Lakewood Lore

From its origin in a garage, dairy just keeps growing

Today, at a time when business cutbacks are in vogue, a milk producing company that started in a double garage in Lakewood's Birdtown community 69 years ago has completed a $3 million expansion and continues to grow.

The big and bustling Oberlin Farms Dairy, Inc., using "Dairymen's" as its trade name, was founded on Dowd Street in 1923 by Lorence Dzurec, a Slovak immigrant who, in the beginning, had only a horse-drawn wagon to make his deliveries.

Now, headed by his two sons, David and Richard, in a three-building, 300,000-square-foot complex on 5½ acres at W. 106th and Western Avenue, the dairy has spiraled its annual production to 100 million quarts of milk from only 360,000 during its first year of operation.

At the outset, its milk was supplied by only six farms. Now it comes from 250. Service area, at first confined to Lakewood, Rocky River and West Park, today covers all of northern Ohio.

Employment has risen to 198, and its delivery fleet currently is comprised of 100 trucks, including 24 large tractor-trailers.

"Dad switched to trucks back in the early '20s," said son Dave, 66, now board chairman. "One day some kids, looking for a joy ride, stole his horse and wagon. He recovered them later at West 117th and Madison, but then and there decided to go to trucks."

Founder Dzurec came to Lakewood in 1910. After working as a tool and die maker for National Tool Co. on Madison for a few years, he returned to Europe to join in the World War I struggle against the Kaiser by enlisting in a French Army unit made up of his Czech and Slovak countrymen.

After the war, he rejoined National Tool for a spell before entering the milk business. It was during a period when there were numerous small, family-run independent dairies in the area, including such names as Swiss, Lakewood, Supreme, and Schneider-Bruce.

"My father was a hard-working, multitalented man who never swore, never smoked and had only an occasional schnapps. His business prospered," recalled son Rich, 63, now company president.

The elder Dzurec worked from 2 a.m. till 8 a.m. delivering to homes and stores, after which he returned to the dairy to process and bottle for the following day. In the afternoons, he had to make a second delivery to the stores because of the poor refrigeration during the icebox era.

He married Theresa Prihel in 1920 and, besides the boys, the couple had a daughter, Barbara, who now lives in Minneapolis.

"In the early days when milk sold for 10 cents a quart, Mother kept the accounts and was our sales person," Rich remembered. "She would throw us kids into the car and drive us with her while she was bill collecting."

Meanwhile, brother Dave's memory revealed that when Templar Motors Corp., Lakewood's only auto manufacturing firm, failed in 1924, his dad bought out that companys leftover stock of wooden car bodies to fire his dairy's furnace boiler.

"L. Dzurec Dairy," as it was originally called, remained on Dowd for five years (the building is still there, opposite Harrison Elementary School). Then, in 1928, the operation was moved to a new one-story plant behind a two-story apartment, both of which were built by the dairy's founder at Lakewood Heights Boulevard and Chesterland Avenue. In 1932, he changed the name of his business to Oberlin Farms Dairy to represent the sourcing area of a substantial amount of the milk received.

Pioneer Dzurec soon became a community leader in Lakewood and served as a vice president and director of Home Federal Savings & Loan. After World War II, he added cottage cheese and fruit drinks to his assembly line and also began distributing orange juice.

In 1950, the year his wife died, he retired and turned over the firm to his two sons. He died in 1956 at 62.

Continuing their father's pattern of growth, the Dzurec boys purchased a four-time-larger Dairymen's Milk Co. in 1972, and consolidated their Oberlin Farms operation into the Dairymen's .location at 3068 W. 106th St.

Nine years later they bought out Lockie-Lee Dairy of Painesville. This acquisition brought ice cream to their company's product mix and extended sales territory to the Pennsylvania line.

In the '80s, retail home delivery of milk, formerly so basic throughout the industry and once accounting for 70 percent of Dzurecs' business, petered out, leaving just about all of the market to the wholesaling segment.

Today, Oberlin Farms continues as a family firm. Chairman Dave has his two sons working there; President·Rich, his three sons and a son-in-law.

In the meantime, the Dzurecs' commitment to quality and growth has not gone unnoticed. Recently their plant received a commendation from the West Side Industrial Retention and Expansion Network, an organization promoting new business and job creation. In additon, the Cleveland Food Dealers Assocation presented Rich with its Honor Award for 1991.

This article appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post January 30, 1992. Reprinted with permission

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