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70  GUIDE TO YELLOW SPR INGS  |  2020 – 2021 By YS NEWS STAFF Thanks to its handy home improvement supplies, it could be said that the local hardware store at the corner of Xenia Avenue and Short Street — now called Yellow Springs Hardware — has held the town together for close to a century. And it’s done so with considerable continu - ity; since 1927, the store has moved once and changed hands only three times. The last of those changes in ownership happened in 2014, when the reins were handed from the Down- ing family to villagers Gilah Pomeranz and Shep Ander- son. Since then, the local couple has operated the independent business as they set out to do: with the needs of villagers in mind. “We appreciate the value of local merchants knowing what you need,” Pomeranz told the News at the time. Toward that end, the couple has cultivated a line of products that caters to both local contractors and villagers diving into DIY projects. Their products are more environmentally friendly, they have added additional gardening supplies for the considerable number of local green thumbs, and they’ve even started carrying a few items that might bring tourists into the shop. In fact, “knowing what the customer needs” has long been the modus operandi of the local hardware store, which has nearly always been locally owned and run. Before John Downing and his sister, store man- ager Kathy Macklemore, ran the shop, which was part of a franchise and called “Downing’s Do It Best,” it was indpendently owned by the Deaton family for three to a bigger building on Xenia Avenue in 1936, in the loca- tion where it stands today. In the 1930s, the store car- ried “a lot of things they don’t carry today,” Wilbur Deaton recalled to the News, includ- ing buggy whips, horse collars, hog scrapers, shotguns and shaving cream and brushes. The elder Deaton was tragically killed in March 1949 by a drunk driver as he ran across the street to open the store for a customer on a Saturday night. His death was a blow to the community, and a News article after the accident noted that it would not attempt a “full list of the commendable things Mr. Deaton stood for, for those who have known him longer would immediately appear to point out something we had missed.” The business was taken over by his son shortly thereafter, and the younger Deaton ran it for more than 50 years. He received help over the years from many locals, including his son, Randy Deaton, who managed PHOTO: MATT MINDE, YS NEWS ARCHIVE The hardware store has continued to operate on the same street corner since the 1930s; it’s changed ownership only three times in its history. Above, current owners Shep and Gilah Pomeranz pose with Kathy Mackelmore, left, in 2017, when they purchased the business from her and her brother, John Downing. PHOTO: ANTIOCHIANA, ANTIOCH COLLEGE The hardware store, at left here in the 1970s. Hardware store holds town together generations. In fact, it was only recently, in 2000, that the Downings bought it from Wilbur “Bill” Deaton, the son of founder Glenn Deaton, who opened Deaton Hard- ware in 1927. According to an advertise - ment for the hardware store from 1956, the elder Deaton was an “ambitious clerk” at a Springfield hardware store who took it upon himself to open a store of his own. “Almost every man dreams of owning a well-stocked hardware store with all the various fascinating tools,” said the ad, and Deaton achieved this dream when he bought an existing hardware store on Dayton Street, which became the first loca - tion of the Yellow Springs hardware store. Though “first day sales were about like the weather at the time — mighty poor,” the store gradually made enough profit that Deaton was able to move