Small businesses played big role in lives of kids who grew up on Uhrichsville's Westside
NEW PHILADELPHIA ― There was a time when small businesses played a large role in the social fabric of communities like Uhrichsville. One example was H.L. Green's five-and-10-cent store in Uhrichsville, where the former Bertha Parson worked when Samuel Bonanno walked in to visit a girl he was dating. The girlfriend was out to lunch.
"He said to me, 'If it was my night to shave, I'd ask you out,'" she recalled. "'I said, 'You shave tomorrow night and I'll go with you.' I was 18 and he was 23. I was a farm girl and he was a city guy.
"That was in September. We got engaged in December, got married in April and had 64 years of marriage."
Sam Bonanno passed away on Dec. 4, 2016 at age 89.
Bertha said she had a good marriage, a wonderful husband and got an award-winning story about both.
She once won a bottle of wine at an event for seniors.
"I told my story that I found my million-dollar baby in a five-and-10-cent store and we won the prize," Bertha said.
More:Westside kids reflect on growing up in Uhrichsville, pandemic year
His widow was among 64 people with ties to Uhrichville's Westside who attended a reunion on Saturday at Tuscora Park. She brought along a painting by her cousin Joe Clantz which was given away in a drawing. Mary Russo won the picture of the H.H. Clantz gas station that was on Trenton Avenue, across the street from the school.
Bonanno said she comes to the Westside reunions "mostly because of the friendship and the fellowship. I didn't live on the Westside. I got in through my husband." During the reunion luncheon, she sat with nieces Loretta Besozzi Russell and Elizabeth Besozzi Russell, sisters who married brothers. Sam Bonanno lived with the Besozzis after his mother died.
Saturday's gathering was the eighth reunion, organized by Nancy Wardell Pallotto, whose grandmother owned a store. But Pallotto had worked at H.L. Green's for 50 cents an hour.
"I loved that job," she said.
Former Westsiders Dianne Dietrich Gulling, Bill Greenlee and Carolyn Greenlee Stewart shared a connection through a piece of memorabilia from the Greenlees' store. Gulling, who now lives in Alliance, found a 1946 calendar from the store while sorting through the estate of her mother, who died at age 98. The calendar has the same kind of advice about eating well that might seem familiar to moderns. But the store's two-digit telephone number would confound members of the cell phone generation.
Bill Greenlee came to the reunion from the Aurora, Colorado area. In addition to his parents' store, he remembered Staley's and the Pittis meat market.
He remembered how Pallotto's grandmother would talk to his mother when both were shopkeepers during World War II rationing.
"She'd say, 'Gladys, I want you to know we got some Tootsie Pops and Double Bubble in.' And we'd run down there. I'd be allowed to have one of each," Greenlee said.
Greenlee and Pallotto also remembered fact and fiction about their school days. He said the principal was rumored to have paddling machine that worked just like a sewing machine. She recalled being paddled by a first-year teacher, just like half of her schoolmates, including many who gathered to share memories and fellowship on Saturday.
Nexy year's Westside Uhrichsville reunion will be held Aug. 5 at Tuscora Park.
Reach Nancy at 330-364-8402 or nancy.molnar@timesreporter.com.
On Twitter: @nmolnarTR
This article originally appeared on The Times-Reporter: Small businesses played big role in Westside Uhrichsville kids' lives
