Father: Mike
Mother: Dorothy

Note: Lou's wife Annie also contributed to this GreatLifeStory

My dad was Mike Urbanski. My mother was Dorothy Woodka. My mother was a native of South Bend, Indiana and came from a German family. My father was one of six…seven…seven? Yeah, seven. Six boys and one girl. He came over from Poland when he was six years old.

At the time of my birth they were already getting into the prohibition era. My dad was operating a tavern saloon right on LaGrange Street and Striker Street in Toledo, Ohio. Of course the country went dry then. He owned the saloon there and the building that had a big hall on it. He was very politically inclined, a strict Democrat in a Polish area.

Annie: He was a councilman.

Yeah, he was a councilman in the Polish board for 21 years. As far as I know he probably still holds the record of the longest one to hold a council position in the city of Toledo.

He and my mother got into the retail business; dry goods and furnishing store. We got a glass picture of one of their ads, one of their calendar ads that a local person from Findlay found in Columbus, Ohio at an antique store 25 years ago. It has “Urbanski’s Furnishings” on it. They remained in the dry goods and furnishing business.

It was in a working neighborhood, huge store, men’s and women’s furnishings, a counter that was probably at least 25 to 30 feet long with a whole wall of bulk goods. Ladies would come in and buy all this material, buy the yarn, and make their own dresses and did everything on their own.

Of course then the Depression came. That counter, instead of counting out dry goods, contained a lot of the local constituents sitting there looking for jobs and ways to live.

Then right about that time repeal came in 1933 and beer was legalized, other alcoholic beverages were legalized, and my father with three other partners got into the beer distributing business. They had a difficult time getting the produce distributed as wholesalers because everybody wanted it and there weren’t too many breweries started up yet.

They ended up with a beer out of Detroit, Schmidt’s Brewing Company, and eventually it became the leading beer in Toledo. There were one, two, three breweries right in Toledo. There was a brewery down in Findlay, Ohio called “Old Dutch” that they had tried to get when they started in business but they didn’t get it because the owner had already committed himself to another wholesaler in Toledo.

About 1936 , Bill Altmyer, who owned the Old Dutch Brewery, came back and wanted the folks to put Old Dutch on their trucks and market it and their answer was the only way we’ll do is if we own the brewery.