By Paula Pyzik Scott

The 4th annual Bluffton History Day featured three family businesses with oral histories that illuminated and entertained. The Fett, Gillett and Hankish families and their customers told of local shops that are fondly remembered many decades after they closed. Common threads in the stories about the hardware, bakery and confectionary businesses are the expertise, personalities and grit that were foundational to all three.

There was a strong turnout for the three-hour event, which was coordinated by the Bluffton Ohio Historical Society. The society recently kicked off a $1.3 million campaign to create a Bluffton museum in the former Kirtland Auto location at Main and Jefferson streets.

The Hankish grandchildren are too young to provide first-hand stories about the confectionary store that was owned and operated by Lebanese immigrant Charley Hankish for some 50 years. However, they know of the shop through their grandfather, who moved from Toledo because of how well he was treated here during his days as a traveling linen salesman.

The Hankishes still have the family recipes and know-how to recreate some of the confectionery’s products. The family, including Jana Hughes and Alicia Stevens, made more than enough vanilla ice cream and peanut brittle to serve visitors throughout the three-hour event. The treats were provided free as a fundraiser for the museum campaign.

Members of the audience enjoyed sharing their memories of the Hankish shop, which was both a store and a hangout. Anecdotes included buying bananas and listening to the jukebox.

Fett Hardware also opened in the early 1900s and would employ four generations of the family. Ed, Bob and Dave Fett provided a program and display about the store in the actual space where it operated, now the Bluffton Senior Center. 

The Fett brothers recounted how the store was transformed and expanded by their father Maurice from a small, traditional hardware into a shop with a large selection of kitchen and household products. They recalled how a generous supply of chairs once gave farmers a place to sit and hear the current news/gossip. Every year Maurice threw away a chair, until there was just one chair and one retired farmer. When the farmer passed away, the last chair disappeared.

Among the memorabilia in the Fett display was a pair of adjustable, clamp-on metal ice skates. Ed noted that he still had a barrel full at home.

The new kid on Bluffton’s Main St. would be Gillett Bakery. Dan Gillett was a baby when his family moved to Bluffton in the 1960s. The Gilletts initially lived above the bakery, and Dan takes credit for saving the family, the business and perhaps the whole block: one night his cries woke them to discover an oven fire.

Gillett spoke of his dad David having a remarkable aptitude for baking as well as the ability to wake early and stay up late. The Gillett bakery was famous for its square pizza, which David learned to make in New York City before “pizza pie” became familiar to Americans. Mom Carolyn was the shop’s cake decorator. She was later joined by Judy Gladwell, who would become part of the family as Dan’s wife.

Dan and his sisters Penny and Shari served up 224 Gillett sausage rolls as a fundraiser for the historical society. The sight of the golden brown dough and aroma of sausage enticed a long line of eager tasters.

This Bluffton History Day demonstrated that there is a strong appetite for history that is specific to Bluffton. The event was made possible by the generous participation of the Fett, Gillett and Hankish families, as well as the sponsorship of Family Hardware. 

Photo displays will remain in downtown store windows through this week.