MEET YOUR NONPROFITS | This is the second in a series profiling the ongoing work of Yellow Springs-based nonprofit organizations.

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By Alissa Paolella

When The 365 Project’s Black History Walking Tour reaches King’s Yard, Lila Crockett does not need her notecards. The storefront where Wildflower Boutique Yellow Springs stands today was once Rita Caz, a shop with a staircase full of guitars, a drum set in the corner and cases of handmade jewelry. It belonged to her grandfather, Mark Crockett. She was small when it closed. She is 17 now, and on select summer afternoons she stands on that block and tells visitors about a Black-owned business in Yellow Springs that happened to be her own family’s.

“It was a very fun store,” she said.

That short distance — between the history on the card and the teenager delivering it — is the whole idea behind The 365 Project’s walking tours, now in their 11th year.

The Yellow Springs nonprofit, founded in 2008 to preserve and celebrate the village’s African American history “365 days a year,” hands its tours almost entirely to young people, some recruited as early as sixth grade. They learn the streets, the names and the stories, and then they lead grown adults through them.

The tours are among the most public of the nonprofit organization’s efforts, which range from a community encyclopedia to oral-history recordings, Wheeling Gaunt Day and a hand in the village’s MLK Day, Juneteenth and Kwanzaa observances. The group also sponsors the Citizens’ Action Reparations Fund, now in its fifth year, moving money from villagers who want to give to Black residents who can use it.

Taken together, the work of The 365 Project seems to repeat, for those who would hear, a question the village keeps asking itself as housing costs climb and its Black population thins: Who gets to stay in Yellow Springs?

In 1970, about 27% of Yellow Springs was Black, the result of a mid-century village that offered African American families affordable homes and comparatively open hiring. The 2020 census, by contrast, counted about 9% of the local population as Black, with nearly as many again identifying as more than one race. Kevin McGruder, The 365 Project’s treasurer and a history professor at Antioch College, said he sees the difference in the schools he helps bring tours to: classrooms of 20 or 25, often with only a few students of color.

The tour program was built, then, to involve those students in telling the story of local Black history, and make sure that story keeps being told. The program was modeled, in part, on that of a Cincinnati museum McGruder visited with then-board secretary, and current YS mayor, Steve McQueen and the late museum director Dr. John Fleming, where the three men encountered high school students who were paid to learn exhibits and work as docents. They thought the model was locally scalable — and Yellow Springs had no museum, so they made the village the exhibit.

John Gudgel, a founding member and the organization’s president, whose family has been in Yellow Springs since the 1890s, recruits walking tour guides from inside the schools, where he has spent more than four decades. There are no auditions and no cuts, and the young guides are paid.

“We take anybody who has an interest,” he said, and the organization pairs newer guides with seasoned ones until they are ready to face a crowd. Two guides lead most tours.

Crockett was about 12 when Gudgel offered her the job, and said the draw for her, at first, was that the pay — $10 an hour to walk around and talk. She had severe stage fright until she was 12 or 13; the tours dissolved it. Now, she said, she’s the kind of student who picks the presentation over the essay, and has watched herself become the older guide, the one training children in her younger brother’s grade.

“I try to be really approachable and friendly, so that they know I’m not judging [them] for being younger,” Crockett said, adding that she remembers being the small one, nervous around anyone more than a few years older. “I think it’s a nice little statement about Yellow Springs, that they let the younger kids be in charge.”

What a guide learns on a corner, McGruder said, is not in any classroom: the geography of their own town, and the fact that you can walk down a street with no idea who lived in a house or what happened there. The tours make the case that the community’s character was built and maintained across generations — and, though the guides may not say it outright, keeping that character will take the same deliberate effort.

“If they want this to continue,” McGruder said, “they’ve got to do it intentionally.”

Preserving the record is the reason The 365 Project exists. Its centerpiece is a community encyclopedia, “Blacks in Yellow Springs,” assembled beginning in 2017 by a committee of elders — many then in their late 70s and 80s — and published in 2020, with supplements still being added.

McGruder said the documents historians rely on tend to be the ones saved by wealthy families; the lives of everyday people slip away unless someone writes them down. Much of this history, he said, lives only in memory, and he is now the only one conducting the oral-history interviews that capture it. Some people on his list died before he reached them.

This year, the walking tour project brought every Mills Lawn Elementary class through the story of Wheeling Gaunt, the formerly enslaved man who bought his freedom, grew wealthy in Yellow Springs and left the village a legacy still honored each winter — delivering flour and sugar to local widows and widowers. Gudgel said he now hears the youngest students volunteer that the park by the pool is named for Gaunt.

“We know it’s resonating,” Gudgel said.

If the tours are how the village remembers, the reparations fund is how some villagers try to make amends. Its lead donor is Susan Harrison, a retired elementary school teacher who is white and who, by her own insistence, controls none of how the money is spent. She started the fund after the summer of 2020, when she marched in 25 straight weeks of racial-justice rallies in the village and kept turning over one phrase.

“The battle cry was ‘do something,’” Harrison said. “So, what can I personally do?”

She took the idea to Gudgel and McGruder, who embraced it, and she was clear about why she did not wait for a larger authority before writing the first check in August 2020.

“If you wait for the government to do it, it can take forever and a day, and it’ll never happen,” she said.

She insisted from the start that she hold no say over recipients. A committee of Black residents makes those decisions, and applicants are asked for no proof of lineage or hardship.

“It’s in their hands. It is not in my hands, and it never was going to be,” she said. “I didn’t feel I had any right to do that.”

Harrison has given about $110,000 of her own money over five years, she said, and intends to keep giving “into perpetuity.” She moved out of Yellow Springs to nearby Xenia in 2021 and funds the village’s reparations effort from outside it.

McGruder, who frames the fund in the language of the wealth gap, puts the same point in historian’s terms. In the aggregate, he said, the net wealth of Black families in the United States runs to roughly a tenth of that of white families, a gap rooted in generations of enslavement, exclusion from postwar housing wealth and discriminatory lending. The fund, he said, asks white residents who benefited from that history to help Black neighbors who did not.

The money has bought and repaired used cars, retired medical debt, seeded small businesses and, McGruder said, helped residents get current on rent and utilities.

Giving tends to move in waves, rising when a letter to the editor or a newspaper insert reminds people it is there; Harrison recalled an early insert that brought in about $17,000 and, more recently, an appeal to past donors that raised roughly $11,000.

Whether any of this keeps Black families in Yellow Springs is a harder question, and no one at The 365 Project claims a clean answer. McGruder is careful to say retention is not the fund’s stated purpose, though grants toward rent and utilities have, in practice, helped people hold on. He is equally careful about the tours, which have shifted over the years from mostly Black guides to an increasingly white group as the village has changed — a development he views, glass half full, as one that sends young allies back to their friends with a history they might not otherwise hear.

Lila Crockett said she traces her own future path — toward art history and, she hopes, a museum somewhere — directly to the tours. She may carry this history somewhere else.

What young guides take with them, Gudgel said, is “a sense of community and giving back and empathy,” whether they remain in Yellow Springs or not. Crockett, he added, “typifies what I’m hearing from guides as they get older.”

The real test for the organization, though, is in its own succession: Gudgel and McGruder have carried much of its work for close to two decades, and both wondered where the project will be in another 10 or 15 years without new people who feel the same urgency.

Their answer, for now, is the children — the seventh-graders Crockett is coaching, the kindergartners who already know Gaunt’s name.

This season’s last tour, Saturday, Sept. 12, is“Wheeling Gaunt’s Yellow Springs,” and it coincides with the annual Wheeling Gaunt Day. The tours are free, and they begin, most days, at Mills Park Hotel, where a group of adults gathers on the sidewalk and waits for a teenager to tell them where they are.

The Sept. 12 walking tour will begin at the Wheeling Gaunt statute at the Yellow Springs Train Station, 101 Dayton St. For more information about The 365 Project, visit the365projectys.org.

Over the last eight years, Yellow Springs has grown considerably in both geography and the number of folks who call these few square miles home.

Between 2017 and 2025, about 340 additional people became villagers, bringing the population to nearly 3,900. During that time, an estimated 184 new homes for sale and rent have been added to the local stock.

And more homes and people to fill them are on the way. By 2030, Yellow Springs is projected to have a population of 4,345 — the highest since the village’s peak in the 1970s.

However, unless local leaders take action, only an economically well-off few will be among those who can nab the new homes. The housing gaps in Yellow Springs — who can afford to live here and who cannot — persist.

This is according to the most recent data from Bowen National Research, which recently published its latest housing needs assessment for Yellow Springs — the second time the Columbus-based firm authored a housing study for Village leaders and local stakeholders, with the first being in 2017.

Like the last study, this pass on Yellow Springs’ housing needs included extensive demographic data and relied on market conditions, local policies and broader economic forces. Also included were a field study of multifamily rentals in town and community input via employer and stakeholder surveys.

Much of the data in this latest assessment — a 232-page document — echo what was shown in 2017. This iteration also includes new data germane to planned and ongoing residential development in Yellow Springs, such as the senior-focused Cascades project; Windsor Companies’ anticipated market-rate apartments on former Antioch College property; and the ongoing expansion of the Spring Meadows subdivision.

Village Council’s stated intentions of developing Glass Farm were not included in the report.

Despite those anticipated additions to the local housing stock, many of Bowen’s projections remain the same: Yellow Springs homes are getting more expensive, rentals are fewer and rents are on the rise. As a result, a sizable portion of the village population participates in the local housing market from the basis of economic precarity.

To wit, some notable data from the updated assessment:

• Yellow Springs has a growing number of cost-burdened households — with nearly 500 of the village’s total 1,884 paying more than 30% of their income toward housing costs.

• Of those 500 cost-burdened households, 178 are severely cost-burdened, meaning over 50% of household income is spent on housing.

• The median rent for the few apartment complexes in town has gone up by more than $300.

•  Less than half of Yellow Springs homes are owned by individuals younger than 54. 

Bearing this particular data in mind, the updated Bowen assessment dovetails with Village Council’s foremost goal of creating more affordable housing options, as well as addressing the swelling cost of living in town.

Through those lenses, Council is set to review the updated assessment at the group’s next work session, ahead of its regular meeting, Monday, Aug. 17.

Zeroing in on demographics, the new Bowen study substantiated what the previous one had identified: seniors largely dominate the local housing market.

Individuals 55 and older comprise nearly 59% of all households in Yellow Springs  — which is about 10% more than in Greene and Clark counties, and the state as a whole.

However, the updated study shows that that percentage has decreased by about two points since 2017, and by 2030, all other age groups in Yellow Springs are expected to grow in size. Before the end of the decade, householders between the ages of 25 and 34 are expected to increase by 13.2%, and between ages 45 and 54 by 6.6%. Additionally, those 75 and older will jump 16.8%, signalling a major generational shift in Yellow Springs. 

Owing to those changes, the new Bowen study recommends that all future housing development in the village “should include a variety of product types across a range of affordability levels with a particular emphasis on senior-oriented housing alternatives.”

Furthermore, to create more homes for young and old alike, the new Bowen study recommends that Village leaders look to the latest Comprehensive Land Use Plan and consider “the redevelopment of vacant/underutilized structures, the development of infill lots and leveraging the remaining developable sites for housing that meets the community’s needs.”

Irrespective of those needs being tailored to demographic shifts, the Bowen study expects that by 2030 the number of homes in Yellow Springs for purchase will increase by 98 and rentals by 147 — mostly owing to the ongoing and planned developments mentioned above, the largest of which are phases three and four of expanding the Spring Meadows subdivision with 190 additional units.

“While the accuracy of these projects can be influenced by factors like construction costs, interest rates or changes in government policies, the clear pent-up demand for housing alternatives within Yellow Springs will likely result in these increases for each tenure type if housing units that meet the needs of area households are introduced into the market,” the study notes.

Though more rental units are on their way, the present housing market favors home buyers.  More than 64% of households in Yellow Springs are occupied by owners — up from 60.7% in 2017 — and roughly 36% are rented — down from 39.3% in 2017.

In the study’s consideration of the village’s lasting discrepancy between rented and owned homes came data on economic disparity.

The new Bowen assessment points out that the vast majority of renter households in the village — 63.6% — earn less than $50,000 annually. On the other end of the spectrum, well over one half — 57% — of owner households earn more than $100,000.

“This illustrates the need for a variety of housing alternatives by affordability level,” the study reads.

The conclusion is in step with the 2017 study, which recommended that Yellow Springs create quite a bit more affordable housing — specifically, at least 100 new very-low-income housing units with rents less than $500 for those who make less than $20,000/year, none of which have been built in the last eight years; as well as at least 80 units of low-income housing units with rents $500–875 for those who make $20,000–34,999/year, 20 of which have been built since 2018.

Along similar lines, the latest iteration of the Bowen assessment calls for 96 new rentals for households who make less than $46,900 per year, 53 for those who make less than $75,040 per year and an additional 51 for all those other would-be renters making upwards of 81% of the area median income — amounting to a total of 200 recommended rental units recommended by this needs assessment.

Like the last Bowen study, this one also calls for additional for-sale homes to be added to the local market — 128 more, specifically. The largest portion of that gap are the purportedly needed 82 more for-sale homes for would-be homeowners with an annual income of more than $112,561. The second highest need identified was for homeowners who make $46,901–$75,040 annually — the study calls for 26 more of those homes. 

Taken together, the updated Bowen Housing Needs Assessment recommends that Yellow Springs create 328 more rental and for-sale units to meet the current and projected demand by 2030.

“Although projected household growth and potential external market support comprise a noteworthy portion of the housing gaps across all affordability levels, there is a higher propensity for the gaps among the lower affordability to be influenced by other factors,” the study concludes.

Those factors include the need for additional units to establish a balanced market, the replacement of substandard rentals and severe cost-burden situations.

“As such, addressing the rental housing gaps [in Yellow Springs] will likely require a combination of approaches, which may include the construction of new rental housing, the mitigation of substandard housing conditions among the current housing inventory and reducing housing cost burden situations through a variety of mechanisms,” the study reads.

Toward the goal of filling the local housing gaps, the study offers a number of actions and initiatives that the Village of Yellow Springs could take. Among them:

• Increase or incentivize density by modifying zoning ordinances,

• Determine Village staff capacity to take on additional work associated with housing strategies,

• Re-evaluate building and design standards and consider more flexible requirements for things like property setbacks and parking,

• Establish a rental registry and code enforcement considerations,

• Provide infrastructure assistance to reduce developer costs,

• Establish a land bank that can acquire, manage and redevelop vacant, abandoned or tax-delinquent properties and turn them into productive use,

• Offer home repair and weatherization programs,

• Create a first-time homebuyer program,

• And more than a dozen potential other steps.

The News will provide additional coverage of the updated Bowen Housing Needs Assessment following Council’s discussion on Monday, Aug. 17.

Virginia-based filmmaker Amy Taylor is coming back to Yellow Springs this month with a short film made right here in the village — and, she hopes, the beginnings of another local production.

Taylor will present “…And Then She Laughed,” a horror-comedy short filmed in the village two years ago, and a newly recut version of her former web series, “Jess Archer Versus,” at Little Art Theatre on Wednesday, Aug. 12.

The 7 p.m. screening, billed by the Little Art as featuring two films with “very different vibes,” will be followed by a question-and-answer session, during which Taylor will also discuss “Everything’s Fine!,” a feature-length “zom-rom-com” she hopes to shoot in and around Yellow Springs, and for which she’s currently raising money.

“We’re looking for donations to support the project,” she said. “I’ve been pounding the pavement, but we thought an event like this could help.”

The evening gives local audiences their first chance to see “…And Then She Laughed” on the big screen. The film was shot over five days in May 2024, primarily at a home on Orton Road whose modern architecture and hard angles closely matched the house Taylor had pictured while writing the script.

The film was produced by local man-of-stage-and-screen Ben Guenther, who suggested the local home as a possible location. It stars Emily Williams Young and Chris Young as spouses whose strained relationship takes a dark turn, particularly as the wife repeatedly shows up in unexpected places. As it did in 2024, the News will continue to leave the film’s central premise unspoiled, though Williams Young previously described its vibe as “mystical, magical spookiness.”

The finished short is currently making its way through the film festival submission process, which Taylor said she expects to continue through next spring. The Little Art screening will serve as the film’s Yellow Springs debut.

Taylor will also screen “Jess Archer Versus,” a mystery-comedy web series she created with several of the same collaborators who later worked on “…And Then She Laughed.” Though the original series was released in episodes, Taylor has recut it into one continuous presentation for the upcoming village screening.

Many of the actors and crew members involved in both projects to be screened have known one another since their time at Ohio University, where they studied film or performing arts. In past News reporting, Guenther described the 2024 shoot as “getting the band back together.” To that end, Taylor said she hopes some version of “the band” will reconvene for “Everything’s Fine!,” which she described as a “post-apocalyptic romantic comedy.”

The screenplay follows a young woman traveling through a collapsed landscape to scatter her best friend’s ashes in the ocean. Along the way, she meets a man who spent the catastrophe alone in a bunker and has only recently emerged.

“He’s just seen sort of these zombie-like creatures, and he’s like, ‘Well, I guess I’m the last man alive,’ and he’s about ready to pack it in,” Taylor said, adding with a laugh: “I know that sounds very grim, but it’s much more fun than it sounds.”

The man offers the woman help to navigate the mountain roads with which he’s familiar, and though she’s not exactly eager to accept, the pair end up traveling together. As they move along, occasionally encountering other survivors, their wary partnership develops into what Taylor called “a screwball romance.”

Taylor initially began writing “Everything’s Fine!” before the COVID-19 pandemic, but set it aside when its fictional catastrophe started to feel reminiscent of reality.

“When the pandemic hit, I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know how I feel about writing about a zombie infection that took out a lot of the population,’” she said. When she returned to the screenplay, she approached it with a new question: “What happens after you have a huge, world-altering trauma?”

Taylor said she viewed the film’s two leads as representing “two opposite ends of the spectrum” of pandemic experience. The male lead has spent the catastrophe alone in a bunker, carrying “the accompanying … mental health issues that we all sort of underwent” in isolation. The female lead has survived amid constant crisis, “running on 110% adrenaline” — an experience Taylor compared to that of health care workers and other frontline workers during the worst periods of the pandemic — until she’s burned out.

“They both have this very different experience of this event, but sort of equally traumatic in their own ways,” Taylor said.

Taylor said “…And Then She Laughed” ponders questions of resentment, insecurity and toxic masculinity — themes that also ran through her 2018 feature, “Hunter’s Weekend.” By contrast, she said the script for “Everything’s Fine!” revisits some of her familiar concerns, but shifts their center of gravity. In her past works, she said, none of the male characters is “someone you would like to meet.” “Everything’s Fine!” still places its leads among survivors who have embraced a “might makes right ethos,” but its central romance gives Taylor room to imagine “positive masculinity” as well.

“I would say the feature is a little bit more optimistic about people,” she said.

Taylor aims to shoot the feature in fall 2027, when the local landscape’s changing leaves would suit what she called the story’s “bittersweet sort of melancholy.” Hitting that target a year and change from now will require raising money, locking down locations and, she hopes, building support from folks in and around Yellow Springs.

The project is fiscally sponsored by the Film Collaborative, a nonprofit organization that supports independent film projects; contributions made to the project through Film Collaborative are tax-deductible. Taylor said the organization’s fiscal sponsorship gives her a path forward for “Everything’s Fine!” outside of a more traditional film-financing model dependent on investors and recognizable actors.

“Film Collaborative is a really great organization; they have a lot of films that they fiscally sponsor, but they also provide educational resources and distribution support to independent films,” Taylor said. “So I always say, if you support our project, you’ll be supporting indie film, because as fiscal sponsors, they get a percentage to keep supporting other projects.”

Taylor added that money raised for “Everything’s Fine!” would ideally circulate back through Yellow Springs, as she aims to use area businesses as much as possible for supplies and to feed and house cast and crew members. She said she and Guenther are already considering possible filming locations, and she wants to make space for locals to appear on-screen as extras or actors in minor roles.

“Hopefully, we would be additive to the community and not like locusts swooping in, taking everything and leaving,” Taylor said.

Having produced one project in Yellow Springs, Taylor said the village feels familiar to her; she grew up in a small town in Virginia that, like the village, fostered the arts and upheld an environmental awareness. Those values, she said, make the village well-suited to independent filmmaking.

“I’m excited to come back to Yellow Springs and try and shoot this feature, because we had such a great experience with the short,” she said.

“An Evening with Amy Taylor” begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 12, at Little Art Theatre. Admission is free, and free tickets can be reserved in advance online at http://www.littleart.org.

For more information about “Everything’s Fine!” supported by the Film Collaborative, go to http://www.bit.ly/FilmCollabEverythingsFine

The Yellow Springs Film Festival has announced additions to the lineup of special events taking place at Foundry Theater on the Antioch College during this year’s multiday festival, Oct. 1–4.

Entering its fourth year, the 2026 festival has added a screening of the Bruce Springsteen concert film, “Nebraska Live,” at 8 p.m. Oct. 2, followed by a conversation with the director, Thom Zimny. Zimny is an Emmy Award-winning director, editor and producer whose documentaries and concert films have explored the lives and work of some of music’s most influential artists.

Also newly announced is a Closing Night “Conversation” with actor Juliette Lewis, at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 4, during which she will discuss her extensive career in film, television and music. Lewis, nominated for an  Academy Award for her performance in Martin Scorsese’s “Cape Fear,” has worked alongside many of cinema’s most celebrated actors and directors.

Previously announced events include:

• A Kick Off Party, featuring a performance by comedian Hannibal Buress, at 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1.

As a stand-up comedian, Buress has released several specials, earning praise for his dry wit, inventive storytelling and observational humor. His television writing credits include “Saturday Night Live” and “30 Rock,” while his acting work has featured performances in “Neighbors,” “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and “Broad City.”

• After Buress’ Kick Off performance will come an Opening Night 8 p.m. screening of the documentary “Stealing Magic,” followed by a live performance and Q&A with magicians Andi Gladwin and David Williamson.

Gladwin is an internationally recognized close-up magician and co-founder of Vanishing Inc., the world’s largest magic company. Williamson was recently named Magician of the Year by the Academy of Magical Arts and Sciences at the Magic Castle in Hollywood.

“Stealing Magic,” which had its world premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, follows Gladwin as he leads an unlikely team of illusionists on an international mission to track down a ring of cybercriminals pirating magic books. What begins as a fight to protect the intellectual property of fellow magicians evolves into a real-life investigation.

• On Friday, Oct. 2, at 4:30 p.m., the festival will screen a yet unseen new cooking show produced by actor Steve Zahn and starring Chef Ouita Michel. The show, titled “You Belong Here,” is a docuseries that follows Michel as she delves into universal human themes while celebrating the food, people and places that are fundamental ingredients of her community. After the screening, Michel and Zahn will take the stage for a live Q&A to discuss the series and their connection. Guests will have the opportunity to also sample food showcased in the episode.

Zahn is an acclaimed actor whose career spans more than three decades across film, television and theater, with credits that include “That Thing You Do!,” “Out of Sight,” “Rescue Dawn,” “Dallas Buyers Club,” “Captain Fantastic” and “The White Lotus.”

Chef Michel has been a James Beard Foundation Award nominee as Outstanding Restaurateur and as Best Chef Southeast numerous times. She is also an alumna of the James Beard Chefs Boot Camp for Policy and Change, a collaborative for chefs who work to improve the world’s food systems.

• On Saturday, Oct. 3, the festival will host an 8:30 p.m. screening of the music documentary “The Best Summer,” which had its world premiere this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Director Tamra Davis will be present for an in-person Q&A after the screening.

“The Best Summer” captures a concert tour in 1995 and features live performances, candid interviews and a behind-the-scenes view of the Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Beck, Pavement, Rancid, The Amps and Bikini Kill.

Davis made her first feature in 1992 with “Guncrazy,” starring Drew Barrymore. She then went on to direct feature films “CB4,” starring Chris Rock; “Billy Madison,” starring Adam Sandler; “Half Baked,” starring Dave Chappelle; and most recently, “13: The Musical,” for Netflix. She is also known for her documentary work on “Jean Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child: and “The Punk Singer,” about Kathleen Hanna.

Tickets for the above events are now on sale, though the four-day Festival Badges are already sold out. For more information, updates or tickets, go online to http://www.ysfilmfest.com

By Alissa Paolella

On a recent Saturday morning, before Ohio Silver Co. opened, a line of customers stretched from the door and down Xenia Avenue. Inside, the contents of the sterling silver cases at 245 Xenia Ave. were thinning.

On another day, a longtime customer wiped away tears at the counter. Near the entrance stood the Tin Woman, the silver figure Ohio Silver owner Marcia Wallgren built by hand and the shop’s unofficial mascot, keeping watch over the crowd. Behind the cases, a small staff moved without pause to keep up with a goodbye that grew far louder than anyone anticipated.

After 54 years, Ohio Silver Co. — one of downtown Yellow Springs’ longest-operating businesses — is closing. Wallgren, who has owned the fair-trade jewelry store since 1974, is retiring. What began as a quiet farewell to the village became a regional event this month, after a Dayton television station picked up the news and shoppers poured in from across the area.

Wallgren and her staff had hoped to say goodbye gently, giving loyal customers the first chance at the store’s remaining inventory. Then WDTN aired the story, and the quiet plan evaporated. In the days since, the shop has seen roughly three times the sales volume of its busiest Street Fair day, according to Wallgren — all handled by a small, rotating team.

“The outpouring of love and sadness for the store closing has been overwhelming, poignant and humbling,”  Wallgren told the News last week. “Some folks hugged us and cried.”

Hundreds have posted on the store’s Facebook announcement, sharing what Ohio Silver meant to them over the years, and one recent day, three generations of one family who had always shopped there made a special trip together.

The shop has been filled with stories — of wedding and engagement rings, ears pierced as a rite of passage, special gifts given and received.

“[Customers’] loyalty over the years allowed me and my staff to live and work here all these years,” Wallgren said.

For all the emotion of these final weeks, Wallgren said she is at peace with her reasons for bidding Ohio Silver farewell.

“I look forward to making art, writing — I have research for at least one book — growing things and, body willing, traveling,” she said.

Market forces have played a role, too. Silver prices whipsawed over the past year, trading as low as $36.21 an ounce in late July 2025 before spiking to an intraday high of $121.58 on Jan. 29, 2026, then settling back to roughly $56 by mid-July, according to Forbes Advisor’s silver price tracker.

Wallgren does not expect those prices to come back down. She called the spike “a different animal” from the swings she weathered in the past, driven now by silver’s growing use in data centers, electric-vehicle batteries and solar panels. When she sees electronics makers investing in new silver mines that can take years to come online, she said, she reads it as a sign that supply is finite and prices will stay high. Some of her artisan lines stopped production or shrank their pieces to stay affordable, losing quality in the process.

The tariffs alone, she said, would have doubled the price of some pieces.

“At a time when affording food or gas is difficult, our products would be too expensive for our customers,” she said.

Wallgren said the 2025 closure of Short Street, which eliminated several nearby parking spaces with steady customer turnover, cut into foot traffic during the holiday season and added to an already stressful period.

Still, Wallgren described the closing as a decision she made on her own terms.

“It just wasn’t fun anymore,” she said.

The work began more than half a century ago, in a far smaller shop. Ohio Silver Co. was founded in November 1971 by brothers Tucker and Kris Viemeister and Kerry Moore, according to News archives. Originally called Standing Room Only and tucked into Kings Yard, the shop moved to its longtime home at 245 Xenia Ave. in 1977. Moore and Marcia Wallgren bought the business from the Viemeisters, and Wallgren — an owner since 1974 — later bought out Moore to become sole owner in 1984. The store is closing just short of its 55th anniversary.

Over the decades, the store built its reputation on handcrafted sterling silver — pieces first made on-site, then sourced from artisans across the United States and around the world — and on a longstanding commitment to fair-trade practices. That reputation reached beyond the village: Ohio Silver was a repeat honoree in Dayton.com and the Dayton Daily News’ Best of Dayton readers’ poll, winning Best Jewelry in 2018 and placing in the category in the years since.

Wallgren said part of the draw of the store was the experience itself. Customers returned for a hands-on, personal way of doing business, where they might try on a stack of rings, ask to have a chain hooked and linger — the kind of attention big retailers can’t replicate. Wallgren was quick to credit her employees for creating an environment that kept customers coming back.

“My amazing staff are [the ones who] made this business,” she said.

Managers Joe Williams and Daria Mabra are both villagers, and each is in the middle of a third decade at Ohio Silver — a rare tenure for any small business. Chica, Mabra’s dog and a familiar presence to regulars, is also part of store lore.

“I couldn’t have done it without them,” Wallgren said.

Mabra, who has lived in the village her entire life, gave a simple reason for staying behind the counter for nearly three decades.

“That’s really easy — the customers,” she said. “I’ve met so many very kind people, and they are so appreciative of the store.”

She pointed to the shop’s signature purple box — long a staple of its identity — which customers seek out as a gift for others and for themselves.

“People say they can’t find this mix of jewelry anywhere,” she said.

Lately, many of those customers have arrived in tears, and Mabra, tearing up herself, said the goodbye has reminded her of what makes Yellow Springs special.

Some come downtown hoping to glimpse a famous neighbor — “they see Dave and they freak out,” she said of comedian and village resident Dave Chappelle — but to her the real draw was always simpler.

“I don’t think there would ever be a time where people would not come here,” she said.

That sense of loss extends well beyond the store’s own staff. The closing leaves downtown Yellow Springs without one of its half-century anchors, part of the shifting landscape of independent retail in the village. Over the years, the store supported local nonprofits and the wider business community, and Wallgren said she takes pride in having added to what she calls the “vibrancy” of the downtown district. In a tribute this month, the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce thanked Wallgren for “decades of dedication,” calling the store a “true silver lining” for the community.

The tributes carry a note of finality, but the goodbye is not quite over. For now, the store remains open. Its closing sale features the full inventory of handcrafted sterling silver, along with fixtures and display cases; prices, the store says, are already below current replacement cost. No firm closing date has been set. As Wallgren put it, the sale ends when the stock runs out.

Current hours are 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday; and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, though Wallgren notes hours may shift. The store can be reached at 937-767-8261. Information will also be posted to the store’s Facebook page: facebook.com/ohiosilverco.

Wallgren built the store on a simple philosophy, she said: sell jewelry that is handmade, beautifully designed and made to last, at a price people can afford — and when it’s not made in-house, choose fair-trade pieces that support the artisans behind them. She hopes it endures.

“Those pieces will be around a long time for people to remember us by,” she said.

Mostly, though, she wants her customers to hear one thing.

“To my customers, we are really going to miss you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

*Alissa Paolella is a local resident and freelance writer for the News.

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