John Thomas Procuniar Sr

John Thomas Procuniar, Sr 1919-1992

A Thumbnail Biography by David C. Procuniar

John Thomas Procuniar, Sr, the son of John Henry Procuniar & Elsia Leona King. John was born April 25, 1919 Dayton, Ohio, died alone March 13, 1992 in a nursing home in New Carlisle, Ohio. Cause of death was listed as Adeno carcinoma of the pancreas with contributing factors of diabetes mellitus & atrial fibrillation, coronary artery disease. John was the oldest child of six children. On July 30, 1938 at the age of 19 John talked Elizabeth Dawn Voight (age16 from Northridge Ohio) into eloping and drove to Greenup County, Kentucky to get married. Both John and Elizabeth (who preferred to be called Dawn) returned home to live with their respective families and did not tell anyone they were married until several weeks later. See Biography of John Thomas below:

Children: (6)

Penny Susan Procuniar 1941-

John Thomas Procuniar, Jr. 1943-

David Charles Procuniar 1945- Author of this website!

Celia Dawn Procuniar 1948-

William Eugene Procuniar 1949-

Timothy Paul Procuniar 1955-

Source for this page: David Charles Procuniar

Biography of John Thomas Procuniar Sr. 1919-1992

John Thomas Procuniar, Sr was born 25 April 1919 in Montgomery County, Ohio. John’s parents were living with his grandmother on Valley Pike, Dayton Ohio from 1914 until mid 1916 when they moved to 50 east Bellefontaine Avenue in Dayton. From there they moved to 1450 N Valley Pike near John’s mother. They were living there on Valley Pike when John Thomas was born in April of 1919, then moved towards downtown Dayton on 620 Valley Pike sometime in 1921 when their second child Irene was born. After having a third child, William, John Henry and Oney moved to Oney’s parents farm in West Milton, Ohio and lived there until they returned to Dayton and moved in a new house on Waneta Avenue in Mad River Township sometime before 1928.

Times were very hard for families during that time with the depression hitting the nation in 1929 when John just turned 10 years old. However his father maintained full time employment at the Dayton Power & Light Company during the depression and with their neighbors practically living in poverty, John’s parents shared their food with many of their neighbors where they lived. Often John’s mother would make a big pot of stew and share that with some neighbors who were too poor to buy very much food. On Fridays after payday, John Henry would stop on his way home from work at the local store and buy several loaves of day-old nickel bread and hand out loaves of bread to his neighbors. John Henry's neighbors to the north, the Jake Miller family, seem to do well financially during and after the depression. It seems Jake made his own home brew of beer that everyone wanted because of it's good taste. Jakes son Harry says his father's beer tasted better then milk. One of Jake Millers many sons, Harry Miller, who lived with the Procuniar family his senior year of high school so he could graduate from Fairmont, (his family moved to another school district). Harry married John Thomas' younger sister Irene in 1941. Harry and Irene were good friends in grade school, dated through junior high and high school.

Both families always assumed that Harry and Irene would marry someday. However one of the band members of John Thomas' band caught his sister Irene's eye and she dated him a few times. About that same time Harry Miller had a terrible automobile accident & drove his car off the road on Huffman Dam and crashed his car. A couple years later Harry and Irene eloped and were married by an uncle of Irene's who was a preacher named Joe Roberts. Harry served in WWII and worked at Dayton Power & Light Company for many years. Harry and Irene had three children, two girls and a boy.

John Thomas, who was often called Tommy by family members, attended Fairmont local schools in Dayton, Ohio. He graduated from Fairmont High School in 1936 just two months after his seventeenth birthday. John’s mother said her son was so smart they let him skip the sixth grade. According to a few of John’s siblings, John formed a band in the mid to late 1930’s with family friends & high school buddies where he sang and played the guitar. A high school friend Blair (Bud) L. Tayloe played the drums for the band. John’s youngest brother Samuel says that the band didn’t stay together very long do to fights breaking out at the bars where the band was playing. Samuel said that John invited his parents to come to the bar and listen to him sing and play the guitar one Saturday evening. John’s parents John Henry and Oney Procuniar had to flee for their lives that night when a fight started between their son’s band and a few patrons of the bar. John’s parents never went to watch their son’s band play again. John slowly figured out that he could not make a living singing in a band and decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and seek employment with the towns electric company, Dayton Power & Light ” where his father had worked for over 17 years at that time.

John went to work part time with his father John Henry at the power company during his senior year of High School as an apprentice engineer but quit or was fired in September or October of 1938 depending on who is telling the story. It seems John promised the company he would go to college & become an engineer while working part time at DP&L but instead John spent whatever money he made on an automobile, guitar and then eloped and married at age 19.

John’s younger sister’s Irene and/or possibly his other younger sister Nettie Nell introduced him to one of their friends named Dawn, (daughter of Charles and Helen (Palmer) Voight), who lived in Northridge, just north west of Dayton, Ohio. Dawn was 15 years old at the time and was just starting her freshman year at Northridge High School. Dawn whose first name was actually Elizabeth, went by her middle name of Dawn.

John Thomas married Elizabeth Dawn Voight in July of 1938 by eloping together to Greenup County, Kentucky against both parents’ wishes. (Dawn just turned 16 years of age two months earlier) On their marriage certificate John & Dawn listed their ages as both being twenty-one and listed their residence as Winchester, Kentucky with John’s place of birth Dayton, Ohio and Dawn’s place of birth in Richfield Springs, New York. John listed his occupation as an Apprentice Engineer at Dayton, Power & Light Company. The minister performing the marriage was C. D. Lear of the Methodist church there in Greenup County. Witnesses were Edwin Wagner and Kathryn C. Lear.

After their marriage in Kentucky they returned to Ohio but feared Dawn’s parents would be so angry that they got married that John dropped Dawn off at her parents house in Northridge like they had just gone on a date and he went back home to his parents house in Dayton and did not tell his parents he and Dawn just got married.

At first they didn't tell anyone that they had eloped and married. But a few weeks later when Dawn's father Charles Voight found out about their marriage, he blew his stack, to put it mildly. Charles threatened to beat up his newly acquired son-in-law and have the marriage annulled. I can remember as late as 1972 my grandpa Voight still mumbling, "I should have had that marriage annulled, I should have had that marriage annulled". However things worked out some how and this union produced a total of 6 children, 4 boys and 2 girls.

With so much turmoil in the Voight house over their marriage, Dawn & John went to live with John’s parents on Waneta Avenue in Dayton and lived there together from 1938 through sometime in 1939. After having been fired from DP&L John went to work for The Real Silk Hosiery Mills Inc in Dayton in 1939 as a salesman (per the Dayton Directory). Later John changed jobs and went to work as a helper for the F. A. Requarth Lumber Company. Then in 1940 their address was listed as RR #9 Box 787 Virginia Street in Dayton. Virginia Street was renamed Beatrice Drive in the mid 1940s. In 1941 John and Dawn's address was listed as 1026½ Brown Street in the city directory at that time. John’s sister Irene Procuniar was working at the MECo as a clerk and living at the same Virginia Avenue address above.

John tried his hand at construction as early as late 1938 according to his brother in law Harry Miller and in November of 1942 built a cement block garage on Waneta Avenue across the street from his parents’ house. John even made the concrete blocks by hand. John and Dawn moved into their garage after it's completion with one child Penny. Their intention was to build a home on the same property at a later date. (The garage was built towards the back of their lot) In 1943 John was working at the Requarth Lumber Company as a driver when he received his draft notice from the US Army about six months after his second child John JR was born.

John Thomas was inducted into the Army on 31 January 1944 and after taking a mountain of test, John scored high enough to be assigned to Company “A” 1915th Engineer Aviation Battalion. At that time John already had two children, Penny born 1942 and John born in 1943. Right after being inducted into the US Army John Thomas complained to his commander that he was always nervous and this nervousness made him sick all the time. After twenty months of this nervous condition and going on sick call so often, John Thomas Procuniar SR was given a medical discharged from the Army on 28 September 1945 just 71 days after his third child David (July 1945) was born back in Dayton, Ohio. John was a patient at the Crile General Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio (John had surgery for a possible brain tumor) up until his medical discharge on September 25, 1945. The medical statement listed a “Nervous Condition” as a reason for the discharge and John received a full 100% disability pension (Claim #178219). By June 30, 1948 this pension (24R8GA C-54220579) was reduced to 10% to $13.80 per month and a few years later the pension was withdrawn.

While John was in the hospital complaining of being nervous and wanting a discharge so he could go back home to his pregnant wife, his younger brother William Franklin Procuniar, who by the way was a star football player at his high school and had a scholarship at Ohio State U. for football, was already in the Army and soon became a Sergeant (Crew Chief) in maintenance for the Air Corp. But William being the kind of man who wanted to get into the action, so to speak, volunteered to be a tail gunner in the B-17 bombers. After returning home from the War William told stories of his days as a tail gunner and often shooting at what he thought were German fighters while flying in B-17 bombers.

John & Dawn were living in the garage with their two children when John was inducted into the Army. John's wife, Dawn continued to live in their garage on Waneta Drive while he was in the military and had their third child (David) while living in the garage. Upon his discharge from the Army October 1945 John went to work for the Yellow Cab Company Inc. for a while, then John wanted to work for himself and decided the Home Construction business would be his next profession.

While building homes for other people in 1948, John was able to save enough money to buy materials to build a home on the same lot where they were living in the garage. Dawn had been living in that garage for six years before they finally built the house. To help save money John used his wife, brothers and children to make the concrete blocks by hand for the house foundation & walls. John’s sister Irene's husband Harry Miller built a garage on the lot right next to Irene’s parents home in 1939. After their marriage in 1941 Irene and Harry moved into their garage and added a breezeway right before their second child was born in 1947. Harry built a house that was attached it to his garage and breezeway in 1949. Irene lived in this house until her death some 46 years later in 1987.

John built other houses in Mad River Township near Brandt Pike and also on Waneta Drive where he, his parents and sister Irene and her husband lived. John was asked to build a home in Beavercreek, a suburb of Greene County Ohio in 1951, which eventually led to John Thomas and his family moving to Beavercreek, Ohio to be close to where John’s work was. John and his family rented an old farmhouse on N. Fairfield Road (now St. Lukes Catholic Church) next to the William Beck & Sons business until their newly built brick home was finished. At one time or another his brothers and brother in-laws worked for him building houses.

John, a self taught general contractor, built homes from 1946-1964, and then became a Construction Superintendent for another company while building Wilber Force College in Xenia. Not satisfied with that, John went into the construction business with his son William and named the company "Rain-U-Corp” Procuniar spelled backwards. After that they did the rough construction for Ryan Homes, built some Gasoline Stations, Churches and schools until the family business went belly-up. Then John retired as a result of heart trouble in the late 1970’s.

As for religion, John and his family were protestant and attended the Christ Episcopal Church at 20 West First Street in Dayton, Ohio. However the Pastor of that church, Phil Porter, sent John & Dawn a letter dated 23 February 1948 telling both John and Dawn that they were being toss out of that church because of non-attendance and indifference. The pastor pointed out in that letter that the Episcopal Church does not consider drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes, if temperately practiced, to be among the weightier matters of the church law. The pastor challenged John and Dawn to show him in the New Testament where Jesus or his Apostles ever forbade smoking cigarettes or drinking of alcohol. Also the pastor warned John to beware of “complacency” and of his use of the word “sanctification” saying that when John says he is sanctified by implying he (John) was already perfected, that this was a claim which none but the Lord Christ himself has ever dared to make. John and his family changed to Dawn’s parents church the Northridge Methodist church on Dixie Drive in Northridge, Ohio.

After their move to Beavercreek in the fall of 1952 John and his family joined the Methodist church on Dayton-Xenia Road where the Rev. Crocker was minister. The church building there was rather small and the congregation opted to build a new church on Grange Hall Road in Beavercreek. John, being in the construction business, designed the new church and he and his construction crew along with church volunteers (and of course his boys) built the congregation a new church. Later that same church dissolved because of lack of attendance around 1969 or 1970. John and Dawn then joined the Knollwood Church of Nazarene. In the early 1980’s John was tossed out of the Knollwood Church of Nazarene do to his difference in his beliefs about incest.

Dawn was diagnosed with breast cancer in the mid 1980’s, which led to a mastectomy. After surgery the surgeon told her that he cut out all the cancer and she did not need any chemical therapy. John & Dawn sold their house on Grange Hall Road in Beavercreek shortly after dawn’s surgery, sold all their worldly possessions and purchased a new 30 foot R/V trailer and started to travel across the USA. However on his first trip with his new R/V trailer John lost control while on the highway in South Carolina and flipped the R/V over which broke apart right on the highway. It was not long before Dawn’s cancer soon spread to other parts of her body and she returned to Dayton, Ohio and after a short time died a painful death from liver cancer on 3 November 1986. Dawn was cremated and her ashes were given to her oldest son John Thomas Procuniar Jr. to keep until his father died then both would be buried together.

After a few years of traveling around in Florida John became ill and returned to Ohio, his place of birth. John checked himself into a senior citizens home in New Carlisle, Ohio in 1991. Shortly after & against his wishes he was placed into a nursing home in New Carlisle, where he later died from Pancreatic Cancer. After a doctor’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and given just three to four weeks to live, John returned to the nursing home where he died exactly three weeks later on 13 March 1992 aged 73 years, eleven months & twelve days. John Thomas Procuniar SR was cremated, against his whishes and both John and Dawn’s ashes are buried in the New Carlisle Ohio Cemetery on State Route #235 just south of New Carlisle. John's wishes were that he be buried in the same cemetery plot with his wife and that his body be placed above (on top) of his wife. However his four sons placed their ashes side by side in the grave & of equal height. John's grave site is next to his younger brother William and both of his parents.

David Charles Procuniar July 2001

Other Sources:

Some of John Thomas Procuniar's siblings gave oral testimony.

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