David first reached out to me back in 2017, when he was looking for pictures of Woolworth’s and Harvest House cafeteria at Midway Mall. I provided a few leads for him, including the name of the last manager of Harvest House before it closed, as well as a woman who was a waitress at Woolworth’s. David was extremely grateful, and regularly updated me with news of his progress towards his goal.
He next turned his attention to the old Westgate Mall in Lorain. This eventually led to his quest to acquire an old Fazio’s sign from the former store there. It took him several years and a lot of effort, but in the end he was successful. (I wrote about this in a two-part post here and here.)
As a collector and nostalgia buff, I came to admire David’s enthusiasm and persistence as he went about trying to obtain some item of interest to him. And it paid off. In one email, he noted, “I've acquired a huge collection of Pick-N-Pay memorabilia and I am going to have it put in a shadow box and displayed somewhere in my house. I also have a ton of Woolworth’s memorabilia, as well as some Fazio's memorabilia.”
So why did he collect all this stuff? It think it reminded him of happy days.
As David explained in an email, “I do not know if it's a good or bad thing, but I am very sentimental and I try to hold onto memories as long as I can. The memories I have – from shopping at Pick-N-Pay in the 70's with Mom as a little kid, to spending the whole day at Midway Mall – are things that I will always cherish.
My sincere condolences to David’s family and friends.
7 comments:
Condolences.
Sincere sympathy to those he loved and loved him.
What a very nice write-up. Thanks!
Thank you for that wonderful write-up for my old friend. I met Dave in 3rd grade at Birmingham elementary. In 7th grade, Dave and I got to be the scoreboard operators for the boys and girls basketball games. I stayed with it until we got to high school. Dave continued to do it for 40 years! Not surprisingly, Dave began collecting old scoreboards, which filled his garage walls. He would send me pics of his latest acquisitions and tell me that he had one for me whenever I wanted one. I would tell him I had no room, as I already have lots of old stuff hanging on my garage walls. I last chatted with him about a month before his untimely passing and he told me he had no plans to retire from the scorers table any time soon. I will truly miss him.
Thanks for the great write-up about Dave. He would routinely mention your blog and felt like he really connected with you. The last time I talked with him was about plans for the new midway mall. Although a big history buff, he was excited about the potential future plans for the mall. He'll ne missed,
A lovely tribute to your friend, Dan.
Dave sounded like a real live "American Pickers" with all of his collecting.It's good that people keep actual items from the past.To let us all know where we came from.Dave is now in Hoarder Heaven in the sky.
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