“Though the thing is when times are bad people sometimes start praying again,” said Karen Klepacz, fourth-generation owner and has been vice president of the corporation since the 1990s.
This spring, the palm orders were already in for Palm Sunday when the pandemic hit and many churches switched to streaming video online of their services.
“I think we ended up putting on the bill to pay what you think is fair, or what you can afford. If not, we get it. But probably three quarters of the parishes paid for it,” she said.
The pandemic has led to some other shifts and changes. With many local Christian book stores closed, they’ve had an uptick in orders for bibles. More people have been asking for boxes of individual communion packs with a sip of wine and bread wafer packaged in singles that people can have at home.
“Our wine took a huge hit, because nobody is doing common cup anymore,” she said.
History
Dayton Church Supply provides alter paraments, communion dresses, baptism accessories, church supplies, crosses, crucifixes and seasonally and liturgically appropriate decorations, and accessories.
The business is in downtown Dayton at 136 E. Third St., now surrounded by new development.
It’s origins date back to November 1912, when after being a road salesman for Benzinger Brothers in Cincinnati, Joseph Tegenkamp came to Dayton and bought The Catholic Library Store. This store rented Catholic literature for a few cents a day.
On Easter Sunday in March 1913, the Dayton flood brought four trillion gallons of water through downtown. The business was washed out, according to the family business’ history. Joseph Tegenkamp enlisted a partner from his days in Cincinnati and reopened as the Witte-Tegenkamp Company, which sold church supplies and religious articles. When the Great Depression hit, Witte asked Tegenkamp to buy him out and the company went into receivership and was renamed as The Dayton Church Supply.
The business relocated to its current location in 1948 and was eventually taken over by Frank Tegenkamp, who saw it through the changes to the Catholic Church ushered in by Vatican II.
Upon his death in 1966, the Dayton Church Supply was incorporated and taken over by Frank’s widow Cornelia and their son Paul. Paul’s daughter Karen Klepacz is the fourth-generation owner and has been vice president of the corporation since the 1990s.
Unique business
The church supply business can be a quirky and varied line of work, importing priest vestments from Europe or making a trip to New York once a year to bring back candle wax scraps to be re-melted back down.
The store has shelves and shelves of rosaries, liturgical posters, Nativity sets, and more. Sometimes a customer will come in and just order a candle, and she’ll have to explain they enough different kinds of candles for different occasions to fill their basement.
“You have to kind of run the gamut. You have everything from a holy card to a marble altar. We just were in the middle of doing an installation of a marble altar, which comes from Italy. That’s a whole process, the Customs agents, the paperwork and installing it,” Klepacz said.
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