Each week, we’ll being you a selection of notable stories that happened this week in Dayton history, chronicled by the same newspaper that continues to serve the community today.
Here are some headlines from the week of Jan. 25-31, 1976.
Jan. 25, 1976: Strike up the band! Armco Steel sings
The Armco Steel Corp. was once the American Rolling Mill Co., well known for its patriotic march music as much as for its steel.
That music from the 1920s and ’30s was being revived in 1976 as Armco’s contribution to the Bicentennial. A modern version of the renowned Armco Band, which had a radio audience across the United States over 40 years ago, had been assembled for performances that year.
In 1920, Armco officials decided the company and the community needed a band, so they enlisted the services of a Middletown native, Frank Simon, at the time the assistant director for the John Philip Sousa band.
Sousa, the “March King,” wrote nine comic operas and more than 100 marches, including “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
At first, Simon and the band played concerts and entertained at Armco events. The 50-piece group’s fame spread and soon the Armco musicians were on the professional circuit.
As their tunes became more and more in demand, they became radio celebrities. Each Sunday night for nine years, the Iron Master Band was featured on network radio.
The band broadcast from Dayton via a telephone hookup into the WLW studios in Cincinnati. Fans of maestro Simon called the band “the best” and even ranked it in popularity with the “Amos ‘n’ Andy” radio program.
The band finally broke up during World War II as many members went into the military service.
In July, 1975, as Armco prepared to celebrate the company’s 75th anniversary, it was decided to revive the popular musical unit.
For Armco birthday celebration, 33 musicians entertained the Armco celebration crowd, which gave them a standing ovation.
The new Armco band grew to 55 strong and began holding concerts monthly.
Jan. 25, 1976: Stotts-Friedman to leave downtown for Moraine site
A major downtown business, Stotts-Friedman Co., was preparing to move from 208 N. Jefferson St. to Moraine, Ron Sanderson, president, said in 1976.
The electronics business was moving to a space formerly occupied by Outdoor Sports Headquarters at 2600 E. River Rd., in the Mid-States industrial warehouse complex.
“I determined 90 days after I bought the business four years ago that I would move,” said Sanderson at the time. He and William Norman Little, chairman of the board and vice president, purchased the business in June 1971 from Harry Friedman.
Sanderson, who happened to be a Montgomery County sheriff’s deputy, complained about “problems with security and shoplifting” downtown. “I have arrested a ton of people,” he said.
Other problems, Sanderson said, were traffic congestion and a shortage of parking space. Parking meters were removed when the new Homestead Federal Savings and Loan Association office was built and when a bus line was transferred from Main to Jefferson. Sanderson said he had been “chastised” often for having autos towed from the store’s parking lot.
Stotts-Friedman employed 35 people. It stocked more than 150,000 items and dealt in wholesale industrial electronics, wholesale television dealer service and consumer products such as citizen’s band radios and police monitors.
“We’re going from a corner drugstore to a supermarket operation,” said Sanderson, predicting a 25 per cent increase in sales within two years.
Relocation to Moraine meant free parking for the store’s customers and its employees. The employees also realized an income tax reduction, Sanderson said.
The business was started in 1949 by Harry Friedman and Ray Stotts. It was located first at S. Main St. and Patterson Blvd., and then at 135 E. Second St. Stotts left the business in 1954.
The present partners at the time, Sanderson and Little, had been in the electronics business since the late 1940s. Sanderson started an electronics firm in Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1949 and sold it to a national firm before he came to Dayton. Sanderson and Little joined forces in 1958.
Jan. 27, 1976: Famous but obscure: Camelot dances jigs to tunes of Ohio Players
Appearing on television and stages around the country with a superstar soul group, the Ohio Players, provided a seven-man dance troupe from Dayton with national exposure and at the same time left it little known.
The group, called Camelot, performed in intricately choreographed routines and bizarre costumes on stage while the Players — also a Dayton group — were front and center with their playing and singing.
The brilliance of the Players tended to relegate Camelot to a supporting role that the public took for granted, but which the dance group hoped to transcend.
“Every time we get to a city, nobody’s interested in us,” said group manager Willie Jackson, better known as “Doctor Please.”
“We’re there with the Ohio Players, so everyone just thinks we’re with them.”
In fact, Camelot was a separate operation — the brain child of seven young Daytonians with a gift for spectacle and a virtually unlimited supply of energy.
The dancers, ranging in age from 16 to 25, were all from Dayton and all either worked or went to school — mainly because they couldn’t make enough money as dancers to live.
“None of us has any formal dance training,” said Randy Ellis, 19, a Wright State University freshman at the time who used the stage name, “Sugar Bear Slim.” “It’s more or less something we’ve just picked up.”
The group’s routines were choreographed by leader Hartford Goosby, 21, who worked at a fast-food restaurant in Dayton when he was not on stage.
Goosby, also known as “H.R. Puff and Stuff,” started the group with a handful of friends, but success was elusive until the act was “noticed” by Clarence (Satch) Satchell, leader of the Players.
Satchell signed up Camelot to dance on stage while the Ohio Players played and sang. A four-man Camelot road company routinely traveled with the Players to engagements all over the country.
Camelot’s major feature is a style of dancing called “locking.” The dancers, dressed in brightly colored breeches held up by suspenders and knee-high socks with loose-fitting shirts, cavorted on stage in an elaborate dance, then abruptly froze in place.
The performances were marked with an infusion of gymnastics. Larry Reid, 20, a University of Dayton football player, specialized in acrobatic additions to more traditional dance, often coming onto the stage on his hands rather than feet.
Other members of Camelot were Eric (Goldie Automatic Man) Goldsmith, 25, who worked at a gas station; Michael (Muscles) Brantley, 21, a Central State University student; Paul (Sundance Kid) Thurman, 19, an Air Force enlisted man, and Bobby (Captain Youngblood) Greenlee, 16, a student at Meadowdale High School.
Jan. 28, 1976: Car roars through house, kills 6, including 4 asleep
Six people were killed when a southbound car went through one side of a house and out the other on Ohio 49 in Darke County in 1976. The dead include four members of a family asleep in the house.
Dead were Mr. and Mrs. Charles Feltz and two of their eight children. The other two persons killed were riding in the car — a black Dodge with a Greenville registration.
Darke county Sheriff James Irwin said the car went into the ditch along the east side of the road, traveled about 350 feet, then swerved to the right, knocking down a tree, tearing through the 16-foot-wide front bedroom and stopping only after it hit a concrete porch of a house about three miles north of there that sat 20 feet from the road.
The four dead members of the Feltz family apparently were sleeping in the front bedroom, authorities said. All six victims were dead at the scene.
The dead children were identified as Jacqueline, 13, and Charles Jr., 10, both pupils in Franklin-Monroe schools.
The sheriff called it the worst accident of its kind in Darke County history. He said the car was “traveling at a high rate of speed.”
Fire units from Pitsburg were on the scene along with a rescue team from Arcanum.
Howard Long, who owns the house and lived a short distance away on Ohio 722, said the Feltz family had lived there for 8 to 10 years. “I talked to all of them just yesterday,” he said.
“Then this... I’ve never seen anything like this before. Just terrible.”
Jan. 29, 1976: They didn’t fix bikes: Daytonian fondly recalls Wright brothers’ secrecy
It was the turn of the century and Raymond S. Stines, then just 11, knew something funny was going on at the Wright brothers bicycle shop on W. Third St. After all, who ever heard of a bicycle shop that didn’t repair bicycles?
But young Stines was unable to pierce the curtain of secrecy Orville and Wilbur drew around their early experiments with flying machines. Had he been able, Stines would have been among the first to learn the details of Orville and Wilbur’s plans.
“I was carrying papers at the time,” Stines recalled. “And when I heard about it I pretended to have something wrong with my bicycle and took it over to their shop. We only lived a short distance away, on Euclid Ave.”
But he was told, however, that the brothers weren’t fixing bicycles any more.
“I talked to Wilbur — he was the taller one of the two,” he said, “and I told him I wanted to go in back and talk to their mechanic about my bike.
“He said, ‘You can’t go back there.’ And when I asked why, he said, ‘We’re doing something secret.’”
That was about 1902, as Stines remembered in 1976. And he said he didn’t find out until much later that the Wrights were probably building their airplane in the back room.
Stines said his older brother, Archie, later worked for the Wrights, helping to build engines for their airplanes.
He himself worked for the Dayton Wright Airplane Co. during World War I. Later, he entered the real estate business.
Stines became well known in the Dayton area as a trombone player. He also taught at the Dayton Conservatory of Music.
Jan. 30, 1976: High school athlete holds largest beer can collection in Kettering
Fairmont West’s Keith Moon was two things, a basketball player and a beer can collector.
College recruiters found out and started to send him beer cans to get his attention.
“I’ve had a few coaches send me cans,” said Moon. “They were from colleges in Texas and Louisiana. The coach from the Texas school sent me a Texas Pride beer can which I didn’t have.”
Moon was a card-carrying member of the Beer Can Collectors of America and follows their slogan of “Don’t Kick The Can.” He had over 2,000 libation containers in his possession. “I’ve got them all over the house,” said Moon. “It used to be just on the shelves in my room. Now I’ve got so many they’re in boxes and baskets all over the basement.”
“I guess the collection is the biggest in Kettering. There is a guy in Cincinnati who has over 5,000 cans and someone told me of someone else in Ohio who had 7,000. I don’t think I can catch that collection.”
Moon had been contacted by over 50 schools wanted him to play for them.
I’ve spoken with most of the Big Eight schools, also schools in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. I attended a Five-Star basketball camp in West Virginia last summer, it was kind of like a big marketplace for high school basketball with scouts from all over the country.”
Moon was averaging 15 points and 14 rebounds a game for West, not extremely impressive statistics for a player at 6-8, 205-pounds. But in the West concept of team offense, Moon was mainly a defensive center.
Keith didn’t feel as if he had stopped growing, though. “I’ve been growing a little more this season and I think I might be about 6-9 or 6-10 before I get out of college. One of my grandfathers was about 6-10.”
Jan. 30, 1976: Kiss: punk rockers strike gold - Bassist spits blood
In 1976, as fairly a new band, Kiss was coming to Hara Arena. A preview story was written about the rock group.
“They are costumed in variations of black and silver, Motown-studded, madness sequined motorcycle queens sporting seven-inch-high platform shoes,” the story began.
Their concert, with tickets costing $5.50, $6.50 day of show, was sold out.
As a stage show, they were described as being somewhere between Alice Cooper and big-time wrestling. Their style was called an easily recognizable combination of bizarre clown greasepaint, carnival tricks and loud, straight-ahead rock.
The band was touring in support of “Alive” their fourth album, which was a budget-priced double album that included an 8-page color booklet of concert scenes.
It was noted that parental guidance was to be furnished at Hara Arena by 25 sheriff’s deputies stationed at the gate, and 25 rent-a-cops in the theater.
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