Local History

A brief chronology of Akron’s cereal mills of the 1800s:

• Stone Mill (1832) — Foot of Mill Street near Ash Street. Built by Dr. Eliakim Crosby. Five-story building along the Ohio & Erie Canal.

• Aetna Mill (1838) — North of West Market Street and west of foot of Furnace Street at Lock 10 of Ohio & Erie Canal. Built by Samuel A. Wheeler and John B. Mitchell. Formerly a blast iron furnace.

• Center Mill (1839) — Three-story frame building at Cherry Street and Ohio & Erie Canal. Built by Joseph A. Beebe and William E Wright. Originally a woolen mill.

• Cascade Mill (1840) — Near southwest corner of Howard and North streets. Built by William Mitchell and Judge Leceister King. Purchased by Ferdinand Schumacher in 1866 and expanded.

• City Mill (1842) — At foot of West Market Street between Canal Street and Ohio & Erie Canal. Built by George W. McNeil.

• Allen Mill (1856) — A brick mill on Canal Street south of Cherry Street. Built by Albert Allen on former site of Center Mill. Formerly a woolen mill.

• German Mill (1859) — Originally at Howard and West Market streets. Built by Schumacher. Moved to South Summit Street between Mill and Quarry streets in 1863. Destroyed by fire in 1872. New building on Summit Street in 1872. Burned in 1886.

• Empire Mill (1863) — East Mill and Summit streets. Specialized in barley. Built by Schumacher.

• Pearl Mill (1870) — Canal and Cherry streets. Built by William G. Raymond and Abraham Fulton. Succeeded by the Hower Oatmeal Mill led by John H. Hower.

• Jumbo Mill (1884) — Eight-story building off South Broadway. Built by Schumacher. Destroyed by fire in 1886.

• Akron Milling Co. (1884) — Howard Street, adjoining Stone Mill on Mill Street. Purchased by Schumacher in 1886.

• Seiberling Milling Co. (1883) — Six-story brick flour mill near Case Avenue in East Akron. Built by John F. Seiberling. Famous for Mother’s Oats. Became associated with Great Western Cereal Co. in 1901. Gobbled up by Quaker Oats Co. about 1912.

— Mark J. Price

Downtown Akron was the same old grind.

Horse-drawn wagons brimming with golden grain lined up along deeply rutted roads in the 19th century. Farmers from the distant countryside brought their harvest to town to have local mills turn it into flour or meal.

It seems strange today to think that cereal milling was Akron’s primary industry for decades. More than a dozen mills operated during that golden era, leading to lucrative spinoff industries such as the making of wood barrels, burlap sacks and paper containers.

Dr. Eliakim Crosby (1779-1854), a native of Litchfield, Conn., made it all possible with a daring idea to create an artificial waterway to supply hydraulic power. In 1831, he proposed cutting a channel from the Little Cuyahoga River near Bank Street and having water race downhill toward Lock 5 on the Ohio & Erie Canal.

According to Akron historian Samuel A. Lane: “It was said, with how much truth the writer cannot say, though with a strong shade of probability, that to prevent observation and the miscarriage of his designs, the doctor did much of his surveying and the running of his levels for his contemplated race by moonlight, as all of his movements had to be made on the sly, until after the control of the river bed had been secured by the purchase of contiguous lands on either side.”

Crosby established a village called Cascade, later platted as Akron, at the present-day intersection of Market and Main streets. His so-called Cascade Race sloshed down the center of today’s Main Street and veered west at present-day Mill Street into the canal.

It’s called Mill Street because Crosby built a five-story mill, one of the finest in Ohio, at the foot of the hill in 1832. The Stone Mill was the first in Akron and the largest building of its era, a bustling hub around which the village revolved. It stood for nearly 80 years — so long that its name unofficially became the Old Stone Mill.

In a 1929 interview with the Akron Times-Press, former wheat buyer John R. Pisel, a sage at the ripe age of 68, remembered seeing farmers line up wagons along “the whole length of Howard Street” for a chance to sell their harvest at the Stone Mill.

“After the farmers would unload and receive their pay for the wheat, they would drive over through the mud on Main Street to feed their teams and then go out and buy clothing and other things for the winter,” Pisel said. “Many is the time I have seen entire families seated on the grain wagons.”

In another interview, retired firefighter John G. Dietz, a wizened wizard at the age of 76, remembered the mill as “a great place in its day.”

“That’s where I used to go as a boy to buy feed for Father’s cows and pigs right here in Akron and most everybody did in those times,” he said. “It was nothing strange to see cows and pigs wandering around on the downtown streets. Nobody thought anything of it.”

The Stone Mill soon had competitors. Over the next decade, four more flour mills — Aetna, Center, Cascade and City — began to churn along the Cascade Race.

By the mid-1840s, as the town’s population topped 3,000, Akron’s mills produced 135,000 barrels of flour a year, consuming about 4,500 bushels of wheat every 24 hours. Canalboats transported the barrels to faraway places in the country.

Running day and night

“When I went to work, they were making about 1,500 barrels of flour a day at the Stone Mill,” Pisel recalled. “After a while, they raised the capacity to 2,200 barrels a day. The big mill ran night and day except Sundays. There were no holidays and we were on the jump all the time.”

Over the decades, most of Akron’s major mills suffered devastating fires. Sparks ignited dust from grain and flour, producing explosions that were difficult to extinguish because of low water pressure and inadequate equipment from yesteryear’s fire battalions. Mill owners either rebuilt or found new lines of work.

Crosby pioneered Akron’s cereal industry, but Ferdinand Schumacher revolutionized it.

Schumacher (1822-1908), a native of Hanover, Germany, moved to Akron in 1851 and opened a shop on South Howard Street. In 1856, he began milling cereal grains because he missed his favorite food.

According to Akron historian Karl H. Grismer: “Schumacher was fond of oatmeal. He had always eaten it for breakfast back in Germany and wanted to keep on eating it after he came to America. But he learned that the only oatmeal obtainable was imported — and expensive.

“Being a frugal individual, Schumacher refused to pay the prevailing high price for his favorite cereal. He decided to make some himself — he had watched it being manufactured in Germany and was familiar with the process.”

Schumacher opened the German Mill in 1859 at Howard and Market streets and won a lucrative contract to supply oatmeal to Union soldiers during the Civil War. As business expanded, he bought other mills (including Cascade) and built new ones (such as Empire and Jumbo), turning a small enterprise into a vast empire.

He consolidated his properties into the F. Schumacher Milling Co. In 1881, seven mill owners — including Schumacher — formed the American Cereal Co., which in 1901 changed its name to Quaker Oats. The company employed more than 1,000 people in downtown Akron.

The wheels of history turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine. As the cereal business became industrialized and automated, Akron’s mills lost their old-world charm.

Electric power made waterwheels obsolete. Canalboats gave way to railroad cars. Automobiles replaced horse-drawn wagons.

Old-timer Dietz feared that the quickening pace of society was detrimental to public health in the late 1920s.

“People often die young now days for the reason that life is now swift,” he said. “These are strenuous days. People don’t take time to live. There is a great nervous strain and then comes the breakdown. In the old days, we lived slower and we ate plain food.”

Today, we have Mill Street without a mill. We have Quaker Square without Quaker Oats. We have a canal without a boat.

“Now little if any flour is made here,” Pisel lamented in 1929. “The old mills have been changed and now breakfast foods are made. The old waterwheel no longer turns.”

Beacon Journal copy editor Mark J. Price is the author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.

CUYAHOGA FALLS: Police Chief Tom Pozza has received an unusual letter from the past.

The letter was composed 50 years ago when Pozza was only 4 years old. Its writer has been dead since 1999.

Menzo D. Preston, chief of police in Cuyahoga Falls from 1946 to 1964, wrote the note in 1962 as the city celebrated its 150th anniversary. It was addressed to the police chief of 2012, the city’s bicentennial year.

Karen Duffy McPherson, a resident of Reynoldsburg, discovered the letter while going through family memorabilia to compile scrapbooks.

Her grandfather was Russell H. Duffy Sr., the city’s first police chief, who served from 1922 to 1946. Before Duffy, town marshals kept the peace in Cuyahoga Falls. Preston, who succeeded Duffy as chief, was McPherson’s great-uncle.

Born in Madison in 1899, Preston lived most of his life in Cuyahoga Falls. He graduated from Falls High in 1918 and served in the Army during World War I. During his military service, he spent two wild days pursuing Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa south of the border.

Preston worked for the Cuyahoga Falls school board as a truant officer before joining the police department in 1938, one of only 10 men on the force. He worked his way up to sergeant, captain and acting chief before taking over the helm in 1946.

As part of the city’s sesquicentennial festivities, Preston wrote a letter in August 1962 to his future successor.

“In the last paragraph, he talked about all the changes in the Falls in the past 50 years, 1912-1962,” McPherson said. “He also imagines the changes in the coming years, 1962-2012.”

Fifty years later, the future is now. Here is Preston’s letter:

• • •

Chief of Police

Police Department

Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio

Aug. 20, 2012

Dear Chief:

This is the year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the City of Cuyahoga Falls, and I feel there is no better place to live and work.

At this time, we have a population of approximately 49,000. There are approximately 20,300 registered automobiles in the city. We have a police department of 47 men: One Chief, Three Captains, Three Lieutenants, Six Sergeants and 34 Patrolmen.

Our city covers 8¼ square miles and we can foresee very little chance of increasing in size, since we are surrounded by Akron and several small communities. We have two shopping areas, one on Front Street (Route 5) between Broad Blvd. and Stow Street and one on State Road (Route 8) approximately 1½ miles long.

There have been so many changes in living conditions during the past 50 years it is difficult to imagine what it will be like in 2012. With lots of luck, I remain,

Very truly yours,

Menzo Preston

Chief of Police

Aug. 16, 1962

• • •

Chief Preston retired in January 1964, more than a year after writing the sesquicentennial letter to the future. He was 100 when he died on Nov. 12, 1999.

Preston lived to see many more changes in the city.

In 1962, he couldn’t imagine that the downtown would be converted into a shopping center. The city closed Front Street in 1978 as part of an urban renewal project.

In 1962, he didn’t think that the city could grow, but it did just that in 1985 when Cuyahoga Falls merged with Northampton Township, tripling the size of the community and winning Blossom Music Center as a prize.

Preston also couldn’t predict the demise of the State Road Shopping Center or the transformation of Howe Road into a giant retail hub.

His instincts were right about the letter, though. It inspired the current chief to write a letter of his own during the Cuyahoga Falls bicentennial celebration.

Pozza, 54, a 30-year veteran who became chief in January 2011, wrote a note to his future successor in 2062.

Fifty years early, the future is here. Here is Pozza’s letter:

• • •

Chief of Police 2062

Police Department

Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio

Dear Chief,

This August 2012, we will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the founding of the City of Cuyahoga Falls. After growing up here, going to school here, and working here for the last 30 plus years, I am convinced that there is no better place to live, work or raise a family.

At this time, our population stands at around 50,000 residents. We have a police department of 71 officers, consisting of one Chief, one Captain, four Lieutenants, nine Sergeants and fifty-six Patrol officers.

Our city covers 25.6 square miles. We have one major shopping area located on Howe Ave. We are anxiously awaiting ground breaking on our newest shopping area, Portage Crossing, located at State Road and Portage Trail. Acme #10 located on State Road is currently under re-construction, building a bigger, more modern grocery store.

During the summer months, Rockin’ on the River events, along with other festivals at the Riverfront amphitheater, provide family fun entertainment for everyone.

With all the positive changes and growth occurring right now, it is difficult to imagine what the city will be like in 2062. May God Bless you and the City of Cuyahoga Falls.

Very Truly Yours,

Thomas L. Pozza

Chief of Police 2012

• • •

Once again, the long arm of the law reaches from the past into the future.

Happy 200th birthday, Cuyahoga Falls — and special future greetings to all the people of 2062. Happy semiquincentennial!

Haunted by a personal tragedy, Sugar Ray Robinson easily could have thrown in the towel.

Instead, the world welterweight champion traveled to Akron, laced up his gloves and rose to the occasion.

Robinson, 26, reclaimed his career when he agreed to headline a boxing match Aug. 21, 1947, at the Rubber Bowl. The fight card was unusual because it also featured world middleweight champion Rocky Graziano in a preliminary, four-round exhibition. Two New York legends shared the bill!

Robinson was scheduled to appear in a 10-round bout against sixth-ranked welterweight Sailor Sammy Secreet, 27, a Pittsburgh pugilist who served in the Navy during World War II. Graziano, 28, was up against Cliff Koerkle, 25, a New York boxer who was best known for losing a split decision to Jake LaMotta.

Returning to the ring was a difficult decision for Robinson. The last time he fought, the results were catastrophic.

Los Angeles boxer Jimmy Doyle, 22, had challenged Robinson to a title bout June 24, 1947, at the Cleveland Arena. Haplessly overmatched, Doyle faced a brutal barrage for eight rounds before Robinson caught him in the jaw with a wicked left hook, sending the challenger flying backward to the canvas, where he struck his head with a horrible thud.

Doyle tried to stand, but lost consciousness. Handlers carried him to an ambulance, which transported him to St. Vincent Charity Hospital.

Robinson’s celebration of a knockout victory in a title bout quickly turned to despair when he learned that his opponent was in a coma. He camped out at the hospital, pleading with Doyle’s trainers: “Is there anything I can do?”

Doctors performed emergency brain surgery on Doyle after diagnosing a cerebral hemorrhage. He never awoke. Seventeen hours after the fight, he was pronounced dead.

“I’m sure sorry about this,” a distraught Robinson told reporters. “I didn’t have any idea he was seriously hurt when I left the ring. He was a great kid and a swell fighter.”

Cuyahoga County Coroner Samuel Gerber ruled the death an accident, saying Robinson was “absolutely blameless” and “unfortunate in being the opposing contestant at the time of Doyle’s fatal injuries.”

Back in the ring

After taking nearly two months off, Robinson was persuaded to return to the ring for a series of charity bouts to benefit Doyle’s family. The Akron fight was the first in the series.

Robinson manager George Gainford and press agent Pete Vaccare were not confident that Robinson was ready.

“Naturally, we don’t talk about Doyle in Sugar’s presence,” Vaccare told the Beacon Journal in 1947. “We just can’t go up to him and say ‘Now, Sugar, we want you to forget all about that affair in Cleveland,’ and we can’t keep asking him if he has wiped it from his mind. …

“We will be watching him closely to see if there are any signs of him pulling his punches or any worrying when his punches connect. Sugar was the greatest fighter in the world at his weight the night he met Doyle, but it doesn’t take very much for a great fighter to lose his edge and to become a has-been.”

Huge venue

Boxing promoter Bob Heath, who owned Kippy’s Restaurant in downtown Akron, welcomed the fight at the Rubber Bowl. Tickets cost $5.50 ringside, $3.50 reserved and $1.50 general admission. The cavernous stadium had about 35,000 seats available — as opposed to the Akron Armory, the usual boxing venue, which had a capacity of only 3,000.

Keeping a low profile, the 152-pound Robinson trained that week at the armory while the 148-pound Secreet worked out at Army-Navy Post 102.

Cleveland promoter Larry Atkins, who arranged the ill-fated Robinson-Doyle bout, had the gall to criticize the Akron fight.

“If Sugar Robinson should kill Sammy Secreet Thursday night in the Rubber Bowl, don’t forget to mention that I warned you it probably would happen,” he told Beacon Journal sports scribe Jim Schlemmer. “This thing is pure murder. Secreet is being licked nowadays by rank preliminary fighters and to send him into action against Robinson is the rankest kind of matchmaking.”

Bad weather

National Weather Service forecaster Ray Robinson — yes, that really was his name — made a bold prediction at Akron Municipal Airport that a warm, dry night was in store for boxing fans.

So, of course, it poured cats and dogs as soon as the matches began. Dreams of a huge walk-up crowd evaporated. Only 4,865 fans showed up in the driving rain.

Foul weather may have had something to do with the sloppiness of the fights.

In preliminary bouts, Sandy Siebert of Pittsburgh clobbered Eddie Cross of Detroit, Danny Peters of New York pummeled Russell Budd of Pittsburgh, and Sammy Schipani of Pittsburgh battered Johnny Chatmon of Buffalo, N.Y. Each win was a second-round knockout.

The Graziano-Koerkle exhibition turned out to be a wash, too, with the fighters wearing helmets and big gloves. The first round was 90 seconds, the second was 60 seconds, the third was 45 and the fourth was 30. Graziano took home $1,050 for 225 seconds in the ring.

Robinson’s previous fight was a tragedy, but this one turned into a comedy. Ringside fans turned their chairs upside down and used them as umbrellas as the rain fell.

Secreet’s handlers carried him to the ring so his shoes wouldn’t get soaked in the wet grass. It didn’t help. The fight was over in one minute and 50 seconds.

“Robinson sparred with him for a full minute, maneuvering him around to a spot where there would be the minimum splash when Sammy hit the canvas,” Schlemmer wrote.

“Then the champion landed a left jab, a left hook and a right stab to the button. Secreet went straight down. Referee Eddie Atlas went through the motions of counting but Secreet had no intentions of getting up.”

Gate receipts for the soggy evening were a disappointing $9,542 — about $110,000 today.

Robinson donated about $700 of the take to Doyle’s family, along with 10 percent of the proceeds from his next three bouts. By November, he had collected enough money to set up a 10-year trust fund to pay $50 a month to Doyle’s mother, Marie DeLaney.

Looking back

Decades later, Secreet recalled the Akron fight as dreadful but memorable.

“No, I didn’t last long against Robinson, but to be frank with you, it was one of my worst performances and it almost ended my career,” he told a reporter. “I wasn’t in shape and it almost wrecked me. …

“But even if I had been in great shape, I suspect he would have beaten me anyhow.”

Robinson went on to become a five-time middleweight champion. Heralded as one of the greatest boxers of all time, he retired from the ring in 1965, compiling a record of 175-19-6, including 110 knockouts. He was battling Alzheimer’s disease when he died April 12, 1989, at age 67.

Sam Secreet, who also had Alzheimer’s, died Aug. 2, 1999, in Steubenville. He was 79.

Although their match is only a footnote in boxing history, its significance cannot be denied.

On a soggy canvas 65 years ago in Akron, Sugar Ray Robinson found his footing and regained the will to fight.

George Morgan was a singing sensation in the privacy of his car. He could drive to work in the predawn gloom and warble to his heart’s content.

Humming along to the engine one dreary morning in 1947, the Barberton man felt particularly inspired. A bittersweet song began to unfold in his mind as he thought about the girlfriend who had just broken up with him.

“Candy kisses, wrapped in paper,” he crooned. “Mean more to you than any of mine.”

Within 20 minutes, he had roughed out a song that would become a smash hit and catapult him to international fame.

Morgan had been a fan of country music for as long as he could remember. One of six siblings, he was born in 1924 to Zachariah and Ethel Morgan in Waverly, Tenn., near Nashville. He was 3 years old when the family moved to Barberton, where his father found a job at Seiberling Rubber Co.

The Magic City was 500 miles from Music City, but the magic of radio helped bridge the distance. On Saturday evenings, the family nestled into their home at 453 W. State St. and tuned in to the Grand Ole Opry broadcast on 50,000-watt station WSM in Nashville.

“I grew up listening to country music because to my folks, it was something from down home,” Morgan later recalled.

Musical talent

As a boy, he learned to play harmonica and guitar, composing songs, singing his heart out and dreaming of performing on the radio. He received a public education, but dropped out of Barberton High in the 11th grade. Morgan enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II, only to be released months later on a medical discharge.

Working odd jobs in a restaurant, bakery and rubber shop, he began to think that music might be a better career path. He sang to customers at Benny Katz’s barbershop at Kenmore Boulevard and Wooster Road North. He also booked his first professional gig, earning $5 a night to sing at boxer Chet O’Kelley’s cocktail lounge at 140 Second St. NW.

At 6-foot-1 and rail thin, Morgan stood out in a crowd. He had slicked hair, a mischievous smile, a smooth voice and earnest delivery, sounding like a country Bing Crosby.

He was thrilled to perform live “hillbilly music” — that’s what they called it then — as an amateur act on WAKR radio’s Pal Time program on Saturday evenings in Akron. The act was so good that Wooster radio station WWST hired Morgan as an early morning talent in 1947 to sign on the air each day.

Commuting to work at WWST changed Morgan’s life — as he told interviewer Peggy Robbins at the Nashville Tennessean Magazine in 1949.

“I was crazy about a girl,” Morgan explained. “We had an argument and she wouldn’t let me kiss her. No matter how hard I tried to make up with her, I couldn’t get her back into a kissing mood.

“One day while I was driving to station WWST in Wooster, where I had a program, I got to thinking about the candy kisses my mother used to bring me from town when I was a kid. Suddenly, I said to myself, ‘That girl of mine would take a candy kiss instead of mine any old time.’

“I was practically heartbroken about my smoochless romance, but I wasn’t so completely in shreds that I failed to recognize the song possibilities in the idea. Twenty minutes later, over WWST, I was strumming a new tune on my guitar and singing a new song, Candy Kisses.”

He took his theme song with him in 1948 when he landed a job at WWVA radio in Wheeling, W.Va. After several months, he moved on to WSM in Nashville, the station that he listened to as a boy. Morgan lived in a room at the YMCA in case the job didn’t pan out.

Making it big

Things happened pretty fast after that. Columbia Records signed him to a deal in September. Two weeks later, the Grand Ole Opry hired Morgan to replace vocalist Eddy Arnold, who had announced he was stepping down from the Nashville institution.

On the night of Morgan’s debut Sept. 25, 1948, he got lost and nearly missed the show.

“I was walking along a dark street, getting more frantic by the minute, when I saw these two fellows talking near a street light,” he recalled years later. “Walking up to them, I timidly asked, ‘Could you tell me where the Ryman Auditorium is?’ I looked closer and identified that one of the men was Eddy Arnold. Simultaneously, he recognized me.”

Morgan needn’t have worried. The show was a big success. The Barberton crooner remained a popular star at the Opry for the next 27 years.

Morgan, 24, recorded the classic Candy Kisses for Columbia in January 1949. By early April, the song soared to No. 1 on the country chart and remained there for three weeks, earning its crooner the nickname “The Candy Kid.” That month, Morgan’s songs Rain in My Heart, Please, Don’t Let Me Love You and Room Full of Roses also clogged the Top 10.

Candy Kisses went on to sell more than 2 million copies. Singers Elton Britt, Red Foley and Cowboy Copas had Top 10 cover versions — all in 1949. Over the decades, it was recorded by such artists as Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Danny Kaye, Kitty Wells, Ernest Tubb and Bill Haley and the Comets.

Old flame moves on

What happened to the ex-girlfriend who inspired it?

“Oh, she finally married another fellow,” Morgan said. “But I’m sure glad we courted long enough to argue!”

In 1949, Morgan returned to Ohio to marry Anastasia “Anna” Paridon, a Doylestown native whom he met at a Marshallville dance. The couple wed at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Doylestown. They named their first daughter Candy, naturally. Over the next decade, the Morgans welcomed four more children: Beth, Liana, Marty and Lorrie.

Summit Beach Park held “George Morgan Day” in 1949. He was the headliner with opening acts Hank Williams and Little Jimmy Dickens.

Morgan returned often to Barberton to visit his parents at their new home at 934 Brady Ave. In the early 1950s, he was a featured entertainer for a talent show at Barberton High School and played with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra in Centennial Park.

Over the years, he enjoyed several more hit songs, including Almost, A Lover’s Quarrel, There Goes My Life, I’m in Love Again, You’re the Only Good Thing and One Dozen Roses.

The Candy Kid had become a silver-haired crooner by the late 1960s. How proud he was when his youngest daughter, Loretta Lynn Morgan, better known as Lorrie, made her Grand Old Opry debut at age 13 in 1973. Tears filled his eyes when he saw his daughter in the spotlight. No one could have guessed that she would grow up to be a country superstar, selling 6 million records.

George Morgan suffered a heart attack in May 1975 and made his final appearance at the Opry on June 28, 1975.

He had heart surgery a week later, lapsed into a coma and died June 28, 1975, at age 51.

The inscription on his grave at Spring Hill Cemetery in Nashville reads: “A beautiful man, a beautiful voice and a heart to match.”

In 1998, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, along with Tammy Wynette, Elvis Presley and former Grand Ole Opry executive E.W. “Bud” Wendell.

Today, daughter Lorrie Morgan carries on her father’s legacy, regularly performing Candy Kisses during concerts.

Written in 20 minutes, a life-changing song is regarded today as a country classic.

“You don’t mean it when you whisper those sweet love words in my ear. Candy kisses, wrapped in paper, mean more to you than mine do, dear.”

Marion Brubaker probably would have been a grandmother by now.

She didn’t get to go to high school, date boys, attend college, find a job, get married or have children.

She didn’t get to grow up.

Fifty years ago, Marion took a shortcut through woods only three blocks from her home in Coventry Township. The 12-year-old girl fell victim to a monster far worse than any she had read about in a storybook.

Marion, a minister’s daughter, was returning from a two-mile bicycle trip to the Portage Lakes library on Aug. 27, 1962, when she disappeared about 3:30 p.m. on a well-worn path through the trees at South Main Street and Killian Road.

About an hour later, a neighborhood kid burst into his house and yelled to his father: “I think there’s a dead girl in the woods!”

Summit County deputies received the call at 4:30 p.m., rushed to the secluded area and discovered a horrifying scene in the underbrush. A girl’s partially clothed body — face covered, shoes and socks placed neatly to the side — was found about 70 feet east of the path. A deputy checked for a pulse and found none, but noted that the body was still warm.

A bicycle, books and child’s purse had been ditched under an apple tree 20 feet away. Deputies saw impressions in the grass that indicated the girl had been dragged to the thicket, where she was strangled. Her broken horn-rimmed glasses were on the ground.

Investigators found Marion’s library card and took it to her Killian Road home. Her shocked father accompanied deputies to the woods and identified his daughter’s body.

“God didn’t take her,” said the Rev. Clair D. Brubaker, pastor of Hillwood Chapel Community Church off South Arlington Street. “She was taken by the sin in a human heart.”

He and his wife, Ruth, and their daughters Evelyn, Martha and Nadine were devastated by the loss, but found comfort through their faith in God.

“Marion was a fine, Christian girl,” Brubaker told a reporter. “We have prayed and we’ve settled everything here in the family.”

Marion would have been a seventh-grader at Lakeview School. She was a good student, took piano lessons, loved to read and dreamed of being a teacher when she grew up.

She made three visits that summer to the library on Manchester Road. She rode her bicycle and carried books in a front basket. Each round trip usually lasted two hours.

On this Monday, she left home shortly after 2 p.m. and arrived at the library before 3, checking out a few books, including Princess in Denim, Sue Barton Visiting Nurse and Secrets of the Martian Moon. She also stopped at a drugstore to buy a greeting card that her mother had requested.

Investigators asked a deputy’s daughter to travel by bicycle along the same route so they could estimate when Marion arrived at the woods across from the Infant of Prague Villa, a Carmelite monastery where the Interval Brotherhood Home is today.

“She had permission to take the shortcut home through the woods,” her father said. “There was no disobedience on her part. All the children used the shortcut, which we believed was safe.”

More than 600 mourners attended Marion’s funeral on Aug. 30 at Hillwood Chapel.

The Rev. Richard L. Burch, pastor of Grace Brethren Church, delivered a eulogy: “God’s way is best. He makes no mistakes. We may not understand his way, but all this is in accord with his plan and purpose.”

Fourteen officers were assigned to the case after the sheriff’s office requested the assistance of Akron police. They sent physical evidence to the FBI laboratory in Washington, D.C., for testing. No usable fingerprints were found.

Investigators interviewed at least 100 people and questioned a dozen suspects, including a convicted sex offender who lived near Portage Lakes. Police administered lie detector tests and truth serum to determine the veracity of the stories.

One suspect was the 15-year-old boy who reported finding Marion’s body. Officers quizzed the Coventry High School student repeatedly, including an eight-hour session that lasted until midnight.

At one point during the grilling, the boy reportedly said of the slaying: “If I did it, I don’t remember it.”

Deputies charged him with delinquency, saying he gave “false information,” and took him to the detention home, but he eventually was released.

On the first anniversary of Marion’s death, Summit County Sheriff Robert D. Campbell described the case as one of the toughest he ever faced. He kept the evidence in his office.

“I look at her bike every day,” Campbell said. “I keep it here to remind me of the case. We hope someday that it will be cleared up.”

In March 1964, authorities arrested a new suspect. A 49-year-old street peddler from Hubbard reportedly had visited his sister’s home in Portages Lakes on the day of the killing. Relatives noticed that he had scratches on his arms, but believed the wounds were self-inflicted because he had a history of epileptic seizures.

For three days, deputies questioned the peddler, a former Hawthornden State Hospital patient who could not read or write and who spoke in a rambling manner. Just when they were about to let him go, he confessed to the crime.

He told deputies that he attacked Marion in the woods because “I wanted to see everything her had on her.”

Authorities took the peddler to the scene of the slaying, and said he pointed out where the crime was committed.

“He told us some things only the murderer would know,” Assistant Prosecutor Bob Murphy insisted.

A skeptic might have pointed out that the crime scene had literally been mapped out in newspapers. The slaying was a topic of conversation in homes across Northeast Ohio.

Marion’s father talked with the peddler for an hour at the county jail.

“It goes a long way toward resolving the uncertainty of the last 18 months,” Brubaker said. “He insists that he did it. However, I’m not sure.”

The boy suspect, by then 16 years old, breathed a sigh of relief after the peddler’s arrest. He said his life had become “a long nightmare” after he discovered Marion’s body.

“You don’t realize how it feels to be telling the truth, know you’re telling the truth and know that some people don’t believe you,” he told the Beacon Journal. “I really didn’t think they’d ever find him, though.”

Three days later, the peddler retracted his confession, saying deputies “made him” say he killed Marion.

“I was there, but I didn’t do it,” he said.

In April, the peddler was sent to Lima State Hospital for testing. Psychiatrists there said he was not fit for trial.

“In our opinion, he doesn’t understand the nature of the charges to be brought against him and he cannot counsel his own defense,” Dr. Bohdan Nedilsky wrote. “Therefore, he would be considered insane.”

A grand jury refused to indict him. He was sent back to Hawthornden.

No one ever was convicted of killing the girl.

Marion’s mother was 82 when she died in 2002. Her father died in 2010 at age 96. They are buried near their daughter at Hillside Memorial Park. The girl’s three sisters grew up, married, moved to California and welcomed children and grandchildren.

Wind rustles through the trees this summer in Coventry. The dark woods at Killian and Main conceal a 50-year-old secret that might never be brought to light.

I’ve written before about the importance of sharing recipes and not taking secret recipes to the grave.

Recently, though, I’ve come up with another reason for sharing them: immortality.

When a recipe lives on, the originator of the recipe lives on in our memories and on our dinner tables.

Such is the case with this week’s feature story on Art’s Place restaurant, which closed in 2001.

Not only were former owners Jennie Morris and Dodie Varca willing to share the formulas for their former restaurant’s specialties, they also made an effort to point out that most of those dishes were the work of one woman, Edith McGuckin.

McGuckin was the sister of former Art’s Place owner Ernest Genovese and ran the restaurant for her brother along with their other sister, Christine Campbell. While Campbell was a fixture in the front of the house, it was McGuckin’s skill in the kitchen that kept customers coming back to Art’s Place.

I had never heard of Edith before this story. She died in 1989.

But from now on, every time any of us makes her recipe for bean soup or for sweet and sour salad dressing, a small part of her will live on.

The same goes for Henry and Margaret Aberth, the founders of Akron’s former City Bakery.

Henry died in 1970 at the age of 86, his wife in 1973, and their bakery was later sold. But thanks to the memories of local residents, the pair are warmly remembered for their devil dogs, a cream-filled chocolate snack cake.

When I wrote last week about a local woman’s desire for the recipe for City Bakery’s devil dogs, two of the Aberths’ grandchildren contacted me.

Henry Hiss, 80, said the Aberths had 21 grandchildren, and 20 of the cousins are still living. If Hiss’ name sounds familiar, that’s because he went on to found Hiss Bakery in Barberton, which his son Karl now operates.

Hiss explained how the devil dogs were originally made by hand with a baker squeezing the batter out of a pastry bag and onto a baking sheet to make their elongated “hot dog” shape. Later, the devil dogs were made by a cookie machine that dropped the batter into the same shape.

At its peak, City Bakery had a fleet of 100 trucks on the road that delivered bread, cakes, and other treats to homes in the Akron area.

Unfortunately, Hiss did not have the devil dog recipe.

That wasn’t a problem because his cousin, Nancy Baumgardner, did. Or at least she knew who did.

Baumgardner wrote to tell me about her grandparents and the history of their bakery, which once was booming at 532 Grant St.

“The building on Grant Street remains empty for the most part which makes me feel sad each time I see it, as it was bustling with activity and wonderful aromas when I was growing up,” she wrote. “I’m sure there are still people in the area who worked at the bakery in some capacity.”

What’s more, Baumgardner contacted another cousin, Helen Franks, whose father, Richard Aberth, worked in the bakery. Franks had her father’s recipe book.

I was pleased to learn that the recipe for devil dogs that we printed in the Aug. 22 Food section was nearly identical to the one provided by Baumgardner and Franks.

But since I promised to print the original recipe if I ever got it, you will find it below.

I also suggested to Hiss that he might hint to his son Karl that perhaps Hiss Bakery needs to start making and selling devil dogs again. After all, it is a family recipe.

For those of you who clipped last week’s devil dog recipe, the only difference is an increase in the amount of cream of tartar from ¼ teaspoon to ½ teaspoon in the cakes. Since the instructions on the original were a little vague, I have tweaked them a bit so they can be clearly understood here.

Here is the recipe:

CITY BAKERY’S DEVIL DOGS

For the cakes:

⅔ cup vegetable shortening

1¼ cups sugar

2 eggs

2½ cups flour

½ cup cocoa

1¼ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. cream of tartar

½ tsp. salt

1½ tsp. vanilla

1 cup milk

For the filling:

2 cups powdered sugar

¾ cup shortening

2 egg whites

¼ tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

For the cakes: Cream together shortening and sugar. Then add eggs, one at a time.

Mix together the flour, cocoa, soda, cream of tartar and salt. Combine milk and vanilla. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, alternating with the vanilla and milk.

Drop by tablespoons onto greased cookie sheet. Bake, cool, cut in two lengthwise and fill.

For the filling: Combine all ingredients with mixer until it forms a soft, fluffy frosting.

Makes about 1 dozen, depending on size.

Editor’s notes: No baking time or temperature were noted in this recipe. We recommend baking at 375 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes.

Because the filling contains raw egg whites, which could contain salmonella bacteria, for safety, use pasteurized eggs.

Lisa Abraham can be reached at 330-996-3737 or at labraham@thebeaconjournal.com. Find me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @akronfoodie or visit my blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/lisa.

You can lead a cow to battle, but you can’t make it fight.

Gen. Mortimer D. Leggett, the first superintendent of Akron Public Schools, is a central figure in one of the strangest tales from the Civil War. The story sounds too ridiculous to be true. Yet it was published as fact in 19th-century newspapers and confirmed decades later by a Leggett descendant.

According to lore, Leggett mustered into service a gentle giant who went beyond the call of duty to serve the Union Army. Her name was “Molly” or “Old Betsy” — accounts vary — and she was a Jersey cow.

Leggett made a lasting impression on Akron, even though his time here was fleeting. One of 11 siblings, he was born in 1821 to Quaker parents on a farm near Ithaca, N.Y., and moved at age 16 with his family to Geauga County.

He attended a teachers seminary in Kirtland and studied law at Harvard, alternating careers as an educator and attorney. Teaching brought him to Akron.

In 1846, the canal town devised a plan to provide a graded school system and free education to all children through taxation of property. The newly formed Akron Board of Education hired Leggett as its first superintendent in 1847.

Akron historian Samuel A. Lane described Leggett as “a ripe scholar and a thorough disciplinarian,” who received a “munificent” salary of $500 a year — about $20,500 today. He also served as grammar school principal and teacher.

Leggett organized the classes and instructors, laying the foundation for a 700-pupil district, but was “impelled to withdraw” in 1849, Lane wrote, “for lack of adequate compensation for his exceedingly efficient services.”

Forty years later, Akron made up for its budget stinginess by naming Leggett Elementary School at Thornton, Allyn and Sumner streets for the original superintendent. The eight-room building opened in 1889 and welcomed additions in 1914 and 1921 before being demolished in 2010 for the $9.2 million Leggett Community Learning Center.

The school’s team is the Tigers, although the Leggett Cows would be more fun.

Leggett was superintendent of Zanesville schools when the Civil War erupted in 1861. Literally overnight, he became a fighting Quaker.

He organized the 78th Ohio Volunteer Infantry and was named colonel of the regiment. Leggett was wounded at least five times while leading soldiers in battles such as Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth, Bolivar, Iuka and Champion Hills. Following the siege of Vicksburg, he was promoted to brigadier general, commanded the Third Division of the 17th Corps and took part in Gen. William T. Sherman’s infamous march to the sea.

“He is a strictly moral man, never drinks anything that will intoxicate, never smokes cigars, never chews tobacco, never uses profane language, and never plays cards; and drinking and card-playing were always prohibited at his headquarters,” U.S. historian Whitelaw Reid wrote in the 1895 book Ohio in the War.

“His services lasted from the beginning to the close of the war; they were always honorable, often arduous, and sometimes distinguished, so that in the end he came to command the trust of his superiors, the admiration of his soldiers, and that gratitude from the country which all deserve who add capacity and skill to their personal devotion.”

Leggett was a tough warrior, but he had a soft spot for cows — most likely from his upbringing on a farm. He took a dairy cow with him for personal use, but decided to share the milk with his troops.

“She was generous in her yield, a portion of which was always reserved for the sick or the wounded, an arrangement that secured her immunity from the fate the befell nearly all army cows, as her milk was never stolen, and no effort was ever made to confiscate her for beef, even when the men were in the worst stages of beef hunger,” the New York Times recalled May 4, 1890. “She became so popular with the soldiers that when forage was scarce, the boys would glean for her whatever could be found along the line of march and bestow it upon her when settled in camp.”

At first, Molly (or “Old Betsy”) was tied to a wagon. Eventually, she “adapted herself to soldier life” and walked behind the wagon without a rope.

Leggett had a blacksmith put horseshoes on the cow’s hoofs to protect her from the wear and tear of long marches.

Molly usually was kept far from the fighting, but she received a fright during the battle of Atlanta in July 1864, when Confederate soldiers sneaked up behind the Union line and unexpectedly charged.

“For nearly a week, she refused her rations and bellowed for hours at a time,” the New York Times reported. “For a month afterwards, the sight of a squad of men on a run would throw her into a panic.”

At the conclusion of the war, Molly won the admiration of a future U.S. president.

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, a friend of Leggett and fellow Ohioan, supposedly invited Leggett’s cow to march with soldiers during the Grand Review of the Armies, a May 1865 victory parade on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. At first, Leggett didn’t think it was appropriate, but he acquiesced to his commanding officer.

Molly was tied to the back of an ambulance and plodded amiably along the street while cheering spectators placed garlands around her neck.

“The people along the line loaded her with bouquets and wreaths until she became a walking monument of flowers,” the Times reported.

Leggett returned to Zanesville and put the valiant cow out to pasture.

President Grant appointed Leggett as the U.S. commissioner of patents in 1871. He moved to Cleveland and practiced law until his death in 1896 at age 74 following a stroke.

Per his request, he was laid to rest at Lakeview Cemetery without military honors. The same cannot be said for Molly.

“In the year 1872, there was staged at Zanesville, O., one of the most unusual funerals ever held in this country when a Jersey cow was ceremoniously buried with full military honors,” the Akron Times-Press reported in March 1927.

According to this account, Union veterans traveled from across Ohio to attend the Grand Army of the Republic rites.

Leggett’s grandson, R.M. Leggett, chief engineer at the Akron waterworks plant, confirmed the tale, saying his grandfather owned cows throughout his life. Every Sunday, Leggett invited 30 to 50 churchgoers to his home to enjoy mush and milk.

If only we could end the story there.

Jim Geyer, director of museums at the Muskingum County Historical Society, asked members of the Zanesville Civil War Roundtable to confirm the tale of Leggett’s bovine companion. A history buff spent hours looking through old newspapers, but found nothing.

“No one seems to know anything about the cow,” he said.

Marjorie Wilson, a Leggett researcher from the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable, doubts that a cow could survive the grueling trek through Georgia.

The only livestock reference she found was about an old ox that carried supplies for the 78th Ohio Volunteer Infantry during Sherman’s march. That story doesn’t have a happy ending. Soldiers feasted on it when they reached Savannah, Ga.

Is Molly’s war bravery a corrupted tale of the ox incident?

“It’s a great story, the military funeral and all, but it does give rise to some skepticism,” Wilson said.

How disappointing it would be if Molly’s adventure was nothing but a bunch of bull.

Akron faith healer David A. Messner’s congregation was doing just fine until THAT WOMAN arrived in the 1930s.

A dark-haired beauty with brown eyes, Madelyn Messner was 50 years younger than the gray-haired preacher who had been widowed for more than a decade.

Tongues wagged. Gossip spread. Scandal ensued.

Messner, a carpenter by trade, founded a tabernacle at West Bowery and Cedar streets about 1932 to promote “divine healing of physical ailments.”

Worshippers at the Divine Healing Gospel Mission called him “the Miracle Man.”

By gently daubing olive oil on the foreheads of sick people, Messner claimed to cure the illnesses of thousands of people.

“I represent a Christ who is able to heal men,” he said.

Born in Akron in 1860, Messner said he received his religious calling as a boy when he picked up a Bible at 3 a.m. in the family attic and began to read the 15th chapter of St. John — even though he hadn’t been taught how to read.

“God saw my intellect and showed me ‘The Word,’ ” he said. “That’s the way God works.”

Messner said he discovered the power to heal in 1894 while praying over a woman who had been shot by her husband.

“The Lord told me to put some oil on her forehead and I asked the Lord to heal her,” he said. “The Lord healed her.”

Faithful testify

Testimonials of miraculous healings were common in Messner’s congregation.

In 1934, Carrie Gummo, 63, of South College Street, said she used crutches for seven years because severe rheumatism kept her from walking. When Messner anointed her with olive oil, she “felt the strength return” to her feet.

“Now every day, I walk a little,” she said. “God healed me.”

Dollie Meadows, a Nathan Street resident, said her 13-week-old daughter Lorena was born with a cleft palate, no thyroid gland and no tonsils.

She said the baby was cured after Messner anointed her: “X-rays taken just a few days ago show that she has tonsils, that her palate is cured and that her glands are there.”

Blindness, deafness and paralysis were among afflictions that Messner said could be cured. By request, he mailed out “blessed handkerchiefs” to people across the country.

“I buy them at 30 for a dollar,” Messner said. “I dip them in olive oil and mail them. They have had great results.”

Messner, 74, whose first wife, Sarah, died in 1920, met his second wife on a healing mission to City Hospital in 1935.

Madelyn Emery, 23, a Tallmadge native, was bedridden with a high fever when the preacher anointed her with oil.

“All at once I felt a thousand needles,” she recalled.

Three months later, the congregation received a jolt, too, when Messner and Emery got married in West Virginia.

“He’s the most wonderful man in the world,” Madelyn said in March 1936. “He’s too good for me, but then, he’s too good for any living woman.”

Bride works in office

The new bride, chatty and giggly, took over office duties at the healing mission, which by then had moved to South Main and Bartges streets.

Many in the congregation took a dislike to the pretty newcomer. Within months, the church services, which usually attracted hundreds, dwindled to dozens of worshippers.

Things unraveled further when Madelyn’s secret past began to emerge. For one thing, she already was married.

Bigamy charges were filed in August because she hadn’t formally divorced Orval Bishop, an Akron machinist whom she wed in September 1931.

Furthermore, she previously had been the wife of Akron rubber worker Ray Meekins, whom she married in June 1929 at age 17.

Pastor Messner was shocked at the news but professed his love for Madelyn.

“She told me she was single and had never had anything to do with any other man,” he told reporters.

Righteous indignation swept the congregation. In September 1936, all heck broke loose.

Wife attacked

One night after a service, Messner returned to his apartment at 659 Wooster Ave. and found his wife writhing in pain. She sputtered something about being attacked. One side of her face was turning purple with nasty-looking burns. Messner called an ambulance.

Wrapped in gauze, Madelyn sobbed while telling police her story. She said she had received a phone call from a woman claiming to be in need of healing. When the doorbell rang, she went downstairs.

“I saw a man and woman standing there,” she said. “It was dark but I could see she had on a white dress with polka dots. Then she threw acid on me.”

Suspicion immediately fell on a churchwoman who had voiced opposition to the minister’s wife and was seen wearing a polka-dot dress that night. Police arrested the woman and questioned her, but she denied any involvement in the attack.

Others threatened

Vulgar, threatening letters arrived in the afternoon mail at the offices of local officials.

Akron Municipal Judge Don Isham received a note that read: “You saw what happened to Mrs. Messner. You’re next.”

A note to Summit County Prosecutor Herman E. Werner read: “You’ll be in a wheelchair when our bunch is done with you.”

The notes were signed “The Mission Comittee,” with “Committee” misspelled.

The investigation took a twist when police dug deeper into Madelyn’s history and found that she had claimed to be Madalayne La Vierre of Marseille, France, when she applied for a job at B.F. Goodrich in 1934.

After being hired, she often feigned illness. Bosses accused her of sticking pins in her fingers and holding a water bottle against her hand to mimic food poisoning.

Detectives questioned Madelyn for 11 hours at police headquarters while her husband, David, sat by her side, frequently kneeling in prayer.

Madelyn breaks

“I am ready to tell the truth for the first time,” Madelyn finally blurted out. “I did it; I did it; but I don’t know why!”

She admitted that she had soaked a cloth in disinfectant and rubbed her face to create the illusion of an acid attack. It was a ploy for public sympathy.

“I guess it was the devil in me,” she told her husband.

“God have mercy on this poor creature, stripped naked of her lies,” Messner said.

Officers escorted Madelyn to jail. The next day, a threatening note arrived in the mail at the healing mission: “We got Mrs. Messner. We’ll get you.”

Messner cited the note as proof of Madelyn’s innocence despite her confession.

“My wife couldn’t possibly have sent this letter,” he said. “She was in jail all day.”

Police arrested him, too. After an hour of questioning, he admitted sending the last note.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” he said. “I don’t even know of ever having told a lie in 60 years of church work.”

Chief Detective Verne Cross summed up the views of many when he told a reporter: “That whole bunch is goofy.”

David Messner pleaded guilty to making a false report to police and was fined $100.

Madelyn Messner was treated at Massillon State Hospital for four months. All charges against her were dropped.

Tabernacle closes

The couple closed the tabernacle in May 1937.

“It’s our enemies who are causing us to leave,” Messner said. “They’ve been after our mission for a long time.”

The retired minister was 88 when he died in 1949. He was buried next to his first wife in East Akron Cemetery.

Madelyn Emery Meekins Bishop La Vierre Messner, who was not listed as a survivor, moved away, fell into obscurity — and was never seen again.

Haymaker Farmers’ Market

Location: Franklin Avenue and Summit Street, under the state Route 59 Haymaker Overpass, Kent.

Hours: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays, rain or shine (live music, 10 a.m. to noon).

2012 dates: May 26 to Oct. 27.

Contact: Market manager Kelly Ferry, 330-472-5801 or haymakermarket@gmail.com; or visit http://haymakermarket.com.

KENT: On a gravel path under the Route 59 overpass, where Franklin Avenue meets Summit Street, they’ve been gathering for 20 years.

Long before local was the trend in food; long before the words “organic” and “sustainable” were part of our grocery shopping; and long before anyone gave much serious thought to where food comes from, a couple of city residents thought it would be nice to be able to shop for produce at an open-air market.

Husband and wife Fritz Seefeldt and JoAnne Jones had no idea how far ahead of the trend they were when they founded the Haymaker Farmers’ Market in Kent, which this season is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Among local farmers markets, Haymaker is a pioneer. In 1992, the national farmers market movement was still budding, and no local ones existed yet.

The market was established three years before Cleveland’s prolific North Union Farmers Market first set up a folding table in 1995, and more than a decade before the Countryside Conservancy began sponsoring its popular markets in Summit County.

On Saturdays for nearly six months out of the year, farmers, bakers and artisan food purveyors of all varieties come together under the bridge to shop, sell and share the bounty of the local food system with hundreds of customers, including students and faculty from Kent State University and locals from throughout Portage and Summit counties.

It wasn’t always that way.

How it all started

Seefeldt and Jones moved to Kent in 1984. He is a native of Youngstown, and she grew up in Brookfield Township in Trumbull County. After Jones began working as an MRI technician at Akron City Hospital, the pair decided to settle in Kent, where Seefeldt worked as a massage therapist and furniture maker. (Seefeldt has since become a nurse, and now works at Akron City.)

Seefeldt said he got the idea because he missed Youngstown’s Pyatt Street Market, an open-air market that used to operate on the city’s south side.

He thought Kent would benefit from a similar market, and the couple started making plans, along with Kent architect Rick Hawksley, who drew up the site plan that Seefeldt and Jones took to City Council.

Seefeldt said he wasn’t really aware of the country’s infant farmers market movement at the time. “I was aware there were farmers markets in larger cities, but I just thought it was something we ought to have in Portage County because of the agricultural nature of the county. Back then it was primarily agricultural,” he said.

The idea was to offer an outlet for farmers to sell their produce and “to encourage people to keep farmland in production,” rather than seeing it converted to housing developments and strip plazas, he said.

The name Haymaker came from the bridge under which the market meets each week. That section of state Route 59 is known as the Haymaker Overpass, taking its name from the Haymaker family, one of Kent’s founding families.

At its first meeting, just four vendors set up shop.

“We put a lot of effort into keeping it going,” Seefeldt said.

Seefeldt and Jones would solicit area farmers, asking them to bring their produce to town to sell, and eventually the numbers grew.

In a college town that has never really outgrown its hippie past, the reconnect-with-the-land aspect of a grower’s market caught on with farmers and customers. Today, nearly four dozen vendors have regular stalls, selling everything from organic bread to goat cheese and, of course, farm-fresh produce.

The market has music and tie-dye, and a relaxed feeling as customers stroll, nibble, shop and converse with each other and with vendors.

“It’s become its own community and a lot of it is based on food,” Jones said, noting that their son and daughter grew up at the market, and now their grandchildren are there each Saturday.

Bernie Chaykowski of Chaykowski Farm has been a vendor since the first year, and keeps coming back because of the connections he has made with the people, both customers and other vendors.

Retired as a general superintendent with the Portage County Engineer’s office, Chaykowski said his family has farmed the same land in Mantua since 1943.

“The people, oh, yeah, great people,” Chaykowski said, explaining why he keeps coming back.

Chaykowski said he could sense early on that the farmers market would succeed, as customers and the country in general were becoming increasingly interested in connecting with their food producers on a personal level.

The market is producer-only: Farmers and other vendors may sell their produce, but food wholesalers are not permitted to sell there.

Bonny Graham Esparza has been selling her home-baked bread at the market for 17 of its 20 years, and summed up its success this way: “It’s about relationships.”

Esparza makes her bread with organic flour she purchases at the Kent Natural Foods Co-op.

She said selling at the market has taught her a lot about working with customers and working for them. “It’s not about what you think you want to sell. You have to listen to them and provide what they want,” she said.

Esparza also praised Seefeldt for his leadership and assistance over the years, noting that he was always willing to work to get vendors what they needed and to help them succeed.

In recent years, Seefeldt has taken a lesser role in the operation. He still holds a position on the board of directors, but in 2011, the market contracted with Kelly Ferry as its first manager.

Ferry had been a volunteer for many years, and was excited for the chance to have an integral role in the market’s management.

“I loved the market and wanted to be a big part of it,” she said.

The market continues to find new ways to expand. Several years ago it began holding indoor holiday markets in November and December, and began its popular Music at the Market series, which features performances by different local musicians each week.

To celebrate the anniversary, the market is marking its home under the Haymaker Overpass.

Mural project

Artist Elaine Hullihen, a KSU fine arts graduate, is painting a mural on the overpass supports that will give permanence to the location.

Through various sources, the market was able to raise most of the $11,000 needed for the project, including repairing and preparing the bridge supports. The Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University donated a large portion of the money and worked with children from Kent’s Holden Elementary School, the school nearest to the market, to help them write poetry based on food and their gardens.

Hullihen’s mural includes images of fruits and vegetables intertwined with lines from the students’ poetry. It is expected to be completed by the end of the month.

“It will give the market a sense of place,” Hullihen said.

Lisa Abraham can be reached at 330-996-3737 or at labraham@thebeaconjournal.com. Find me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @akronfoodie or visit my blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/lisa.

Somewhere in the darkness, high above the glow of the city, a distant voice rang out from the clouds.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience,” it crackled. “This is Graham McNamee.”

World history was made in Akron on a chilly night in September 1927.

Technically, world history was made over Akron.

New York announcer Graham McNamee (1888-1942), the most famous personality in early radio, became the first man to broadcast from an airship.

The exciting stunt was sponsored by the Akron Times-Press and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in conjunction with the second annual Akron Radio Show at the Akron Armory.

Radio buffs were invited to the show Sept. 21-24 to inspect the latest receiving sets, loudspeakers, power units, batteries, eliminators and other accessories “amid a gorgeous setting of stately columns, flowers and other attractive decorations.” Admission cost 35 cents and included musical entertainment by tenor Allen McQuhae, the Ina Arnold Chamberlin Banjo Band, the Blue Room Singers and the Shades of Moses Cleveland Quartet.

Radio was still in its formative years in Akron. The city’s first licensed radio station, WOE, went on the air in 1922 but signed off in 1923. Akron’s second radio station, WADC, arrived in 1925.

Buckeye Radio Service Co. on East Mill Street sold crystals, dials, tubes, condensers, wires and other equipment for Akron residents to build radio sets. Increasingly, however, companies sold consoles that were already put together.

Visitors to the Akron Radio Show could ooh and ahh over the latest receivers, including the Kolster Model 6-D, the Sparton Model 6-26, the Bosch Cruiser, the King Crusader, the Crosley Bandbox, the Atwater Kent Model 33 and the Freshman Equaphase G-3.

Tunney-Dempsey fight

The night before visiting Akron, McNamee thrilled 50 million listeners with his NBC broadcast of heavyweight champion Gene Tunney defending his title against ex-champ Jack Dempsey in Chicago.

The Sept. 22 fight was piped over loudspeakers at the Akron Armory, where more than 3,000 hung on every word and cheered as if they were sitting at ringside.

McNamee’s blow-by-blow account proved to be so exhilarating that one woman had to get up and leave.

“I can’t stand it any longer,” she told the Times-Press. “The men folks can stay, but it’s too much for me.”

Paul Heasley, sales manager at Buckeye Radio Service, was the brains behind the broadcast from the Goodyear blimp Pilgrim. In less than 24 hours, he built, tested and installed a short-wave transmitter aboard the airship and set up a short-wave receiver in the armory. If all went as planned, the five-watt signal would then be relayed to WADC radio for a wider audience.

McNamee, 39, received a cheery reception at the armory Friday evening, Sept. 23, chatting with fans about the boxing match in which Tunney retained his title. After a few hours, the announcer was whisked by automobile to the hangar at Wingfoot Lake in Suffield Township for his first ride aboard a blimp.

Veteran pilot Carl Wollam served as McNamee’s captain on the Pilgrim, Goodyear’s first helium-filled commercial airship. The silver blimp was 110 feet long and 32 feet in diameter, with a gas capacity of 56,000 cubic feet. Its enclosed gondola, finished in velour with polished aluminum and nickel, had room for one pilot and two passengers.

Shortly after 10 p.m., the Pilgrim disappeared into the night.

From the southeast, a droning engine puttered through the sky toward Akron. Radio owners listened intently, waiting to hear one of the most recognizable voices on radio.

On the air

Suddenly, the signal arrived — faint at first, but growing stronger.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience,” the announcer said. “This is Graham McNamee.

“I am aboard the Goodyear blimp Pilgrim and we are flying over the city of Akron.”

Engineers cheered at the armory and patted each other on the back. The futuristic broadcast, which lasted no more than 20 minutes, must have sounded to WADC listeners like something out of a Jules Verne or H.G. Wells tale.

A man in the sky was talking to them!

“The voice from the clouds seemed eerie — a disembodied spirit,” the Times-Press reported. “But it came in. … The great announcer’s voice told of watching the city as it lay beneath him. Lights blinking, signs flashing, streaks of light and shadow to mark the streets. The row of lamps that marked North Hill Viaduct.”

It was a perspective that lifelong Akron residents could only imagine.

After circling overhead, Wollam set a return course for Wingfoot Lake and the announcer signed off.

“This is Graham McNamee speaking. Good night, all.”

A crowd of 100 greeted the two at the hangar to congratulate them on their historic feat.

The next afternoon, Mc-Namee returned to the armory to meet fans and talk about his adventure.

“Don’t think I’ll forget that ride in the Goodyear pony blimp Pilgrim,” he said before leaving town.

Akron hadn’t heard the last of McNamee. He returned to broadcast the All-American Soap Box Derby in 1935, the first year the national competition was held in Akron.

Quite by accident, the announcer elevated the derby’s profile.

Champion Maurice Bale Jr. of Anderson, Ind., lost control of his car and plowed into McNamee while he was broadcasting live at the bottom of the Tallmadge Avenue hill.

A wobbly McNamee continued to announce the race, but suffered head and spinal injuries and spent two weeks at City Hospital.

The bizarre crash became a national story and catapulted the Soap Box Derby into the public consciousness. With the unexpected publicity, Akron’s fledgling race became an American institution.

“For 13 years, I have taken chances while broadcasting in airplanes, atop skyscrapers, in speeding autos and dozens of other ways — and then I’m knocked for a loop by a 14-year-old kid,” McNamee joked from his hospital bed.

Ever have one of those days?

Winfield Sheehan certainly did — and it became the defining moment of his life.

The 18-year-old sales clerk was working alone during lunch hour when an Akron housewife strolled into the fabric department at the M. O’Neil Co. store on South Main Street.

Sheehan, who sold dress goods by the yard in 1900, asked the woman whether she needed any assistance.

Why, yes, dearie, she did.

The customer told Sheehan that she was interested in making a dress and wanted to see what material was available.

Sheehan sprang into action, pulling a bolt of fabric from a shelf and placing it on the counter. No, that one wouldn’t do, the housewife said.

How about that material over there? Sheehan pulled another bolt off the shelf and rolled it out for display.

No, not that one either, the customer said. Maybe that fabric below. Or the one beside it.

Sheehan took down bolt after bolt, trying to impress the customer. He scissored small samples of fabric so the woman could compare colors against each other. No, no, no, no, no.

After patiently lugging 25 to 30 bolts of cloth from shelves, the clerk was getting tired.

Finally, the housewife spoke.

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll decide today,” she said. “I’m really just waiting for a friend.”

Sheehan paused for a moment and replied grandly: “If you think your friend is in that last bolt on the top shelf, I’ll gladly get it down for you.”

That was the moment that Sheehan realized he wasn’t cut out for the retail business.

A New York native, Sheehan moved to Akron at the request of his Irish-born father, Jeremiah, who ran J.F. Sheehan & Co., a dry-goods store in Buffalo. The elder Sheehan asked his Akron friend Michael O’Neil, who also hailed from Cork, Ireland, to teach Winfield the merchandising business.

After the run-in with the bored housewife, Sheehan broke the news to his father that he was switching careers.

Memorable fellow

For someone who lived here only a couple of years, Sheehan made an impression. The blond-haired, chubby-cheeked chap, who stood 5 feet 8 inches and weighed 170 pounds, was a regular at the North End Athletic Club.

“We called him Winnie and kidded him about being fat,” former club secretary Frank Cassidy recalled decades later. “But he took the kidding good-natured and became one of the best-liked fellows around the club.”

Sheehan also was witness to the worst night in Akron’s history: the riot of Aug. 22, 1900.

An angry mob dynamited Akron City Hall and burned down Columbia Hall after failing to lynch a prisoner accused of assaulting a child. Police shot into the Main Street crowd and killed two young spectators.

Sheehan and his pal Pat Tobin saw angry rioters break into a hardware store and steal guns and ammunition.

“Directly in front of us were several men armed with shotguns,” Tobin told the Akron Times-Press years later. “They were shooting at City Hall as coolly as if they were shooting a target. We asked one of the shooters for a shell for a souvenir.

“He gave us one, but a minute later, turned to us and said ‘Give me that shell; I’m going to need it for those blankety-blank so-and-sos. I’ll give you an empty one.’ ”

Sheehan survived that night, but his days in town were numbered. As a sideline, he wrote sports blurbs for the Beacon Journal, Akron Times and Akron Press. He parlayed that talent into a full-time job.

Sheehan moved to the East Coast and became a reporter for the New York World. After slogging on the police beat for years, he was hired as secretary to the New York police commissioner, wheeling and dealing in municipal politics.

The high-profile position earned him a lot of attention.

Hello, Hollywood

Movie pioneer William Fox admired Sheehan’s management skills and approached him with a proposition: Would he like to join the film business?

In 1915, Fox formed the Fox Film Corp. with Sheehan as general manager.

Sheehan traveled to dozens of countries in search of talent and helped organize the company’s studio in California. As vice president, the former Akron clerk helped turn Fox into a Hollywood powerhouse over the next two decades.

He is credited with developing movie stars such as Janet Gaynor, Myrna Loy, Victor McLaglen, Henry Fonda, Spencer Tracy, Alice Faye, Paul Muni, Margaret Hamilton and Will Rogers.

When William Fox lost financial control of the studio in 1929, Sheehan succeeded him and gained total control over story selection. He insisted on building a sound studio — naysayers initially dubbed it “Winnie’s Folly” — but he proved that talking pictures were the future of film.

“I believe we are going to return to an era of honest stories dealing with human emotions and issues,” Sheehan is quoted as saying in author Aubrey Solomon’s 2011 book The Fox Film Corporation. “Above all, clean stories with wholesome humor will find favor with the public.”

In 1930, the producer approved the hiring of cowboy extra Marion Michael Morrison for the lead role in The Big Trail. After a quick name change, John Wayne enjoyed his first credited role.

In 1934, Sheehan discovered teen beauty Margarita Cansino dancing with her father in a Tijuana nightclub act. She came to Hollywood and changed her name to Rita Hayworth.

Curly-topped bit player Shirley Temple became an overnight star with her song-and-dance routine in Sheehan’s 1934 film Stand Up and Cheer!

The cigar-chomping businessman was a wheeler-dealer who produced some of the highest-grossing movies of the early 20th century. Sheehan lived in a Hollywood mansion and became a millionaire.

His titles included What Price Glory (1926), Seventh Heaven (1927), The Black Witch (1929), State Fair (1933), Change of Heart (1934), Now I’ll Tell (1934), Baby Take a Bow (1934), One More Spring (1935), Curly Top (1935) and The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935).

Academy Award winner

His most celebrated film was Cavalcade (1933), a romantic drama starring Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook, which won three Academy Awards: best picture, best director and best art direction.

After a failed marriage to Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Kay Laurel, Sheehan wed Austrian opera star Maria Jeritza in 1935.

The same year, Sheehan resigned as chief of production when Fox Film Corp. merged with Twentieth Century Pictures, forming 20th Century-Fox. Darryl F. Zanuck succeeded him as studio boss.

As an independent producer, Sheehan’s swan song was the 1945 filming of Captain Eddie, the life story of World War I pilot Eddie Rickenbacker, starring Fred MacMurray.

Sheehan was 61 when he died of post-surgical complications in 1945. After sinking much of his fortune into his last film, he left an estate of only $23,000 (about $293,000 in 2012) to his widow.

One of Hollywood’s greatest moguls is largely forgotten today. If Sheehan had lived longer in Akron, more people here might know his name.

On the other hand, if he had lived here longer, he might have spent the rest of his career retrieving bolts of fabric.

Leaves rustle in the wind along a rolling slope off Triplett Boulevard.

The quiet bluff, which overlooks Akron Fulton International Airport and the Akron Airdock to the east, bears no noticeable scars of the trauma it once endured.

There is no memorial to the deadliest air crash in Summit County. It’s almost as if it never happened.

But 70 years ago, a gentle hill exploded into a hellish inferno that haunted witnesses for the rest of their lives.

Seven young pilots were killed Oct. 3, 1942, when a twin-engine bomber crashed shortly after takeoff on a routine training mission during World War II. Two of the aviators were local men, whose loved ones watched in horror as the tragedy unfolded.

At least they got to say goodbye.

The Martin B-26B Marauder arrived at Akron Municipal Airport that Saturday afternoon from Baer Field in Fort Wayne, Ind. While the bomb-less plane refueled for the return flight to Indiana, the 442nd Bomber Squadron crew decided to get some chow during the 90-minute delay.

Army Air Corps 1st Lt. Claude R. Jackson, 22, of Akron, hoped to surprise his father by dropping in unannounced at the family home at 839 Ardmore Ave., a couple of doors down from the residence of Dr. Bob Smith, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

However, Akron Fire Capt. R. Lawson Jackson turned the tables on his son during the happy reunion.

“Dad had some steaks all in the icebox ready for him when he’d come home next,” sister Joyce Jackson, 18, told the Beacon Journal in 1942. “He said he had a feeling he’d visit us again this weekend.”

Claude Jackson was a Buchtel High School graduate who attended the University of Akron for two years before joining the military. As a boy, he built model airplanes. Now he was flying real ones.

“Either I will come back in one piece or not at all,” the pilot often told his family.

Last supper

He brought home three uniformed buddies for supper that afternoon: 2nd Lt. William S. Holm, 26, of Minneapolis; 2nd Lt. Thomas F. Schofield, 25, of Providence, R.I.; and 2nd Lt. Albert L. Spickers, 25, of Midland Park, N.J.

After enjoying a home-cooked meal and good-natured banter, the pilots returned to Akron Municipal Airport for the flight back.

Also boarding the bomber were Staff Sgt. James T. Golby, 22, of Mauch Chunk, Pa.; Sgt. John T. McDonald, 20, of New York City; and Lt. Ralph C. Shrigley, 23, of Rootstown.

Shrigley, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph J. Shrigley, was a Rootstown High School graduate who attended Kent State University for three years before being drafted. He wasn’t a member of the bomber’s crew, but Jackson invited him to Akron so he could visit his folks.

“He always said he wanted to get overseas and to bomb Hitler,” Shrigley’s father said.

Jackson sat in the cockpit and prepared for takeoff while his father and sister watched from the tarmac.

“We saw Claude reach out a hand and wave goodbye,” Joyce Jackson recalled. “All of them waved.”

After several sputtering attempts, the engines roared to life and the bomber began to roll. The plane picked up speed as it traveled west on the runway about 6:30 p.m.

Akron bystander Roy Walker knew something was wrong almost immediately.

“I am in the habit of watching the transports take off and I noticed how slow this one was in getting off the ground,” he told the Beacon Journal.

“It went clear to the end of the runway and I remarked to a man next to me, ‘My God, if he doesn’t lift soon, he will hit that hill.’ I had hardly got the words out of my mouth when I heard the engines on the plane cut off.”

The 24,000-pound bomber began to turn upside-down while hurtling toward the grassy slope below the Guggenheim Airship Institute and Thomastown Elementary School.

Witness Henry Beltz, a police officer at Goodyear Aircraft, said the Marauder wasn’t far off the ground when its right motor stalled.

“Then the wing dipped and the plane turned over on its back,” he said. “It hit the ground on its back and then you could see the flames shoot up.”

Raging inferno

Onlookers gasped in horror as the impact shook the earth. The fuel tank ruptured and exploded, creating a fireball that incinerated the underbrush.

Goodyear and airport workers rushed to the wreckage in a desperate attempt to save the crew. Searing flames silhouetted the rescuers while the sun dipped beneath the horizon.

“I knew there was a door at the rear in the bottom and I kept yelling to someone to try to open it for I couldn’t yank it open alone,” Pittsburgh visitor Dave McAninch recalled. “Instead, they kept hacking at the bulkheads with axes. They couldn’t break those open. It was four or five minutes before they finally heard me and got the door open.”

All attempts were futile. The aviators could not be saved from the raging fire.

Joyce Jackson and her father ran toward the wreckage, but were held back by police. The elder Jackson, a fire captain, was powerless to stop the worst blaze he had ever encountered.

“Up there in the darkness, we ran into Mr. Shrigley,” Joyce Jackson told a reporter. “He said, ‘My son was on that plane, too.’ ”

U.S. troops cordoned off the scene. More than 100 men guarded the charred debris overnight, refusing to allow curious onlookers to take photos because of wartime secrecy.

Crews began the grim recovery of remains. Jackson’s family identified his body by a ring on his finger. Schofield was identified by a wristwatch that stopped at 6:32 p.m.

The next day, military aides loaded the wreckage onto a truck bound for Dayton’s Wright Field, where investigators would search for the cause of the deadly crash.

Military escorts flew to Akron for two funerals. Jackson was buried at Glendale Cemetery, and Shrigley was buried at Rootstown Cemetery.

The remains of the other five pilots were flown to their hometowns for military burials. Three of the men left behind young widows.

Crash aftermath

Nature eventually reclaimed the site where the Akron disaster occurred. Grass, underbrush and trees took over the scorched hillside until there was no trace of a crash.

According to military historian Victor C. Tannehill, technicians determined that a faulty rubber seal in the impeller shaft was to blame for the deadly crash. When overheated, the seal shrank and allowed high-octane gasoline to pass, causing the engine to stall.

The U.S. military ordered all B-26 mechanics to replace the rubber seals with heat-resistant nylon. Through swift action, no similar crash was reported.

That is the silver lining to the darkest of clouds.

In an ironic twist, Akron’s terrible disaster helped save the lives of countless other aviators during World War II.

A New York art critic once said Sister Matilda “painted like a man.”

She took it as a compliment.

“I don’t paint with a woman’s touch,” she admitted.

The Catholic nun, who was blessed to have an avocation as uplifting as her vocation, led an extraordinary life with many daring adventures.

Sister Matilda, the former Caroline Bechter, was born in Akron in 1887 to European immigrants George and Josephine Bechter. She grew up in a crowded house on Allyn Street with at least 10 siblings.

Carrie was 9 years old and a pupil at St. Bernard’s School when her mother sent her to Polsky’s to buy a spool of thread. That was the day she discovered the glory of art.

“When I got to the store, there was a man standing in the window, painting,” Sister Matilda told the Beacon Journal decades later.

“I was fascinated. In fact — and I wouldn’t want you to spread this around — I skipped school for three days so I could go back and watch him paint.

“Finally, he let me come in with him and I held up his paintings for sale.”

The painter was George Gardner Symons, an American impressionist who specialized in winter scenes. He certainly made an impression that week.

Carrie asked her parents to combine her birthday and Christmas gifts so she could buy a paint set. With money scarce, she cut her pigtails and tied the locks to wooden matchsticks to make brushes.

The more she painted, the more she liked it. And the more she liked it, the better she got. The girl’s talent amazed relatives, friends and classmates.

Carrie didn’t intend to become a nun. At age 15, she received a letter from a girlfriend who invited her to stay at the convent of St. Dominic Academy in Jersey City, N.J.

“It meant I could study at some of the great art schools in New York,” Sister Matilda recalled. “So I went.”

The Akron girl took classes at Columbia, won a painting contest and received a scholarship to Cooper Union.

Carrie didn’t want to go home. She already was home.

“I’ve found my life’s work,” she told her mother.

She joined the convent in 1907, adopted the name Sister Matilda in honor of a younger sibling, taught art in Catholic schools and continued to paint.

Cheerful, friendly Sister Matilda returned to Akron and joined the Sisters of St. Dominic. In 1923, the sisters purchased Elm Court, the West Market Street mansion of former B.F. Goodrich executive Arthur H. Marks, for use as a new headquarters. They renamed it Our Lady of the Elms.

Marks wanted $1 million for the 33-acre estate, but he gave the nuns a bargain at $400,000 — complete with furnishings.

Sister Matilda visited the mansion with her mother superior, who wasn’t too pleased to see gaudy, nude paintings decorating the walls. She ordered the art to be removed. Matilda loaded paintings into a car and took them to an art dealer.

“I told him the story,” she told a 1979 interviewer. “I said, ‘I’ve got them out in the car, all these nudes and things.’ He took them, and I went back and went up in the attic and came down with another load. That’s how we got started financially.”

Sister Matilda taught art at Immaculate Conception School in Ravenna, St. Augustine in Barberton, Sacred Heart Academy in Akron and, of course, Our Lady of the Elms.

She painted oil portraits on commission, but never kept the money. She gave all proceeds to the Sisters of St. Dominic for educational purposes.

Cleveland Bishop Joseph Schrembs admired her talent and arranged for Sister Matilda to study in Europe. In 1937, she enrolled at the Royal Institute of Art in Florence, Italy, to learn from European masters.

One day she was painting an outdoor scene when it began to rain. She took the painting inside to finish it.

“Sister, what are you doing?” an instructor demanded. He angrily threw the picture out a window and told his student never to try to capture light and shade from memory.

“It was a lesson I never forgot,” she said.

The nun soon got swept up in European tensions. German dictator Adolf Hitler came to Florence in 1938 to visit Italian fascist Benito Mussolini.

Sister Matilda heard people say “Heil, Hitler!” at school.

“I’m an American,” she told them. “Should I say, ‘Heil, America?’

“It was the child in me,” she recalled. “They called me up that day and said, ‘Sister, you’d better go.’ Anyhow, I got out the next day. I got on the train and went to Paris.”

She continued her studies at Fontainebleau and the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where World War II eventually caught up to her.

She was painting landscapes in a fishing village in the south of France in August 1939 when she noticed that soldiers were confiscating livestock from farmers. They kept getting in the way of her painting.

The next day, she heard rumors of war and hurried back to her convent in Paris.

“There I found the heroic nuns herding the children into buses and taking them out into Normandy,” she said. “I remained there several days helping them. That was when the sirens would scream and the populace would duck to their dugouts.”

After the children were evacuated to safety, Sister Matilda grabbed a bundle of paintings and left all other belongings behind. As warplanes flew overhead, she hopped a train to Le Havre, France, and arrived only a few minutes before the government shut down the transit system.

Sister Matilda had the foresight to buy a ticket months ahead and was able to board the U.S. luxury liner Manhattan. Hundreds of refugees crowded the decks. Seven people crammed into the nun’s two-person cabin.

Among those aboard the ship were Hollywood actress Norma Shearer, actor George Raft, U.S. Postmaster General James Farley and American gossip columnist Elsa Maxwell.

The Manhattan went north of its usual course, dodging German submarines and mines, and took a week to cross the Atlantic, but Sister Matilda was relieved to get home safely.

“I do not believe I will ever return to Europe again,” she told the Beacon Journal in 1939. “I could never go through another war scare like this one.”

U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt invited Sister Matilda as a guest of honor at a White House tea in May 1940. She took two of her paintings, The Hills of Sennville and Oyster Flats, to the gala.

The nun’s fame grew. She won positive reviews for exhibits in New York, Chicago, Washington and New Orleans. Her paintings adorned churches, hospitals and schools.

She reproduced Our Lady of Perpetual Help and St. Joseph and the Christ Child for St. Peter Catholic Church in Akron. She painted colorful portraits of former leaders of the Dominican order.

Her masterwork was a heavenly mural behind the altar in the chapel at Our Lady of the Elms. Sister Matilda spent 15 months on the angelic painting of St. Dominic receiving the rosary from Mary.

She completed it about 1959, but not without personal loss. One day on the scaffold, she became dizzy and fell, causing nerve damage to her leg.

Sister Matilda went from using a cane to using a wheelchair. She zoomed about the Elms in a three-wheeled, battery-powered cart.

The nun retired from teaching in the 1960s, but continued to paint for the rest of her life. She was 93 when she passed away Nov. 11, 1980. She was a nun for 73 years.

“I love the habit,” she said a year before her death. “I’d never give it up.”

Today, her paintings are treasured works at Our Lady of the Elms. Compelling, bold, vivid — just like the story of her life.

In the cold darkness of the old cemetery, two glowing eyes gazed out from the gravestones.

Medina County motorists noticed the eerie stare as they drove past Sharon Center Cemetery at night along Ridge Road. The unblinking gaze seemed to follow them.

It could mean only one thing. Those darned kids were at it again.

In the early 1950s, juvenile delinquents with luminous paint repeatedly targeted a life-size, granite statue marking the rural grave of Akron businessman Samuel Woods. Mischievous vandals painted the eyes to glow in the dark.

Sadie R. Woods paid a sculptor in Barre, Vt., to create the 6-foot likeness after her husband’s death in 1940 at age 68.

The detailed statue depicts Woods in a double-breasted suit with pleated, cuffed pants. He stands with his arms at his sides, looking off to the west with a rather stern expression.

The sculpture tops a heavy marble slab bearing the chiseled inscription:

SAM WOODS

This sculptured memorial was erected to his memory by his loving wife. Besides being a devoted husband and companion, he was indeed an inspirational influence to his many friends and to the community at large. He loved art, music and books. His versatility was outstanding. He was known as musician, artist, poet, actor, director, reader.

Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.

According to Sharon Township historian Dorothy Morris, several morbid legends — all untrue — arose about the odd memorial in Sharon Center.

The statue is so lifelike that some people thought it wasn’t a sculpture at all but Woods’ carefully preserved body encased in layers of cement.

Another story was that Woods’ widow positioned the statue so its comforting shadow would cross her window every morning at her home across the street. In fact, Sadie Woods never lived in Sharon.

Rite of passage

Visiting the grave became a rite of passage in the township. A popular prank, especially around Halloween, was for teenagers to blindfold their friends, lead them to the cemetery in the dark and abandon them near the statue.

They called it “going to see Sam Woods.”

The glow-in-the-dark paint made the visit spookier. Vandals daubed the statue’s eyes, buttons, pockets, cuffs and tie.

“Probably a bunch of kids did it,” cemetery caretaker George Reich fumed to the Beacon Journal in 1952. “The township trustees and deputies tried to find out who did it at the time. When the paint was fresh, you could see it clear from the road. I think it was done to scare people.”

The delinquents may not have thought of their vandalism as mean-spirited, but it had an unintended consequence.

It frightened Woods’ widow.

Four years before her death at 83 in 1956, she told the Beacon Journal: “I’m afraid to visit the grave alone anymore for fear somebody will attack me.”

So who was the mysterious Sam Woods? With a little research, details emerge by dribs and drabs.

He seems to have been an ordinary man with an extraordinary amount of interests.

In 1930, cartoonist Web Brown saluted Woods as a “photographer, chemist, X-ray expert, actor, astronomer, violinist, saxophone player, bandmaster, composer, music teacher, radio expert, chiropractor, artist, writer, handwriting analyst, student of occult sciences and book collector.”

Woods was born Oct. 18, 1871, in the village of Whaplode in Lincolnshire, England, and emigrated with his parents, Ezra and Mary Woods, to the United States when he was 10.

His father worked at Ferdinand Schumacher’s milling company in Akron.

Woods attended Akron Public Schools and served as an apprentice for Akron photographer George J. Snook at his studio on South Howard Street.

In the late 19th century, Woods opened his own studio.

“Our motto: Every portrait a work of art,” he advertised. “Our commercial work is unexcelled.”

He unexpectedly made news in 1900 by passing out in his studio during a July heat wave. “He recovered in a short time,” the Beacon Journal noted.

Music and theater

Woods was manager of the Jefferson Dramatic Club, a troupe of 20 actors, and appeared in local plays such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Drummer Boy of Shiloh at the Grand Opera House.

“Like Alexander the Great, our own Sam Woods sighs for other worlds to conquer,” the Akron Daily Democrat wrote in 1901. “Sam will invade Wadsworth next; in a gorgeously painted bandwagon.”

He also served as a substitute music teacher in Akron Public Schools and helped direct the Great Western and Palmer bands.

Scandal erupted in 1902 when Woods’ first wife, Ida, filed for divorce “on the grounds of absence.”

Woods replied that his wife was “so unreasonably jealous,” accusing him of flirting with other women, that she made his life “almost unbearable.”

Two years after the divorce, Woods married dressmaker Sadie Rozelle Witner Allen, a Barberton native.

The couple lived for decades at 577 E. Market St. near Akron City Hospital.

Although they never resided in Sharon Township, they did have family ties there.

Woods’ father, Ezra, retired from Quaker Oats and moved with his wife, Mary, to Medina County. The elder Woods served as justice of the peace.

Ezra died in 1913 and Mary died in 1925. They were buried in Sharon Center Cemetery.

In 1927, Sam Woods took his wife to England to see his native land. While touring the countryside, Sadie noticed that cemeteries had graves decorated with statues of the deceased.

She liked the idea.

Late in life, Woods closed his photo studio and switched careers. He served as president of the Akron College of Chiropractic at 829 E. Market St. in the late 1920s. Unfortunately, the business folded by 1931.

Samuel Woods died July 11, 1940, during a trip to Wichita, Kan. His widow commissioned the statue soon afterward.

Its epitaph, “Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound,” is a quote from Moby Dick author Herman Melville.

Sadie Woods took up ice skating at age 68, saying it was safer than walking on icy sidewalks.

The Beacon Journal hailed her as “probably Akron’s oldest ice skater” when she passed away at age 83.

She was buried next to her husband beneath the 6-foot sculpture in Section C, Row 2, of Sharon Center Cemetery.

The statue stands out among the headstones, a true curiosity in an otherwise average-looking cemetery.

Caretakers have removed the vandals’ paint and restored the statue to its original, nonspooky condition.

Despite the legends, Sam Woods was no one to fear.

He was just your typical photographer, chemist, actor, musician, composer, poet, writer, teacher, astronomer, radio expert and chiropractor.

If it weren’t for an unforgettable tribute by a loving wife, he might be forgotten today.

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its big, floppy clown shoes.

In the late 1970s, McDonald’s officials faced a public-relations nightmare over a silly rumor that was too ludicrous to be believed. Yet, many customers bought it.

According to the outrageous gossip, Ronald McDonald was in league with the devil.

Officials chuckled when the first letter arrived at corporate headquarters in Illinois. An Ohio woman wanted to know if it was true that company owner Ray Kroc donated 20 percent of the fast-food chain’s profits to the Church of Satan in California.

Another letter arrived asking a similar question.

Then another.

Mail carriers delivered bags of envelopes with postmarks from across the country.

Suddenly, officials weren’t laughing anymore. Although they didn’t want to dignify the rumor with a response, the issue became too hot to ignore. Restaurant sales were falling.

“We look ridiculous trying to refute something that is ridiculous,” McDonald’s spokeswoman Stephanie Skurdy told the media in October 1978. “We don’t know where it’s coming from. It’s one of those ugly rumors that just persist, regardless.”

The company sifted through stacks of correspondence in an effort to determine the origin of the rumor. The zigzag trail led them to Akron.

Ronald McDonald had faced many nemeses in his day, including the Hamburglar, Grimace and the French Fry Goblins, but none was as troublesome as the church lady.

The Rev. John McFarland, pastor of Kenmore Church of God, explained to the McDonald’s communications department that a former parishioner had told him that she saw Kroc being interviewed on The Phil Donahue Show.

“I don’t recall whether it was a question from the audience or someone who called in,” the woman told the pastor.

“The McDonald’s president said he supported several charities and Satan’s church was one of them.”

McFarland thought the revelation was deeply disturbing, so he shared it with his congregation in the church newsletter, Moments of Sunshine.

“It was brought to my attention a few days ago that the president of McDonald’s Inc., a multimillion dollar enterprise, recently appeared on The Phil Donahue Show, a nationwide syndicated TV program,” he wrote.

“Every time you and I have eaten at McDonald’s, we have unknowingly been financially supporting the worship of Satan and the promotion of his cause. Just the thought of it makes me feel sick inside. I don’t think I can ever eat at another McDonald’s under those conditions.”

It was true that Kroc had appeared on Donahue’s talk show. The program originally aired in May 1977 and was repeated in June 1978.

However, there was no mention of Satan or any of his minions, according to the official transcript of the program.

After being published in Akron, the devilish rumor spread from church to church. Some of the details changed in the telling.

For example, the amount of McDonald’s alleged satanic tithing varied from 10 percent to 50 percent.

Some accounts had Kroc making the startling admission with Mike Wallace on CBS’ 60 Minutes or Johnny Carson on NBC’s Tonight show.

“It’s scary how a totally false rumor can spread,” Donahue told the Associated Press in 1978. “We know that pastors have been handing out church bulletins saying Ray Kroc said on the Donahue show that he supports devil worshippers.

“That is totally false and irresponsible. Kroc made absolutely no reference to the devil during the interview. But when a pastor hands things out, it has tremendous credibility.”

Kroc dismissed the rumor as best as he could.

“I’m a God-fearing, God-loving man,” he explained.

Confronted with the facts, McFarland published a retraction and an apology to McDonald’s in his next issue of Moments of Sunshine. Overall, he found the incident to be “really embarrassing.”

As for the parishioner who spread the false information, he said: “She evidently wanted to hear it so bad, she just heard what she wanted.”

McDonald’s considered an advertising campaign to clear its name, but decided that doing so would only bring more attention to the allegation.

Instead, the company launched a strategic initiative to silence the whispers. Executives appeared before church groups across the country with sworn statements from TV producers who said Kroc never said anything about Satan on any program.

The McDonald’s rumor gradually died down.

Unfortunately, it spread to other companies such as Procter & Gamble and Liz Claiborne, which faced threats of consumer boycotts following years of false claims about satanic charity.

Maybe it all could have been avoided if an Akron church newsletter had quoted a Bible verse such as 1 Timothy 5:13:

“And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not.”

Democracy glowed brightly next to potbellied stoves in one-room shacks.

Propped up on concrete blocks, wood-frame buildings with tar-paper roofs served as voting booths for the better part of the 20th century in Summit County.

The drafty, drab buildings, usually painted gray, were found on vacant lots in nearly every neighborhood. During fall elections, the booths were heated with coal-burning stoves. During warm-weather primaries, shutters were latched open to let in a breeze.

Poll workers crowded around tables in buildings about the size of one-car garages. The stations included poll books, voter lists, instructions, ballots, envelopes and ballot boxes. They lacked toilet facilities, running water, telephones and adequate heating, which meant that Election Day could be awfully uncomfortable for poll workers. When the door opened, wind, snow, rain or heat arrived with voters.

Citizens lined up outside the gray shacks and waited their turn to climb the temporary, wooden steps at the entrance.

“A voting booth is an unlovely piece of architecture,” Beacon Journal political writer H.H. Harriman wrote in a 1947 column. “Still it isn’t exactly ugly. It’s just a plain little rectangular building somewhat smaller than the country school houses of horse-and-buggy days and a little larger than the ‘Chic Sales’ of those same days.”

By Chic Sales, he was using a euphemism for outhouses. Humorist Charles “Chic” Sale was the unfortunate fellow whose name became associated with privies after he wrote a 1929 book, The Specialist, about a carpenter who specialized in building outhouses.

Considering the choices during some elections, the outhouse reference was fitting.

Akron’s first major election was held in a saloon. Whig candidate Seth Iredell defeated Democratic candidate Dr. Eliakim Crosby to become the town’s first mayor in 1836. The 91-75 vote was held in Clark’s Tavern at the northeast corner of Main and Exchange streets.

When the town’s population was a mere 1,343 people, a central polling station was convenient. As the community grew, ramshackle booths were built to serve as satellite stations.

In 1891, the Summit County Board of Elections flirted with the idea of purchasing 20 iron booths from a Buffalo company. The narrow, oval structures were clean, neat, durable and “nicely appointed.”

After thorough review, the board instead hired an Akron cabinet maker to make less-expensive wooden booths, which continued to be the norm for the next 60 years.

Each structure cost about $75 to build a century ago. The elections board adopted plans so that multiple contractors could build uniform booths.

In 1912, there was a minor scandal when Building Inspector Howard G. Goodwin halted the construction of a dozen booths because county officials forgot to obtain permits.

“The code applies to all kinds of constructions regardless of who puts them up, and the city and the state or county must comply also,” Goodwin said. “I do not wish to be unfair, or unnecessarily retard the building of these booths, but the code must be complied with.”

Each year, elections board officials had to find new locations for booths as precincts expanded or contracted. The county paid landowners $1 a month in rent to maintain the buildings on vacant lots.

As Summit County’s population exploded in the 20th century, vacant lots were harder to find. New housing took the place of old polling stations, forcing the elections board to find other locations.

Announcement of the annual changes in polling stations became almost comical. In 1923, the Beacon Journal published this update for readers:

“The booth 3-U in the rear of the Central Garage has been discontinued. Voters in that precinct will vote at 3-F, Cherry near West Market Street on the municipal parking ground.

“Precinct 6-Z, which was at Annadale and East Exchange Street, has been divided into three sections. All voters residing south of Exchange Street will vote in 5-X in the Mason school yard. Those residing east of Annadale including the east side of Annadale and north of Exchange Street will vote in 2-I on East Exchange near Cleveland Street. Those living west of Annadale including those on the west side of Annadale will vote in 2-G, Spicer north of East Exchange.”

Wooden booths arose in more than 400 precincts in the county. The elections board issued orders that local candidates had to stay at least 100 feet away from polling places because voters too often were accosted by campaign pitches. Sneaky candidates — or perhaps their scheming rivals — plastered partisan posters on outside walls before elections.

Though conveniently located, voting booths had many unexpected troubles. They often were subject to break-ins from kids looking to start clubhouses. Vagabonds picked the locks and found good places to sleep.

Potbellied stoves started fires, causing voters and poll workers to flee for their lives. Concrete chunks fell off the North Hill Viaduct and plunged through the roof of an empty voting booth on Charles Street. Heavy rains flooded streets and forced poll workers to build makeshift bridges.

The elections board repaired and painted booths to avoid paying for new ones. Following World War II, structures cost $680.

Increasingly, the elections board began to rely on schools, churches, fire stations and public buildings to house polling stations. On rare occasions, the board secured the use of private garages in densely populated neighborhoods.

In 1950, the Akron City Park Advisory Commission passed a resolution ordering the county elections board to remove all voting booths from city parks “in the furtherance of our city beautification program.”

That prompted elections board chairman Ray Bliss to fume: “City parkland is owned by the citizens and taxpayers. So are the voting booths. It seems rather trivial to quarrel about beautification.”

By the late 1950s, the tide had turned. About 280 shacks were still in use, but more than 300 polling stations had moved into public buildings. The old-style booths cost $1,200 to build, so there was a financial incentive to move voting elsewhere.

Only 125 wooden booths remained by 1972. Poll workers complained about the lack of toilets, running water, telephones and heat. In addition, old wiring created hazards.

Elections board director George Vaughan acknowledged that facilities were inadequate but said the booths were for the convenience of voters, not poll workers.

“We just have to face the fact that some people are going to have to suffer a little inconvenience for one day,” he said.

The board soon had a change of heart. Over the next two years, officials closed down the old booths. The last seven were vacated in Barberton in 1974.

Remaining structures were demolished. A few were donated to historical societies.

After more than a century of campaigning, the little shacks retired from politics.

A silent killer stalked the corridors of a crowded hotel in Boston Heights, creeping from room to room during a night of unexpected horror.

Hundreds of guests gathered Nov. 18, 1967, at the Yankee Clipper Inn off state Route 8 at Hines Hill Road north of the Ohio Turnpike.

For many, it was a Saturday evening to celebrate, a raucous night of dining, drinking and dancing. For others, it was a quiet night of relaxation, a welcome respite after a long day’s journey.

Slowly but relentlessly, events spun out of control.

The cavernous complex was loud and bustling. More than 500 people were enjoying a Shriners dinner dance sponsored by El Hasa Temple 28 of Cleveland. Dozens more were attending a conference of the Lithuanian Medical Association. Others arrived early for a Sunday meeting of the National Association of Dance and Affiliated Artists.

Cleveland residents George and Ruth Harris, both 40, began to feel dizzy about 6:30 p.m. but chalked it up to the flu or maybe something they ate. They retired to their room, hoping to recuperate. About 11:30 p.m., George Harris called the front desk to report that his wife had fainted and needed help.

Yankee Clipper manager Robert Joyce interrupted the meal of Dr. V.L. Ramanauskas, a Richmond Heights physician, and asked if he could examine the Harris couple.

“When I looked at them, I was suspicious that they were suffering either from something they had taken into their stomachs or from inhalation,” Ramanauskas later told the Beacon Journal.

He urged Joyce to send the couple to a hospital.

Boston Heights Patrolman Walter Odum escorted the ambulance to St. Thomas Hospital, where Dr. Glenn East was on duty in the emergency ward at 12:20 a.m. Sunday.

The Cleveland couple complained of pounding headaches and extreme fatigue. Their cheeks were flushed and their fingernails had a reddish hue.

Just then, another ambulance arrived with John and Beverly Whitehead, a Rockford, Ill., couple with the same symptoms. They were guests at the Yankee Clipper, too.

“I called the nursing supervisor and told her I thought we had a big problem,” Dr. East told the Beacon Journal.

The doctor asked Patrolman Odum to call the Summit County Sheriff’s Office and send every ambulance possible to the hotel. He suspected carbon monoxide.

Back at the Yankee Clipper, guests were falling ill. Many went to their rooms to rest, a logical decision that turned out to be a terrible mistake.

“People started getting sick, having difficulty breathing, keeling over,” Cleveland Shriner George Miller recalled from his hospital bed.

Toledo resident John Schroeder, 42, and his family returned to the hotel after visiting friends in Hudson. They found a delirious man crumpled in a hallway.

When Schroeder called the front desk, no one came to help. Then he and his wife, Joan, began to feel sick, too.

“I thought I was having a heart attack,” he recalled.

He woke up at St. Thomas after losing consciousness.

Sirens wailed as dozens of ambulances arrived at the Yankee Clipper. Two hundred police officers, deputies and firefighters converged on the scene about 1:30 a.m. Pajama-clad guests stumbled into the parking lot in a fog of confusion while crews administered oxygen and whisked victims away on stretchers.

Officers knocked on doors to rouse guests in the hotel’s northern wing. There were seven stories, 21 rooms to a floor, and most were occupied.

Groggy guests were informed of the danger and told to evacuate the hotel. When there was no answer at doors, safety crews broke into rooms.

They discovered carbon monoxide victims sprawled on floors, stretched across beds, moaning incoherently.

Deputies found Elyria sisters Mary Bishop, 56, and Betty Bishop, 53, unconscious in a second-floor room. Betty owned a dance studio and Mary was a registered nurse.

A nephew said they planned to “live it up for the weekend” before Sunday’s meeting of dance studio operators.

“We worked on them about 20 minutes — got all the windows open and used up four or five bottles of oxygen,” Deputy Norman Smith told the Beacon Journal. “Then we tried mouth-to-mouth respiration. It was no good. They were gone.”

On the fifth floor, officers entered the room of honeymooners Bruce and Joan Plagman, who had just gotten married Saturday morning at Ascension Church in Cleveland. An unopened bottle of champagne was on a nightstand.

The bride, 21, was revived with oxygen but the groom, 22, could not be resuscitated.

The couple had checked in at 9:30 p.m., unpacked suitcases and settled in for the night when Joan began to feel ill.

“Bruce ran in and carried me to the bathroom because I was so sick,” a sobbing Joan Plagman told a reporter at St. Thomas. “Then he put me on the bed. He sat next to me, calling my name and patting my face. He never complained about himself.

“The next thing I remember I was in the hospital. I thought I was in the motel dispensary. I kept asking the nurses to get Bruce for me.”

She received the horrifying news that her husband had died on their wedding night.

Dr. Thomas P. Scuderi, a sheriff’s physician, commented grimly on carbon monoxide: “There isn’t a damn thing you can do. The only thing that helps is fresh air. You die so damn easy you don’t even know that you died.”

Crews evacuated the Yankee Clipper by 3:30 a.m. In addition to the three deaths, more than 100 people were sickened and more than 60 were hospitalized, including six officers overcome while ushering guests to safety.

Investigators traced the poisonous gas to a swimming-pool heater in a basement laundry room. Its vent had been installed too closely to a fresh-air intake, which spread fumes through ducts to the upstairs.

“This is an improper installation,” Summit County Building Inspector Anthony J. Horack noted the day after the incident.

Following a month of investigation by a blue-panel team, the case was closed as a horrible malfunction.

“There are no criminal charges we could file on the basis of our investigation,” Summit County Prosecutor James V. Barbuto announced Dec. 20.

A week later, the hotel’s furnishings and equipment were sold at a sheriff’s sale to help pay $70,000 in debts.

The tragedy was the last straw for the Yankee Clipper, which was built for $4.2 million in 1962 but suffered a series of financial troubles and lawsuits before falling into receivership.

Ownership changed often. The building served as the Golden Dolphin, Brown Derby Inn, Regency Inn, Red Roof Inn, Days Inn and Hudson Inn. Nothing seemed to last.

Abandoned and deteriorating, the condemned building was demolished in 2004.

The hotel disappeared floor by floor until there was nothing left of the sorrowful site.

Sonya Heckman recalls how an advertisement transformed her life.

As an Akron teenager in the 1950s, she loved reading fashion magazines, flipping through the glossy pages and admiring the latest styles. Somewhere near the back of Glamour or Seventeen, an ad caught her eye: It was for the Grace Downs Air Career School, a New York City academy “for girls who like adventure and travel plus a fine salary.”

A job as a stewardess sounded exciting, so she sent an application, filled out forms and mailed her photo.

“I didn’t even tell my mother,” she said.

The former Sonya Suscinski, a little girl with lofty dreams, grew up in a house on Mustill Street in the Little Cuyahoga Valley. A child of divorced parents, she lived with her mother, Mabel Vrabel, but often visited her father, John Suscinski, who lived on Hickory Street.

Sonya attended Findley Elementary, Jennings Junior High and North High School before graduating from Ellet in 1957. She had remarkable poise at a young age — thanks to the Mary Pollack Dance Academy and Paige Palmer School of Charm and Fashion Modeling.

Heckman, 73, remembers modeling fashions and doing demonstrations on Palmer’s popular exercise program on WEWS-TV 5 in Cleveland.

“When I was at Paige Palmer, she more or less took me by the hand,” Heckman said. “She started taking me to the television studio every morning.”

Studying with Pollack, she danced in a trio called the Maryettes, which performed at local clubs and restaurants. After a girl quit, the group became a duo, the Lee Sisters, which danced at nightclubs in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and a monthlong engagement at a resort in the Adirondacks of New York.

In 1958, the Manhattan airline school accepted the Akron girl. Sonya broke the news to her mother, who had saved $3,000 for her to attend the University of Akron.

“All right, this is your choice,” her mother replied. “Take the money and you can go to New York.”

Sonya lived for months in a New York dormitory with dozens of girls. The school had classrooms, a mock passenger cabin and flight simulator.

“You had to study all these different airplanes and codes and procedures,” she said. “There was a lot you had to learn.”

Students took a grueling test and sat for interviews with airline representatives.

“And then you just kept your fingers crossed that one of them would hire you.”

At the end of training, nervous students were ushered into the mock airplane, where airline officials called off the names of the dozen or so women who were hired. Capital Airlines selected Heckman.

“Oh, my God, it was like Miss America,” she said. “Everybody hugged one another.”

Capital flew her to Washington, D.C., for more training — and that became her hub. She lived in an apartment with three stewardesses — they weren’t called flight attendants then — and took a cab every morning to classes in a hangar at National Airport.

“You had to be a certain height, you couldn’t be over a certain weight,” she said. “At that particular time, you couldn’t be married and fly.”

She was fitted for a uniform — olive green in winter and light tan for summer — and flew into the wild blue yonder.

“Most of the people that were on the airplane were men,” she said. “They were businessmen traveling. You didn’t see too many families.”

Airplane cabins were filled with cigarette smoke, thanks in part to the Winston packs that stewardesses distributed. Stewardesses also pushed a cocktail cart down the aisle.

“I was always scared of the champagne because I had to pop the cork,” Heckman said.

One time, labor leader Jimmy Hoffa was on board. He sat there gruffly, throwing back drinks and dropping peanuts all over his seat.

“He wasn’t nice at all to me,” Heckman said. “When he got up to leave, it was a big mess. You might have thought you were at the zoo.”

Heckman flew as far south as New Orleans and as far west as Denver. She enjoyed the camaraderie of the crew.

Danger always lurked in the air, however. Because Capital’s planes didn’t have radar, pilots often ran into foul weather.

Heckman remembers flying on a twin-engine DC-3 to Norfolk, Va., when the sky turned black and the plane began to pitch all over the place.

“It got so terrible, I unstrapped myself from my seat belt and I ran up to the cockpit, I opened the door and I burst in,” she recalled. “I said ‘Guys, what’s going on?’ They said we’re in a hurricane.”

When one of the engines stalled, a pilot instructed Heckman to tell the 30 passengers to get out their pillows and assume crash positions. People started to cry and scream.

“I’m sitting there and I’m saying my prayers,” she said. “I’m making the sign of the cross.”

Suddenly, everything became calm. The engine restarted. The sun came back out. The plane landed 10 minutes later.

Heckman was lucky that day. Sadly, other flights ended in tragedy for co-workers. “In the years that I flew, I lost quite a few friends through crashes,” she said.

After United Airlines bought Capital in 1961, Heckman retired her wings. She was planning to marry airline captain Harvey Heckman.

She stayed in the business, donning a blue uniform and selling travel insurance from a counter at National Airport. That led to one of the best experiences of her life.

One day in 1962, her manager took her aside and told her to report to the Nov. 17 dedication at nearby Dulles International Airport. He instructed her to wear white gloves because she was going to meet President John F. Kennedy.

“So then my anxiety attack started,” she said. “Is my uniform pressed and ready? Do my shoes look decent? Where in the world are my white gloves?”

She remembers being nervous as she drove to Dulles. She stood in the receiving line and watched as Kennedy moved through the crowd. She kept her composure, recalling her training from Paige Palmer.

The president stopped, shook her gloved hand and spoke to her. A photographer captured the moment.

“Being face to face with him was simply awesome,” Heckman said. “He was so good-looking and smiling at me. I mean, I’m looking straight in the eyes at him. I felt like I was going to faint.”

She remembers everything about that moment — except for the conversation itself.

“I couldn’t believe the president was speaking to me,” she said. “I spoke back. I don’t know what I said.”

Later that evening, she got another surprise when her picture with Kennedy appeared on the national news.

“I was just in total shock to see it,” she said.

Heckman left the insurance business after she and her husband, Harvey, welcomed a daughter, Laura.

Sonya Heckman wasn’t done meeting VIPs, though. She returned to modeling in the 1960s and continued into the 1980s, working for stores such as Bloomingdale’s and Lord & Taylor. The work brought her in contact with such celebrities as Elizabeth Taylor, Vidal Sassoon, Ethel Kennedy and Hollywood actress Arlene Dahl.

It was an interesting career, and Heckman is forever grateful to that 1950s advertisement “for girls who like adventure and travel.” She truly reached her destination.

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