Friday, May 9, 2025                                                  Newsletter #1

Hello All,

DISCLOSURE: This email has been sent to a dozen people in the form of “blind” copy. This hides your email address in order to protect your online privacy. When responding, and we hope you do, a “reply all” will hide your email address as well. You can also just respond to tiffinbowlinghistory@gmail.com.

Tiffin Bowling History (TBH) would like to give everyone who responded to our letter an update. A special thank you to our local news outlets for helping us get the word out. This project has progressed nicely. We already have an all-star cast, and we are just getting started.

What we hope to do (more on that later) depends on what we have. What we have means – what our local city bowling association officers might have as far as records. We have now found, and been in contact with, the two main historians on both the men and women’s side. It now comes down to; what do we have, how much, and in what form. After several conversations with these two people, we now have a pretty good idea of what we are dealing with as far as the data that would need to be digitized. Not overwhelming by any means. Without those two people this project never gets off the ground. They were and are the best. Thank you!

For example – average books. I found an average book published by the men’s association in 1993/1994 which lived in the bottom of my bowling bag in the basement for the last 30 years. It’s not in the best condition (image attached) as you can see. I’m sure there are many others elsewhere, and it sounds like our records people have that covered. Great stuff, and a good start. As you can see from the image, this is the 14th annual edition, so they go back to 1980. They contain the individual bowlers’ averages and what leagues they bowled in the previous year, along with the all time high scores and results of the previous year’s City Tournament.

They also have old newspaper memorabilia. More can be found via microfilm at our local library, which brings me to another great addition. The Tiffin Seneca Public Library and The Seneca County Museum have offered to help in whatever capacity they can. They have already been helpful. Thank you so much.

It now becomes about “stuff.” Accumulating whatever we can find to post in our digital museum and getting the word out to other people to find more. It now becomes a research project as well as a scavenger hunt. The more the merrier.

This is more than just bowling history, it’s Tiffin history, and about the bowling establishments themselves. To our understanding, the Junior Auditorium was the first bowling alley in the city of Tiffin. One of our historians’ dads worked there. Not sure when. The Junior Auditorium was connected to The Junior Home, a staple of Tiffin history. It was located at 155 E. Market St. beside the skating rink across from the old East Jr. High School. We don’t know when it was built, but it was torn down in 1961 or 1962 and replaced with a First National Bank drive thru. Today, it is the National Machinery Splash Pad and Amphitheater. What can we find out about this place? As I understand it, the bowling alley was on the second floor. One of our historian’s dad worked as a pin setter there at one time. He was paid by the game. Pennies at that time. Imagine setting pins by hand? Ouch!

Right down the street toward Heidelberg, just past Rock creek, was the Bowl-O-Drome (on the other side of the street) at 198 E. Market St. This was an eight-lane alley with a snack bar in the back. Neat place. The original owner had a big dog that walked around the building and rode in his coach. The dog’s name was King. Anyone who bowled there remembers King. According to records found on Facebook, thanks to the Tiffin Historical Society, it opened November 24, 1941. Other research shows it closed in 1977 after changing ownership sometime in the mid-sixties.

Then there is the K of C (Knights of Columbus) which is still located at 49 E. Perry St. Not sure if they have bowling in their basement anymore (4 lanes), but they might have some history of all the years they did. They had regular leagues as well as a huge annual tournament that went on for weeks.

Southland Lanes. This bowling alley was between the fairgrounds and the airport where Smith’s Family Foods is now located at 1600 W. County Road 54 (this was the official Southland address). It opened in 1977 and closed in 1984 or 1985 (we think). At that time Tiffin was supporting two 24 alley bowling alleys (including Gay Lanes), and the 4 at the K of C. Now we have none. On short research we can’t find much on Southland. They had 24 alleys, a lounge, and snack bar. If our memories are correct, their Grand Opening featured Dick Weber, a professional bowler, who bowled a 300 that night.

Finally, Gay Lanes, probably the most familiar bowling alley in town. Located at 747 W. Market Street. We think, but not verified, they opened sometime in the mid-fifties and closed circa 2017-2018. Gay Lanes changed their name to Heritage Lanes when they did a major remodeling sometime in the 2000’s (we think, not sure when). Most of the historians we have gathered here bowled at Gay Lanes, including a couple of people who worked there over a couple of generations. They have a wealth of knowledge and will be a great help. Thank you.

Going forward.

At this point, we have enough data to move to the next step – a website. This provides a better communication and collection point. This is where it gets complicated. Our site must be free. We want no money involved here. How do we do that? It can be done, not sure the best way. Maybe some have suggestions. Please speak up.

Once you hit the website, the main page would give an overview of this project. You could then select between the bowling alleys to see the history of each facility and whatever is found and submitted for that location. Then select by year, if applicable, to include our city association records, average books, newspaper clippings, and whatever someone might take a picture of and submit for each location (we have some already). Take a picture, send it in, get full credit, unless you prefer to be anonymous.

After spending some time at the microfilm machine at the library, much of the data can be found. But before taking on that task you need dates. A starting point. This is where more people mean more information. Where to start you might say. We have some general dates, but they are broad. Southland closed in 1984-1984 for example. That’s not close enough. It would take miles of microfilm and many hours to research 2 or 3 years of old newspaper articles to find what we are looking for. Shrinking that date window would be a great help. I’m sure we have the people whose memories will help shrink the date range.

As we said above, we already have an all-star cast, but there are still a few others we would like to get on board. One gentleman wrote many articles over the years for the Advertiser-Tribune named Al Stephenson, and another named Mark Steinmetz, a well-known and published local historian. We don’t know how to contact them. The Tiffin Historical Society is another. They have posted some neat old bowling stuff to Facebook over the last few years. People loved it. It would be nice to get them on board as well. We contacted them via Facebook but didn’t get a response (some don’t respond and that’s fine). They only seem to be on Facebook, but we can’t find anything else. We found another person just last week who has an impressive collection of Tiffin history. He is going to contact us once he looks through his collection

As a bonus to this newsletter, and speaking of important dates, the below pictures were taken May 9, 2025 of the current demolition of Gay Lanes/Heritage Lanes at 747 W. Market St. Tiffin, Ohio.

All comments and suggestions are welcome. Please pass the word. Anyone who would like to submit anything can do so by submitting it to our email address below. Feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who may want to be a part of this project and replying to tiffinbowlinghistroy@gmail.com so we can get them on our email list (via blind copy).

Many thanks to everyone, more to come. Stay tuned,

TBH

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