St. Mary High School Final Graduation Class – June 1969

A recent view

School’s out for summer, so it’s a good time to feature a few vintage school-related articles with that theme from the pages of the Lorain Journal.

Today’s story is from the June 4, 1969 edition of the paper. It’s about the final graduating class of St. Mary High School in Lorain. (The school’s replacement – Lorain Catholic High School - was to open that fall.

Here’s the article (below) as it appeared in the paper. Click on it for a readable version.

The Hoop on West Erie – Then & Now

Photo courtesy of Richard C. Head

To close out my weeklong look back at the restaurants owned and managed by Richard W. Head, I thought I’d give the only former Hoop Drive-in still standing the “Then & Now” treatment. It’s located down at the southwest corner of West Erie Avenue and Leavitt Road.

Above you see it in its heyday. The distinctive angled roof really gave it a modern appearance.

I remember the restaurant from its Manners days. It's where we brought our straight-A report cards to receive a free Big Boy, when that promotion was running in the late 1960s.

As I noted back on this post, Manners abandoned this location in the early 1970s. A variety of restaurants then followed, including Tudy’s Coffee Shop; Bonnie’s Place; Antigoni’s; The Fish Shanty; Pete’s Family Restaurant.

Today the former Hoop Drive-in is still the home of the popular Beachcliff Diner. The parking lot is really jammed on Sunday mornings.

The restaurant should consider removing the faux mansard roof and window inserts. It would really create a nice retro vibe for the place.

The Restaurants of Richard W. Head – Part 4

The Hoop Drive-in on West Erie
(Photo courtesy of Richard C. Head)

As I noted in a past series on the Hoop Drive-in, the popularity and success of Richard W. Head’s homegrown restaurant chain attracted the attention of the Manners organization in Cleveland.

(It probably didn’t hurt that the “Sooper Hooper” double-decker burger was similar to the classic Big Boy sandwich.)

By 1961, Manners had purchased the original Hoop Drive-in on Henderson Drive.

1962 Lorain phone book ad

Three out of the four remaining locations (including an Elyria outlet on Bridge Street) followed, leaving one Hoop restaurant on North Ridge near Clinton Avenue. Richard W. Head consequently joined the Manners organization as an associate.

But that’s not the end of the story. Even before the Manners chain eventually disappeared entirely in the late 1970s, Richard W. Head was back at work at the restaurants he built. The 1975 city directory listed him as the manager of Poor Richard’s Pub at the original Hoop Drive-in location. And the former West Erie Avenue Hoop that had become a Manners Big Boy briefly became a Hoop again in 1975.

In September 1975, Richard W. Head purchased Tudy’s Restaurant on 254. He also developed a small chain of Tudy’s Restaurants, using the former Hoop/Manners location on West Erie and the Manners at 2173 N. Ridge Road.

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Looking back, Richard W. Head successfully owned and operated restaurants in the Lorain area over three decades. It’s an achievement that we’ll probably not see again soon, especially during a time in which consumers tend to favor national chains, making it a challenge for locally owned restaurants to survive.

In an email, Richard C. Head explained how his father’s restaurants played an important role in his life.

"All of my family worked in those restaurants in our teen years and they were the foundation of our family’s financial well being, as well as a training ground for all of us regarding how to work hard in this life."

As for his father, Richard noted, "He was a unique man who taught us all how to conduct our lives for the greater good. 

"Thanks for keeping his legacy alive!”

The Restaurants of Richard W. Head – Part 3

Hula hooping behind the Hoop Drive-in on Henderson Drive
(Photo courtesy of Richard C. Head)

Richard W. Head believed in the power of advertising when it came to his restaurants. Above is a photo of a hula hoop promotion that took place in the parking lot of the Hoop Drive-in on Henderson Drive.

But there was an even more ambitious promotion that took place at that location in 1956 during the summer of a steel strike in Lorain. This promotion involved a flagpole sitter.

Here’s a photo (courtesy of Richard C. Head) of the installation of the flagpole.

Putting up a flag pole on the Hoop on Henderson Drive
 (Courtesy Richard C. Head)

So what was the story behind the flagpole sitter? An ad designed to resemble a newspaper article told the whole story (below) in the July 23, 1956 edition of the Lorain Journal.

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FLAGPOLE SITTER DRAWS 
BUSINESS TO RESTAURANT

A flagpole sitter has joined our midst. You’ll find him perched 40 feet in the air over the Hoop Drive-in restaurant.

Doing the sitting is Joseph Rhodes, nicknamed Dusty, of course. Dusty is 47 and a former carnival roustabout who once before sat on top of a flagpole.

“That was during the depression,” he reported through his sponsor, Richard Head, owner of the restaurant. “Dusty had nothing else to do, so he sat on a pole for 38 days.”

This latest sitting was inspired by the steel strike.

Dusty has nothing to do with the steel industry. But Head’s business began dropping off because of the strike, so he induced Dusty to sit on the pole in hopes of attracting a little business.

“It’s worked, too,” said Head. “Business has been improving since Dusty got up there.” That was last Monday night.

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A short bulletin at the bottom of the ad reported that “Dusty Rhodes, flagpole sitter at The Hoop Drive-in, came down from his perch this morning due to illness.” He had been up there about a week.

Curiously, the Lorain Journal covered the story of the sick flagpole sitter without mentioning the Hoop. This article (below) ran on the front page of the Journal on July 23, 1956.

The steel strike was officially over on July 28, 1956, so it doesn’t appear that Dusty Rhodes had recovered in time to resume his perch atop the flagpole.

Next: Manners

The Restaurants of Richard W. Head – Part 2

The Hoop Drive-in on Henderson Drive
(Courtesy Richard C. Head)

After the Lorain Diner, Richard W. Head’s next big endeavor was the Hoop Drive-in. He started out with the single restaurant on Henderson Drive.

A full-page ad for the Hoop appeared in the June 21, 1955 edition of the Lorain Journal. The ad included a menu touting the “Super Hooper” (2 patties of fresh ground choice beef, a slice of tomato, lettuce – served with a special sauce on toasted bun), the “Peanut Hooper” (2 patties of fresh ground choice beef plus a generous portion of delicious peanut butter – served on toasted bun), and the “Sausage Hooper” (2 patties of fresh ground corn fed pork – just enough seasoning to give it that country style flavor – served on toasted bun).

The ad also included a biography of the man behind the restaurant.

Here are a few Hoop Drive-in ads from the early days.

1955 Lorain phone book ad

1956 Lorain phone book ad

A second Hoop location opened in June 1957.

Lorain Journal ad from June 29, 1957

By the time of the 1957 phone book, the chain had expanded to three outlets.

Next: Promotions

The Restaurants of Richard W. Head – Part 1

The original Hoop Drive-in on Henderson Drive

Since I started writing this nostalgia blog back in 2009, I’ve written about Lorain’s iconic Hoop Drive-in Restaurants many times.

I featured a 1956 St. Patrick’s Day ad here; a 1957 ad announcing the opening of the second Hoop Drive-in here; a 1959 Easter Dinner ad here; a 1960 ad announcing the addition of Sloppy Joes to the Hoop menu here; and a look at the various restaurants that succeeded the Hoop at its Henderson Drive location here.

I also did a two-part series on how three of the four area Hoop Drive-in Restaurants eventually became part of the Manners Big Boy chain.

Well, as a fitting follow-up to all this Hoop-la, I received a nice email back in April from Richard C. Head, the son of the Hoop’s founder. He wrote, "I found your Blog on Lorain County. Thanks for all the hard work.

"As additional information on the Hoop Restaurants and the Town Crier restaurant, the founder of all those restaurants was my father, Richard W. Head."

In a subsequent email, Richard noted that there were other restaurants besides the Town Crier Inn that his father was involved with, before he founded the Hoop Drive-in.

"The Butterfry Restaurant (to my knowledge) was my dad’s first restaurant in Lorain,” he explained.

Sure enough, the 1952 Lorain city directory listing for the restaurant with the not-too-healthy-sounding moniker included his father’s name as the man in charge.

One of Richard W. Head’s next endeavors was the Lorain Diner. I’ve written about it a few times, including this three-part series. The Lorain Diner was located a few doors east of the Pueblo on the same side of U. S. Route 6.

Feb. 29, 1952 Grand Opening Ad

1954 Lorain County Rural Directory listing

Richard C. Head provided me with this photo of him and his father, hard at work building the Lorain Diner. They’re actually in the rear of it.

This recent photo of the former Lorain Diner (now the home of West Side Tractor & Marine) shows part of the rear of the building where Richard and his father were photographed.

Next: The Hoop Drive-in

New U.S. Highway Signs for Norwalk – 1968

Although it's June at last, here's a small leftover from May that I didn't have time to post.

It's a small photo with caption from the May 29, 1968 Lorain Journal – 50 years ago.  It depicts a simple event (the routine installation of new highway signs) but commemorates something much bigger: the opening of the U. S. Route 20 Bypass around Norwalk.

The construction of these new, limited-access bypasses around cities during the 60s and 70s made it much easier to get around, but it forever changed small town American life. Without that steady flow of traffic through the heart of a city, downtowns deteriorated as businesses suffered and eventually closed.

It's no coincidence that the beginning of Lorain's decline in the 1960s coincided with the opening of the new Route 2.