Stanton Jonas
born 1929
BiographyStanton Jonas, born in 1929, grew up in Hazelwood, and attended Taylor Allderdice High School. He went to the University of Pittsburgh for pharmacy from 1948 to 1951. He then joined the Air Force, enlisting with seven other Pitt classmates. He spent four years in the Air Force running the Air Force pharmacy in Miho, Japan. After Japan he managed a Thrift Drug Store for seven years in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, it was downtown in the center square/park area. He moved back to Pittsburgh after this to manage a pharmacy in Carlton House Hotel (the building was imploded in 1980) and take additional classes at Pitt. About two years after working at the Carlton his wife, Roda, noticed an advertisement in the Pittsburgh Press for a County Pharmacist and he applied. This is when “all hell broke loose” as he stated, because the paper advertised the job in the men’s section and the National Organization of Women brought a sex discrimination lawsuit against the Press. The lawsuit went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1973, which ruled in favor of Pittsburgh City ordinance that stated jobs could not be gendered in the newspaper. Jonas still received the job once the lawsuit was settled. He stayed in this position for around 12 years and then moved up to a position as one of the county district managers (there were six districts at this time). He attempted retirement three times before it stuck.
