DaytonDailyNews.com

As a teenager, Sidney Schultz had no intention of staying in Dayton and running the family business. The plan was to become an English professor.

Yet here he is, closing down General Surplus Outfitters later this month after 60 years in business downtown at Third and Patterson.

So what happened? How did the youngest of Sol and Evelyn Schultz's five children end up devoting 42 years of his life to the family store?

"Guilt," Schultz said, laughing. "Jewish guilt."

A serious case, obviously.

Yet a funny thing happened on the way to literary pursuits. Schultz found that he loved the business, loved the product, loved the customers who had been coming to the store for generations. "This is the stuff of literature, the stuff of life," he said, gesturing toward the building.

Shutting down the business is "like performing major surgery on yourself without anesthesia," Schultz, 58, said Monday, as customers flocked to the store to reminisce and take advantage of going-out-of-business sales.

Business peaked in 1994 when G.S. Outfitters boasted 33 employees. Then came the Internet and the mega- sporting goods stores, not to mention the decline of downtown retail. Schultz said business dropped dramatically after the opening of the Mall at Fairfield Commons.

Schultz isn't bitter. "Sixty years in one location, that's a really good run," he said. He's looking forward to traveling and reading some great books that have remained his first love. Yet he's worried about the implications for society when small businesses can't compete with the big conglomerates. "Welcome to Mall World," he said. "The very texture of our lives is going away. All the touchstones of my childhood in Dayton — Donenfeld's, Goodie's restaurant, Neil's Heritage House — have disappeared."

Main Street, he said, is in danger of becoming "one long corridor along 1-675."

Observed longtime customer Beth Brubaker of Dayton, "I get so mad because people don't support independently owned businesses. You just don't get the same service at the big-box stores."

For the past several years, the store was breaking even. "Last year we started actively losing money," he said.

Last year, Schultz employed nearly 40 people downtown — 17 at General Surplus, and 20 at Sol Schultz and Co. Inc., a wholesale distributor of imprintable sportswear that was the last remnant of the wholesale dry goods store his father founded in 1930. It was liquidated last year. General Surplus, which Sol Schultz bought in 1966 from its founder, Dolph Polachek, will likely see its last customer around the end of the month.

That's a lot of history being lost. "Yet since we announced we were going out of business, not one person from the city of Dayton or the Downtown Dayton Partnership has stuck their head in the door and said, 'What a shame. Is there anything we can do to help?'" Schultz said.

Tony Faeta, 64, plans to retire after working as a buyer for General Surplus for 27 years. "The store used to be so busy that you couldn't stand it," he said. "But life changes."

And when yet another longtime Dayton business closes its doors, life is diminished.