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Sports Room tells history of Dayton greats in photos

Margo Fisher, a co-owner of Hickory Bar-b-que, 1082 Brown St., shows the restaurant's new Dayton sports history room. Fisher has collected a variety of photos of Dayton sports luminaries to display along with captions. Photos of other aspects of Dayton history hang elsewhere in the restaurant.

Jan Underwood Margo Fisher, a co-owner of Hickory Bar-b-que, 1082 Brown St., shows the restaurant's new Dayton sports history room. Fisher has collected a variety of photos of Dayton sports luminaries to display along with captions. Photos of other aspects of Dayton history hang elsewhere in the restaurant.

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By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer 9:01 PM Saturday, June 27, 2009

Eager to share the collection she had put together over the past few months, she led the way — enthusiastically telling one story after another — toward the back dining room, now The Sports Room, to show you part of what Don Donoher called “a little mini-museum.”

She never made it that far.

Just before the doorway — hanging on the wall above the corner booth in the main dining area of Hickory Bar-B-Que — her eye caught the artist’s rendering of an incredible scene at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds.

Margo Fisher kicked off her shoes, hopped up into the booth and soon was detailing the spectacle like some earnest schoolgirl with a science project:

“This was the day Goldsmith Maid, the most famous horse in America, came to the Fairgrounds to try to break the world (trotting) record. Look at all those people. There was a grandstand on one side for men. On the other, for women. The infield’s full, the whole track is surrounded by a crowd. One newspaper report said there were 75,000 people. Imagine that.”

It was October 2, 1874, and it’s doubtful Dayton ever has had a single sporting day quite like it.

City officials issued a traffic flow pattern to get to the new fairgrounds, which, back then, were on the outskirts of town. Wagons and buggies going to the track from downtown had to take Main Street. Those returning had to come up Warren Street.

Passenger trains coming to Dayton were jammed. According to one newspaper account, at the Miamisburg rail station alone, more than 1,000 people were left stranded on the platform, unable to cram into the over-loaded passenger cars.

Hotels were filled. At the track, there were so many people, they spilled out onto the racing surface, where they continually were pushed back by mounted police.

Everybody was here to see the fabled harness mare, Goldsmith Maid, who was unbeaten from 1871 to 1874 and in her career would win 350 heats, 95 of 123 races and $364,200, a mark that stood 60 years. The crowd that saw her in Dayton — when she tied the record of 2:18 — was the biggest of her career.

“Pretty neat, isn’t it?” Margo gushed. “Now look back here.”

Her father would ‘be proud of this’

She led into The Sports Room, where a collection of 37 photos of Dayton sports personalities and teams covered the walls.

Margo and her husband, Gary — who own the Hickory with Margo’s sister Shirley and their 86-year-old mother, Irene — wanted to spruce up the landmark Brown Street restaurant that Irene and her late husband Joe Kiss launched with Irene’s brother and his wife in 1962.

Turning the front dining room into a Dayton History Room and dedicating the back to sports was Margo’s project.

Her work was unveiled at a reception last week that drew quite an assortment of sports types, including: Olympic gold medalist Lucinda Adams, women’s pro basketball player Megan Duffy, 81-year-old power-lifter Felix Nichalson, hockey’s Moe Benoit, former Major League pitcher Fred Sherman, 91-year-old former Detroit Lions tackle Tony Furst, softball legend Jerry Raiff, Donoher and four Dayton Flyers who played in the NBA, Bucky Bockhorn, Jim Paxson Sr., Monk Meineke and Don May.

The families and friends of another two dozen sports figures also were at the gathering.

“We had three generations all together and it was definitely a neat experience,” Duffy said. “I got to meet some of the Dayton sports legends from back in the day, and I thought it was pretty cool, too, that I’m up there on the wall, right next to Tamika Williams and Brandie Hoskins, all of us connected like we are. (They starred at Chaminade Julienne and in college before playing in the WNBA).”

Bockhorn agreed: “It was a good time. (Margo) did a hell of a job with all the photos and bringing us together. I knew her dad, and I’ll tell you, he’d be proud of this.”

One and a million

Joe Kiss, a Hungarian from Romania, immigrated to the United States in 1930. He was just 11 years old.

“He came all by himself with his name safety-pinned to his coat,” said George Smith, the longtime Dayton-area thoroughbred owner and former Ohio State golf star. “He got off the boat at Ellis Island, couldn’t speak the language and look what he made. He lived the American Dream.”

After Irene, who’s also of Hungarian descent from Romania, married Joe, they had three daughters — Jo Ann, Shirley and Margo — and the whole family, as well as in-laws and now grandkids, have worked at the restaurant.

The place became known for ribs, steaks and cabbage rolls and developed quite a following. Beyond his restaurant, one of Joe’s biggest passions was thoroughbreds. He owned several that were handled by Jim Morgan — the former Louisville All-American basketball player from Stivers — who launched his celebrated training career on a financial stake from Kiss.

Margo pointed to a Winner’s Circle picture of Grand Action — the Morgan-trained horse owned by her dad and Joe Samu — who won the Ohio Millionaire Stakes at Thistledown:

“With the race, there was a contest tied into the Ohio Lottery and a man named Omar Watts, a Cherokee Indian chief, won $1 million dollars because (through the luck of the draw) he’d been pared with Grand Action,” Fisher said.

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