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 March 8-14, 1976.
March 8, 1976: Former spy uncloaked in Kettering
Otto E. Fiedler may not have been the idea of what a counter intelligence agent looked or talked like.
Gentle and engaging, with a bemused tone of voice he used to camouflage what friends described as a brilliant mind, Fiedler, of Kettering, looked more like somebody’s favorite uncle than the trench-coated agent he was many years prior on the Czech-German border.
In 1976 he was chairman of the 3,000-member National Counter Intelligence Association, the “alumni” organization of the Counter Intelligence Corps disbanded by the Army in 1967. Fiedler said that the “Mission: Impossible” image was one of several public distortions of real intelligence work.
Many Central Intelligence Agency personnel did nothing but read foreign newspapers and magazines, he pointed out.
Fiedler’s perspective was international before he transferred from the Army Air Corps to the CIC after the War Department established the agency in 1942.
On one wall of his East Dayton business office in the F&F Mold & Die Co. was a sword Fiedler’s soldier grandfather had from the second German Reich of World War I.
Fiedler came to America in 1927, a year and a half after his father, Joseph, left Bavaria and Germany “because he saw greater opportunities for freedom in the U.S.”
He won a national scholarship to Harvard after graduation from high school, then went to Washington to seek a State Department job.
“That was in 1940, and they knew we were going to have a war,” he recalled. “They said I didn’t have much chance (because of his German birth) and if I was hired, they’d be hard on me.”
Fiedler instead joined the Army Air Corps, then transferred to the Counter Intelligence Corps formed in 1942. His work took him back to Europe in the spring of 1945.
On the way from Wiesbaden to his assigned post along a 90-mile border area between western Germany and Czechoslovakia, Fiedler visited Nuremberg, his home town.
“It was just blown to bits,” he said. “Fortunately my family moved to suburbia after the first war, and I was able to find my grandmother who raised me.”
The mission of Fiedler and the five other members of his CIC team included counter-espionage, counter-sabotage and counter-personnel work along the border being crossed daily by 10,000 refugees from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Eastern Germany.
The CIC agents carried, but seldom used, a federal badge giving them arrest powers up to and including the rank of colonel in the American military, as well as fugitive Nazis wanted for war crimes.
Among their catches were Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Himmler’s deputy Gestapo chief, Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering’s wife and Col. Otto Skorzeny, the daring officer who had engineered the rescue of Mussolini from an Italian mountaintop earlier.
“I interviewed Mrs. Goering and she insisted the only thing she knew was that her husband had been head of the German Red Cross,” Fiedler laughed. “That was the problem: Before 1945 everybody was a Nazi, and afterward, nobody was.”
Nazi operatives from the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland and the Flussenberg camp in his sector were among the prisoners Fiedler turned over to the authorities for prosecution at the Nuremburg war crimes trials.
He personally would have preferred turning them over to their own German people, “who would have taken care of them immediately in an act of revenge.”
March 9, 1976: All ‘Hustler’ production coming here, Flynt says
Hustler magazine had a circulation of 2.1 million in 1976.
The magazine was getting half the run printed at the Dayton Press and expected all of the production to end up at the former McCall Printing Co. plant, according to Larry Flynt, the publisher.
The former Daytonian told the American Business Club at its luncheon meeting at the Stratford-Ramada that 99 percent of the circulation was newsstand, with only 1 percent subscription.
“We’re making money. We have no advertising support. We have a 106-page magazine that sells for $1.75, while Playboy, with more than 200 pages, sells for $1.35. We reach people without the mails,” Flynt stated.
Flynt, who started in the publishing business in Dayton and operated bars here, had his offices in Columbus, where the company had acquired two buildings and was expanding operations to other parts of the world, including Japan.
“We try to keep excessive nudity off the cover of Hustler,” said Flynt.
“Moses freed the Jews. I want to free the psychotics. You can’t dictate reading habits. Sex is the cleanest thing in the world. We should look at ourselves in the changing times. As soon as pornography is brought into the open the better off we’ll be.”
“My whole life I’ve been totally obsessed with what I do. You are what you think you are. You got to think you are a winner,” he added.
Flynt’s Hustler magazine was in the top 10 of all magazines on the market at the time.
March 9, 1976: Millionaire wants mansion tax cut
Harrison Twp. millionaire-industrialist Jesse Philips wanted property taxes on his six-year-old hill-top mansion slashed by more than two thirds in 1976, because, his lawyers said, his neighborhood was in decline.
The nationally famous house has six bedrooms, seven baths, a swimming pool and had a monthly utility bill of more than $800 at the time. It is located at 3870 Honey Hill Lane, a dead-end street in the Shiloh area of Harrison Twp.
In court papers, Philips’ lawyers said the 11,000-square-foot home was appraised unrealistically because officials did not consider the fair market value of the property if it were to go on sale.
They said the area around Honey Hill Lane had deteriorated, making the county’s estimate of the house’s value far too high.
“The thing is that the area is slipping and that is all there is to it,” an appraiser hired by Phillips said in a transcript filed in the case.
The attorneys planned to ask Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Rodney M. Love to slash the 1974 appraised value of the residence from $256,580 to $70,000.
At 1976 tax rates, Philips paid $11,876 annually in property tax.
Assistant Montgomery County Prosecutor Chris R. Van Schaik said he opposed the reduction. He said he would also argue against a motion by Philips’ attorneys that the case be decided in his favor because of an alleged improper delay by the county.
Philips was board chairman of Dayton-based Phillip’s Industries, manufacturer of components for recreational vehicles and mobile homes. He declined to discuss the court action.
The custom built house is located on one of the highest hills in the area and has a view from its vast picture windows extending from downtown Dayton to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Published reports at the time of construction put the cost at over $1 million.
The house had been written about in a national interior decorating magazine as one of the outstanding contemporary homes in the country. It was built for Philips in 1969 by Chicago architect I.W. Colburn.
Its outstanding external features are five 52-foot-high chimneys which give the home the aspect of a medieval castle in modern design.
The house was listed as including a sauna bath, a five-car garage, five fireplaces and a dining room that can seat 120 persons.
The master bedroom closet is seven feet deep and 30 feet long, a marble-floored entrance hall is 20-by-60 feet and a library measures 20-by-40 feet with a 14-foot-high ceiling.
The property is currently listed as the corporate office site for the Jesse and Caryl Philips Foundation.
March 9, 1976: Gas dealer claims he gives more HPG (Hustle per gallon)
When Ron Napier interviewed prospective service station attendants in 1976, his first question had nothing to do with cars.
“Can you run?” he asked.
Napier, at the time a new Exxon dealer, at 1241 E. Central Ave., Miamisburg, said the question usually puzzled the young men, but it was important.
At Napier’s Exxon, attendants ran to every customer.
“The first impression is the most important thing,” said Napier. “We have nothing to sell except service. You can buy gas anywhere, usually at a cheaper price, but I try to stay competitive on gas and service.”
March 11, 1976: Orville Wright’s gravedigger took pride in his work
In 1976 Marvin Fish, 65 at the time, said he would always remember digging Orville Wright’s grave in Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery. It was 1948 and Fish had been on the job three years.
“We took a big rock out and a guy from Cincinnati said he’d like to have it,” Fish recalled. “But he never came and got it so it’s still up there, beside the grave.”
Fish also recalled the snow and ice storm the day he helped prepare the grave for inventor Charles Kettering’s final resting place.
There was a time when most graves were dug by men with shovels. Today, however, most of the work is done with mechanical backhoes.
At the time, there had been more than 83,000 burials in the hilly, tree-studded 180-acre Woodland Cemetery since it was opened in 1841.
Fish said he had dug hundreds of them.
Because of the rolling terrain and many trees at Woodland, a few of the graves prepared there each year had to be done by hand. According to Fish, four men working with shovels and picks could dig a grave in about six hours. When one man did all the work, it took 8 to 12 hours.
One man operating a backhoe, however, could open a grave in about 30 minutes.
Fish took pride in his work.
“If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing,” he said. “Sure, people turn up their noses when you tell them you’re a gravedigger but I love the work. It lets me be out of doors and there aren’t many people around to bother you.”
One thing that had changed over the previous 30 years was that people didn’t visit cemeteries as they once did.
“We all have a different way of living these days,” Fish said. “People have got so many other things to do, they don’t come to the cemetery as often.”
Woodland had its share of visitors, though.
“Lots of people come here every day to drive around,” Fish said with a smile. “One guy walks his two dogs here every morning around 11. In the summer, folks sit on the grass and eat sack lunches, and members of the Belmont High School and University of Dayton track teams run through here all the time.”
The smile on his face disappeared when he was asked if he planed to retire.
“In June,” he said, softly, like a man who wasn’t looking forward to the day he’ll pack up his shovel and leave.
March 11, 1976: Dillman chain to open ‘super market’ on Ohio 725
The area was getting a new supermarket chain this week in 1976. This one wasn’t based in Chicago, Detroit or some other big city. This one was from Middletown.
The Dillman Foods store that was opening at Ohio 725 and Alex-Bell Rd. was in the superstore class. It was designed by Studio 70, the division of Super Valu that dreamed up the layouts and decor for several of the most spectacular stores in the Dayton area.
Roger Dillman, president of the operation, started in the business bagging potatoes and passing handbills for his parents’ “mom and pop” grocery at 1105 Young St. in Middletown. The family lived behind the store.
There were two Dillman Foods stores in Middletown. One, built in 1963, was smaller. The University Avenue store, built in 1973, was the size of the south-of-Dayton store.
While cashiers rehearsed for opening day under the eye of a professional cashier instructor, Dillman told about his personal retailing concepts. “We like to take inexperienced people and teach them,” he said. He claimed that only friendly people were given jobs at Dillman’s.
While the store didn’t do price advertising — only institutional advertising — Dillman promised that his pricing would be “extremely competitive.”
A Dillman motto hung over the meat counter: “It’s our trim that makes the difference.” “We cut the tails off of our steaks; we cut extremely close,” Dillman explained. “Two or three ounces of trim at meat prices today is a saving of 25 to 30 cents.”
That food shopping should be “exciting” for the housewife was another of Dillman’s beliefs. There were wide, carpeted aisles, parcel pickup which delivers groceries by conveyor to customers’ cars and floral, deli and gourmet departments. “We will be baking at 4 in the morning, so we will have fresh baked goods at 5 a.m.,” Dillman said.
The store had been engineered so that the temperature in any aisle, including the frozen foods aisle, differed no more than two degrees from that of any other aisle. “A housewife can shop in a bikini and still be comfortable,” Dillman said.
The new store, like the Middletown stores, was to be a 24-hour operation. Dillman’s stores had been open around the clock for five years. Ninety people were to be employed at the new store. A lot of fuss was made whenever a new industry comes to town and provides 100 or so jobs, but supermarkets got little publicity, Dillman lamented. “It’s this type of business (supermarkets) that’s going to rejuvenate the economy of this country,” he said.
Dillman Foods closed it’s final store, located in Middletown, in early 2014.
March 12, 1976: For 150 years, clock has done time for one family
For nearly 150 years, an alabaster marble clock had been keeping time for the Collins family.
“It’s the only real heirloom we’ve kept,” says Paul Collins, 62, of Huber Heights.
Collins said the clock, which is 19 inches high and weighs about 25 pounds, had been passed on to the youngest son in the family.
“It’s a 32-day clock,” said Collins, who was a consultant with a California firm that was on contract at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
“The interesting thing about the clock is the pendulum,” he said. “It shows an eagle and 18 stars, which represented the 18 states of the United States.”
The United States was composed of 18 states between 1812 and 1816.
Collins said the history of the clock had been passed on by word of mouth and that the only written information was a short note written by his grandfather in about 1921.
The note said the clock was purchased in New York for Michael Collins by his brother Anson in 1830 for $125. Collins said it had been in his possession since 1934 when his father died.
Collins said the clock was once appraised at $2,400.
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