Leroy Youngwirth on the Southside

Leroy's Bar at the corner of 7th and Knapp is a Southside institution. The first saloon there opened in the summer of 1914. Leroy's gets its name from Leroy Youngwirth, the proprietor of the bar from 1949 until 1991.

Leroy's Bar at 701 Knapp Street.

I recently met a longtime Oshkosher who said he spent a lot of time at Leroy's in the 1960s. He said he got to know Leroy Youngwirth pretty well. I asked the guy if he had any Leroy stories. Here’s what he told me...

Leroy, him and his buddies. There were four or five of them who were on the road every afternoon going around to the bars and they'd just drink. And all of them had stuff wrong with them like diabetes and everything. And they weren't drinking beer. They would just drink alcohol, almost straight alcohol. Yeah, Leroy was a different guy…

When he was tending bar, and there were like three guys drinking and two of them were drinking fast and one of them was drinking slow and had like half a bottle of beer left, Leroy would put another bottle in front of the slow guy. The guy would say, 'I don't need one yet.' Leroy would tell him, 'You catch up or you go out and sit on the stoop.' He was so impatient. He'd do that to everybody.

There was a lot of gambling there and cash raffles and whatnot. Sunday mornings they'd have these big raffles. Leroy got caught all the time. He'd get fined and then the next Sunday he'd have another raffle all over again. Leroy, he was just... I don't know. They could have made a movie about Leroy.

Leroy Youngwirth behind his bar in 1991.

Leroy Youngwirth was born in Oshkosh in 1919. Prohibition began the following year. Leroy’s father, Butch Youngwirth, was a bootlegger who ran several wildcat breweries in and around Oshkosh during the so-called dry years (Butch's story can be found here). Leroy Youngwirth died on March 27, 2000. He was 80 years old.

Leroy's grave marker in Lake View Memorial Park.