Here’s a look at some stories happening the week of Feb. 12-18.
Feb. 15, 1930: Downtown Dayton crippled for 3 hours in serious power break
Activities in downtown Dayton were paralyzed from 4:20 p.m. to 7:20 p.m. on a Friday after a short-circuit along Fourth Street.
Streets became “dismal canyons of blackness” except for the occasionally lit store not on the disrupted circuit and a few candle lights.
Heavy black smoke rolled from the manholes on Fourth Street. Emergency lines were tested by failed to work. Crews were dispatched to the scene, but because the tunnels were filled with smoke, air pumps were used to clear the passages.
Diners in restaurants continued to eat their food in the darkness. Several people caught between floors on elevators were forced to wait it out until power was restored.
Feb. 16, 1940: Girl, no “somnambulist,” spells that word to win Stivers title
Ada Kay Bomford, a sophomore, won the highly regarded Stivers High School spelling championship by spelling “somnambulist,” a word for sleepwalker.
All 1,500 students in the school took part in the spelling contest.
Bomford also won the championship in Lincoln Junior High School, which she attended before entering Stivers.
Feb. 14, 1952: Police may ask public vote on 40-hour work week
In 1952, police officers were working a 48-hour week.
A proposal was being considered to place the question of a 40-hour work week for Dayton policemen on the ballot for the November election.
“At the present base pay, 40 hours would be $1.94 an hour ... and that’s pretty good money,” said Harry T. Fowler, Fraternal Order of Police lodge president.
Feb. 13, 1957: No shoddy jobs by city smiths
In 1957, the Dayton Daily News did a profile on George Asztalos, a blacksmith who started working for the City of Dayton in 1925.
At the time, Asztalos had been a blacksmith for 50 years, still “swinging a 10-pound sledge as if it were weightless.” at the age of 72.
His only change to modern times was an electric blower to fan the flames of the forge, formerly done with hand bellows.
Asztalos hammered out all sorts of metal fittings and tools for the various city divisions and departments. The week before the story was published, he was making sewer pipe brackets and asphalt cutting shovels.
Feb. 17, 1966: Springfield bootlegger found slain in cottage
Paul Gaskins, a 67-year-old bootlegger, was found shot to death in his home.
The man, who lived alone, was found with a gunshot through the neck and beaten, probably with a long furnace poker that was found at the scene.
Neighbors who knew him said Gaskins frequently carried fairly large sums of money with him.
Police said Gaskins had a long record for illegal sale of liquor and gambling. He had not been active for the past three or four years.
Feb. 16, 1973: Bobby Mitchell makes it big after transferring to Stivers
Bobby Mitchell was a star athlete who was among the first on Dayton’s transfers in the Freedom of Enrollment plan of 1969, moving from Roosevelt to Stivers. With his great success as a senior, the Dayton Daily News profiled him.
Mitchell was twice voted onto the All-Public league first team in football and made it into the exclusive 1,000-point career basketball club.
Mitchell lived just four blocks from Roosevelt high school, but he and two friends decided they wanted to go elsewhere.
“We decided we wanted to go to a white school,” Mitchell said, “So all we did was study the bus lines, Stivers was on our bus line, so that’s were we decided to go.
“Now, looking back, I’m pleased with myself about Stivers. I think of it as a step for the black community, as well as a step for the white community. I think things are beginning to open up.”
Mitchell was later voted into the Stivers Athletic Hall of Fame.
Feb. 17, 1982: 25 tons of cheese on its way
More than 50,000 pounds of cheese for the needy — courtesy of President Reagan — were set to be distributed in the Dayton area.
That was Dayton’s allotment of Ohio’s 1.4-million pound share of the federal government’s 30 million pound national cheese giveaway.
Most of the area’s supply of American process cheese was stored at the Terminal Cold Storage warehouse, which was normally used for storage of school lunch program food.
Local nonprofit charitable organizations geared up to hand out five-pound chunks to eligible families. The Salvation Army was giving out five-pound chunks of cheese to families of five or more and 2 1/2 pound chunks to single people and families of up to four people.
People were lined up around the block for the initial area giveaway in Troy.
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