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38 2O24–2O2 5 GU I D E to Y E L LOW S P R I NG S the private school for allow- ing space for her intellectual curiosity to thrive when she was a student. “[The Antioch School] gave me a foundation [so] that I took boldness, I took fearless- ness into every aspect of my life. I really believe that I can change the world, and I say it in present tense,” Jalyn Roe said. The couple now reside in what Jalyn Roe calls the fam- ily’s “legacy” home; property that has been in her family for several decades. She is also related to the famed poet Paul Laurence Dunbar through her great-grandfather Fielding Dunbar, who was the poet’s first cousin. “We have eight generations that have grown up in Yellow Springs,” Jalyn Roe said. “My great-great-grandfather was a slave that was freed — he got his freedom because of the war.” Jalyn Roe said her family owned several acres of prop- erty on what is now called Grinnell Road. “Pat Matthews [former writer for the YS News] used to say they owned more land than Grinnell. And it would’ve been called Dunbar Road [instead of Grinnell], if they were white. Fielding Dunbar gave the land to the boys, and the homes to his girls. The boys quickly sold the land,” she said. According to Roe, entrepre- neurship is a mainstay of her family legacy. “I very strongly believed that you have to own something. You can’t get it by working on someone else’s dream,” she said. Roe’s parents were entre- preneurs and owned several local businesses. Her parents owned a nightclub called the MaJaGa, which her father named after the women in his life. “He [her father, Jacob Jones, Jr.,] called it his three queens, Maxine, Jalyn and Gayla [his wife and two daughters], and the Party Pantry,” she said. Jalyn Roe’s parents were the first Black owners of a Cassano’s Pizza King fran - chise, and also helped other African American businesses get established in the com- munity. “My father believed in help- ing Blacks get into business, and of course, they couldn’t get loans. He financed Gabby’s restaurant,” she said. STEVEN ROE The son of a teenage mother, Steven Roe’s upbring- ing in Springfield was a con - trast to his wife’s experiences in the village. “I lived with my teenage mother who lived with her parents through the second grade of my life, and they were poor. They had an outhouse in the back of the house, and the water — you had to pump it out in the front yard,” Roe said. Roe grew up in a section of the city known as “The Bottom.” “It was called Front Street because it fronted on Buck Creek. Everyone in that area was poor,” he said. Steven Roe experienced racism early on, describing an incident in which he was arrested when he was around 14 years old. The arrest was triggered by an incident involving the owner of an ice cream shop where he and his uncle had gone to purchase milkshakes. “I was accused at one point of attacking a police officer with a milkshake — that’s what the actual police report said — a milkshake,” he said. “And I would’ve spent the entire weekend in jail had it not been for the fact that my grandfather was a well-known Baptist preacher in the area,” he said. Roe also credits his mother with changing his life after she purchased him a set of encyclopedias when he was in the fourth grade. “I spent my hours reading the encyclopedia, and just really loving it and enjoying it,” he said. Roe added that his mother had to advocate for his edu- cational choice to take certain classes in school when he was a junior high school student. “I wanted to take Span- ish, and they told me that I couldn’t take that course. And so, my mom came to the school and told them, ‘He can take whatever he wants.’ After she got them straight, I was able to take Spanish,” he said. Roe believes that his educational engagement with the books led him to Central State University. “I was the first one in my family to graduate from college,” he said. “I have a master’s degree in business admin- istration, and I’m a certified rocket scientist.” What does it take to be certified as a rocket scientist? According to Steven Roe, it’s a boring topic. “My strengths were in the area of physics and mathematics, and I took a certification of something called Advanced Technical Intelligence, designed to help you configure the sensors on a rocket, and then determine what the payload will be, and how much fuel you need to get that rocket into orbit,” he said. Before co-founding The Jael Group with his wife, Steven Roe said he worked for defense contractors at UCLA. “I ran a research lab at UCLA Medical Center, and the anesthesiology depart- ment for seven years. I’ve had a lot of different jobs. I’m a published author in several scientific journals,” he said. ♦ 107 Xenia Ave. omnibusyellowsprings @ gmail.com r s s ” ‘ ACollection of Many Thin g s ’