The next time you step into a public restroom, say a quiet thank you to Dayton natives Michael and Ira Gessel, Steve Froikin and Natalie Precker. After all, it was their efforts nearly 50 years ago that allowed Americans to pee for free. The high school students founded the Committee to End Pay Toilets in America in late 1968 and launched what would be a tenacious, bold national campaign to get rid of the hated pay toilets. For readers under the age of 50, thousands of public restrooms across the country had locking mechanisms on stall doors that required a dime or more to open. The idea for changing the world came on a Gessel family road trip along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in December 1968 when the brothers encountered pay toilets at a Howard Johnson Restaurant. They saw it as an affront to human dignity, and ending pay toilets became their number one priority. The committee's logo was a fist clenching chains rising from a toilet bowl. Membership dues were 25¢, and some 1,800 people across the country promptly joined. In May 1976, Ohio Gov. James Rhodes signed the toilet bill into law. It put a lid on the problem by requiring an equal number of free toilets for every pay one. A $1,000 penalty was tacked on for non-compliance.
