This epic Dayton street party has been going on for 50 years

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The epic yard party the three families had that Labor Day morphed into the Wroe Avenue Block Party the following year.

The kids have grown up and some of the neighbors have moved on. But the family-friendly party — long-spiked by then-University of Dayton professor and Wroe Avenue resident Richard Baker's legendary Hairy Buffalo — has pressed on.

The Wroe Avenue Block Party will celebrate its 50th anniversary this weekend.

>> PHOTOS: This epic block party has been going on 50 years

The street-closing bash was moved from Monday to Sunday 45 or so years ago.

Barbara, a Wroe Avenue resident more than 50 years, said the switch was made "so everybody could sober up" in time for work and other forms of adulting Tuesday.

“The kids did not have clean uniforms for school the next morning,” she joked.

Kidding aside, like Barbara, Wroe Avenue resident Ann Szabo said the block party is about more than just partying.

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“It is a good chance to sit down with the people you live with,” she said of the block party that includes a parade down the middle the street, a potluck dinner, snow cones, cotton candy, a candy toss, games and all variety of neighborly fellowship.

Ann said the party is about loving and actually knowing your neighbors.

Wroe Avenue residents help each other, she told us.

During our visit, it was evident that everyone knows everyone on Wroe Avenue.

Barbara called Pat and Marcia Ann’s daughter, Erin Monaghan, over for a photo during our interview with her.

It is proof of the generation after generation that has lived on the street among newer residents like Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley.

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Ann’s parents, Eugene and Ann Moore, moved into their Wroe Avenue home in 1941 and raised seven kids there.

She has attended every block party since the tradition started her freshman year in high school.

Ann moved away from the street after becoming an adult, but moved back at age 38 to care for her mother.

She and her husband now live in her parents’ old home. The family could have lived elsewhere.

“I raised my kids there,” she said of the house that dates to 1923. “We love our home and we love our neighborhood.”

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Her kids have moved away, but are coming back to town from Denver and Richmond, Virginia.

Virginia Platt Gehres grew up with Ann on Wroe Avenue and has lived there most of her life.

She said the party prep is pretty seemless.

“Most of us have been here so long that we do our own thing,” Virginia said. “It just meshes to get in one big celebration.”