Community remembers SkyWay Drive-In as more than a place to eat

by Noell Wolfgram Evans

Many longtime area residents spent the end of the summer saying goodbye to what was more than just a restaurant, but a community staple that became part of their lives.

In July, SkyWay Drive-In closed its last location in Fairlawn, and with it, the region lost a connection with the past. Owner Steve Large wrote in a Facebook post, “For more than seven decades, SkyWay has been so much more than a restaurant – it has been a tradition, a gathering place and a piece of our community’s story.”

The business was founded in 1952 by Ross Large and Ruth Schaff. “They built a legacy founded on hard work, quality and treating every customer like family. That legacy was lovingly passed from one generation to the next,” Large wrote.

He thanked customers for making the restaurant “an institution, a landmark and a cherished part of our community.”

At its core, SkyWay was more than a restaurant. It was a place to hang out after a football game, relive the memory of a first date and of course eat onion rings that belied their basic nature.

At a sit-down restaurant, you wouldn’t think of striking up a conversation with the adjoining table mid-meal, but at SkyWay, rolling down your window to talk to a neighboring car was expected.

Longtime customer Debbie Lothes said, “It was such a pleasure to go there. It was fun. Everyone was pretty cordial.” She paused for a moment as her mind raced back through time. “During high school, it was a whole different ballgame there.”

“On Friday and Saturday nights, whether we were eating there or not, we always cruised SkyWay,” Lothes said. “And they were always full. Sometimes there wasn’t a parking spot to be had.”

And about those parking spots, she said there was an unwritten rule, “‘The Establishment’ parked near the building and all of the high school kids parked in the back rows.” Even then, she said every school had its own section and there was never any trouble.

One of the particular draws for Lothes and her boyfriend, George, was that “it was like a car show. You would circle the building to see the cars and who was there.”

As she got older, Lothes and her now-husband George looked forward to the new “season” every year to see who the new carhops were. They enjoyed getting to know them, and George particularly liked giving them nicknames.

Carhops took the jobs as a badge of honor and enjoyed their “regulars” as much as the customers enjoyed them. One past employee, who asked not to be named as she still felt a little guilty, recalled the friendships she made, cemented in the storeroom where they commiserated over customers while sneaking pickles.

While the memories of time spent with friends were perhaps the biggest point of discussion following the closure, the lamentation of the onion rings was a very close second. “Aunt” Ruth Schaaf developed an onion ring recipe that online commenters like Lauren Richards called “glorious.”

Lothes summed up the transcendent nature of SkyWay when she said, “It was an integral part of our lives.”

There was a proposal to build a Dutch Bros Coffee on the site, which has received some pushback, as community members want to pause redevelopment of a historical piece of the community, according to the Akron Beacon Journal.

Photo caption: SkyWay Drive In closed its doors after 74 years. Photo from Facebook.