His career started after attending trade school for carpentry. He worked with a family member for a while until jobs dried up due to the recession of the early 1980s. He branched out on his own and eventually, through word of mouth, started getting projects offered to him. The first home he worked on himself was the infamous “Witch’s Hat House” on Grand Avenue.
“I just kind of got passed around in the Grafton Hills neighborhood,” he said. “It was fun. It was really cool for somebody my age to be working on these houses because I was just taking the basic skills I got from my trade and did remodeling. I had no experience, so I’m self-taught.”
Wysong grew up on a family farm out in New Lebanon that had been in his family since 1850. As a farmer’s kid, he said that it was necessary to just “kind of figure out how to do it and how to deal with it” when it came to fixing things. His dad taught him about different types of wood growing up. He also had a neighbor who built grandmother clocks that he spent time with.
“He [neighbor] restored antiques, and I spent a lot of time there,” he said. “I was a fat kid, not overly popular. I had friends, but I spent a lot of time there because I loved what he did. I had a lot of really cool influences when I was younger, and so I sort of translated that into the craft.”
Eventually, Wysong started buying his own properties to remodel and eventually got into salvage projects in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. When a home is salvaged, Wysong will go through a home and try to save as much as possible from the original structure to be used in other projects. He will save anything from hinges to woodwork to beams.
“The restoration part is really fun,” he said. “But the idea of salvaging kind of runs deep for me because I was raised in a depression-era home. Those people didn’t throw anything away. We had a waste not want not mentality which is what drives a lot of what I do salvaging.”
Wysong said he saw the need for salvaging after restoring homes, and while he could make a buck selling items from the homes, he thinks more about what people could actually use. He began working with Mike Osgood, who purchased homes to restore and salvage. Their first salvage project was a VFW on Third Street.
Credit: Chris West
Credit: Chris West
For a time, Wysong worked for Dayton Works Plus, which was a workforce development company that helped felons find work. He worked on salvaging approximately 300 homes in the Dayton area. Other projects Wysong worked on include the Livingston Care Center on Huffman Avenue and the infamous Dublin Pub church addition.
“There are about 30 different structures represented in here [Dublin Pub] that we pulled pieces and parts from,” he said. “Most everything came from buildings in Dayton. There’s a few things I got from some barns that we took apart … The backside of this beam has some boards on it that are actually sideboards to a wagon that was my grandfather’s, so it’s a little piece from my family history. I love to come in here and tell stories.”
Wysong has found a few treasures in the homes he has restored or salvaged over the years. He found a vintage baseball bat signed by Tris Speaker, a baseball player who played in the early 1900s. He also found a collection of Barbie clothes and a brooch with European cut diamonds. But these are not the reasons why he does what he does.
“You’re saving materials out of a landfill, but when you’re saving wood, it’s much bigger than that,” he said. “You’re saving trees, and you’re saving the expense of logging those trees and the fuel … You can’t buy wood like this. Any one of these pieces of wood [in the Dublin Pub] is at least 200 years old. The pieces on the bar top are at least 500 years old. For me history-wise it’s the love of the land, the love of the wood, and the idea that things should just be saved.”
Wysong ran a company with his brother for a time and now operates Dayton Reclamation and Restoration. He is back to working by himself, with the help of a few close workers. He said that the business and marketing side of the work has never been his main thing, but he loves what he does.
“I’ve never been a great businessman because a great businessman makes money; I make a living,” he said. “But I’ve done some great projects over the years and I tell people all the time I’m not rich and I don’t even have retirement. I’ve had a ball, and I’ve had a lot of fun doing what I do. It’s a passion; it’s an addiction.”
Wysong has been married for 45 years and raised five kids. He has also partially raised some grandkids and was even a foster parent for a while. Wysong said he doesn’t plan on retiring. He tells people that “as long as the Lord keeps me able and mobile, I’ll be working.” And the work he continues to do will definitely be cherished by future generations.
HISTORICAL HOMES FEATURE
“Timeless Dayton” takes a look at historical homes in the region. The Dayton Daily News wants to share stories of historic homes and the journeys of restoration. Reach out to Reporter Jessica Graue at jessica.graue@coxinc.com.
About the Author