Each week, we’ll bring 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 Feb. 8-14, 1976.
Feb. 8, 1976: ‘Super’ store opens: JoAnn Fabrics adds 8th in area, 351st in chain
A company which was founded in 1946 in the Cleveland area and had been operating in 23 states, opened its eighth store in the Miami Valley in 1976.
The newest area JoAnn Fabrics was in the Oak Creek Plaza shopping center on Bigger Rd.
The store had more than 9,000 square feet of space and was one of the new “super” stores for the company.
The Kettering store was stocked with 30,000 to 40,000 yards of fabrics for fashion, decorator and upholstery projects. Fabrics ranged from 50 cents to $20 (for upholstery) a yard. Other items carried included a full line of patterns and sewing accessories.
Fashion and decorator specialists were among the 15 to 18 employees who staffed the store, the 351st in the chain. It was one of six new stores that opened that week. The store accepted JoAnn charge, BankAmericard and Master Charge.
Polyester double knit was the backbone of the fabrics industry and the top material in demand.
Marty Rosskamm was president of the company which opened the first Dayton store in August 1970. He was a son-in-law of one of the founders.
JoAnn Fabrics has since closed all its locations, including those in the Dayton area, following bankruptcy filings in early 2025.
Feb. 8, 1976: ‘Feather the ends’ Old-time barbers lose as men turn to stylists
When Ernie Looney took over the barber shop in Miamisburg in May, 1975, the owner charged only $1.25.
“I had to up that to $1.50,” said Looney, 48 at the time, who scratched a living from that by averaging six heads an hour for eight hours a day, six days a week, as a practitioner of what was seen in 1976 as a dying profession.
“You’ve got to be fast, you’ve got to know your job to cut like that,” Looney said. “I have cut as many as nine per hour.”
Looney had not been able to cultivate the new skills needed to become what was fast replacing the traditional barber, the hair stylist.
He tried to learn the stylist’s total hair care concept so he could take in $6 or $8 a customer, too. It required skills he did not have, and he balked at what he saw as the need to coddle male egos.
“It just wasn’t my bag,” Looney said.
Looney was reminded that his profession was disappearing every time he looked at the two empty barber chairs in the one-man shop at N. Main and Spring streets.
“I can’t get anybody to cut for this money,” he explained.
To Looney’s barber generation, such terms as “the layer look,” “angle it in the back” and “feather the ends” sounded as strange as the Wright Brothers would have found space-age computer language.
“The customer who asks for cuts like that wants the old barber to stand there with his tongue hanging out,” said Don Cole, president of the Dayton Barbers Local 887 and owner of Gentlemen’s Quarters in Centerville.
Cole said the new wave in men’s hair grooming also produced an interest in frequent change, with new styles and techniques each season. That made hair styling a constantly changing business.
But old barber shops closed every week and new styling shops opened as often, Cole said. While the old barber was lucky to earn $15,000 a year, the stylist seldom made less.
Feb. 8, 1976: Valium: Is it causing more problems than it’s curing?
In 1976, Americans were spending almost half a billion dollars a year on a drug to relieve their anxiety. That drug was Valium.
The medicine most frequently prescribed in the United States — and probably in the world — in 1976, was not, as might be expected, a hopeful remedy for some life-threatening or fatal condition like cancer or heart disease or a crippler like arthritis. Instead, it was a tablet generally prescribed for an emotional state vaguely described as anxiety.
Valium had yielded the richest harvest of profit of any single medicine in history.
Among physicians, psychologists, sociologists and moralists, Valium — the name is derived from the Latin for “to be strong and well” — was generating as much anxiety as it was designed to allay. Some critics went as far as to say that it is doing more harm than good, or even deny that it is doing any good at all for the great majority of patients.
Some cried with alarm that it was far from being as safe as it was proclaimed, and that it could be hideously addictive and could be the cause of addicts’ deaths.
It was certainly subject to abuse, and one critic asserts that it had become the first choice of drug abusers. Others contend that it causes birth defects.
Inevitably, with a drug so widely used, questions arose about its addictive qualities. A highly respected Manhattan psychiatrist, Dr. Marie Nyswander, asserted that Valium was the most addictive drug in common, legal use.
The view among the vast majority of other psychiatrists, however, was that patients who become addicted to Valium were “addiction-prone” and would become addicted to some other drug, legal or not, if Valium did not happen to be available.
Another charge against Valium was that, if a woman took it in the early months of pregnancy, it could cause birth defects.
The common view at the time was that Valium was probably no worse than aspirin; it certainly didn’t cause gross deformities, as thalidomide did. The general rule was that a woman who is, or was, about to become pregnant should take as few drugs as possible. That meant alcohol, tobacco — and Valium.
Among the few undisputed facts about Valium was that American doctors wrote the massive total of 59.3 million prescriptions for it in 1974. How many tens of millions of Americans had been getting it couldn’t be calculated from this figure because the drug is also widely used in hospitals for conditions other than anxiety.
The gross yield to the manufacturer, wholesale, was $250 million a year.
Feb. 9, 1976: Fill-up rewarded: Gasoline dealer has split rate
Marathon dealer Jay Montgomery walked out of his station 47 times in one day in 1976, to pump one dollar’s worth of gas.
It was on that day that he decided something had to be done. He would encourage customers who filled their gas tanks, and he would discourage those who bought only enough gas to get them to a cut-rate dealer for a fill-up.
At that time, if you purchased a tankful of gas at Schantz Ave. Marathon, 2275 W. Schantz, you paid 53.9 cents a gallon. For less than a fill-up, the price was 63.9 cents a gallon.
“I have to pump $3 worth of gas if I’m to break even walking out to the pumps. It may be even closer to $4 (to pay the overhead),” said Montgomery, who had been handling the pumps himself much of the time. At one time, he had thought about setting a $3 minimum for a purchase.
A sign in front of the station explained that a fill-up was 10 gallons, or $5 worth (for small cars). When Montgomery first started the split rate, he sold regular gas for 57.9 cents and premium for 67.9 cents. He dropped the price of regular one day to 53.9, which was only a penny higher than the price charged by nearby cut-rate competitors.
The volume of gas sales had picked up somewhat, although the number of customers was smaller, allowing Montgomery to spend more time servicing cars.
Montgomery was optimistic that his split rates will work. “My back is against the wall. It’s the only way to keep my station,” he said.
Feb. 12, 1976: ‘A gift of life!’ Russian Jews arrive in Dayton after voyage from Ukraine
Tears clouded Moisey Dolingsky’s eyes as he stepped from an airplane with his family at Cox Municipal Airport in 1976 to begin life in America.
“I have always dreamed of America and of this day,” he said. “I am an old man, but for my grandchildren, this is a gift of life.”
Then holding a smoking stand he brought with him from Russia like a trophy in one hand, and clutching his cane with the other, Dolingsky, 86, sat on an airport chair, half gasping and smiling and feeling every bit a happy patriarch.
Dolingsky and eight members of his family were the first Russian-Jewish immigrants to relocate directly to Dayton.
Ruth Bloomfield, chairman of the Resettlement Committee of the Jewish Family Service that spearheaded plans and preparations for the family, and a number of other Jewish community leaders, greeted Dayton’s newest residents.
“It has been a fantastic outpouring from the entire Jewish community,” Bloomfield said. “So many have joined in the effort to help make adjusting as painless as possible for them.”
Bloomfield said committee members Shirley Mazur and Ruth Cohen found two apartments, completely furnished for the family. In addition financials were arranged “until the family can become self-sustaining. Right now what we need most are good jobs for the men.”
In addition to the grandfather, those who were relocating here included Dolingsky’s son Viktor, 40, and his wife, Lilya, 32. Viktor is a home appliance repairman by trade. Their two children were Larisa, 10, and Stanislav, 6.
Dolingsky’s daughter, Eugenya Kreps, 42, and her husband, Igor, 43, a jewelry repairman, arrived with their children, Raisa, who was 24, and Aleksandr, 17.
Interpreters helped translate comments from Dolingsky, who had been a shoemaker all his life in the Ukraine.
Young Aleksandr was able to speak a trace of English. “I expect a happy life in America,” he said. With the help of the interpreter he added, “it is good feeling to know that people reach out across the world and help others.”
The immigrants were to live in the Albright Apartments, 4900 Riddles Ave.
At Cox Municipal Airport, the youngest member of the family, Stanislav, ran back and forth through the electric eye that opens doors at the airport, shouting, “America, America, America.”
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