Rivers, Mich.
JOHN WROTE to the chamber of commerce and received a list of fishing resorts in the area. When he wrote to the resort owners, one man replied that Pott had sold out long before. He thought that the Pott boy had gone to live in Wisconsin with a physician brother-in-law.
In a listing of physicians in Wisconsin at the library John found the brother-in-law's name. He lived in Sheboygan.
To John's letter of inquiry the doctor wrote that Pott was a store detective at Marshall Field in Chicago. When John wrote to the store management asking for Pot's address, a reply said that the information was confidential. John then asked the manager to deliver a letter to Pott.
After all the trouble John had to find Pott, Pott did not come to the reunion.
When John said he was going to trace Rags, I wondered how he would go about it. "I'll let you know," he said.
HE FIRST MADE UP a notebook of the 15 stories about Rags that had appeared in the papers up to that time. One gave his name as Elias John Barauskas.
At the library John looked for the name in the Chicago telephone directory, choosing it because it is the largest directory in one volume. He found listed a Gus Barauskas.
Gus said over the telephone he had never heard of an Elias Barauskas, and he was sure they were not related. Gus has two brothers, but neither is named Elias. He added that the name is Greek and Elias is pronounced Ay-lee-as, which accounts for Rags' nickname Lee.
Next John went to the coroner's office. When Rags died, all he had with him was a notebook belonging to a Daytonian and a cheap piece of jewelry. He had probably found them on the street. The notebook had been returned to its owner.
John then talked with Tom Sammons, a detective with the police force. Tom told him that the FBI had identified Rags as Elias Joseph Barauskas and that he had been born in Waterbury, Conn.
JOHN SPENT a morning at the library looking through Connecticut telephone books. In all the state he found three Barauskases listed.
On the third call he spoke to Leon Barauskas in New Haven. "Why yes," said Leon. "That must be my uncle Eli. I'll call my father."
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Curt Dalton
757 posts
Apr 01, 2014
8:20 PM
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Story continued...
"Have your father call me," John said.
In a little while Alphonse Barauskas telephoned. "I had forgotten his middle name is Joseph," he said, "but he is my brother. The last I knew he was in a hospital in Kentucky, but when he left ere, we lost track of him. I have another brother in Florida and we have an aunt living in Connecticut."
John suggested that Alphonse call the coroner's office with the information. "What I wonder," said Alphonse, "is why did you wait so long to let us know?"
This is how Rags was finally identified. The news stories mentioned only that "a local genealogist" had provided a clue to his identity.
I thought you might like to know the story of that local genealogist.
(from an AD LIB column by Roz Young, around June 1980, Dayton Daily News.
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Mark1984
159 posts
Apr 02, 2014
4:26 AM
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Rags was an enigma back then. I was a teenager when he was around. He carried himself quite differently from the what seems like a larger number of homeless people now. Or those who claim to be homeless. People who spend any amount of time downtown have encountered people panhandling. Some of them can be a little aggressive. Rags wasn't like that. From the few times I saw him. He preferred to live his life the way he did. He didn't want help or pity from anyone. Or at least it appeared that way to me. Without trying to. He still has an impact on this city 30+ years after his death. Does anyone know where he is buried?
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Riverdale Ghost
475 posts
Apr 02, 2014
4:36 AM
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In addition to where he's buried, did anyone explore military records?
Comment: they say the Cincinnati police dropped him off in Dayton.
Comment: they say he was in a hospital in Kentucky.
Comment: didn't someone see him or someone on Route 4?
I'll tell you what's in Cincinnati, Kentucky near Cincinnati and Dayton: a VA hospital. But, Dayton also has the base hospital.
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 Honest Communications Is The Foundation of Civilizations.
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