The Magazine of the Greater Jim Thorpe Area
jttoday.com
Mar. 2006

Pop Culture - Part 4

Gordon Ripkey holds his life membership certificate with the  New England Moxie Congress. Ripkey is a collector of Moxie memorabilia. On the countertop, from left to right is a bottle from Skinner Brothers Lehighton Bottling Company, and a Moxie bottle and a Justins bottle, both bottled by the Lehighton Moxie Bottling Company by Ripkey’s uncle Justin Dunbar.

Lehighton historian Mike Ebbert opens garage doorthat once led to the original location of the Lewies Bottling Company and very likely, had been the Lehighton Bottling Company before Justin Dunbar split with his brother Lewis and moved the Lehighton Bottling Company, later to become the Moxie Bottling Company, between Second and Bridge Streets on Summit Avenue.

A 1938 calendar from the L.H. Dunbar Bottling Company of Lehighton. L.H. Dunbar bottled Lewies Beverages and Whistle. (Calendar courtesy Platz’s Restaurant.)

Although no soda bottling plants remain, Carbon County had many only a generation ago.

This is the fourth part of a series on the soft drink “pop” industry in Carbon County.

Part 4: Pop – The Family Business

An inveterate Moxie collector, former Lehighton School principal Gordon Ripkey was related to major Lehighton bottlers. 

We are a generation that grew up not only drinking soda, but being constantly inundated with pop advertising, with television commercials adding to the magazine ads and billboards that had been around in previous generations. 

This mass marketing crushed the local brands, making them part of history. Their bottles became collectables and people wonder what happened to the locally bottled brands that they enjoyed while growing up. 

At a time when schools are trying to rid themselves of sugary soft drinks, it’s almost ironic that a major collector of soft drink memorabilia is a former high school principal. 

Gordon Ripkey, a former Lehighton High School principal grew up with family in the soda business. His father’s brother, uncle Howard Ripkey, owned the  Carbon Bottling Works. His mother’s sister was married to uncle Justin Dunbar, owner of the  Lehighton Moxie Bottling Works. Justin’s brother, Lewis Dunbar, unrelated to Ripkey and who he never met, ran Lewies Bottling Company. All three bottling companies were in Lehighton. 

Ripkey’s mother was Hazel Bennett. Her sister, Helen Bennett, married Justin Dunbar. Beneath their Bridge and Second Street on Summit Avenue home, the Dunbars operated the Lehighton Moxie Bottling Works where they bottled a variety of flavored sodas like orange, grape and cream under the “Justins” label, a franchised chocolate beverage – Chocolate Soldier, and a national brand, “Moxie.” 

Ripkey remembers it as the “Moxie house” because above the basement windows of the bottling operation painted on the white siding in large red lettered script was the words, Moxie Bottling Company. The vacant lot which adjoins the property was used as a ball field for the Moxie team sponsored by the bottler. The “Moxie house” was built in 1879 and is now owned by the David Hofacker family. 

In the early part of the last century, Justin Dunbar and his brother, Lewis Dunbar, operated the Lehighton Bottling Company at Mahoning Alley on North 4th Street, between Cypress and Mahoning Street and between 4th and 5th streets. 

In the late 1920’s, the brothers split the business. Lewis opened the Lewis H. Dunbar Bottling Company, selling “Lewies Beverages” Later, the business was moved to 248 South 4Ih Street in a building formerly used in the 1930s by the Roth brothers to seIl Jewett and Paige automobiles. Ed Teets and Mary Blank later used the building as a Chevrolet garage. Today, Kim Semmel has her Dance with Kim studio in that building. 

After Lewis died, his daughter, Edna’s husband, C. Ware Boynton, became proprietor. In 195I, the business was sold to Alan Hahn and Melvin Gilham. Hahn later sold his half of the business to Gilham. Gilham’s ownership of Dunbars was discussed in part 2 of this series.

Thanks to Mike Ebbert for historical background.

Continued in Part 5:  A Family with Moxie