Sizemore, now 71 and living down the street from the store she owned on Peter’s Pike, grew up in Richmond, Ind.
“I always wanted a little store,” Sizemore said. “My family had one, and my neighbors had one.”
When she moved to Dayton, she helped out from time to time at the Little Store, long a landmark amid small developments surrounding the old Deerwood Farm.
Sizemore bought the place about 1981.
“It was just a little country store when I had it, and it did a huge business,” Sizemore said.
It started as a small grocery and candy store, then began to make sandwiches at customers’ request.
“I started out making six submarines a day,” she said, “and it ended up being (seemingly) thousands.”
One day, a neighbor, seeing the police and fire department vehicles outside, called and asked if Sizemore was okay. Sizemore told the caller that the officers were just eating lunch.
When Edna fell off a short stepladder and shattered her leg in 1994, she decided to retire, selling the place to Eric Jerardi, who has turned it into an upscale wine and sandwich stop.
Comments he made in a Dayton Daily News story about what the store was before irked some longtime residents.
But Sizemore said, “That’s OK. I sold the people what they wanted. If they wanted ketchup, I had it. If they wanted meat, I had it.
“Eric wanted to do something different.”
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