Women remember experiences on job

The stores were known for Skyscraper cones, chipped ham and Klondikes.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
BOARDMAN -- A camaraderie that started at the office continues 35 years after the business closed.
About 15 employees and family members of the former Isaly's Youngstown dairy plant's office, all women, gathered Thursday at TJ's Restaurant in the Holiday Inn for what has become an annual reunion.
"Isaly's was a very family-oriented company," said Barbara Jones Horton of Boardman, whose father, John Paul Jones, was the company's attorney. Horton worked in the office for two summers before going to college.
"Many members of the same families worked there," she said.
Marjorie Latsko Green's family is one example. Her father, Jack Latsko, was a store manager; her mother, Margaret, worked in the office; and one of her uncles was a store manager.
Green, of Poland, started coming to the reunions with her mother, and she has continued since her mother's death.
"When I would come home for supper, my parents would talk about Isaly's," she said. "It was their life."
The reunions started about 10 years ago, when one of the former workers, Sophia Eliadas, moved to Naples, Fla. The gatherings are scheduled for when she and her sister return to the area for visits.
"I grew up there," said Eliadas, who worked at the store for more than 16 years, beginning when she was in high school. "I had a good boss -- Art Frank."
But her memories of the company date back even before she worked there.
"The Skyscraper cones were one of the things Isaly's was famous for," she said.
The women said the ice cream treat was named for its narrow height and tapering top.
"That was our treat," Eliadas said. "After church on Sundays we had to go to Isaly's and get the rainbow ice cream."
Other Isaly's favorites were chipped ham and Klondikes.
Friendship outlasts business
Donna Holesko Sedzmak of Boardman worked in the payroll department from 1959 until it closed in 1971. "That was a sad day," she said.
The building that housed the plant at the corner of Glenwood and Mahoning avenues is now owned by U-Haul.
Mary Lou Gartland of Canfield was the longest serving employee who attended Thursday's reunion. She worked in the plant's office from 1932 to 1971.
Florence Hughes O'Neill of Youngstown worked as a secretary from 1947 when she graduated from high school to 1956, and Jean Nemenz Davidson of Berlin Center served as head of the payroll department for 16 years.
All of the women say they have fond memories of their years at the plant, and they laugh and reminisce as they share stories, remember gossip and pass around photographs.
Horton and Eliadas have become the historians of the group and between the two of them can rattle off the history of the company, its owners and operations.
Horton can recite the locations of the first stores, founding family members' names and how things worked like its second nature.
"The women had a big ledger book, and they would write in the day's receipts," she said. "Part of the job was they had to have excellent penmanship."
Part of O'Neill's duties was writing letters to individual store managers, informing them about their profits and how to improve store operations.
"These women were the forerunners of the women's movement," Horton said.