National Clothesline Celebrates 50 Years with TCATA

(April, 2025) In October of 1961, an optimistic Pennsylvania couple — Sol and Carol Memberg took a chance and published approximately 500 issues of a new four-page “Newspaper for Dry Cleaners and Tailors in the Delaware Valley.” It was called The Clothesline and it was assembled on the kitchen table of their home.

The seeds for the publication were first planted during Sol’s childhood when he grew up working for his father Philip’s tailoring business in Philadelphia. In junior high, his interest in journalism blossomed, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to work for someone else.

“In the back of his mind was always his father saying, ‘You have to own your own business. You don’t want to be beholden to anybody,’” Carol said. “He said, ‘Let’s try a community newspaper for local drycleaners.’ We put something together in our house. He wrote most of the stories. I wrote some. We created a couple of dummy ads of what it would look like.” Once the mock-up was finished, they attended a local convention of the Pennsylvania Drycleaning Association.

“We went from one employee who was a typesetter, to having a full staff of two to four typesetters and an art staff of about five or six people who could do paste-ups. We had a dark room and could do all of our own processing,” Carol noted. “I did more writing and some of the paste-up work. Sol did photography and would develop the pictures. We were really hands-on for a whole lot of years.”

Over time, the small paper with a first run of 500 issues grew to include a subscription base of tens of thousands of cleaners. Sol and Carol made a point of attending conferences all over the country — not just in the east where they were headquartered. “It was really rewarding for us because we actually got to meet the people who we were writing about,” Carol added.

The Membergs, pictured at a TCATA Conference, also continued to seek top-of-the-line technology to improve their publishing efforts. In the early 1980s, they had an opportunity to test a new computer that wasn’t on the market yet — a “Macintosh” — and were impressed enough to buy two plus a LaserWriter printer when they were for sale.

A few decades back, a second generation of the family — the couple’s daughter, Leslie Schaeffer — began as a delivery driver, but soon expanded her role into every aspect of the business. She has been instrumental in leading the publication into the digital age where it can also be read online.

Unfortunately, Sol did not live long enough to see his newspaper evolve in the 21st Century; he passed away on May 30, 1997. Since then, Carol and Leslie have continued helming Clothesline in his absence, through the events of 9/11, the Great Recession of 2008 and the recent pandemic. Join us in congratulating National Clothesline on their 50th anniversary of membership with TCATA!