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| I still have a bottle of genuine Driscol Music Co. slide oil |
For a period of almost 75 years, if you were a musician in Lorain County, then you probably spent some time in one of the two Driscol Music Co. stores in Lorain County. The stores sold everything a musician needed, including the instruments. In Lorain, the store was conveniently located right downtown at 445 Broadway.
That's why I was happy to find the article below about the Driscol brothers, Paul and Ted, and their company. The article ran in the Journal on Feb. 20, 1972, and provides a nice history of the firm.
As the article notes, "The history of the two present Driscol music stores can be traced back to a little piano store in downtown Elyria founded in 1941 by Paul Driscol, Sr., the brothers' father, who is now president of the Driscol Music Co.
"After the war, a Lorain store was opened in the 1000 block of Broadway and was later moved to the present location. The Lorain store has been remodeled and expanded several times, and the Elyria store was moved to its new location in April of 1971."
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| Grand Opening Ad for the New Lorain Store - May 23, 1958 |
It was a sad day when
Paul Driscol passed away in late June 2014. The Lorain store closed its doors forever about five months later in mid-November 2014.
Today the former Driscol Music building is home to a Domino's Pizza outlet.
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For many years, the Driscol Music store was a regular stop for the trumpet-playing Brady brothers for our valve oil, mutes, music, etc. And it was only a short walk from Mr. Visci's trumpet studio on Broadway. For many years, Mr. Visci received a lot of instrument repair work from Driscol's.
When I switched to trombone (due to getting braces), I bought my slide oil there as well. Many times I would see Mrs. Ksenich, the wife of Richard Ksenich, one of my Masson School elementary teachers there as she managed one of the departments. She was always a friendly, familiar face there.
My wife and 2 boys took piano lessons from Ted's wife Karen at their house maybe 12-15 years ago. They are both great people. Once or twice a year they would have a piano recital where all of Karen's students (probably ages 8 to 80) would perform a song in front of a crowd of family and friends at a local hall. That was a nervous time for the piano players but a nice memory. I still run into Ted sometime at Drug Mart in Amherst, apparently we're both regulars there.
ReplyDeleteHappy times & nice memories.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I delivered the Journal to the Driscoll's home on Parkview in the mid-1960s. However, I stopped taking piano lessons a couple of years before I took up "Journalism."
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