Dexter may have stopped making them, but others continued.
I don't know who specifically has been making them during that period, nor what quality they were, but I've seen them at the shoe outlets that I buy all my athletic shoes at every time I go there, and at local sporting goods stores, for years.
The shoe store I go to most is Famous Footwear, but I can't remember the name of the other place (I think it's Factory Shoe Outlet, or something like that).
I don't know what store chains you have on the east coast, so I don't know where to tell you to look out there.
It may also be a regional thing, where they weren't selling in your area so people stopped carrying them, but they sold enough out here to keep carrying them.