Local History

Urban legends aren’t supposed to be true.

For generations, Summit County residents have handed down a strange tale about entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. and a fateful incident involving an Akron motorist.

When we tried to debunk the story, however, we were surprised to learn that it isn’t a legend. It really happened.

In November 1954, Davis was a nightclub performer on the rise. The 29-year-old had appeared on NBC-TV’s The Colgate Comedy Hour as a singer and dancer with the Will Mastin Trio and had just released his first hit song, Hey There, on the Decca label.

Following a late show at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, Davis decided to drive back to Hollywood, where he had a recording session scheduled, instead of reserving a room for the night. He and his valet, Charley Head, took turns steering Davis’ new Cadillac Eldorado on U.S. 66 as it snaked through the starlit desert.

The valet finished his shift, climbed into the back seat and dozed off while Davis drove the black convertible south in the predawn gloom.

Somewhere in the distance, an Akron woman was trying not to get lost.

Helen S. Boss, 72, was the widow of Frank Boss, who had served as Akron police chief from 1930 to 1938. After her husband died in 1944, Mrs. Boss moved out of their Brown Street home to a smaller residence on Birdland Avenue in Coventry Township.

Her lasting legacy was selling nearly 2 acres to the city to establish Boss Park between Allyn and Sumner streets. She also donated $500 in playground equipment.

Mrs. Boss liked to spend winters in Van Nuys, Calif., but the cross-country trip was too long to drive on her own. She took out a Beacon Journal classified ad for travel companions to share the ride and expenses.

Practical nurse Bessie Roth, 69, of Good Street, Akron, responded to the ad, thinking that a vacation in sunny California would be the perfect antidote to another Ohio winter.

Thomas McDonald, 22, of Crouse Street, Akron, also responded. He wanted to go to Lancaster, Calif., to visit his brother, Eugene, at Edwards Air Force Base.

The older women let McDonald handle the bulk of the driving in Boss’ Chrysler. The vehicle rumbled west to Chicago and veered south on U.S. 66 toward Southern California.

Several days later, McDonald reached his stop. He stepped out of the car and bid farewell to the women, who continued the drive to Van Nuys.

Mrs. Boss pulled the car onto the highway. As the sun rose Nov. 19 over San Bernardino, Calif., she realized she had missed her turn at the infamous fork at Cajon Boulevard (U.S. 66) and Kendall Drive.

She stopped the car and began to back up. She didn’t see the Cadillac in her rearview mirror.

Weary Davis was almost home after a long night’s drive. He arrived at the fork in the road but didn’t notice the other car backing up into his lane. There was no time to swerve.

“The grinding, steel-twisting, glass-shattering noise screamed all around me,” Davis wrote in his 1989 Why Me? “I had no control. I was just there, totally consumed by it, unable to believe I was really in an automobile crash. I saw the impact spin the other car completely around and hurl it out of sight, then my forehead slammed into my steering wheel.”

The impact catapulted Davis’ sleeping valet, who suffered a broken jaw among other injuries. The Akron women were thrown into their back seat and suffered broken bones.

Seat belts were not yet standard equipment in cars. It’s a miracle that no one was killed.

Davis wanted to make sure the other crash victims were OK, but horror-stricken onlookers held him back, saying he had to go to a hospital. Only then did he realize that his left eye was mangled.

He lost consciousness.

Davis woke up in San Bernardino Community Hospital, not knowing where he was. His head was wrapped in bandages. He called out for help.

Dr. Frederick Hull stepped into the room to discuss the crash with the patient.

“Doctor, please,” Davis pleaded. “Will I be able to dance? Am I blind?”

The doctor replied: “You’re not blind. You’re going to see. You’ll be able to dance and sing and do everything you ever did. But I removed your left eye.”

A one-eyed entertainer? Davis thought his career was over.

Worried celebrities rushed to the hospital, including Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh and Eddie Cantor. Nurses swooned when Frank Sinatra arrived.

“You’re going to be all right,” Sinatra told Davis.

Davis didn’t know that the crash had been front-page news across the country. Press agent Jess Rand kidded him: “This was a great little publicity stunt you dreamed up.”

A rabbi chaplain stopped by to offer comfort to the entertainer. The visit was more inspirational than expected.

“Lying flat on your back in the hospital for eight days, you are bound to think about serious things,” Davis later told the Associated Press. “And I couldn’t get over how lucky I was. God must have had his arms around me. Otherwise, I would be blind today.”

While recuperating from his injuries, the entertainer converted to Judaism.

In December, Davis filed a $150,000 lawsuit, alleging that Mrs. Boss’ reckless driving caused the crash. He wanted compensation for medical bills, damages and lost earnings.

Mrs. Boss responded with a $120,000 countersuit, alleging she suffered severe shock and injuries when Davis crashed into her car. Mrs. Roth sued Davis for $75,000.

Jurors cleared Davis of any wrongdoing in the crash.

Wearing a silver eye patch, Davis made his first public appearance a month after the crash, joking with Marilyn Monroe and Mel Torme at a ritzy Hollywood nightclub.

He returned to the stage in a one-man show in January 1955, performing for a crowded house that included Humphrey Bogart, Judy Garland, Donna Reed, Liberace, Dick Powell and Ricardo Montalban.

“This is more than wonderful,” he told the applauding audience. “Only in show business could it happen.”

After he was fitted for an artificial eye, Davis stopped wearing the patch.

His career hadn’t ended. It was just beginning.

Davis appeared in movies, musicals and TV shows, recorded dozens of hit songs, toured the country, became a top draw in Las Vegas and joined Sinatra’s “Rat Pack” with Dean Martin, Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford.

In Northeast Ohio, he appeared at Kent State University, Blossom Music Center, the Richfield Coliseum and Front Row Theater, performing more than 50 shows.

When he died of throat cancer in 1990, Davis was praised as a show-business legend.

Las Vegas dimmed its lights.

The Akron women in the car crash had quiet farewells.

Mrs. Roth passed away in her sleep in December 1955, a little more than a year after the accident. She was 72. Mrs. Boss was 84 when she died at Middlebury Manor in 1966.

Their lives all briefly intersected on a desert highway in California, turning an up-and-coming star into a household name and creating an Akron legend that endures to this day.

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.

Believe all you want in Doppler radar, satellite imagery and computer-based models.

Eunice Merton didn’t need any fancy technology to predict the weather.

For nearly 50 years, the Richfield Township woman deciphered the clues of nature to make semiannual forecasts for winter and summer. She became world famous with her quirky-yet-accurate prognostications based on farm folklore.

Merton called her forecasting technique the “Bangs Corners Bug Barometer.” Named for a local family, Bangs Corners was an obscure 19th century nickname for the point where Richfield, Hinckley, Brecksville and Royalton townships converged.

Merton admired nature in all its glory while growing up on a 160-acre farm off Humphrey Road near the northwest corner of Summit County. She was born in 1894, the second of Edward and Ella Merton’s five children, and had a busy childhood on the farm, planting, tending and harvesting.

She received a public education, graduated from Richfield Center High School and taught classes for a couple of years in a one-room schoolhouse on Black Road, riding to work in a horse-drawn buggy and sleigh.

The land kept calling, however. Merton dreamed of being a horticulturist and landscaper. At age 21, she enrolled in Ohio State University’s school of horticulture, only to receive a terribly rude reception.

“My physics professor was particularly gruff,” she recalled years later. “He told me that regardless of my grades, I would flunk the course. He said that physics was just no subject for a woman.”

Merton complained to the dean, changed physics classes and earned an A from a different professor. She graduated in 1920, the first woman to receive a bachelor of science degree in horticulture at Ohio State.

Petite and sprightly, Merton started out as a flower arranger but gradually worked her way into nursery management. In 1934, she opened the 25-acre Merriam Hills Nursery on her farm. She and her sister, Pauline Gynn, operated a Broadview Road produce stand.

President of bureau

Merton was elected the first woman president of the Summit County Farm Bureau in 1949, earning the nickname “The First Lady of the Land.”

For years, Merton entertained neighbors with her weather predictions. In the fall, if she noticed heavy coats on animals or thick husks on plants, she projected cold winters. In the spring, if insects and amphibians emerged early, she forecast hot summers.

She wasn’t entirely serious, merely spreading folklore she learned from farmers. Her whimsical pronouncements, written in a poetic style, spread far beyond Richfield. Newspapers, wire services, radio programs and eventually television networks all featured stories about the Bangs Corners Bug Barometer.

A harsh winter?

According to Merton, these were ominous signs in fall that a cold winter was dawning:

• “Ghost-like and lingering, the mists of morning cling in the hollow, loath to go.”

• “Thick husks blanket the ears of corn and the hickory hulls are fat and green. The buckeyes are sleek as satin.”

• “The hens act haunted, while the plow horse, lonely for work and one of his kind, chases the cows, high-tailed, for want of play.”

• “The bat hangs back of the shutter, head down, and the barn owl starts her silent swift prowl before the sun goes down.”

• “The cat suns, lazy on the south porch — too lazy to move when the field mouse slips over the threshold to a warm home in the wall.”

A hot summer?

Conversely, Merton saw early warnings in spring that a hot summer was on the way:

• “The old dog prances as proud as if he had two tails.”

• “The redbird poses before his mate with his noisy boasting ‘Ain’t I pretty-pretty-pretty-pretty?’ ”

• “Angleworms trace long paths on the mud, and the rabbit nurses her naked young in the woodchuck hole.”

• “The hungry bees feed in the skunk cabbage blossoms. Spiders and wasps crawl stiffly out of the woodwork.”

• “The cress is greening along the creek. Dandelions and poke sprouts like asparagus are almost ready for the pot. And rhubarb pushes its red fist into the sun.”

Wild and woolly

Merton was enamored with woolly caterpillars, which generally are reddish-brown in the middle and black on both ends. When the ends were larger than the middle, Merton took that as a sign of a cold winter.

In late 1952, she reported a surprising phenomenon: The woolly caterpillars were either all blond or all brunette.

The lighter caterpillars suggested a mild winter while the darker ones suggested a cold winter. Both were right.

In a classic forecast, Merton pronounced: “Old Ma Nature is fooling around like some frivolous flibbertigibbet … Just when you expect the worst, she’ll ease off and kiss you. And when the outlook is most rosy, she’ll deliver that old double-whammy.”

Sure enough, temperatures were mostly above freezing that winter, but the mercury plunged near zero a few times.

The final frost

Eunice Merton remained single until the autumn of her life. In 1960, when she was 66, Merton married Cleveland Press writer Robert Bordner, 61, an Akron native who owned the 140-acre Thanksgiving Hill farm in Peninsula. Bordner’s first wife, Ruth, died earlier that year after a prolonged illness.

Merton had known Bordner for about 20 years. When she was a garden columnist at the Brecksville News in the 1940s, he was the editor. They were both trustees of the Peninsula Library and Historical Society.

Following a private wedding, Merton resigned from her nursery and settled in with her husband in Peninsula. Her weather predictions became less frequent.

The couple spent the next 11 years together before her death in 1971 at age 77. There were no calling hours. Her body was cremated. Bordner passed away two years later.

The Bangs Corners Bug Barometer predicted its final winter. In one of her last forecasts, Merton wrote:

“Slowly the nightly B&O train trails its lonely calls for the crossings down the echoing valley. Each hour now whispers, ‘Hurry.’

“Hang the storm sash. Get out the woolens. Fill the bins and tidy the shelves in the earth cellar. Pile the firewood close by the door. Bitter winds are about to blow.”

The glow over Bath Township was so bright that the Three Wise Men might have been tempted to take a detour.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic clogged streets for blocks as family automobiles crawled to a stop along a dead-end road north of Summit Mall.

A dazzling light display became a public spectacle every Christmas in the Vesper Lake housing development. When Dr. Dean Jones, a West Akron dentist, decided to brighten the holidays for local children, he went the extra mile.

In 1969, Jones decided to set up a Christmas display on 1.25 acres at his home off Hilen Road. He started with a mere 3,000 electric lights and expanded to 10,000 the following year, finally topping out at 12,500 bulbs decorating his house and more than 100 trees.

“I guess I just like lights,” he sheepishly told the Beacon Journal in 1971.

Families gaped in awe at the outdoor scenery. The colorful wonderland featured a life-size Nativity scene, a 50-foot Christmas tree and electric lights shaped into wreaths, snowflakes, stars, bells, candles and other patterns.

Jones used more than 12 miles of electrical cords, nearly 100 junction boxes, a transformer, timer and other equipment to run the $20,000 display, which operated 5 to 11 p.m. every evening from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. His electric bill was $450 a month — about $2,500 today.

“Just seeing the children’s eyes popping was worth it all,” Jones said.

More than 250,000 vehicles drove past the exhibit each Christmas season. The display was so vast that it could be viewed from Hilen Road, Vesper Road or Knollwood Drive, all of which backed up with traffic during peak hours.

Jones gave out candy and gifts to kids and furnished doughnuts and soft drinks to youths from the Summit County Children’s Home. If motorists offered monetary donations, Jones turned over the funds to local charities for the purchase of Christmas gifts for needy families.

“I’m doing this strictly for the children,” he said.

The nightly traffic jam caused troubles in the housing development near Smith and Ghent roads. Residents often couldn’t get home because automobiles blocked driveways. Litter was found strewn about streets and yards.

The dentist thanked everyone for their patience and understanding.

“I have a lot of good neighbors,” Jones told a reporter.

After a couple of years of holiday mayhem, though, grumbles grew louder.

“The problems caused by that lighting display have taken all the joy out of our Christmas,” one neighbor fumed. “Traffic-wise, we are prisoners on our own street.”

Public officials began to see the Christmas light show as a local hazard.

Bath Township Fire Chief Larry Hershey expressed concern that traffic would impede emergency vehicles if they needed to get into the neighborhood. A firetruck would require an extra 15 minutes to weave in and out of cars.

However, he hesitated to complain. “Nobody likes to be a Scrooge to a Santa Claus,” he said.

Summit County commissioners approved a plan to turn Smith Road into a one-way street at night to better handle the traffic. That did little to control the logjam on the dead-end street, though.

Jones considered donating the display to the Akron Metropolitan Park District in December 1972.

“Those lights would be beautiful strung up in Sand Run Park,” he said. “It would be one of the most beautiful displays in the entire country.”

Park Director John Daily appreciated the gesture, but said the district already had its hands full.

“We have trouble replacing the burned-out bulbs in one spruce tree we have in front of our Goodyear Heights office,” he said.

During the 1973 energy shortage, neighbors won a reprieve when Jones decided not to put on his light show. He returned the following year, though, with his biggest, brightest display.

Bath Township trustees passed a nonbinding resolution in 1974 urging Jones to move the decorations to another site where they wouldn’t be a problem. The traffic was too much for Bath’s five police officers.

“We can only try to express the fact that while we favor putting up lights to entertain little children, we cannot condone the problems it has caused,” Trustee Floyd Crile explained.

As a last resort, Trustee Frank Gaffney proposed a measure to shut down the street to all but local access.

“There are about 25,000 cars who try to go down that road every night,” he said. “That’s three times the entire population of Bath Township each night.”

Jones refused to unplug his Christmas display, defiantly telling trustees: “Halloween has been cut out, and unless someone tries to hold the line, five years from now, everything else will be cut out, too.”

In 1975, he surrendered. He put up a sign on his street, notifying motorists that the gaudy display had moved.

Jones donated the lights to the Cathedral of Tomorrow on State Road in Cuyahoga Falls.

The Rev. Rex Humbard thanked Jones for his generosity to the church.

“We want to brighten everyone’s Christmas and put as much beauty as possible into it for them,” Humbard announced. “But most of all, I want to let everyone know the real meaning of Christmas, which is the birth of Jesus Christ and that God gave his only begotten son so that we might have eternal life.”

In 1977, the cathedral staff pulled the plug on the outdoor display, saying it was too costly to continue operating. That was the end of the light show.

Dr. Dean Jones, who had a history of heart problems, died in January 1980 at age 51, forever dimming a Christmas tradition in Bath Township.

The memory still shines.

The Old Book Store was a downtown Akron landmark with a lot of character — and a lot of characters.

Packed to the rafters with nearly 250,000 volumes, the long, narrow shop stood for decades on South Howard Street, a once-bustling block that fell to urban renewal in the 1960s.

The store specialized in used, rare and out-of-print books, but it also had a good selection of new titles, as well as coins, stamps, magazines, records and postcards. Its crowded shelves, counters and glass cases were a happy hunting ground for bibliophiles.

If customers needed a book, the store probably had it.

Gruff Lionel M. Swicker, better known as “Swick” to regular customers, was owner and proprietor. Born in 1895, the Illinois native was a World War I veteran and former farmhand who moved to Akron in 1923 in pursuit of employment.

He initially landed a job at B.F. Goodrich, but switched to Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., where he remained for 18 years.

In 1936, Swicker bought the Rev. George Hulme’s religious bookstore at 32 S. High St. and moved its 17,500-volume stock to 17 S. Howard St., the shop’s home for nine years. Initially, Swicker was a book dealer by day and rubber worker at night.

Highland Square resident Warren Skidmore, 86, who retired from Akron-Summit County Public Library as head of the language, literature and history division, remembers going to work at the Old Book Store about 1940, when he was a student at North High School.

“My mother got me the job,” he said. “She went in there and said, ‘Oh, I’ve got a son who reads a lot of books.’ ”

Skidmore became Swicker’s apprentice, working afternoons and Saturdays, learning every facet of the business. He operated the cash register, conducted banking and bought old books to sell for a profit.

“There was a desk near the front, and I sat there,” Skidmore said. “I did more than wait on the trade. I started ordering all the new books from the publishers. We put out catalogs about four times a year and I typed all the catalogs.”

In the 1940s, Swicker moved the business to 42 S. Howard St., which had a main floor — new books in front, used books in back — and two upper levels of storage. Customers could find titles on just about any subject, including poetry, mathematics, philosophy, history, science, sports, religion and the occult.

“Swick would go out and get carloads of stuff,” Skidmore said. “It all had to be priced, marked and shelved.”

When people called to say they had old books to sell, Swicker cranked up his 1936 Oldsmobile and drove to see the collections. Sometimes he bought entire private libraries.

“You have to be a gambler to be in this business,” Swicker once told the Beacon Journal. “You quote a price and buy a batch of books and then you sit back and hope somebody will take them off your hands so you’ll get your money back plus a little extra.”

American actress Helen Hayes and Sir Thomas Beecham, an English conductor, were among the notables who wandered into the shop.

“It was a sort of center for the intelligentsia,” Skidmore said. “There were an awful lot of university people that sort of hung out there.”

The store even maintained a vast supply of old National Geographic magazines and kept an index to help students search for topics when working on school reports.

“You may be surprised to learn what our bestseller was, year in and year out: The Masonic Blue Book,” Skidmore said. “Any prospective Mason had to memorize the first three degrees, which were in the Blue Book.”

Skidmore left Akron to attend St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md., but returned to his old bookstore job after graduating in 1947.

“I enjoyed it,” he said.

Goodyear retiree John Wiedey, 74, of Wadsworth, recalls going to the bookstore when he was a boy living on Kenilworth Drive in West Akron. He will never forget Swicker.

“He was a fierce-looking guy, but once you got to know him, he had a heart of gold,” recalled Wiedey, a 1956 graduate of Buchtel High. “A lot of kids were scared to death of him. And he knew it, too. He just let them be that way until they figured out he was different.”

Wiedey remembers that Swicker smoked foul-smelling pipes, drove a noisy jalopy and wore crumpled suits to work.

“He didn’t want to leave the impression that he was wealthy,” Wiedey said.

Swicker helped fuel Wiedey’s lifelong passion for Thomas Edison, tracking down rare books about the inventor. The two became good friends.

“If somebody brought in good books, they got good prices for them,” Wiedey said. “Because he knew he could sell them, he knew his market, he knew who his customers were.”

In the 1960s, Akron officials decided to close South Howard Street and demolish the aging buildings for urban renewal. The Old Book Store had to go.

Skidmore accepted a job at the library and remained until his retirement in 1986.

“I wasn’t there very long before I was promoted to the biggest division,” he said.

Wiedey recalls the final days of the downtown store in 1967 when Swicker allowed him to climb a rickety staircase to explore the unsafe third floor.

“When you would walk up that thing, it was like walking across a swinging bridge,” Wiedey said.

The roof had leaked. Boxes had fallen over. Wiedey didn’t see anything to salvage.

“It was very sad,” he said.

A week later, the building was demolished. Swicker moved his store to smaller quarters at 210 E. Cuyahoga Falls Ave. in North Akron.

“I could make more money digging a ditch, but I wouldn’t have as much fun out of life,” he told the Beacon Journal.

Frank Klein, 86, owner of the Bookseller in West Akron, remembers Swicker as a knowledgeable book dealer.

Klein’s father, Clarence, who owned Klein’s Books in Stow and Kent, used to play cards with Swicker and accompany him on book expeditions.

When Klein took over the Bookseller after his father’s death, Swicker helped show him the ropes.

“Swick really befriended me,” Klein said. “I still have notes that he gave me on the book trade. He was really very open.”

Swicker advised him to seek out histories by local authors such as William Henry Perrin, Samuel A. Lane, William B. Doyle, Oscar E. Olin, Scott Dix Kenfield and Karl H. Grismer. Their books always will find buyers, Swicker said.

After 44 years in business, Swicker sold the North Hill store in 1980 to Ron Antonucci, who ran it another five years. Swicker and his third wife moved to Texas, where he died of cardiac arrest in 1982. He was 87 years old.

From time to time, Klein finds books that belonged to Swicker. He can tell by large pencil marks inside the cover.

“All dealers have distinctive pricing code,” Klein said. “Every once in a while, I’ll see a book that he had.”

Skidmore remains thankful that Swicker introduced him to the book business.

“I enjoyed talking to people and I enjoyed the books,” he said.

Among Wiedey’s prized belongings is a Columbia phonograph that Swicker gave him. It used to sit in the front window of the Howard Street store.

“He was a true friend,” Wiedey said.

Every kid in Ellet knew who lived in that house.

No bigger than a shed, a brightly decorated cottage stands tall in the memories of Akron baby boomers.

Visiting the Santa Claus house at Eastgate Plaza was a beloved Christmas ritual during the 1950s and 1960s.

Beneath glowing lights, sparkling garlands and wafting carols, Ellet children braved the cold and lined up on the sidewalk to see Santa at the Canton Road shopping center.

Kriss Kringle sat on a carved throne inside the wooden house, which was assembled every year on a platform in the front parking lot outside Woolworth and Gray Drug.

In 1952, Akron developer Francis E. Rottmayer opened Eastgate, the first such plaza in Summit County and one of the earliest in Ohio. The $2 million center’s early tenants included J.C. Penney, W.E. Wright, Acme, Kroger, Shulan’s Jewelers, Carter Shoe Co., Rosen’s Bake Shop, Moore Auto, Evans Savings, Tip-Top Laundry and Eastgate Bowling.

Many Ellet natives might be surprised to learn that Rottmayer (1904-1989), an expert carpenter, personally designed and built the Santa Claus house, along with Santa’s chair and sleigh.

The red, white and green cottage featured curtained windows, little flower boxes, toy-lined shelves, scrollwork and carved railings with a Christmas tree motif.

Stored in the Eastgate basement during the offseason, the structure was easy to take apart and put together.

Rottmayer, a native of Germany, took a special joy in entertaining children during Christmas at the plaza.

“He always made a big production of Santa coming,” recalled Rottmayer’s daughter Susan Suthers, a Medina resident. “It was really crowded. Kids were all over the place.”

One year, Santa arrived triumphantly by helicopter. Another year, he climbed down a ladder from atop the plaza.

“They had jingling on the roof and then they had reindeer,” Suthers said. “You could see a little bit of a sleigh hanging over.”

When the big man in the red suit and black boots finally set foot on the ground, Suthers was just as amazed as everyone else in the crowd.

“I don’t know how he got up there,” she said. “My dad didn’t tell me. I believed in Santa at the time.”

Lasting memories

Robert Gulledge, 62, of Goodyear Heights, who grew up on Hawk Avenue in Ellet, remembers the excitement of going to Eastgate when he was a pupil at Windemere Elementary School.

“Around Thanksgiving, workers would close off several parking spaces in the front row of the shopping center and build the house,” recalled Gulledge, a 1968 Ellet High School graduate.

“Kids would wait in long lines to visit with Santa, while their parents could shop at Woolworth’s or J.C. Penney’s for gifts. The Santa house at Eastgate Plaza provided the children of the Ellet community with lasting memories of Christmas and their visit with Santa.”

When it was cold and snowy, youngsters wore coats, hats, boots, gloves, mittens and earmuffs while waiting to ascend the ramp, follow the railing and enter the house.

Elf assistants ushered in children to sit on Santa’s lap, tell him what they wanted for Christmas and have their photographs taken — if their parents wanted to buy pictures.

Kids could also do a little window shopping before or after the visit. The Woolworth’s downstairs store, which opened in 1957, was a popular stop for children at Eastgate.

“The toys were right downstairs in the basement,” Gulledge said.

West Akron resident Steve Pryseski, 53, a language arts teacher and yearbook adviser at Ellet High School, grew up on Stevenson Avenue about four blocks from Eastgate. He could walk to the shopping center with his sister Joyce and brother David.

“I do remember it was completely, completely decked out with strings of lights all the way across the plaza,” said Pryseski, a 1977 Ellet graduate. “That little house always seemed to stick up. It was one of those things you could see as you arrived.”

The interior of the house, painted in gaudy colors, became a little cramped when more than one sibling got in the picture.

There was no guarantee that children would get what they requested for Christmas, but candy canes were a consolation prize at the exit.

“There was always a little token gift bag of candy, a tiny little thing, after you visited Santa,” Pryseski said.

Repeat visits

The Rev. David Weyrick, 57, pastor at Stow Presbyterian Church, grew up on Yerrick Road in Ellet and has vivid memories of visiting Eastgate at Christmas when he was a pupil at Hatton Elementary.

“What was really cool about the Eastgate Santa was you got to see him more than once,” Weyrick said. “So you could wait in line a second time if you forgot something. Or your mother could say, ‘No, you’ve already seen him once.’ ”

In downtown Akron, children enjoyed the comfort of waiting indoors to visit Santa at O’Neil’s or Polsky’s department stores. But isn’t the North Pole supposed to be cold?

“An outside Santa Claus, now that was the real thing,” Weyrick joked, adding “Tough Ellet kids!”

When children arrived at the wood throne, “it was like you were seeing the king or something,” he said.

It’s funny what sticks in the mind of a 5-year-old boy.

Weyrick distinctly recalls looking up at Santa and noticing that his facial hair wasn’t completely white.

“I still remember the top of the mustache area being this brownish-orangish color, and thinking that was sort of strange,” he said. “Then I realized years later that was probably nicotine or cigar smoke.”

After a couple of decades of Christmases, Rottmayer retired the Santa Claus house at Eastgate. He moved the wood to his Medina home, reassembled it next to a pond and used it as a changing booth for swimmers.

“That’s why I remember the details of it,” Suthers said.

The holiday house no longer exists, but Suthers’ brother has incorporated some of the carved railings into his shed, preserving the last relics of a beloved Ellet building that used to be magical at Christmas.

Thousands of baby boomers met Santa Claus for the first time at Eastgate Plaza.

“That’s where I went each year,” Suthers said. “A lot of my friends say they remember when they were kids they were there to see Santa.”

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.

Akron songwriter Mort Greene scored a lot of hits during his long career, but none more memorable than The Toy Parade, a cheerful, rollicking tune that marched through American living rooms in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

What’s that? You don’t recognize the title?

Try these lyrics: “Hey! Here they come with a rum-tee-tum. They’re having a toy parade. A tin giraffe with a fife and drum is leading the kewpie brigade.”

Still not sure? Here is a little dialogue: “Gee, Wally, that’s swell.”

The Toy Parade served as the theme to Leave It to Beaver, the beloved TV sitcom that aired from 1957 to 1963, first on CBS, then on ABC. Each week, audiences followed the comedic, black-and-white adventures of Ward and June Cleaver and their sons Wally and Beaver.

Greene, who co-wrote the song with David Kahn and Melvyn Leonard, had an unusual career in show business, finding success in radio, film and television, not only as a composer and lyricist, but also as a comedy writer.

Morton S. Greenberger, the son of Ethel and Nicholas Greenberger, was born Oct. 3, 1912, in Cleveland but raised in Akron. His father, an attorney, was the Akron city solicitor.

The family resided at 82 Metlin Ave., then 539 Crosby St., then 71 Casterton Ave., all in West Akron. Little Morty and his brother, Bobby, attended Portage Path, King Elementary and West High School.

Irascible and energetic, Morty loved making people laugh. His January 1930 senior class voted him “The King of Wit,” and friends predicted he would find fame in vaudeville.

In the West High yearbook Rodeo, he listed his hobbies as “women and song-writing.” Besides cartooning for the Lariat student newspaper, Morty belonged to the dramatic club and served as chairman of the sweater committee, which presumably was a real group.

“Morty has a line you could hang clothes on,” the yearbook noted. “When he’s not making wise cracks, he’s usually found writing snappy music.”

The boy developed his musical talent by plunking away for hours on a piano in the family’s den. He composed little ditties at home and wrote the score for The Revue of Revues, a West High musical in which he had the lead role.

At 16, he penned a ballad titled I Fell in Love, and promoted it by singing it live on weekends in the music department at Akron Dry Goods and over the airwaves at WADC radio.

“I want to make a start in writing songs, and follow it up,” Morty told the Beacon Journal in 1929. “I’ve written several songs just for my own amusement, but never tried anything serious before.”

He was working on three other songs, and hoped to get one or two out “before so very much longer.” If that didn’t work out, he might enter the banking business, he said.

Upon graduation, Morty studied briefly at the University of Akron before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania to major in business. In his spare time, he wrote the song My Prom Girl, which won rousing encores when performed in East Coast ballrooms by Red Nichols and His Five Pennies.

After tasting success, the Akron boy threw caution to the wind in 1932 and moved to Hollywood, where he shortened his name from Greenberger to Greene.

He landed a gig writing music and scenes for Metro-Golden-Mayer, then RKO Pictures. He met movie stars, attended glamorous parties and dated actress Anne Shirley, the star of 1934’s Anne of Green Gables.

Greene and songwriter Harry Barris teamed up on the 1935 song Thrilled, which was recorded by artists such as Abe Lyman, Ruth Etling and Tom Coakley, appearing for 14 weeks on Your Hit Parade.

He began a successful collaboration with English songwriter Harry Revel, cranking out more than 200 songs, including the soundtracks to nearly 30 movies.

Greene married starlet Ann Lawrence in 1938 and built a Hollywood ranch house with a swimming pool. He installed a slot machine in his recreation room that played the chorus from Thrilled during jackpots.

The marriage was not happy. Lawrence divorced Greene in 1946, alleging he was “abominable and extremely surly.”

“When he came home, if at all, he wouldn’t talk,” she told a judge. “For days at a time, he wouldn’t say a word to me.”

As a lyricist, Greene had plenty of words for other people. Ginger Rogers danced to Greene’s song Put Your Heart Into Your Feet and Dance in the 1937 movie Stage Door. The Andrews Sisters sang Sleepy Serenade in the 1941 Abbott and Costello movie Hold That Ghost. Lucille Ball sang Who Knows? in the 1942 movie The Big Street. Frances Langford belted out I’m Good for Nothing But Love in the 1946 movie The Bamboo Blonde.

Greene and Revel were nominated for an Academy Award for their song There’s a Breeze on Lake Louise in the 1942 film The Mayor of 44th Street, starring George Murphy and Anne Shirley, but it had no chance to win because it was up against Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, sung by Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn.

When asked about his inspiration for the song You’re Bad for Me, Greene joked that the title came naturally.

“I’d just downed six highballs and a Spanish dinner,” he told a Hollywood columnist.

In 1947, Greene married actress Jan Wiley, whose film credits included Secret Agent X-9 (1945), She-Wolf of London (1946) and The Brute Man (1946). The couple had two daughters, Nicki and Melissa, and visited Akron often to see Greene’s parents in their home at 206 Melbourne Ave.

In the late 1940s, Greene reinvented himself, turning his wisecracking humor into a source of income. He began to write jokes for national radio comedies, which led to work in the fledgling television industry. He wrote material for Bob Cummings, Perry Como and a young Johnny Carson, but returned to music to co-write the TV themes for Leave It to Beaver and Tales of Wells Fargo.

Greene worked his way up to lead writer for The Red Skelton Show, and was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1963. He specialized in sight gags for “The Silent Spot” of Skelton’s program, a pantomime skit near the end of each show.

As he explained to the Beacon Journal: “Skelton, say, is sitting in a doctor’s waiting room with other patients and fighting desperately to hold back a sneeze. Finally, he lets it go. Patients, furniture and old magazines end up in one big pile in a corner of the office.”

Greene was one of the highest-paid writers on television when the show ended in 1971, the same year that his second marriage ended in divorce.

On one of his final visits to Akron in May 1980, he attended the 50th reunion of his West High School class.

“I’ve climbed every mountain,” he told Kenny Nichols of the Beacon Journal.

Greene was inducted into the Akron Radio Hall of Fame in 1987. He was 80 years old when he passed away Dec. 28, 1992, in Palm Desert, Calif.

He left behind hundreds of memorable songs, including The Toy Parade, which still sounds awfully swell, Wally.

Just ask the Cleavers.

The location was prime. The clientele was select. The product was choice.

Unfortunately, the business just didn’t cut it.

The Portage Packing Co. was a meat-processing plant at Merriman Road and Portage Path in what is now known as the Merriman Valley in Akron. Although the company didn’t last long, it left behind a landmark building that still stands. Few people would recognize it as a former slaughterhouse.

Company founders promoted the new business in 1917 as a lead-pipe cinch for stockholders, “a safe, conservative investment — the kind a man can honestly recommend to his best friend.”

Akron was a growing city of 150,000 voracious consumers who would always demand meat for three square meals a day, organizers explained. The business would cater to 300,000 people in a 30-mile radius around the city.

“You eat meat, your neighbor eats meat, practically everybody eats meat,” the company noted in its stock offering. “And when they do, they are increasing the demand of the packing company. If you have stock in a packing company, you don’t need to worry as to whether or not the public will support it. They must, if they expect to live.”

Capital stock sold for $25 a share (about $380 today). When the business opened in 1918, it would be “one of the best equipped and most modern packing plants in the country.”

The company’s officers, all “trained, practical men,” were John R. Bliss, president; Irvin R. Renner, vice president; Clyde S. Burgner, secretary; and W.C. Crow, treasurer. They predicted “a brilliantly successful future” with “handsome profits for all shareholders.”

Choosing a site

They selected a construction site on the outskirts of Akron along the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad near Old Portage, the north terminus of the ancient trail where Indians carried their canoes between the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas rivers.

The three-story, brick-and-concrete building had 38,000 square feet of floor space and walls that were 2 feet thick plus 8 inches of cork insulation.

“We know positively that as soon as the ‘first pig squeals,’ it will be the signal for the stock to advance,” the company advertised.

Work began in earnest near the end of World War I. Portage Packing had the capacity to slaughter and dress 5,000 hogs, 1,200 cattle and “proportionate numbers” of sheep, lambs and calves each week. “Akron-killed in a modern plant,” the company boasted.

Byproducts included hide for leather, hair for upholstery and bones for fertilizer and glue. Poultry, eggs and dairy products also were handled using “the latest sanitary methods.”

Shareholders voted to increase the company’s capital stock from $250,000 to $500,000, and then doubled it again to $1 million.

For about three years, the plant produced fresh and cured meats for butcher shops in Summit County. Then a series of misfortunes struck.

In 1920, trade journal United States Investor published an item that questioned the value of the Akron company’s stock.

“Very little appears to be known about Portage Packing Co.,” the journal wrote. “It has marketed its own stock for some time past, in a rather, unsatisfactory manner, and we would advise leaving it alone.”

In 1921, the business became enmeshed in a fake securities plot in which a Chicago gang flooded the U.S. market with $10 million in bogus stocks, forged certificates and stolen bonds from more than 30 companies, including $50,000 in fake notes from Portage Packing. Investors fled the company in droves.

The timing was terrible, because the company already was reeling from the Depression of 1920-21. Wholesale prices plunged, and unemployment surged.

Portage Packing limped along for another year or so before falling into receivership, bringing an abrupt end to the former lead-pipe cinch. The assets were auctioned off for $309,000 in 1923.

Other uses for building

A Cuyahoga Falls farmer turned the former slaughterhouse into a mushroom-growing nursery in the late 1920s, but the enterprise failed. A potato dealer wanted to use the building as a spud warehouse, but the deal fell through.

For 15 years, the abandoned building stood dark and desolate, looking like an ancient ruin. Vandals smashed its windows and ripped down doors. Trees grew out of the roof.

Albert L. Denney, a driver for Jones Van & Storage, bought the old plant for $3,500 in 1946, cleaned up the debris, installed new windows and remodeled the structure as a warehouse. He leased the first floor to Aster Meats, stored furniture on the second floor and used the third floor for general storage.

In 1956, Denney sold the building for $75,000 to Dickson Moving & Storage, which operated the warehouse into the 1960s. Dream House Furniture later assumed ownership, but abandoned the place in the 1970s.

The building was vacant for a few years until developer Steve Botnick and his father, Irving, saw its true potential. In 1979, they decided to convert it into a health club.

The RiverParke office and recreation complex opened in 1981 following a $3.1 million renovation, which included the addition of a fourth floor. Vic Tanny International, a Detroit health-club chain, leased the building, which included a swimming pool, running track, racquetball courts, steam bath, dry sauna, whirlpool, showers, aerobic dancing rooms, exercise equipment and separate gymnasiums for men and women.

Vic Tanny sold out to Scandinavian Health Spa in the early 1980s. Besides being a place to work out, Scandinavian developed a reputation as a spot where singles could mingle. It was a popular spot to meet men or women. Some people jokingly called it “a meat market.” If they only knew the building’s origins!

Scandinavian gave way to Bally’s, which operated the spa for more than 20 years. Following another remodeling, RPFitness moved into the building in 2005, and it’s been there ever since.

The former Portage Packing Co. is still packing them in, tending to a select clientele at a prime location.

Customers prefer to order lean cuts.

In the quiet darkness of the Akron Airdock, billowy clouds formed near the ceiling and floated gently downward.

A silvery rain of nylon cascaded to the floor.

Ohio engineers gathered inside the cavernous hangar 60 years ago to conduct controlled experiments on military and civilian parachutes. With the curiosity of children attaching plastic toy soldiers to paper napkins with thread, researchers dropped one parachute after another from the 200-foot ceiling of the airdock.

Goodyear Aircraft Corp. in Akron and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton teamed up for the free-fall experiments, which studied various design factors on parachute performance.

“If the day ever comes when you have to jump out of an airplane, you may owe your safe survival to some strange-looking doings out at Goodyear Aircraft’s airship dock while most of Akron sleeps these nights,” the Beacon Journal reported in January 1953.

Built in 1929, Akron’s cocoon-shaped hangar measures 1,175 feet long, 325 feet wide and 211 feet high. It’s as tall as a 22-story building and big enough to house 100,000 people.

Scurrying around like ants, a small colony of engineers took part in the meticulous tests.

Wright Air Development Center officials decided to drop parachutes in the Akron Airdock, the largest building in the world without interior supports, because of its unobstructed views and massive floor space.

Previous free-fall experiments were conducted from airplanes and outdoor towers, but military engineers wanted a more controlled atmosphere free of wind currents. Hopefully, someone warned them about the possibility of rain.

As any Akron trivia expert will attest, the airdock is so large that it rains inside. Technically, it’s condensation. On foggy mornings, when relative humidity is high inside the dock, a rapid drop in temperature can create condensation that falls in a mist to the floor.

Researchers continuously measured relative humidity, temperature and barometric pressure during the parachute tests. Before getting started, researchers dropped paper cups to see if there were any gusts that could skew results.

Parachutes constructed

Project engineer Gerhard E. Aichinger supervised construction of 27 nylon parachutes — from flat to spherical to conical to square to triangular — at Goodyear’s Wingfoot Lake hangar in Suffield Township.

The goal was to determine the influence of a canopy’s shape by comparing “flight path, stability, weight-carrying ability and opening characteristics.”

Inside the airdock, engineers assembled a mechanical hoist system featuring aluminum beams, pulleys, stainless-steel cables, a 1-horsepower electric motor, magnetic brakes and a 24-foot arm with a movable hook.

A technician operated a central console on the floor, lifting parachutes 172 feet in the air and releasing them automatically — like an indoor amusement park in the name of science. Chutes away! Chutes away! Chutes away!

Safety was virtually ensured because the parachutes weren’t manned. A fabric bag containing lead shot was clamped below each one as a dead weight.

Small light bulbs, powered by a battery unit, were sewn into the fabric and wired to suspension lines. The airdock’s interior lights were switched off before each drop, giving the parachutes an eerie glow as they glided downward.

Two Eastman D-2 cameras, locked into position on opposite catwalks, recorded each descent in timed exposures with the shutters open for the duration of the fall.

After parachutes hit the floor, the airdock lights were turned on again so crews could untangle the lines, retrieve the parachutes and store them between tests.

With descents ranging from four seconds to 20 seconds, more than 700 drops were conducted in the airdock.

Results were carefully recorded, including the types of parachutes, shapes of canopies, lengths of suspension lines, sites of landings and other pertinent information. Researchers compiled thousands of pages of notes on drag coefficients, velocity, oscillation, angles and aerodynamic characteristics.

Results reported

Following years of tabulation and analysis, results were published in a hefty, seven-volume report in 1960.

“From these tests it appears that parachutes of a particular family or design seemed to indicate specific tendencies such as gliding or oscillating rates which did not vary substantially when the parachute shape was changed,” Goodyear Aircraft’s F.J. Stimler and R.S. Ross concluded in their 231-page first volume. “It is recommended that a careful study be made of these tendencies in an effort to determine the exact aerodynamic forces responsible for this action.

“Engineering evaluations of why a parachute behaves as it does, combined with the wealth of empirical data constantly being gathered, would aid the parachute designer considerably in attempting to provide a new parachute design with predetermined flight characteristics.”

While the city slept, Akron pulled the ripcord on air safety.

Goodyear supplied the parachutes and tall building. Engineers provided the ingenuity. Gravity did the rest.

Akron resident Anna E. Wasler didn’t intend to be a civil rights pioneer.

But then she died.

When the beloved, 83-year-old grandmother passed away in 1962, her heirs made funeral arrangements and selected a local cemetery as her final resting place.

Grief turned to disbelief, however, when Rose Hill Burial Park refused to sell the family a plot.

The cemetery’s graves were for white people only — and Wasler was black.

Born in 1879, Wasler was a native of Washington, Pa., who moved to Akron about 1956 to live closer to relatives. She was the widow of William J. Wasler, a factory laborer and coal hauler.

In declining health, Wasler moved in with her granddaughter Ann Smith on Winton Avenue in West Akron. The elderly woman spent her final days at Holy Family Home in Parma, where she died Sept. 18, 1962, leaving behind Smith, great-grandson William Henry Anderson, also of Akron, and four great-great grandchildren.

The Rev. G. Lincoln Caddell, pastor of St. Paul AME Church, conducted rites at Turner Funeral Home. “Burial will be in Rose Hill Burial Park,” a Beacon Journal obituary noted.

In making arrangements, Smith recalled an advertising brochure that was mailed to her home from the cemetery at Smith and Medina roads. She inquired about purchasing a plot, but Rose Hill officials turned her down because her grandmother was black.

Five months earlier, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had told a crowd in Memorial Hall at the University of Akron:

“Segregation is not something encountered merely in the South, although there we find it in its most glaring and conspicuous form. As long as we have discrimination in housing — where the Negro cannot buy or rent a house wherever he has money capable of placing him — we will always have segregation.”

Obviously, that applied to cemeteries as well.

Complaint filed

Smith believed that Rose Hill was violating the Ohio Civil Rights Act of 1959, which guaranteed fair access to “places of public accommodation.” She filed a formal complaint with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, the law’s enforcing body, and stored her grandmother’s casket in a crypt at Glendale Cemetery until the dispute could be resolved.

The Ohio Civil Rights Commission scheduled a public hearing Nov. 2 in Akron with Cleveland attorney Jack G. Day serving as special examiner.

William R. McClenathen, attorney for Rose Hill, testified that the cemetery had “contractual relationships” with local congregations and fraternal groups to restrict burial plots “in certain prescribed sections.”

“The rules and regulations have been in effect approximately 40 years and state that ‘Rose Hill Burial Park is maintained for the interment of persons of the white race,’ ” McClenathen testified.

Furthermore, he claimed, the cemetery was not a place of public accommodation, the Civil Rights Act of Ohio applied only to living persons, and lot owners and their heirs would lose their right to fraternize as they wished.

Cleveland attorney John E. Duda, representing the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, testified that Rose Hill most certainly was a place of public accommodation because it “advertises its burial park and its cemetery function by direct mailing advertisement to the public, among other advertising media.”

According to Duda, the Civil Rights Act covered cemeteries as public facilities “because the language of the law extends beyond restaurants, barbershops, amusement places, travel facilities and the like.”

Examiner Jack Day ordered both sides to file briefs by Dec. 7 before he made a recommendation.

“After that, either side may appeal,” Day said. “The appeal probably will be taken to Summit County Common Pleas Court and then it is up to the courts to make a final decision.”

Decision reached

Day studied the opposing arguments for two months before making his report Feb. 13, 1963.

He concluded that the state law did indeed apply to public cemeteries and he recommended that the Ohio Civil Rights Commission order Rose Hill to accept Wasler’s remains for burial and refrain from further “discriminatory practices.”

Legal proceedings continued for four months. Then the cemetery backed down.

“On advice of counsel, we decided not to take this to court,” Rose Hill Vice President Walter Bittner Jr. told the Beacon Journal on June 19, 1962. “I’d rather not comment beyond that.”

Commission member Duda was jubilant, predicting that the test case would have “a far-reaching effect.”

“This is a great victory for civil rights in Ohio,” he said.

Three days later, the commission integrated all public cemeteries in the state, ruling that no citizen should be excluded from burial because of race. The ruling exempted religious and military cemeteries.

Ten months after Wasler’s death, her remains were removed from the crypt at Glendale and carried by hearse to Rose Hill Burial Park.

Graveside services were conducted Aug. 3, 1963, officially integrating the cemetery 50 years ago. The Akron woman was laid to rest in a quiet corner near a maintenance building. It was off to the side, but by gosh, she was there.

Among the well-known people buried at Rose Hill are Akron publisher John S. Knight, evangelist Rex Humbard, Major League Baseball catcher Luke Sewell, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Dwite H. Schaffner and Akron radio magnate Allen T. Simmons. Their final resting places are surrounded by graves of people from all races, ages and creeds.

Among the lesser-known names at Rose Hill is a civil -rights pioneer buried in Section 7, Lot 229.

A flat, marble stone bears the simple inscription:

ANNA E. WASLER

BELOVED

GRANDMOTHER

1879-1962.

On the coldest days of winter, when the wind moaned and the snow swirled, the doors and windows were open.

Frail children took deep, cleansing breaths and exhaled tiny clouds of wispy vapor.

Fresh air was a remedy.

Sunshine Cottage, the children’s ward at Springfield Lake Sanatorium, provided a healthful respite for young patients battling tuberculosis, one of the deadliest diseases of the early 20th century. Far from the smoke and soot of congested cities, the rural complex was hailed as “a veritable fairyland” for youths isolated by illness.

Chronic fatigue, persistent coughing and weight loss were symptoms of the bacterial disease, which spread into the lungs through airborne droplets from coughs or sneezes.

In the days before antibiotics, Dr. Clarence L. Hyde (1878-1945), superintendent of the sanatorium from 1920 to 1945, believed fresh air, sunshine and rest would restore patients to health, so he prescribed all three in liberal doses.

The 108-acre Summit County institution was nearly a decade old when Sunshine Cottage opened in November 1924 southeast of the main complex. Clemmer & Johnson Co. constructed the low-roofed, gabled, brick building for $125,586 (about $1.7 million today).

The 100-bed facility had living quarters, lavatories, a central lobby, dining room, kitchen, classroom, library, clinic, offices and other amenities. Little beds, tables, chairs and bookcases were among the child-size furnishings. On the walls were murals of characters from Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island and Hansel and Gretel.

Beginning with the child

Sunshine Cottage opened with 77 children ranging in age from 18 months to 16 years. About 500 guests attended the dedication. Naturally, it rained.

Akron Mayor D.C. Rybolt presided over the ceremony. The Rev. Richard A. Dowed, the Rev. George P. Atwater and Rabbi David Alexander offered prayers. The Tuesday Musical Club provided entertainment.

Sunshine Cottage patient Rosanna Williams, 7, had a show-stopping moment with the song It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More — despite evidence to the contrary outside.

“Oh, it ain’t gonna rain no more, no more,” she sang. “It ain’t gonna rain no more. How in the heck can I wash around my neck if it ain’t gonna rain no more?”

Considered one of the nation’s leading authorities on tuberculosis, Dr. Hyde presented a lengthy dissertation on “The White Plague.”

“Medical men now appreciate more and more the aphorism, ‘To combat tuberculosis, we must begin with the child,’ ” Hyde told the audience. “This building, dedicated to the care of the tuberculosis child, should be a source of much pride to the residents of Summit County. Not so much because of the physical plant about to be opened, but more because they have recognized their responsibility to him and are undertaking the problem of lessening the occurrence in future generations.”

‘Daddy Shaw’

Edwin C. Shaw (1863-1941), president of the board of trustees at Springfield Lake Sanatorium and chairman of the Sunshine Cottage building committee, also spoke.

“This hospital might be called a prophecy and a fulfillment — a fulfillment of drama entertained in the past, and a prophecy of great things to come,” Shaw said.

He hoped that the facilities would be more than adequate for “the schooling and character building needs of our rapidly growing family of children.”

Shaw, a tall, distinguished-looking man with a white Van Dyke beard, was a beloved figure at Sunshine Cottage, where he knew every patient by name. The fresh-air children called him “Daddy Shaw” and followed him around the complex. In 1934, Summit County commissioners renamed the entire complex Edwin Shaw Sanatorium despite the vigorous objections of its namesake.

Sunshine Cottage patients had a highly regimented schedule with each child receiving 14 hours of rest each day, four hours of schooling and an hour of recreation. They ate a balanced diet that included milk, eggs, meat, fruits and vegetables. The children sang songs for 10 minutes after every meal.

Sleeping in the open

It’s difficult to imagine today, but kids slept outdoors on porches all year long. During winter, children filled gallon jugs with hot water and covered themselves with blankets.

“A visitor who drops in at Sunshine Cottage around 2:30 any chilly January afternoon would see a long row of cots stretched side by side on a long porch,” Akron Times-Press writer James Craig reported in 1938. “Puffs of steam shoot upward from each cot as though from so many jets, as the youngsters breathe deeply, then exhale. But no children are visible.

“At 3, heads commence to sprout all along the line and alert-looking youngsters with cheeks the color of Northern Spy apples begin to pop up. Glasses of tomato juice are delivered to each cot by the nurses. Then it’s ‘All Out,’ and the children bounce out of bed and haul gallon jugs from beneath the covers.”

In summer months, children frolicked in their underwear while basking in the sun. That wasn’t possible in winter — especially in Northeast Ohio — so Dr. Hyde employed artificial sunshine to treat his patients.

Children entered a special room with a sun symbol painted on the door. They sat in their skivvies on tiny chairs and received a daily dose of ultraviolet light from a carbon arc lamp on a sand-filled floor. It was the closest thing to a beach in January and February.

In the cottage, a motto was inscribed on a mantel: “Of all flowers, the human flower needs the sun the most.”

Of the 246 people buried in a small cemetery on the sanatorium grounds, none was from Sunshine Cottage. All died between 1915 and 1922.

Making progress on TB

The county’s tuberculosis rate plunged as health authorities worked to protect the public from cattle infected with the disease. Officials stressed the necessity of consuming cooked meat and pasteurized milk.

Slowly but surely, patient enrollment declined at Sunshine Cottage, too. The facility released 100 patients in 1926, 86 in 1930, 57 in 1935 and 22 in 1942.

Sunshine Cottage was all too happy to close in June 1943. Only 10 patients remained, and they could be treated at home.

Officials fretted over what to do with the building. In the late 1940s, it served briefly as a satellite campus for the Summit County Children’s Home on South Arlington Street.

The vacant property fell prey to vandals and thieves for more than a decade until the Summit County Child Welfare Board reopened it in 1965 as Sunshine Center, a housing complex for 100 children.

It was renamed Andersen Village in 1977, but closed in 1985 after its last three residents were placed in foster homes.

The sun finally set on Sunshine Cottage.

Meanwhile, the aging sanatorium reinvented itself in 1967 as Edwin Shaw Hospital, a rehabilitation facility for patients recovering from strokes and other medical problems.

Akron General Medical Center took over the hospital in 2005, but moved its operation to Cuyahoga Falls in 2009.

The 108-acre complex has been vacant since 2010.

All that fresh air and sunshine are going to waste.

Joining the Army was easy. Getting out was a little more complicated.

After eight grueling weeks of basic training, Pvt. Raymond E. Hafer of Akron was tired of marching, drilling and camping in the Alabama heat. He yearned for his mother’s homemade biscuits.

“It’s getting pretty rough,” he admitted in a 1953 letter. “Besides, I miss the home cooking.”

Hafer finally marched up to his commanding officer and begged to be discharged. The lieutenant colonel listened incredulously before ordering the upstart soldier out of the office.

No matter how hard he tried to explain, Hafer couldn’t get military brass to believe that he was only 13 years old.

The Akron boy made national headlines 60 years ago as “the youngest GI in the country.”

He really was 13, although he didn’t look his age. Hafer stood 5-feet-10 and weighed nearly 160 pounds. Those homemade biscuits must have been mighty delicious.

Hafer, an only child, lived with his mother, Thelma Smith, and stepfather, Floyd B. Smith, in their home at 681 S. Firestone Blvd.

A restless spirit with a short attention span, Hafer wasn’t the best student in Akron. In fact, he attended nine different schools in eight years, transferring from classroom to classroom.

After Hafer flamed out at Ellet Elementary, Mrs. Smith sent her son to a Detroit boarding academy in the fall of 1952. The eighth-grader quickly “got tired” of the strict academy and concocted a sure-fire scheme to get out.

He used ink eradicator on his birth certificate and retyped the birth date from July 29, 1939, to 1935, which changed his age to 18. Then he ran away to Cleveland, took the fake certificate to a draft board and enlisted in the Army on Feb. 10, 1953.

The military was all too happy to have a new recruit during the Korean War.

Hafer hoped to join his Akron pal Keith Phillips, 19, who had been drafted into the Army. “I figured I might be sent to Fort Lee, Va., where he was stationed,” Hafer later explained.

Instead, Hafer arrived Feb. 23 for basic training at Camp Rucker, Ala., and was assigned to Company M of the 16th Infantry Regiment in the 47th Division. Only one other trainee, Francis Armstrong, also of Akron, knew Hafer’s real age but he was sworn to secrecy.

Clearly, Hafer hadn’t considered all of the ramifications of his enlistment. The U.S. Army made the boarding school look like a garden party.

Hafer had to rise early each day, march for miles, run obstacle courses, learn to build bivouacs, crawl under live machine-gun fire and prepare for combat in Asia.

Meanwhile, his mother had no idea he was missing.

“The last time Ray was home was when he got a week off school last January,” Mrs. Smith told the Beacon Journal. “I didn’t worry when no letters came for several weeks because he sometimes planned trips home for the weekend and wanted to surprise me.”

Boy, what a surprise.

After eight weeks in camp, Hafer wanted out. He spent two more weeks trying to convince officials of his true age, and dropped a bombshell on his mother with a letter that requested an official copy of his birth certificate.

National story

Hafer became an overnight celebrity when the truth came out. Reporters flocked to interview him when he received his honorable discharge. His photo appeared in newspapers around the country.

“I didn’t like school, so I joined the Army,” he told one journalist. “But now I have decided that school is better for me — much better — so I’m going home.”

After 10 weeks of Army chow, he said, “I sure do yearn for some of my mother’s biscuits.”

Hafer returned to Akron on April 13, 1953, and enjoyed a home-cooked meal with his family. He also reunited with friend Keith Phillips, who was home on leave, and sat for more interviews with reporters.

“Don’t think it was any rougher on me than the other guys,” Hafer told the Beacon Journal. “About the time I left, everyone was wishing they could get out, too.”

The soldier boy planned to attend ninth grade at Garfield High School in the fall.

“The next move is up to him,” his mother said. “But he’s definitely going back to school.”

When Hafer returned to Akron, everyone wanted to see his forged documents.

“The Army kept ’em,” he explained. “Don’t know why they bothered. I sure won’t be using ’em again.”

More trouble

That would have been the end of the story, but Hafer ran away the next year at age 14.

By then, his family had moved to 1223 Pondview Ave. He lied once more about his age to rejoin the Army in 1954.

His mother contacted military officials and had her son returned to Akron with a second honorable discharge.

In August 1955, a military policeman noticed a uniformed soldier cavorting in a downtown Cleveland bar and asked to see his pass.

“I don’t have any furlough papers,” the soldier replied. “I have discharge papers. In fact, I have been discharged twice.”

As it turned out, the soldier had been AWOL from Fort Knox, Ky., since Jan. 25 — only 10 days after enlisting for the third time. Hafer had used the fictitious name of Ray E. Fisher to join the Army.

The 16-year-old was held overnight in Cuyahoga County Jail before being transported to Fort Hayes in Columbus, where he received his third honorable discharge. Again he made national news.

Tragedy strikes

If only he had joined the military when he was of legal age. He would have lived.

“The brief but adventure-packed life of Raymond E. Hafer ended this morning in the jagged wreckage of a car,” the Beacon Journal solemnly reported April 2, 1958.

Hafer, 18, was speeding south on Massillon Road about 1:45 a.m. when he lost control of the automobile on a steep hill just past the Waterloo Road intersection. The car rolled and scattered debris for 200 feet in the darkness, authorities said. A friend was seriously injured in the crash.

Just as police arrived on the scene, Hafer died of his injuries.

He was buried in Ellet Cemetery, probably the only U.S. veteran honorably discharged three times as a teenager in the 1950s.

Once and for all, that restless spirit was free.

The bonds of love were stronger than the manacles of slavery.

Henry and Rebecca Brantley survived decades of oppression, cruelty and heartbreak, overcoming hardships that would shatter the spirit of most couples.

Through it all, they never gave up on each other.

A 25-foot granite monument in Portage County is a testament to the enduring love that the Brantleys shared. The 1880s memorial stands atop a breezy hill in the middle of Maple Grove Cemetery in Ravenna.

Near the top, the spire bears the word “EMANCIPATION” and features relief carvings of clenched hands breaking free of shackles and chains.

A weather-beaten inscription, almost too worn to read, gives a brief history:

“Henry Brantley born 1825, died April 15, 1888. Rebecca Brantley, born August 1833, died Oct. 26, 1880. Born slaves near Clarksville, Montgomery County, Tennessee. Married 1852. Springhill, Mo. Fugitives from bondage, they came to Ravenna Aug. 28, 1862, where they lived honest and industrious lives.”

Naturally, there is far more to the story than would fit on any monument.

Henry and Rebecca had known each other since childhood. Born eight years apart on the same plantation near the Cumberland River, they took their surnames from owner Abraham Brantley, as was the custom at that time.

Abraham owned more than a dozen slaves and put them to work in the house and field. Henry was a butler and Rebecca was a housekeeper.

Not much is known about Abraham, other than the fact that his wife, Lucy, left him in the late 1820s, alleging cruel treatment. One can only imagine how he treated the slaves.

Becky, as Rebecca was better known, was a bright, willowy teen who caught Henry’s eye. The two fell in love, knowing that they could be torn apart at any time.

When Abraham died about 1850, his sons carefully divided the estate. Everett Brantley took Henry and Joel Brantley got Rebecca.

The brothers moved to farms near Spring Hill, Mo., where Henry and Rebecca remained in touch.

Allowed to marry

The slave owners allowed the couple to marry in 1852, but the joy was short-lived.

Joel Brantley died within a year and his assets were liquidated. Rebecca was dragged away and sold at a public auction for $830 to Washington Sides, a cruel, drunk, detestable owner who sadistically beat the 20-year-old woman.

“The slender girl was alternately a field and house hand, holding the plow, hoeing corn, made useful at hard farm work and then employed about the house,” the Portage County Republican Democrat, a Ravenna newspaper, noted in 1880. “She was often whipped unmercifully by the brutal master.”

As Henry Brantley later put it: “Her lot was far harder for a woman than a man.”

He and his wife were kept apart for nearly 10 years.

When the Civil War erupted in 1861, Washington Sides retreated to Arkansas, attempting to keep Becky and his other slaves from fleeing to freedom in the North. With the sound of artillery in the distance, Henry also was forced to move to the Deep South with a new owner.

One night, however, he saw an opportunity to escape and he seized it. Running for his life, he crossed the battle line in Arkansas and threw himself on the mercy of the Union Army.

The Yankee troops welcomed him into their ranks — not as a soldier, but as a servant.

Henry became the valet of Capt. Algernon S. Seaton, a Ravenna man in command of Company K of the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry Regiment.

The two developed a close bond that transformed into eternal gratitude when Seaton was seriously wounded in battle. Henry Brantley carried the captain on his back through enemy fire for about eight miles to a military hospital.

In August 1862, Seaton was furloughed to Ravenna to recover at home. Henry looked after him on the long journey. When the captain was well enough to return to battle, he bid farewell to his friend Henry, who was now a free man.

Seaton had unfinished business. As a pledge to the man who saved his life, he tracked down Rebecca, who by then had also fled across Union Army lines, and arranged for her safe passage to Ravenna.

Separated for nearly a decade, the Brantleys reunited in November 1862.

How joyful that first embrace must have been. For never giving up hope, the two were rewarded with a new life in a new town.

Settling in Ravenna

The couple settled into their adopted home of Ravenna, gradually blending in with Northern society. He was 37 and she was 29.

Both found jobs with Portage County Probate Judge Cornelius A. Reed (1838-1929), a Rootstown native, who lived at 533 E. Main St. in Ravenna.

Reed built the first opera house in Portage County and donated money for construction of a library. Today, Reed Memorial Library in Ravenna is named for him.

Rebecca worked as Reed’s housekeeper and Henry served as a handyman and caretaker. The labor wasn’t easy, but the Brantleys were pleased to finally receive pay for their work.

They saved enough money to buy a homestead at the northeast corner of Cedar and Elm streets, where they spent the remainder of their years.

Respected by all

A local reporter described the Brantleys as “an industrious, economical couple” who were “respected by all classes of society.”

“Becky was a bright, capable woman, a great favorite to many families, as she was a skilled cook and her services were in great demand at parties and the social gatherings,” the Republican Democrat noted.

“Several years since, she became a member of the Disciple Church and in the Sabbath school she learned to read, sometime after she was thirty years of age and found great enjoyment in this acquirement. She was a devout Christian, regular and prompt at church, always ladylike and interesting.”

The couple spent 18 years together before health troubles — no doubt exacerbated by a hard life during captivity — caught up with them.

Rebecca spent her last three years as an invalid before passing away of “pulmonary consumption,” later known as tuberculosis, in 1880.

Henry followed her to Maple Grove Cemetery in 1888 “after a long and painful illness.” A large crowd attended his funeral.

Judge Reed, who served as executor of the Brantley estate, is credited with building the Ravenna monument to his former employees.

There were no known heirs, so Reed invested the couple’s savings into a granite spire pointing toward heaven.

Veterans clubs, the NAACP and other local groups routinely decorate the former slaves’ memorial on patriotic holidays.

On a breezy hill in a cemetery, freedom and love endure.

Put on your thinking cap. It’s time for a pop quiz.

Question: What is the definition of Witan?

1. A small island in the South Pacific.

2. An exotic species of flowering vine.

3. A popular brand of wicker furniture.

4. An abbreviation in Old English.

If you responded in Old English, congratulations! You just might be in touch with Akron’s needs.

In 1943, seven young women formed a club that they hoped would be an asset to the community during World War II.

The founders were Mary Brittain, Betty Clemmer, Pat Krans, Gretchen Parsons, Billie Miller Schlegel, Audrey Stevens and Eleanor Woodward, the wives of Akron men who belonged to the Junior Chamber of Commerce.

The women named their group “Witan” — pronounced wi-TAHN — after the Anglo-Saxon word witenagemot, which is defined as “a group of councilors carefully selected, and acting under a democratic form of government.”

The club recruited 50 women as charter members and sponsored 50 others for membership at a fancy tea party during the first months of activity. Mary Brittain was elected as Witan’s first president.

Members firmly believed in balancing social activities with an equal amount of civic work. The club educated its members on civic responsibility, promoted volunteerism and provided financial support to community projects.

“We feel that Akron needs a club of young women who are interested in the welfare of the city, so they may work together in a congenial manner,” Miller Schlegel, a member of the organizing committee, explained in 1943.

One of the club’s earliest functions was a luncheon at the Mayflower Hotel to hear Beacon Journal reporter Kenneth Nichols discuss the United War Chest of Summit County campaign. Members wore hats, gloves and formal attire.

“From the start, Witan was very busy in the community,” explained Karen Clark, Witan’s president for 2012-2013. “Witan was involved in the sorting of the United National Clothing Collection for Akron and Summit County. This was a huge collection of clothing from all over the city of Akron and the nation. The clothing was sorted and sent overseas to people in war-torn countries.”

Club members held benefit bridge parties, sold tickets to shows at Goodyear Theater, sponsored Valentine’s Day dances, whipped up Christmas eggnog socials and served as soda jerks at the Akron YWCA, Clark said.

Witan also volunteered for the Summit County Children’s Home, Akron Children’s Hospital, Kate Waller Barrett Training School, March of Dimes, Akron Symphony Orchestra and the Summit County Society of the Blind.

In addition to improving the community, Witan members improved themselves.

“In the old days, when women weren’t allowed to sit on boards because ‘what could we possibly contribute,’ this was a way to train women to be on boards, to understand Robert’s Rules, to understand board procedures, and to understand financial statements and things like that,” said 2012-2013 membership chair Cherie Morris Shechter. “It was a training class, really. Your experience in Witan prepared you for doing something better.”

The club reflected the changing roles of women and housewives in American society. In 1959 interviews with United Press International, Witan members pointed out that club activities were a nice complement to housework.

“I think the clubwoman is a much better homemaker than that perfect little housewife who is home all day,” President Mary Jane Tenney told a reporter. “The clubwoman has been out mixing with people. She comes home to her family with interesting things to talk about. Her conversation is not centered on the washing machine breaking down or something else that went wrong.”

Past President Lucy Palmer added: “I think the hardest part of the day for a woman is 4 to 6. Husband home, children home, and me trying to get dinner on. All I hear is questions, questions, questions.”

Jeanne Ilse concluded: “None of us is a perfect housewife, I can tell you. None of us is what I’d call a typical clubwoman either.”

Since 1943, Witan has volunteered more than 3 million hours in the community and granted more than $1 million to nonprofit agencies. Through fundraising projects, Witan donates $50,000 per year to community projects.

Among its notable achievements, the group:

• Pledged $75,000 to Stewart’s Caring Place in Fairlawn.

• Commissioned composer Carlos Chavez to write an original score for the opening of E.J. Thomas Hall.

• Founded the Deaf Children’s Nursery at the Rehabilitation Center.

• Restored historic, stained-glass windows in the Chapel at Glendale Cemetery.

• Granted funds to the burn center at Akron Children’s Hospital.

• Pledged $25,000 to Ronald McDonald House at its inception.

• Provided seed money to establish an arboretum at the F.A. Seiberling Nature Realm.

• Funded the soup kitchen at St. John’s Episcopal Church.

• Sponsored the cost of Petie the Pony at Victory Gallop.

• Purchased kitchen equipment for group homes of Hattie Larlham in Summit County.

• Funded scholarships for the Children’s Concert Society.

• Purchased lumber to build Habitat for Humanity housing.

After 70 years, Witan is still going strong. It has nearly 100 active members and another 200 sustaining members.

Shechter described Witan as a fellowship where members can make wonderful friends.

“If you came into this community and didn’t know anybody, and you wanted to get to know people fast, we have people from all over Akron,” she said.

In recent years, Witan has unofficially become WITAN. An informal acronym, Women In Touch with Akron’s Needs, was adopted nearly a decade ago to further describe the group’s mission.

At least it’s not called witenagemot.

“It’s an unpronounceable word,” Shechter said. “Fortunately, they’ve shortened it to Witan.”

The philanthropic group sponsors two major fundraisers each year and they are both held in February.

“There’s nothing to do here in February,” Shechter said with a laugh.

A black-tie gala, the WOW Imagine Ball, is held at the beginning of the month. This year’s event raised $24,000.

The other major fundraiser is the French Market, which will be held this Friday and Saturday at Todaro’s Party Center in Cuyahoga Falls. Started in 1978, the market is a juried arts and crafts show with custom-made jewelry, homemade baked goods, daily luncheons and more. Admission is $6.

The event is expected to attract thousands of visitors and raise more than $25,000 for community projects.

“It’s just a fun thing to do and, fortunately for us, it makes a lot of money for a lot of good causes,” Shechter said.

For more about Witan, visit www.witaninfo.org. 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.

Details

What: Witan’s 36th annual French Market.

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Lunch is available from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. each day.

Where: Todaro’s Party Center, 1820 Akron-Peninsula Road, Cuyahoga Falls.

Details: Juried arts and crafts show featuring more than 40 artisans, baked goods, raffles, flowers and more. Proceeds benefit grants for nonprofit groups.

Admission: $6.

Information: 330-697-3487 or www.witaninfo.org.

The treasures far outweighed the trash and trinkets Saturday, when area residents packed the Akron Home and Flower Show for a chance to have their antiques appraised by expert Lori Verderame.

Those who watch the Discovery Channel’s Auction Kings on Thursday nights will recognize Verderame as “Dr. Lori” from the show. She has been appearing all weekend at the home show that continues today at the John S. Knight Center in downtown Akron.

For those who show up early enough to get a front-row seat, Verderame will offer free appraisals displaying the items on stage for the audience to view.

At her Saturday afternoon show, the big winner was Marian Steiner of Sterling, who had brought an oil painting of a girl to be appraised for a friend, Wayne County resident Christopher Stewart.

Stewart is a minister and was left the painting in 1989 by a friend from Marietta, who was in her 90s at the time. The friend believed the painting to be the work of Charles Sullivan, an Ohio artist from the Marietta area, who was known for both his portraits and landscapes.

Stewart asked Steiner, who is an artist, for help in getting the portrait valued.

He is nearing retirement and told Steiner that he wanted the painting to be donated to a museum and not “go out in a box and sold at a yard sale” if he died. She brought it to Verderame to inspect.

Verderame, however, identified the art to be that of American portrait artist Thomas Sully of Philadelphia, under whom Sullivan had studied. Sully’s portrait of Andrew Jackson graces the $20 bill. She estimated the work was done between 1810 and 1825.

Because the portrait had some marks on it and its framing and backing were not the original, Verderame valued the portrait at $7,500. Had its condition been better, its value would have been about $20,000, she said.

“Condition is to antiques what location is to real estate,” Verderame told the audience.

Steiner said she was surprised by the finding and said Stewart still hopes to be able to donate the work to a museum and hopes to have it restored.

Another happy surprise came for Ginger Good of Wadsworth, who brought an American folk art dog to be appraised.

Good purchased the dog — amusing because it was anatomically correct — at an auction in New Hampshire for $30. Verderame said the dog dates to 1900 or 1910, and she valued it at $3,500.

Verderame valued a baseball, signed by members of the 1954 New York Yankees, at $4,500, which pleased its owner, Angelo Italiano of Youngstown, who had purchased it at a swap meet in Hawaii for 50 cents.

Not everyone went home with their pockets quite as full.

Verderame valued a cobalt blue glass eye washing cup at $20, a French tapestry at $40 and a carnival glass rose bowl at $70.

Betty Bonner of Kent attended Friday’s show and found out that a clock and vase she had appraised were worth about $400 each. So she wasn’t too disappointed on Saturday when Verderame explained that her 1925 flatware set that had been her grandmother’s was silver plate, not sterling silver, and as a result was worth only about $1 per piece.

Dan Whitacre of Springfield Township had hoped to get his Electro Lunch Box from the 1940s examined, but was not able to get his item on stage for a look by Verderame. He purchased the aluminum lunch box at an auction for $2. The user would plug it in to keep food warm in several small compartments inside. Whitacre said he had never seen one before, but didn’t think he would wait for a later show for another shot at an appraisal.

Verderame appears at the home show again today at 11 a.m., noon, 2 and 3 p.m. Visitors who sit in the front row have the best chance of getting their items appraised.

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.

The Ohio Theater had more twists and turns than a Saturday matinee serial.

Located on the southern edge of Cuyahoga Falls, the two-story, brick landmark stood for more than 70 years, changing names, owners and functions as effortlessly as an actor changing costumes.

Its big premiere almost didn’t occur.

The Akron-Falls Amusement Co. created a ruckus when it announced plans in October 1935 to build a 1,000-seat theater on State Road just north of the High Level Bridge.

Prohibition characters

Attorney A.J. Bianchi, who made a career out of defending bootleggers and gamblers in the 1930s, served as the company’s president. His partners included Anthony and Sam Comeriato, who had well-publicized difficulties complying with the laws of Prohibition.

Residents worried

Cuyahoga Falls citizens quickly voiced their concerns.

“Residents of the neighborhood are not convinced that it isn’t a nightclub instead of a theater that is contemplated, and the planning commission has asked to see more detailed plans before the permit is granted,” Cuyahoga Falls Building Inspector Mark Yoder announced.

The company silenced critics by hiring Akron general engineer John W. Egan to design and construct one of the classiest neighborhood theaters in Summit County.

Over gulch

It was built over a rocky gulch, a miniature version of the nearby Gorge between Akron and Cuyahoga Falls. Egan solved the problem by having Deluca Construction Co. drive 58 fluted-steel piling shells filled with concrete to support a 21,560-square-foot theater.

The building at 1554 State Road was erected in 66 days despite a bitterly cold winter, and cost $100,000 to complete (about $1.67 million today). The Bellows Claude Neon Co. installed a vertical “OHIO” sign with rose-colored letters over an opalescent marquee.

Newspaper ads hailed the Ohio as “The Theater Beautiful” and “The Theater Ladies Will Adore.”

Manager lured

The owners lured Ernie Austgen, manager of Loew’s Theater in downtown Akron, to guide the Ohio. Austgen had been in the business since childhood when the Colonial Theater hired him to strike wooden blocks to simulate horse hoofs in silent films.

Austgen praised the Ohio Theater’s advanced technology in sound and projection, and promised that visitors would enjoy “the utmost comfort.” For example, the ladies’ lounge was a triple suite featuring vanity, smoking and sitting rooms.

Uniformed attendants welcomed patrons to a 2-acre parking lot with space for 500 automobiles. “Why worry about parking your car?” the theater advertised. “We have plenty of free parking — right on our own theater grounds!”

A long, narrow lobby led into the theater, which was decked out in red and gold carpeting. The auditorium featured 1,000 deluxe seats in red leather and velour.

“The auditorium’s walls are pastel shades of orange and green set off by orange and gold drapes,” the Akron Times-Press reported. “When the auditorium is darkening, a rose and blue lighting system is brought into play.”

Double feature

The movie house opened in February 1936 with a double feature of Dance Band, a musical romance, and Forced Landing, an airplane thriller. A Mickey Mouse cartoon was among the featurettes.

Daily matinees cost 10 cents for children and 15 cents for adults. Evening shows, including midnight movies, cost 25 cents, and were for adults only.

“Capacity audiences greeted the new Ohio Theater’s opening program Saturday night,” the Beacon Journal reported. “Its lobby lined with floral tributes expressing good wishes of business houses and friends, the new playhouse won universal admiration.”

That was the beginning. The theater attracted crowds for more than a decade, but attendance dropped dramatically in the late 1940s with the growing popularity of television.

In 1952, Akron-Falls Amusement Co. leased the Ohio Theater to the Washington Theater Circuit, which also owned the State and Falls theaters in town. New manager Henrietta Kunkel devoted the screen to foreign films and art-house pictures. The experiment lasted only a few months.

Competition

As television continued to take its toll, the theater enjoyed an unexpected revival.

The Rev. Rex Humbard, pastor of Calvary Temple in West Akron, was looking for a new building because his congregation had outgrown the former Copley Theater. He told his wife, Maude Aimee, that he thought the State Road building was an ideal location.

“Then Maude Aimee visited the Ohio Theater for the first time,” Humbard recalled in his autobiography. “She was dazzled by the possibilities. Her sharp artistic eye took in various features of the auditorium that could be remodeled or redecorated to our advantage. She pressed her hand against a wall of the theater, closed her eyes, and prayed, ‘God, if this is the building You’ve picked out for us, help us to get it!’ ”

Humbard signed a deal in February 1953 to buy the building for $140,000. He announced that Calvary Temple would reopen there on Easter Sunday, April 5.

“We are buying this property on State Road and are here to stay,” Humbard said.

Church remodeling

A team of volunteers spent a month remodeling the building, working on carpentry, plumbing, painting and wiring. A crew installed a 42-foot sign featuring a red-and-green cross in front of the building.

“When I finally walked into the new Calvary Temple auditorium, I couldn’t speak,” Humbard wrote. “The transformation was thrilling. I walked down the aisle with tears in my eyes. A new pulpit stood on the stage.”

The church opened on Easter to capacity crowds. Humbard rented 22 city buses to transport worshippers. Within a year, more than 1 million people were watching from home.

Akron’s WAKR-TV began airing live TV broadcasts of Calvary Temple services, followed by Cleveland’s WXEL. The show spread from West Virginia to Pennsylvania, and eventually was beamed into living rooms across the continent, appearing on nearly 400 TV stations in 91 languages.

Move north

After five years, though, the congregation left the cramped theater for a new home 2 miles north. In 1958, Humbard built the 5,000-seat, $4 million Cathedral of Tomorrow at State Road and Portage Trail.

The theater reopened in 1959 as a home for Showcase Musical Productions, which staged Guys and Dolls, Kismet and Pajama Game before folding. In 1961, the theater served as the home of a Shakespeare festival. Among the thespians was a teenage John Lithgow.

Over the next two decades, the building housed the restaurants Embers II, Headliner, Chickenfest and Barnaby’s. In 1985, it debuted as Hilarities comedy club. Tim Allen, Dennis Miller, Jimmie Walker and Gabe Kaplan were among the comics who performed there.

Fire is end

It was no laughing matter, though, when a $1 million fire decimated the club in 2004, forcing the business to move to 1757 State Road, where it later was renamed the Funny Stop.

After languishing for three years, the charred building was demolished in 2007. Today, the State Road site is an empty lot between Sunrise Senior Living and Monro Muffler.

From drama to comedy, the Ohio Theater saw it all — until it reached ... the end.

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.

Details

Event: In the Company of Extraordinary Women, a formal Victorian tea with actresses portraying historic figures.

When: 1 and 4 p.m. March 16-17. Reservation deadline is Friday.

Where: Hower House, 60 Fir Hill, Akron.

Tickets: $30 adults, $15 students. Includes self-guided tour of the 1871 mansion.

Information: 330-972-6909 or http://www.uakron.edu/howerhse.

The grande dames of Akron society once again will grace us with their presence.

For the fifth year, Akron’s Hower House is the setting for In the Company of Extraordinary Women, a Victorian tea honoring late, great citizens of the past.

Sponsored by the Friends of Hower House, the Women’s History Month event re-creates the formal teas that socialite Grace Hower Crawford (1881-1973) and her mother, Blanche Bruout Hower (1862-1952), held in the 28-room mansion on Fir Hill.

Actresses will portray the hostesses and special guests during four shows March 16-17. Seating is limited to 50 guests at each show.

Organizers promise a riveting, informative afternoon. The story should also be sobering. According to this year’s plot, the shocking news of World War II will be the subject of conversation.

As portrayed by actresses, the guests at this year’s tea are Idabelle Smith Firestone, Hazel Steiner Polsky, Gertrude Penfield Seiberling and Grace Hower Crawford.

Frank Chaff IV wrote the play and will serve as director. The cast features Nici Romo, Josie Reynolds, Natalie Beckwith, Alex Agosta, Miranda Roth, Erica Peters, Annabelle Rogers, Libby Justus and Delilah Tuminello. Pianist Ben Cochran will provide accompaniment.

One lump or two? Let the tea flow. Here is more about the esteemed guests:

Idabelle Firestone (1874-1954)

Mrs. Firestone was a gifted songwriter and composer, penning such tunes as If I Could Tell You, In My Garden, Melody of Love and You Are the Song in My Heart. The Idabelle Firestone School of Nursing was named for her, as was the Idabelle Firestone marigold, developed by Philadelphia botanist David Burpee.

She married Harvey S. Firestone in 1895 and for a time lived at Fir Hill and Forge Street before they built and moved into Harbel Manor in West Akron.

“I think we all should make the best possible job of our life’s work, whatever it may be,” she said at her 75th birthday celebration in 1949. “Mine has been that of a homemaker. For years, all my hours were spent trying to be a good wife and mother. Now I’m trying to be a good grandmother.”

Hazel Polsky (1882-1964)

Mrs. Polsky was active in many Summit County civic and cultural organizations including Akron City Hospital, Children’s Hospital and the Women’s City Club. She was known as a gracious woman who was devoted to her husband and children. She was married to Bert Polsky, owner of the popular local department store.

Her father was Noah R. Steiner, who developed and named Kenmore.

Upon Mrs. Polsky’s death at age 81, the Beacon Journal eulogized her as a woman who exemplified the best connotations of the word “lady.”

“Here was a woman whose grace of manner, whose devotion to husband and children and whose service to the community made her beloved by all who had the good fortune to know her,” the newspaper reported.

Gertrude Seiberling (1866-1946)

Mrs. Seiberling, the wife of Goodyear co-founder F.A. Seiberling, was an Akron humanitarian and cultural leader.

A talented painter, singer and musician, she was a founder of the Tuesday Musical Club, Akron Garden Club, Women’s Art League of Akron and National Federation of Music Clubs.

Mrs. Seiberling sang before President William Howard Taft at the White House, appeared in productions at Akron’s Academy of Music and produced more than 100 paintings — about 80 of which remain at Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens.

She was known for her gracious hospitality and lifelong commitment to the arts.

“Here is the kind of wealth that doesn’t fluctuate with the stock market,” the Rev. Walter F. Tunks, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, eulogized at Mrs. Seiberling’s funeral. “We rejoice in all that she did to enrich the cultural life of this community.”

Grace Crawford (1881-1973)

Mrs. Crawford was the daughter and eldest child of Blanche Bruot and Milton Otis Hower. She and her husband, John, were the third generation to live at Hower House.

Her grandfather, John Henry Hower, an Akron industrialist, built the mansion in 1871. The family had owned the land since 1812. Seiberling and Firestone children used to play on the property.

Mrs. Crawford was active in local cultural and civic organizations and was one of the founding members of Weathervane Playhouse.

She was known for inviting University of Akron students to formal teas in her home. She gave the property and its furnishings to UA in 1971, and lived there until her death two years later at age 92.

“I hereby bequeath to the University of Akron, it being my wish that the bulk of these furnishings be preserved in said residence to the end that it retain its present character,” she wrote in her will.

If you would like to sip tea with these extraordinary women (and some of their modern contemporaries), you are cordially invited.

The deadline for reservations is Friday.

Per usual, if this year’s event is another success, expect more distinguished guests to visit Hower House in 2014.

A trespasser slipped through the mansion gates, quietly looked around and hid in the tangled woods.

Rarely has an intruder been more warmly received.

The white-tailed deer that sneaked onto the grounds of Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens in early 1973 became a beloved, unofficial mascot at the former estate of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. co-founder F.A. Seiberling and his wife, Gertrude.

Forty years later, the creature’s playful antics are fondly remembered.

Beacon Journal paperboy Bo Parker was making afternoon deliveries in late February when the curious deer followed him onto the property at 714 N. Portage Path. Another newspaper carrier, Dave Harrison, noticed the animal emerging from trees along the nearby AC&Y railroad tracks.

The brown doe, about a year old, explored the 70-acre estate like a child touring Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. She scampered past the front door of the Manor House, where the Latin motto Non Nobis Solum (“Not for Us Alone”) is inscribed in stone above the front door. The Seiberlings never guessed that phrase would apply to Odocoileus virginianus, the common American deer.

Stan Hywet’s bemused staff adopted the doe instead of shooing her away. Chairman Robert Seiberling Pflueger began calling her Stanette, although the name didn’t stick. Dave Williams, special projects director, suggested Elizabeth in honor of the English Tudor queen and Stan Hywet’s architectural style of Tudor Revival.

When the estate reopened that spring, Elizabeth enjoyed a public coronation.

“We have a salt lick and hay, and there’s plenty for her to eat from her natural habitat,” Executive Director Robert Dimit told the Beacon Journal in 1973. “She seems contented.”

Every morning, Elizabeth emerged from a meadow to greet Stan Hywet guides as they arrived for work. She followed them to the front door and then scurried back to meet the next batch of arrivals.

She also trotted out to greet busloads of students on school tours, making doe eyes and capturing young hearts. Elizabeth crashed wedding receptions, Shakespearean plays, Ohio Mart and other outdoor events. Beacon Journal society editor Betty Jaycox once held out a handful of salted peanuts and Elizabeth ate from her hand.

Elizabeth became quite tame, walking alongside visitors and impishly nudging them in the back.

The public began to come to Stan Hywet just to see the deer, although she was difficult to spot when she so desired.

“Visitors always want to know where she is, but we can’t tell them,” Dimit explained. “When she is in the woods, you have to be on top of her before you can see her. Her coat camouflages her very well.”

Liz, as she affectionately was called, had a safe environment with few predators to fear. Occasionally, stray dogs would pursue her, but Elizabeth literally ran circles around the hapless pups, dodging them with the grace of a matador avoiding a rampaging bull. The dogs always got tired and gave up the chase.

Former Beacon Journal garden writer William L. Snyder, Stan Hywet’s grounds superintendent from 1971 to 1991, had many tales about mischievous Elizabeth. She used to follow him and his crew as they worked on the estate.

“She did many things we will never forget, like the time my men were laying long strips of plastic to form a flower bed edging the grass wouldn’t penetrate,” he once recalled.

“As fast as they would get it laid out and straight, she would run in, grab an end and carry it off into the woods. We finally got the job done, but we really had to work fast to outsmart her.”

Students who had summer jobs tending to the mansion’s lawn were delighted to see Elizabeth eating weeds ahead of them. When the boys and girls took a lunch break, the deer would frolic around them until they returned to work.

Elizabeth’s appetite became a subject of consternation on Stan Hywet’s well-manicured grounds. The girl liked to eat.

In the spring, she dined on tulips. In the summer, she feasted on rose buds.

“Liz liked roses and tuberous begonias,” Snyder recalled. “Every evening, you could see her with a huge red begonia flower sticking out of her mouth. How they kept blooming, I’ll never know.”

In the fall of 1973, the Men’s Garden Club of Akron planted thousands of tulip bulbs in a meadow. Elizabeth dug up one and decided that it was quite delicious. So she dug up another.

As luck would have it, the ground didn’t freeze that winter because of mild weather. Elizabeth went on a bender and devoured more than 3,000 bulbs.

The deer must have grown bored during the quiet offseason at Stan Hywet. When Elizabeth disappeared for two weeks in February 1974, the staff became concerned.

Apparently, she missed children. She spent those two weeks near Firestone High School and Litchfield Junior High School.

A crew brought her back to Stan Hywet, but she kept wandering down Garman Road. That’s when the staff really got worried. The deer kept running through traffic.

Stan Hywet workers were afraid that it was only a matter of time before a car struck Elizabeth. So they made the difficult decision to take her to safety in the Cuyahoga Valley, where she could return to the wild.

“It took a lot of soul searching to remove her from Stan Hywet,” Snyder noted in 1974. “She was a tremendous asset. People came by the thousands just to see her and she drew many Akronites who had never been to Stan Hywet.”

The crew arranged for Elizabeth to move to Camp Ledgewood in Boston Heights near Peninsula. She could roam 350 acres of rolling woodland, make friends with hundreds of other white-tailed deer and visit children whenever she wanted.

Elizabeth was tranquilized, loaded into a truck and transported to the Girl Scout camp in April. She must have been bewildered when she woke up, but she ambled up to a Girl Scout who fed her peanuts near a lake.

The doe wandered off into the trees and began to explore her new home.

“Grown men had tears in their eyes, yet they all knew it was for the best,” Snyder recalled.

That was the last time the Stan Hywet crew ever saw the beloved deer.

If nature took its course, as it is wont to do, Elizabeth probably found a young buck in those woods. Hopefully, the descendants of that remarkable doe are still creating mischief in the Cuyahoga Valley.

Autopsies and ice cream usually don’t intersect.

A three-story brick building, quiet and unassuming, served as the unusual nexus of melancholy and delight at the southeast corner of North Summit and Park streets in downtown Akron.

The Mendenhall Building stood for nearly 70 years, although Summit County residents can be forgiven if they don’t clearly recollect the structure at 31 N. Summit St.

Built in 1930, it was named for businessman Ross Mendenhall, who made a mint as manager of the Furnas Ice Cream Co. He introduced the curiously labeled confection (shouldn’t it melt?) to Akron when he moved here in 1909.

Mendenhall, 29, was a native of West Newton, Ind., and a 1907 graduate of the University of Indiana. He taught mathematics and coached football at Wilmington College in Ohio before joining Furnas as an ice cream ambassador.

Robert W. Furnas (1848-1916) founded an Indianapolis dairy in 1877 and began manufacturing frozen treats a year later after being asked to make ice cream for a church social. He lived to see his brand become a national phenomenon with plants in Columbus, Huntington, W.Va., St. Louis, Fort Wayne, Ind., Birmingham, Ala., and Des Moines, Iowa.

Furnas Ice Cream, whose motto was “The Cream of Quality,” promoted itself as “a health-giving food which adds vim, vigor and vitality to mind and body.”

“Made of the finest materials money can buy,” the company boasted. “True vanilla flavor, rich sugared fruits mixed with rich sweet cream (pasteurized). That’s what makes it so good, and why it is so good for you.”

The company worked tirelessly to promote its product as a year-round food instead of a summer-only delicacy, and had no qualms in exaggerating the health benefits of ice cream to enhance sales.

“Its nutritive value has long been recognized by the medical profession and it is prescribed and generally used for invalids and convalescents in a wide variety of cases where other foods are forbidden,” Furnas spokesman W.R. Griffith noted.

Mendenhall opened Akron’s first Furnas plant at 28-30 N. Main St. in 1909 and moved it two blocks east to 34-42 N. Broadway a few years later. Coincidentally, the factory was only two blocks south of Furnace Street, prompting many Akron consumers to misspell the product’s name.

Historian Scott Dix Kenfield once wrote of Mendenhall: “Through close study and deep thought, he has instituted well devised plans for the upbuilding of the business and under his management the small plant has been replaced by a large modern structure containing every appliance for expediting the work.”

Furnas Ice Cream was served at drugstore fountains and five-and-dime counters throughout town. Today’s oldest citizens might want to attribute their “vim, vigor and vitality” to a childhood dessert of the early 20th century.

Mendenhall and his wife, Mary, and their children Robert and Sarah resided on Payne Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls. The businessman, a 32nd degree Mason, belonged to Yusef-Khan Grotto, Tadmor Shrine and Knights Templar. He also served as vice chairman of the Ohio Dairy Products Association.

As the Furnas business boomed, Mendenhall reinvested his profits into real estate, buying up several properties in downtown Akron. One such purchase was at North Summit and Park streets.

In the 1920s, Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church held services in an old, cramped house at 31 N. Summit St. The growing congregation was happy to sell the property to Mendenhall for $22,500 in 1929 and even happier to celebrate the dedication of its new church in 1930 at 129 S. Union St., which remains its home to this day.

Mendenhall tore down the old house and built a three-story brick building with his name inscribed in stone over the front door. The Mendenhall Building’s first tenants in 1930 were the Clark, McDaniel, Fisher and Spelman advertising firm, Barstow & McCurdy civil engineering, Wynber Engineering and Woods Office Service.

After more than two decades in the ice cream business, Mendenhall retired in 1931 and moved to a 200-acre farm in Suffield Township. Borden Dairy Co. bought the Akron interests of Furnas Ice Cream.

Mendenhall was only 59 when he died in 1939 at Akron City Hospital while being treated for an appendicitis attack. It was his first time in a hospital. He was buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Cuyahoga Falls.

His namesake building became a union hall for Milk and Ice Cream Drivers & Dairy Employees Local No. 497, a private club that became a popular watering hole for newspaper reporters in the 1950s.

No one could have guessed the building’s next incarnation: the Summit County morgue.

In the 1960s, Dr. A.H. Kyriakides, Summit County coroner, beseeched local officials to find him a headquarters. More than 400 autopsies were performed each year at local hospitals — at $50 per procedure — because the coroner and his staff did not have proper facilities.

“Only by performing an adequate number of autopsies can we discover the cause of death accurately and uncover any attempt to hide foul play or perpetrate a civil injustice,” Kyriakides explained.

However, Summit County Commissioner John Poda balked at the expense of using public funds for the building.

“It is my duty as an elected official to protect the interests of the Summit County taxpayers,” he said.

Poda and Kyriakides battled over the proposal for years before the county bought the Mendenhall Building for $67,000 in 1966 and spent another $200,000 in renovations.

Shiny, clean and sterile, it reopened in early 1968 as the County Morgue Building and served the public adequately for nearly a decade. However, the facility became notorious for structural issues and fire-safety problems. When it rained, the ceiling leaked and buckets had to be positioned to catch the water.

Kyriakides and his successor, Dr. William A. Cox, who both left office following highly publicized charges of financial impropriety, grew to rue the leaky building.

Ohio fire marshals repeatedly cited the building, saying it failed to meet state safety codes. It didn’t have sprinklers, alarms, fire walls, proper ventilation or storage areas for flammable chemicals.

In 1997, the office moved a block north to a state-of-the-art laboratory on North Summit Street. Today it’s called the Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The Mendenhall Building, leaky roof and all, was demolished in the late 1990s. The property was sold for $21,000 in 2005 and turned into — what else — a parking lot.

From religion to ice cream to alcohol to autopsies, the corner has witnessed its share of bizarre transformations over the past century. The next 100 years ought to be interesting.

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