092622_GYS_2022_ONLINE

34 GU I D E to Y E L L OW S P R I NG S | 2O22 – 2O23 In 1933, Vernay Laboratories began in a tiny 15-feet-by-20- feet space in the Antioch Col - lege science building basement as a “Rube Goldberg” opera- tion — “a fantastic arrange - ment of tubes and spigots and wires and pipes that you put a solution in here and another mixture in here and out comes something called simply ‘the chemical,’” a college bulletin said at the time. Presiding over the laboratory was its creator, Sergius Vernet, a tall, dark-haired man who, perhaps as much as any single individual in village history, shaped Yellow Springs into the community it is today. “The company was very much about Sergius,” said Scott Sanders of Antiochiana, the Antioch College archives. “While he was alive, it operated in his image.” That image reveals a brilliant thinker, a passionate believer in equal rights and a lively conver- sationalist whose home was, according to the college bul- letin, a salon for artists and cre - ative people, the “Greenwich Village” of Yellow Springs. The Antiochian described him as a notorious practical joker who once “planted Antioch students in the Glen dressed in various startling costumes by means of which he hoped to overawe several visiting Easterners.” Sanders summed up Vernet with four words: “very smart, very generous.” That generosity led to the funding of several Yellow Springs institutions that, without contributions from the Vernay Foundation, might never have existed. These include the Community Children’s Center, the Yellow Springs Public Library, the Glen Helen Building and Friends Care Community. A native of Brooklyn, Vernet came to Antioch College in ʾ33 when he was invited by the college’s president, Arthur Morgan, to participate in the Antioch Industrial Research Institute, a program Morgan ini - tiated to attract “entrepreneurs and inventors to Yellow Springs by offering research space and equipment in exchange for sharing whatever commercial success their efforts might produce and employment of A HISTORY OF VERNAY LABS By DIANE CHIDDISTER From June 2002 with additional material by REILLY DIXON ▲ Sergius Vernet, left, and members of Vernay Patents Company’s Labor Management Committee, Sue Fessenden, Herman Jackson and Joan Ellis in October 1944. P H O T O : A N T I O C H I A N A , A N T I O C H C O L L E G E • Over 250 selections of domestic, imported and micro brew beers • Expanded selection of wines including a wide variety of organics • Natural flavors of coffee & cappuccino • Sunday beer all day & wine sales after 11 a.m. • Lottery /ATM machine Locally & Family Owned Ben Van Ausdal, Manager 4 Xenia Ave. • 937-767-1349 Monday–Sunday 7 a.m.–10 p.m. Nipper ’ s Corner