IRONTON — The year was 1976 and Gene Unger was flat on his back in the hospital.

He’d had a heart attack and he was facing a considerable hospital stay.

That left his teenage son Joe and Joe’s sister Teresa to run the family shoe store.

Joe Unger remembers visiting his father in his hospital room.

“I remember telling him, ‘Dad, I sold my first pair of shoes,’” Unger said.

Gene Unger must have been more impressed than he let on. Up until that point, Joe had worked weekends at the store, dusting, sweeping up, opening boxes — busy work to earn enough cash for a few baseball cards.

“‘Everything’s OK, Dad, don’t worry,’” Joe told his father.

Gene Unger recovered from his heart attack, which happened during the 30th anniversary year of his downtown Ironton store.

And Joe stayed in the business through the rest of high school and college, eventually making a career of it.

Another 30 years has passed and Joe Unger, now president of the family-owned corporation, is celebrating 60 years Ungers have been selling shoes in the same location.

In that 30-year period, Joe Unger’s devotion to his family’s business, and to his role as a downtown merchant, has grown and deepened.

Like Ashland, Ironton has seen better retail days. The era when major stores anchored downtown America and local shoppers trod the sidewalks from one family-owned shop to another has long passed.

Unger’s hangs on, however. Not that Joe, now 46, thinks of it as hanging on. He is convinced that small downtowns can thrive as retail centers.

He works to make that happen in memory of his father, who died in 1995.

Gene Unger got his start in the shoe business in the 1920s, working in the Selby Shoe factory. Then he was manager of the shoe department at Gabler’s Department Store.

He spent the war years in the service and after his discharge in 1945 was offered his job back at Gabler’s.

Instead, he opened his own store in February 1946, in the same building at the corner of Third and Vernon streets.

He was the first tenant in the building, which was the first commercial structure erected in Ironton after wartime steel rationing was lifted.

Gene Unger married his wife Bonnie after the war and their five children grew up amid the shoe boxes.

Joe and his sister, Mary Meehan, who is vice president, still manage the store and Joe’s two oldest children, Rian and Joseph, and his wife Karen work there, too.

“A family business becomes a big part of the family. We talked about shoes around the dinner table,” he said.

After his emergency initiation onto the sales floor, he stayed in sales during summers, through Christmas breaks, in the spring when his buddies were baking in the Daytona sunshine. “I came to Ironton to sell shoes.”

Unger graduated from Ohio University in 1982 and later earned certifications for fitting orthopedic shoes. Meehan has the same certifications.

In the 1970s, the building’s owners wanted to sell out and Gene Unger bought his store.

Ironton was still in the flush of post-war prosperity. “It was a happening corner,” Unger said.

In the 1980s he expanded when the gift shop on the corner closed, knocking out a wall and doubling the space.

In the 1990s, Joe Unger renovated the original facade of the art-deco style building, restoring it as closely as possible to its pre-war appearance.

Inside the store are the original cash register, display cases and other items. The furnishings are 1930s vintage that Gene Unger bought when Gabler’s closed.

For Gene Unger, buying the used furnishings was a matter of business practicality.

“He knew they were good and he bought them for a song,” said Joe Unger, who keeps them because he’s a self-described “history nut.”

That explains the pictures and trophies of the bowling team his dad sponsored in the 1950s and the vintage Red Ball Jets memorabilia he keeps on display.

It only partially explains the decision to restore the building.

“It was my commitment to downtown,” Unger said. “I feel like it’s a legacy to be part of a city for so long and I want to give back to my city and my community. One way I can do it is to maintain its heritage through architecture.”

Maintaining the store’s historical flavor honors his father’s memory.

“When I wait on elderly customers, I hear them remembering downtown Ironton when it had five theaters, J.C. Penneys, Kresges, names like that. I want my father’s name to be a part of that,” he said.

Unger’s commitment to downtown doesn’t stop at the vestibule to the shoe store. When the city was planning the remodeling of the former J.C. Penney building into a civic center, Unger was at the forefront of the campaign to recreate the fountain that once splashed at the center of the main sales floor.

Preservation makes solid business sense, Unger believes. Old-fashioned downtowns make for a pleasant shopping experience, and the evidence is in new mall construction, he said.

“They’re building malls now that look like old-fashioned downtowns. There’s a message there, that it’s the heart and soul of your community.”

Downtowns do have a future, but it is up to merchants to roll up their sleeves and make it happen, he said.

“It is imperative that the owner of the property downtown be responsible for their property, and the merchant also be cognizant that they have to be actively involved in downtown,” he said.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2652.