Here’s a look at some stories from the week of Sept. 1-7.
Sept. 3, 1938: 10 dead, 5 hurt in 2 auto crashes
A horrific night on Dayton roadways made front-page news in 1938.
Ten people died and five more sustained injuries in two car crashes.
In the first crash, in which a driver failed to stop at a stop sign on route 73, six people died and four were injured.
In the other crash, on Springfield Road, two cars hit head-on, killing four people. One driver was arrested for driving in a weaving manner, which was seen by witnesses of the crash.
Sept. 5, 1948: Dayton’s first woman high school principal proud of school
Roosevelt High School, the largest high school in Dayton, opened in 1948 with the first woman high school principal in Dayton history, Nettie Lee Roth. At the time, there were 2,200 students enrolled.
It was written that Roth possibly had more to do with making Roosevelt what it was at the time than any other person.
She was one of the school’s first assistant principals, starting in 1923.
According to reporter Gordon Englehart, “One of Miss Roth’s major qualifications as the first woman high school principal in Dayton history is her complete belief in her school. A visitor comes away convinced that, in Miss Roth’s mind, Roosevelt is beyond question the city’s finest high school,”
Roth was proud of the strong loyalty graduates had to their old school. She said that a pupil seldom graduated without having made three or four personal friends of teachers and continued their close ties to the school in later years.
Sept. 3, 1958: Wright brothers monument set for rites in Virginia
Acting Secretary of the Army, Hugh Milton, presided at a military ceremony dedicated to another historic achievement by Dayton’s Wilbur and Orville Wright.
Milton unveiled a monument at Fort Myer, Virginia, to the first military flight by an airplane. That historic occasion took place exactly 50 years prior, in 1908, with Orville at the controls.
A plaque was also unveiled honoring the memory of First Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge.
Selfridge was killed two weeks after the first military flight at Fort Myer, while flying with Orville Wright. Orville, who was piloting the plane, was injured critically and was unable to continue his tests for the Army Signal Corps.
A later Wright model plane passed all tests, however, and was bought by the Army in 1909 for $25,000.
In connection with the ceremony, the U.S. Army made available to the Dayton Daily News a set of historic pictures showing the first military flight and scenes from the fatal crash.
Sept. 2, 1968: Grismer to open fifth store
The Grismer Tire Co. was about to open its fifth store at 6600 Brandt Pike, adjacent to Goldman’s department store in Huber Heights.
Charles Marshall was the president of Grismer Tire at the time. Grismer had handled Firestone in Dayton since 1932.
The facility was to operate six days a week selling Firestone tires and other automotive services. It was to be open seven days a week selling Goldman’s gasoline.
The store was to be managed by Brandon Mabe and have a total of seven employees.
Grismer is still in business today and has about 25 locations.
Sept. 3, 1978: Museum piece still looks good to two WWII pilots
In 1978, Edison Heintz, of Blue Island, Illinois, and George Hillman of East Lansing, Michigan were in Dayton for a date with an old girlfriend from World War II.
The old girlfriend was a four-engine Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber on display at the Air Force Museum.
Heintz was the pilot and Hillman was the co-pilot of a 512th Bomb Squadron crew that flew 50 missions in B-24s from a base in in Italy in 1944.
The B-24 was believed to be one of only two or three of its kind still in existence, although 18,190 were built during the war.
On Hillman’s 50th and final mission, he was shot down in another plane and spent three months in a prison camp in Bulgaria. He later made it to Turkey, where he was turned over to the American consul and sent home.
Heintz said he hadn’t flown an airplane since he came home from the war.
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