Woman helped husband operate corner store from 1930s to 1950s

12/10/2005

Mrs. Guy died of complications from dementia, said a son, Arthur Guy.

Born Bernice Newman in Crissey, she married Arthur J. Guy at age 17 and from 1934 until 1955 they operated Guy's Market at the corner of Albon Road and Chicago Pike, now Airport Highway.

"Mom helped whenever the store got busy," the son said. "We lived above the store, and there was a doorbell-like alarm Dad could ring if he needed her to come down."

Guy's was a mom-and-pop market typical of the era, offering meat and basic groceries.

"It was a gathering place also, for people to come and talk," Arthur Guy said.

The store demanded long hours, though, and the family took few vacations, the son said. When they did travel, Mr. Guy hired local people he knew to keep things running in his absence.

On the plus side, Arthur Guy said, "If we had company and we ran out of something, we could just go downstairs and get it."

Eventually, the long hours and supermarket competition persuaded Mr. Guy to sell the business.

The family then moved into a house that he had built on Crissey Road, and he went to work at the S.M. Jones Co., an oil-well equipment manufacturer.

Buyers converted the old market into a used-furniture store, and the building succumbed to Airport Highway widening during the late 1970s. A gas station now occupies the corner where it once stood.

Arthur Guy said his mother was content as a housewife, and housekeeper, once his parents no longer had their own business.

In later years, she often babysat her grandchildren, he said.

The Guys were founding members of Providence Lutheran Church.

Arthur J. Guy died in October, 2001.

Surviving are her sons, Arthur and Robert Guy; daughter, Dorothy Kunz; brother, Carl Newman; seven grandchildren; 17 great-grandchildren, and six great-great-grandchildren.

The body will be in the Maison-Dardenne-Walker Funeral Home, Maumee, after 2 p.m. tomorrow. Services will be at 10 a.m. Monday in Providence Lutheran Church.

The family suggests tributes to the church or the Hospice of Northwest Ohio.