Barrett started going to Pla-Mor Lanes when she was 6, hanging out in the playroom while her parents bowled. More than four decades later, she was one of the many who remembered Wilson with fondness Thursday at Newcomer Funeral Home. The longtime Pla-Mor proprietor, who devoted 60 years to the sport he loved, died last Sunday at 77.
“There wasn’t a time I walked in there that he didn’t ask, ‘How’s your family?’ ” Barrett said. “He would bend over backwards for his bowlers.”
Wilson got his start in the business as a pin boy at Pla-Mor, then a 14-lane center on Salem Avenue in Dayton, when he was a teenager.
“Even in high school, if anyone asked, ‘Where’s Bob?’ the answer would always be at the bowling alley,” said high school classmate Tillie (Durko) Shelton.
After graduating from Roosevelt High School in 1953, Wilson took a job at a local tool shop but was back in the bowling business by 1972. This time, the business was his as he and his partners, Dave Handler and Howard Stroble, bought Pla-Mor, which had since moved to Linden Avenue and sported 24 lanes.
Pat Ryan was already working at Pla-Mor when Wilson bought the center.
“He put a lot of effort into the bowling business,” Ryan said. “At Pla-Mor, we always said we knew people by their names and it was true. It was like family.”
That “family” mattered to Wilson. Although he claimed to be semi-retired in 2008, he was still behind the desk as many as 50 hours a week. Even as his health failed in recent years, he still couldn’t stay away.
“He’d come in just to see the bowlers and leave,” Ryan said. “He really loved the people.”
That dedication to the business and, more importantly, to the bowlers did not go unnoticed.
“Not only was he a really good partner, he was a great friend,” said Ron Rentz, who partnered with the Wilson family to purchase Beaver-Vu Bowl in 1995. “It was more of a family than a partnership.”
While many things have changed since the days Bob Wilson set pins night after night, some remained constant – his love of the sport and his dedication to the bowlers.
In an interview in 2008, Wilson shared his simple secret of success.
“Our success in the business is due to the fact that we made a lot of friends and that we’re on site,” he said.
And the elder Wilson’s business philosophy made a definite impression on his son Doug Wilson, the Beaver-Vu proprietor.
“He taught me that people really are the treasures of this business, and he was right.”
And Bob Wilson was – without a doubt – one of those treasures.
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