My Dad ~ Edward M. Bogard I

My dad was born on Sept. 1910 in Berwick, Pa. He was the youngest of two sons of John Arthur Bogard and Eva Mae (Fuller) Bogard. Dad had an older brother named Fuller Bogard. My uncle Fuller was born January 12, 1907 in Beach Haven, Pa. Jobs were hard to find in Pennsylvania. It was a railroad and coal mining state and if you didn't work for the railroad or the mines, you basically didn't work. Finding a good paying job was near impossible. In 1920, Dad and his family packed up their 1919 Maxwell sedan and headed for Akron, Ohio. John had heard plenty about the rubber factories in Akron and wanted to try his hand at that. The trip to Akron from Berwick was not far by today's standards. But at the time, there were no freeways. Not too many roads were even paved and most were dirt or gravel. After a heavy rain they were mud or gravel. Also, there weren't many places to stop to eat or to stay the night. Most travelers of that period would find small campgrounds along the way and would sleep in their vehicles and cook over an open fire. There were no bathroom facilities except the woods for a toilet and the river or pond for a bathtub.

The cars back then didn't have trunks so you packed whatever you were taking on the running boards, top and hood. Suitcases went into the backseat if there weren't too many passengers. Also, as was stated before, the roads were terrible. Put that fact together with the fact that tires then were next to no good and many were old tires at that, there were many blowouts. Tires then were being patched all the time. This was why there was more than one spare on many cars.

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Dad told me, many years later, that the trip to Akron took around five days. (Today you can drive it in six hours or less). All the food that they would need was in the car. Also, they carried a road map, tools, plates, cups and silverware for eatting, blankets and pillows for bedding. An important item that was brought was the tire repair kit. This consisted of rubber patches, extra inner tubes, extra valve stems, rubber plugs and glue.

Dad told me that the trip was fairly mundain and easy except for an incident that happened on the third night. They had found a small grove of trees to pull into where several other families had parked for the night. Everyone had dinner, the men talked amongst themself for a couple of hours and then beds were made in the cars or on the ground. Dad was nine years old and got the back seat of the old Maxwell all to himself. His brother, Fuller slept in the front seat. John and Eva made their bed on the ground beside the car. Everyone in the campsite was asleep. The cars of the day seldom had the horn button in the steering wheel like they have today. Horn buttons then were mounted on the dashboard or, like the Maxwell, on the side of the steering colume. At around 3:00 in the morning, Fuller turned over in his sleep and his leg or knee came to rest on the horn button. The horn was loud and woke everyone in the area. Dad said even the babies were crying. The only one it didn't wake up was Fuller. My grandfather jumped up and yelled at Fuller to move off of the horn. But he didn't respond. Granddad opened the car door and moved him. Dad told me that everyone in the campsite was more than a little upset. The next morning, granddad had everyone in the car and packed up and left very early.

Once in their new home in Akron, Ohio, Granddad got a job at Firestone Tire & Rubber Company. They lived on Collinwood Ave. in the North Hill area of the city. Times were good. Dad attended Finley Grade School on West Cuyahoga Falls Ave. As dad grew in Akron, one of the things that bothered him a great deal was treatment of the blacks. Dad detested the bad ways that the negros were treated and swore that he would never fall pray to that way of thinking. And he never did. And he would end up raising us kids to believe the same way. He always told me that one of the swearing words that wasn't allowed in our house was the "N" word.

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Dad never drank alcohol. Not because he thought there was anything wrong with it or that he was a christian, but simply because he didn't like the taste or the smell of it. This came from experiences as a young boy. His father, John made beer during the depression of the 1920s. He didn't sell it but liked to keep it on hand for friends who came by or for the holidays. Dad told me that granddad had an old claw foot bathtub in the cellar where he made the beer. The smell of hot beer was all through the house when dad came home from school. The summertime was the worst. Dad would do his homework on the front porch and sometimes would sleep on the porch swing on warm pleasent nights to avoid the smell as much as possible. I remember that in our house, dad kept a single bottle of whiskey in the top kitchen cupboard. This was used only when he caught cold or the flu. The thought was to take a shot of whiskey before bed and sweat it out overnight. He claimed it worked. This was long before cold medicines came on the market. But mom said that getting him to drink that shot was like pulling teeth. It was rough.

One of dad's first jobs was at Gardner Funeral Home in Akron. He only worked there while he attended college.

Dad had followed his father into the rubber business and also got a job with Firestone. He was educated, attended college and even had a degree in engineering. He told me that he had applied for an engineering position and when he got the call to start work, he rushed down to the plant and met a man. The man took him to a door and when it was opened, dad saw that the door lead into a janitor's closet. The man handed dad a broom and dustpan and said they would be his "tools of the trade". Dad explained that he had applied for a job as an engineer. The man told him, "I see, well, think of the broom as your pencil and the dustpan as your sliderule and you'll be fine. Two years later, dad was on the line building tires.

When World War II began, dad went to the recruiting office to take his physical and was deemed "4-F" because of his hearing. He was deaf in his left ear. (He wore a hearing aid most of his adault life). Dad stayed at Firestone and worked in the defense areas of the plant. They made everything from truck, jeep and airplane tires to tank tracks and even airplane turrets. Dad continued at Firestone throughout the war. When Firestone went on strike in the late 1940s, Dad refused to picket. He agreed not to cross the picket line, but would not picket the facility. He explained to me that Firestone was a good place to work and the workers was asking for more pay and he thought that he was paid enough as it was. He told me something that, many years after his death, I would remember and would come to pass. He told me that unions were a wonderful thing. That many, many workers were being treated terribly and if not for their unions, they would have no place to turn. But, he said, on the other hand, if a man is making a good wage and can support his family well, he dosen't need any more. He said that one day, the unions would bargain their people right out of a job when plants would close because they couldn't afford to operate any longer. A number of years ago, I had a job doing security for the Goodyear Mold Plant in Hudson, Ohio. They were closing down that division and many old-timers were losing their jobs. I talked one day to the general manager of the plant and asked why the plant closed. He told me that everytime the union went to the bargaining table at contract time, they always wanted more money. At that time, Goodyear was losing money on the tire market due to so many new imported tires. He told me that the average Goodyear Mold worker was making $21.00 an hour. Then he said something that sounded like an echo from history. He said, "Their union has bargained them right out of a job!" Dad seems to have been correct all those years before.

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Several years later, when dad was findly a managment employee and an engineer and not governed by the Rubber Worker's Union any longer, he still refused to cross their picket lines, explaining that the only differance between him and a floor worker was the white shirt. And the white shirt didn't give him the power to go against men who were his friends. When strikes came, he simply stayed home.

A story that my mother told me years ago shows how dad handled racial problems. We lived right on a bus stop in the city. The bus turned the corner and stopped at our side door. Our house was on the corner. In the winter months of the year, dad would leave the car in the garage and would take the bus to work. He could stand in our kitchen and watch the bus five blocks away coming down the street. At work, the bus stopped at Firestone's main gate. So he never spent very much time out in the cold for the whole trip. Several of his friends that he worked with also rode the bus. One morning when dad got onto the bus, it was packed and there were no seats to be had but one. The empty seat was right next to a black man who also worked at Firestone. People were standing in the isle as not to sit there. Dad asked the man if he minded if he sat there and the man happily agreed. Dad sat down and the two of them began talking. A few seconds into the ride, an Italian friend of dad's sitting a few seats ahead on the other side of the bus turned and said to dad, "Why ya sittin' there, Ed? Dad explained that it was the only seat to be had. "I know that", the Italian man replied. "I mean why would you want to sit beside a N-----?" Dad smiled at him and said, "Maybe I'd rather sit next to him than next to a garlic-snapping dago!" The Italian man and dad never spoke again. When I asked him about the story later, dad explained to me that he never made a friend in his life base on color, creed, religion or background. He made friends because of the man himself. Dad was a Christian, but he had friends who were athiests. He was a presbetirian, but had friends who were Cathalic. Dad was a republican, but some of his friends were democrates. Dad didn't drink alcohol but one of his closest friends was a drunk. And dad was a white man, but some of his friends were black. He said that's just the way it is. "No reason to judge it. Friends come in all sizes, shapes and colors."

Not long before dad passed away. When his mind was still right, I asked him if he had ever hated anyone. He looked at me and asked why I wanted to know. I simply had never heard him put anyone down and wondered if he hated another human being. He told me that there where a very few that he disliked for one reason or another, but hating took too much time and energy and he really never wanted to give that emotion that much time. Then he added, "Actually, I have hated one man...Adolf Hitler!"

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Dad's father, John A. Bogard died June 9, 1946 of a massive heart attack at the age of 60. Dad was painting his parent's house on Avon Street in Akron, only two blocks from our house at the time. Dad was standing on the roof over the front porch, painting the trim around the 2nd floor bedroom window. He was talking to John through the open window at the time. He said something to his father and, when he got no reply, dad looked into the window and found that his father had stepped back, fell on the bed and died suddenly. My grandmother stayed in the same house for the next ten years untill her death.

Through the 1940s and during the war, dad worked at Firestone. After the war, he continued working there. He liked his job very much. Sometime around 1950, mom saw dad's car come around the corner and into the garage after work. She was in the process of preparing dinner. Dad was always good about coming into the house right away and when he hadn't come in for about 20-minutes, mom walked out to the garage to see what was holding him up. When she walked up beside the car in the garage, he was still sitting behind the steering wheel. She asked what was wrong and if he was coming into the house. He told her that he would need her help to get out of the car. He told her that, while at work that day, he had been checking out a new addition that the workers were installing and the new floor gave way. He fell three stories to the cement factory floor below. Actually, he had come through it pretty well. He only broke six ribs but was, otherwise, alright. She scolded him for not calling her and for driving himself home. Once he got there however, he discovered that he was unable to get out of the car by himself.

My oldest sister, Louise had been born in 1934. Another sister, Evelyn followed in 1943. I was born in 1951 and would be the only boy and the last of the kids to arrive. When I was born, dad was 41-years old and mom was 39. Dad never raised a hand to any of us kids. Mom was the one to dish out the spankings. She used a razor strap. Now, for those too young to know what a razor strap was, it was a strip of hard leather about 3-1/2 feet long by around 4 to 5 inches wide and about 1/2 to 3/4 inches thick. It was used many years ago to sharpen the old folding type of streight razors used for shaving. Our's hung on the back side of the bathroom door. When applied to one's "bottom end", the sharp pain could be felt up the back into one's head. In other words, you didn't want to meet the razor strap. I had the misfortune of being on it's recieving end three times growing up. I can still feel it today.

Mom hated to use it and only did when I got really out of line. I tried not to do that very often. But dad never put a hand on us kids in anger. He didn't have to. He had, what we called the "evil eye". One of us kids would say or do something wrong, look in his direction and he would be looking sternly right at us with that squint in his right eye. Why we were so scared of that, I really don't know, but we were. I really do think it had to do with respect. People today have no idea what respect really is. It's not fear. It's knowing that if you ever need that other person, they will be there for you. And knowing that the other person is a good, decent person. We had the utmost respect for both of our parents. So, when we got dad's evil eye, it was enough for us to settle down right now.

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Dad had several interests or hobbies. But his main interest was guns. He loved hunting and maintained a large gun collection. He reloaded all of his own ammo in a private arsenal in our basement. Early on he had bars installed on all of the basement windows for security reasons. There was an old 1920s gas stove in our basement where dad would melt the lead that he used to cast the bullets. He had the reloading equipment to measure the powder grain and install the primers and we always had boxes and boxes of Ammo in many differant calibers on hand all the time. Dad used old cupcake tins to form the blocks of bee's wax and would stack the blocks up. We had several thousand pounds of lead stacked in the basement at all times that had been aquired from Firestone Rubber Co. I remeber going to Firestone on Saturdays with him to get the lead. We would take our utility trailer on the back of the '58 Packard and load it up with as much lead as the car would pull. The lead was free for the taking. Firestone was always scraping it. One year around 1960, dad came home from work and gave me several molds for casting lead Army figures. Someone at Firestone had made them. That Saturday evening, dad and I spent hours in the basement making me a whole Army of lead soldiers. I wish I still had those.

Dad's mother, Eva Mae (Fuller) Bogard got sick and passed away in her bed at home on July 19,1958. She was 72 years old. With her at her final hours were mom and dad, my uncle Fuller and aunt Marion, My oldest sister, Louise and her husband, Tom, my niese, Sharron, and myself. Her doctor was there also. That's was in the days when doctors still made house calls. Grandma was laid to rest at Mount Peace Cemetery in Akron next to my grandfather. She was a fine lady. I was very young when she died. But I remember her so well to this day. She was absolutely one of the best people in my life.

About a year before grandma's death, mom and dad had been looking for property to buy in Pennsylvania to use for summer vacations and to, one day, move to when he retired from Firestone. Both my parents were originally from Pennylvania so it was a no-brainer that they would return there someday to live out their lives. Dad wanted a place in the country that he could target shoot right in his own backyard and where he could go hunting. Mom wanted to enjoy one of her passions, fishing. So there had to be a creek or river near by.

In the summer of 1958, we drove all over the state of Pennsylvania and looked at all sorts of properties. We even looked at a couple of small farms. But, for one reason or other, non filled the bill for us. Then in late 1958, dad got in touch with a man by the name of Horace Carmult. He wa a real estate agent. I don't remember where they lived but they had a log cabin in a small, (really small), town by the name of Clarington. This was not Clarion but was actually not far from Clarion. Clarington was three miles from Cook Forest State Park in Pennsylvania. My Carmult owned several parcels of land on the river right outside of the park and wanted mom and dad to look over some of them. We set up a meeting and met the Carmults at the hotel lobby in Brookville. 18-miles from Cook Forest. My sister Evelyn was with us and she and I, for some reason, stayed in the hotel lobby while our parents went to check out one of Carmult's properties with him. They were gone for about three hours, as I remember. They returned and we left Brookville to head home to Akron, Ohio. On the trip home, dad told us that he had signed papers and bought a piece of property right on the river.
It would be about two weeks before dad could get the time off of work so we could drive over to Cook Forest and see the land he had bought. The trip then took around three hours. It was only 151-miles from our driveway in Akron to the driveway in Pennsylvania. But we had had to drive through all the small towns and larger cities along the way. There was no freeway at that time. Some of the towns we drove through were: Poland, Ohio, Barkeyville, Pa., New Castle, Slippery Rock, Leaper, Pa., and several more. In the middle 1960s, when route 80 would be laid, the trip would shave down to only 1-1/2-hours.

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I was surprised when we made our first trip there that there was a small house on the property. It was small but very roomy with a large living room, dinning area, kitchen, full bathroom and another area where my bed would be. The house was actually quite comfortable. However, during the winter months, things were a little on the cold side when we would arrive. The entire house was heated with a coal burning stove. The kitchen stove and hot water tank were hooked up to propaine gas tanks behind the house. So we never used the kitchen stove oven to heat any of the house. The coal stove was the only heat sourse. When we arrived, mostly at night, dad would begin building a fire in the stove right away. Mom and I would unload the car. Dad would have the coal fire burning pretty good, then he would go turn the water on and the propaine gas tanks. We kept antifreeze in the toilet when we weren't there in the winter to keep it from freezing. One flush would get rid of the antifreeze. We would go to bed on freezing cold sheets and shiver untill we fell asleep. When I woke the next morning, the entire house was nice and warm from the stove fire burning all night. Dad filled the stove with coal three times a day, roughly every eight to ten hours.

Our home in Akron, Ohio was a large three story home and, untill 1962, it was heated by a coal fired furnace in the cellar. Men in a dump truck would deliver a load of coal every fall and fill the coal bunker room in the cellar across from the furnace. Dad would go down and shover coal into the furnace several times a day during the winter. It was a gravity furnace and the heat would rise through all of the rooms upstairs. Actually, I remember the house staying pretty warm all the time.

I was, by birth, a "city boy". When we first began going over the the house in Cook Forest, I was less than pleased. There was no television. The radio only got about six stations and they were staticy most of the time. Plus, there were no other kids for my to hang out with. It wasn't long, however, that we met the Whitemans. They owned the only store, (the only business), in the little village of Clarington. We all became good friends quickly. They had a son about my age named, (I'm not kidding), Ed. Just like me. We became friends quickly also and chummed around together a lot. Ed came with us one summer to Akron, Ohio for two weeks. But when I was alone I found that the most fun was rummaging through the woods. Our back yard was woods and the forest went for miles and miles beyond that. I would leave right after breakfast and head into the woods and spend the entire day. I would get back to the house around 3:00 in the afternoon. Most of the time I had things with me that I had found. Things like, deer antlers, arrowheads, really strange rocks, all the things that young boys like. So, it came to a point that I enjoyed going to Pennsylvania.

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One summer, I found a beautiful set of 11-point deer antlers. Another time I found a deer skull that still had some of the fur intact. I still have those items to this day. On one trip I found the skull of a rattlesnake. I lost that over the years. But one summer I approached a huge overhanging rock formation and sat down to rest and got poked in the backside. Brushing the pile of leaves away, I found the most interesting item of all. It was a black powder, muzzleloading, double barreled shotgun in 12-gauge. It was 1961 when I found it and the gun was very rusty and broken into three pieces. But it was all there. What a remarkable find, I thought. A local man told me that there could be several explanations on how the shotgun got where it was. A tribe of Blackfoot Indians used to live around the woods. It's possible that the gun came from a battle between them and some settlers who was possibly in the woods hunting. But the more plausible explanation to me was that around 100-years before, someone was hunting, took aim on his target and the gun misfired, making him miss his prey. Extreamly angry, he may have twirled the gun and smashed it on that big overhanging rock and left it. However, I found the gun to be unloaded so it's unlikely that a misfire happened. So, I really don't know how it got there. But I still have the gun.

Hunting to my dad was very important. He would drive over to the house in any kind of weather. I remember one year it was snowing like crazy. But it was Friday night and we were set to leave Akron for Cook Forest. He had taken me out of school for two weeks and had taken a two week vacation from Firestone and off we drove in a blinding snowstorm. It was early 1960s so we had to drive the regular highways with no freeway. It wasn't long after we leaft that I snuggled down into the backseat of the old '58 Packard and went to sleep. I didn't want to watch when we were killed in an auto accident. I slept most of the trip, Thank God, and woke as we were going through Leper. Cook Forest was only a few more miles ahead. Once we got to our road, it was covered with about twelve inches of snow and it was still snowing heavily. We stopped the car and dad got out to look around, but decided to go on. We began driving down the road pushing the snow with the Packard's front bumper. We had eight miles to go and in another hour we were there. Then we had to stop the car in the road as we took snow shovels from the trunk and shoveled the log driveway out. The snow had drifted up the front of the house and we had to actually dig a hole to get to the front door. Once inside, dad built a fire in the stove first thing as the house was freezing. But it would be the next morning before we got any relief.

As I stated before, dad was a gun lover. He reloaded all of his own ammo and was a pretty good gunsmith. So, it would stand to reason that he was better than a fair shot. I remember once at the house in Cook Forest, we were there for the weekend in the fall. My mother's cousin, Jessie was there with her husband, Kenny and we had several guns out on the picnic table that we were using for target practice. One of the pistols dad had was a vintage World War II German Luger. Dad was talking about how well the gun shot. Kenny, who fully believed that he knew everything in the world, told dad that the German Lugers were the most undependable pistols around. Dad said that he could shot just about anything with it and Kenny saw a flock of wild turkeys about 300 yards up in the woods. "Get us a turkey then." Kenny told dad. Dad aimed, fired and a turkey fell. The others took off. Dad, Kenny and I walked up into the woods to see and found the dead turkey. The remarkable part was that the turkey's head was about three to five feet away from it's body. Dad had shot it through the neck and actually blew it's head right off. Kenny couldn't believe that dad made that shot with a Luger. Dad told me later that he was surprised that he actually hit anything, let alone, shot the head off. But Kenny thought that he had ment to do it.

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Another time dad and I and a few neighbors were down the road at the Massey's cottage and dad had his .44 Magnum with him. Mr. Massey wanted to know what the gun sounded like. (The .44 Magnum was new on the market at that time.) Dad pulled it out of the holster, aimed it into the woods and popped off a shot. He and Mr. Massey walked into the woods to see the tree that dad had fired at. Once there, they saw what was left of a rabbit that dad's shot had hit and passed through before hitting the tree. Dad felt terrible. He didn't believe in killing things just for "the hell of it". That bothered him the rest of the day.

But I would think that the memory that I have most is the Church Supper in 1964. Dad was a ruling elder in the church in Akron. We attended lots of events and functions there over the growing years. One of these functions on a Saturday night in 1964 was a pot luck dinner. Everyone brought food and the tables were set up in the basement gathering room at the church. This gathering was differant than most because church members were asked to bring their hobbies with them, set up displays and demonstrate the machanics. Also, they were to explain their hobbies and why the chose them. There were many hobbies displayed that evening. I remember some of the men talked about fishing, some brought wooden projects and told how they built them. Some had brought books that they had read and explained their hobby of reading, some gardening, others with tools, and others told about their interests. When it came to dad's turn, he had several rifles and pistols layed out on the table. His hobby was guns and hunting. He talked rather long and some were getting visibly tired. So dad had a plan. About halfway through his presentation, he got to the new .44 Magnum and as he talked about it, he picked it up, pointed it upwards and fired a shot toward the ceiling. He had made up several blank loads for it a few night before and when the gun went off, the women screamed, babies began crying and the men in the room woke up quickly and jerked in their seats. He sure wouldn't be able to pull that off today. Afterward, I heard that many of the women were angry that, not only he brought guns into "the Lord's house", but he actually fired a shot from one of them inside the church. My ears didn't stop ringing untill the next day.

As I stated before, dad was a ruling elder of the church. But he was also a maintainance man because he knew about electrical and plumbing and woodworking and machanics. When something went wrong at church, they called dad. Sure, he didin't charge them anything. Dad created a large lighted shadow box display cabnet in a wall for displaying religious items and statues. He built and repaired most anything and everything that needed it around the place. So, I guess, dad thought he should have a little power over the church at times. A good example of this is in the following story.

It was the deer hunting season in 1964 that our minister, Rev. St. Clair and his family came over to our house in Cook Forest. Actually, hunting was not the reason he came. They just came for a week's vacation and we would be there, so that's why they picked that time to come. Rev. St. Clair was a great guy who I have always remembered fondly and had a great deal of respect for. He was a short man, around 5'2" tall. He had a stooped back, better discribed as a hunchback from a birth defect and had suffered terribly as a young boy while doctors at the time tried to correct it by strapping him to boards and trying to straighten his back. Non of these procedures worked ofcorse and he stayed that way for life but suffered great back pain sometimes. With all of that, his mmod was always pleasent and happy. He became a minister and was a really great one. He and dad became instant friends at their very first meeting when Rev. St. Clair came to our church to become our minister.

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The trip to Cook Forest in 1964 was fun. Rev. St. Clair had two boys about my age and we had a really good time. Dad would go hunting every day alone. One day, Rev. St. Clair wanted to go up into the woods and look for deer to get some pictures. I took him and his sons and we spent about three hours in the woods. At one point we spotted three deer, a buck, doe and a fawn and Rev. St. Clair got the biggest thrill out of it. He told me that he had never seen a real deer in the woods before. Because my dad had taken his binoculars hunting, we had taken my unloaded .22 rifle with a telescope with us just so we would have the telescope in the event we saw some deer. So when we did find this deer family and they were fairly close, we used the telescope on the rifle to look at them better. Rev. St. Clair had a wonderful time at our house that week. He and I spent a lot of time together. I was only 14 at the time but I remember that trip to this day.

Back home in Akron, Ohio word had gone around the church that Rev. St. Clair had spent a week at our place in Pennsylvania deer hunting. That he had actually carried a rifle in the woods. There was even a rumor that he had took a shot at a deer. Now, you have to understand the times. In 1965 it was alright for the members of the church to go fishing and hunting, but not the preacher. He wasn't supposed to be in favor of killing anything. So when this rumor spread, the congregation of the church went nuts. They even went so far as to call for his resignation. Dad was furious. Rev. St. Clair was, in dad's mind, one of the best things to happen to that church, and, because of gossipy old women who never even tried to get the truth, they wanted him to leave. That Sunday was a day to remember. Rev. St. Clair began the service and never mentioned the trip to Cook Forest. You could look around the church and see all the faces of anger and disrespect cast on him. Then dad had a few things to say. He approached the palpet and began to speak. I don't remember the words, but he blasted the congregation and really let them have it good. He called the rumor mongers "mindless old biddys who had nothing better to do but to defame a great man". He explained that they had no evidence that Rev. St. Clair had done anything bad at all. And he explained what had happened at the Pennsylvania house. Then he exercized that power mentioned before. He told them that if Rev. St. Clair was to leave, dad and his family would be leaving also. Then he asked them, "who will do all the work on this place? Who will donate money for the upkeep? You damn well better think about these things. Rev. St. Clair did nothing wrong. He never went hunting, I went alone every single day. Some of you people really need to grow up!" After dad was finished and left the podium, the looks on all the faces were differant. And everyone shook hands with Rev. St. Clair and told him that they didn't believe the rumors anyway...yea, right! This is one of the reasons I never went to church after I grew up.

The church was important to my parents. We belonged to the North Hill United Presbytarian Church in Akron. Besides dad being a ruling elder, mom was a deacon in the church. Dad was also a Boy Scout leader for over 36-years. His Boy Scout Troop, No. 2003 was based at the church. Every Sunday we attended when we were in Akron. In Cook Forest, we attended as guests at the little church in Clarington. Both of my sisters were married with their own families but, out of respect, and possibly a little fear, they were in church every Sunday with us.

After we bought the property in Cook Forest, one of the events dad loved most was cutting down our own Christmas tree each year. We would head up into the woods, select a prime tree and bring it down, drag it home and put it into the utility trailer. Then we would repeat the act twice more and get trees for both of my sister's families. We would load all three trees into the trailer and head back to Ohio.

One of the things that I remember most about my father was that he was very generous and would help anyone that he could. I remember several instances where this was shown. And I was there for each of them.

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Instance #1: Dad and I had been getting our hair cut by a barber in Segal, Pennsylvania. He had a small, one room barber shop. Upstairs, over the shop was a small apartment that he and his wife lived in. The only heat in the entire building was supplied from a coal stove in the barber shop. There was a steel grating in the ceiling of the shop that was also in the center of the upstairs apartment living room that allowed heat to rise through for the upstairs. We would sit in the shop and his wife would walk across the floor and across the grating all the time. Dad asked the man how he would like to have a furnace in his place. He said he would love to, but couldn't afford to have one put in. Remember, hair cuts then were about $1.00 and he did only a few a day. Dad told him not to order any more coal because we would be back in two weeks and he would help the barber out. The man asked what it would cost. Dad told him not to worry about it. He would be able to afford dad's price with no problem.

At Firestone, there were several old gas furnaces in one of the warehouses that Firestone had replaced. They had been used to heat several large offices and heating the barber shop and the upstairs would pose no problem for them. Dad got one, brought it home and spent the next week working on it every evening after work. He rebuilt the entire heated and converted it from natural gas to propaine. He installed new burners and a new thermostate and new gas line and it was ready to go.

We took it back to Segal on our next trip and spent the whole Saturday and Sunday installing it in the barber shop. Dad even ran two ducts up to the apartment and got two large propaine gas bottles out back and piped it in. When it was all done the Barber was able to remove the grating in the upstairs floor and lay wood. Plus the barber shop and the apartment both stayed a comfortible 80 degrees even on the coldest days of the winter. He was very happy. When he asked dad what he owed him, dad told him that he wanted six haircuts a year for five years. Three for him and three for me. That was it. The man happily agreed.

Instance #2: In Akron, around 1962, at the old Lowes Theater in downtown, a black man had a popcorn wagon out on the front sidewalk. One day the machine stopped working and he couldn't fix it. Somehow, and I don't know how, dad found out about it and stopped by the theater. The man told him that it was his only income and he had several kids to support and was beside himself as to what he was going to do. I remember coming home from school and ealking up the street and seeing the '58 Packard drive into the driveway pulling this old popcorn wagon behind it. We rolled it into the garage and dad worked on it for the rest of the night. Sometime around 10:00 to 10:30, the machine was working perfectly. The man was thrilled and asked dad what he owed him. Dad told him that every time we went to the theater, he expected free popcorn. The man was very happy to agree. We never went to the theater.

Instance #3: In the late morning of a Saturday around 1963, a homeless man knocked on our front door. Dad had the Packard in the driveway around back and the man asked if he could wash the car so he could buy something to eat. Dad always washed his own car and so he wasn't real keen on having someone do it. But he gave the man a bucket and the hose and told him to go at it. At that time the standard fee for a hand car wash was .75c to $1.00. The man spent about two hours on the car and when he finished dad could get over how well he had done. The car was clean inside and out and sparkled. He had even dried it all. Dad gave the man a $10.00 bill and thanked him. The man was overwelmed and walked on down the street. Mom watched him through a window and when the man got to the next block, he walked into the bar. Mom told dad, "He went into that bar down the street. He's going to buy booze with that money." Dad sat down with his newspaper and replied, "He did a great job on the car and earned every cent. It's his money and he can buy whatever he wishes. Besides, they do sell food there too."

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Instance #4: Dad had a friend who owned a balloon factory somewhere in Revenna, Ohio called Oak Rubber Company. It was a rather large business with many rubber extrution machines. One of the machines went down and the man was in trouble because it was the largest of the machines and ran his main orders. He called dad and wanted to know if he could come out and take a look at it. I remember that we drove to Revenna every evening after he got off of work for about three nights. Findly, dad got the machine up and going. The man told dad that he would write him a check. He asked how much the repairs were. As always, dad insisted that he owed him nothing. "No way", the man replied. Dad said he didn't want money. The man asked, "You've got a lot of grandkids, don't you?" Dad replied that he did. The man loaded the trunk of our old Packard plus the back seat with boxes and boxes of balloons. Dad also got two antique shotguns out of the deal that the man gave him. We stacked all of the boxes of balloons in the guestroom closet. I remember the stacks of white boxes in there for years after that. I also still have one of those shotguns to this day.

Dad was a scout leader with the Boy Scouts of America for 36-years. He had wanted me to join. Clubs weren't my thing. I never liked belonging to organizations so I never joined. He didn't push it on me. However, I did go to meetings and camp many times. In the summer months we would join the troop at Camp Manitock in Summit County, Ohio. Dad's troop was based at Akron's North Hill United Presbyterian Church. Meetings were held in the churches' basement banquet room.

Dad also was a member of the Masonic Lodge. He was a 34th degree Mason and had been a member for 32-years. Dad loved belonging to these organizations and took pleasure in the charible work that they did.

Another thing that dad enjoyed was traveling. He loved going to the differant states and looking over historical sites. Right after President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, we traveled to Washington, DC to visit his first resting place at Arlington National Cemetery. Dad always traveled with a handgun and the trip to Washington, DC would be no differant. He took his .44 magnum revolver in the trunk of the car. Once in Washington, DC, we found a motel room and began unloading the car. A woman spotted the pistol from her motel room window and, sure enough, she called the police. Dad showed them the gun and explained that, because of the trouble in Washington at that time, he had it solely for protection. That was good enough for the cops. See how differant 1963 was from today?

Another thing I remember well was a story that I call, "The old lady and her dog". There was an elderly lady who lived on the next block from our house and every evening around 6:00 she would walk her dog down the street. This was in the 1960s before the dog pooper laws came about. This old woman was a hateful old hag with a piss poor personality. In the nice weather, we would sit on the porch steps in the evening. One evening the old woman came down the street with her dog. When they got to our yard, she let her mut take a crap right in the grass. Dad asked her if she was going to pick that up. She looked at us with that frown she wore and turned to walk away. Dad told her that the next time it happened, he would shoot that damn dog. She walked away. The next evening dad took an old shotgun that was in the corner by the front door and stood it out on the porch and sat down on the steps. Sure enough, around 6:00 here came the old crow and her dog. Once again, as the dog passed, it began to crap in our grass. Dad got up and grabbed the shotgun and aimed it at the dog and told the woman to say goodbye to it. She screamed and grabbed the dog and picked it up. Dad told her that was good because he could now shoot the both of them using only one bullet. She screamed and ran back down to her house. As it turned out, the shotgun was an old one that wouldn't even shoot. But dad said it got his point across. The police showed up shortly after and talked to dad. Because he knew many of the Akron Police officers and because he told them what the old woman was doing, they simply told him, "Hey, whatever works!" And then left.

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As I said before, dad loved to travel and so we took trips every year. I remember one trip when we went frm Ohio to Texas for the funeral of a good friend of dad's. They had worked at Firestone in Akron together for many years. Charlie, (dad's friend), moved to Texas and started his own home constrution business. He lived there for another 15-years then he died. We drove the '58 Packard to Texas and, once there, dad wanted to get the car washed for the funeral. We stopped at an old run-down gas station that had a car washing sign out front. Dad talked to the man behind the counter and was told that the car wash would be $2.00. He pulled the car into the bay and a middle aged black man began washing the it. Dad talked to the man but never got a response from him. Thinking the man may be deaf, dad walked into the station and asked if the man wasing the car was deaf because he didn't answer any of dad's questions. The man said, "You can do what you like in Ohio, but in Texas blacks don't talk to whites if they know what's good for them. Dad got angry but kept it to himself. He left the black man finish the car. Then, seeing the the white guy was outside waiting on a customer at the pumps, he gave the black man a $20.00 bill. "Oh, no sir," the black man said. "I can't take this. I'll be in all sorts of trouble." Dad told him that who would know? The black man smiled and thanked dad and took the bucket and rags into another room. Dad went out and told the white guy that the car looked great and gave him his $2.00. He asked the man how much of that $2.00 goes to the black man. "50-cents!" The man answered. "And he should be glad to get that". Dad chuckled the whole way to the car thinking that the black man made $20.00 washing the car and that idiot white guy got a stinking $2.00.

I remember a humorous story that my mother told me long after dad got sick. Back in the early 1930s when my parents were dating, they were driving up an old dirt road in Pennsylvania. Dad was driving an old open roadster with one hand on the steering wheel and the other arm around my mom. As they drove, a horse mounted policeman rode up and told dad to, "use both hands!" Dad answered, "I would officer, but I'm sort of scared to take the one off the steering wheel." The cop didn't look amused and replied, "You know what I mean!"

Dad, mom and I worked on the Cook Forest house on weekends and summer vacations just about every year from 1957 untill 1967. Dad would pack his guns into the car and while at the house we would target shoot in the back yard on some days when we took a day off. Dad always made sure that I knew guns and gained a respect for them. He bought me my first rifle, a .22-caliber bolt action when I was only 4-years old. When I turned eight, He gave me a Winchester lever action .25-20 rifle. I loved that gun. I always loved the old west and the Winchester was the opitnamy of the old west. Plus, a .25-20 had very little recoil so it was ideal for an eight year old. When I turned 12 years old. I got dad's old .38 special. It was a Smith & Wesson police revolver with the original flip-out cylinder. I remember that the sound was so sharp that your ears would ring for about two hours after you were done shooting. Dad's have many guns. The ones that I remember most were his 30.06 Remington bolt action with a telescope, his 30-30 Winchester lever action, his 12-gauge and 20 gauge shotguns, his .44 magnum Blackhawk western revolver, his antique .44 Bulldog revolver, his 9mm World War II German Luger pistol, and many more. I firmly believe that by teaching me early on about guns, and the safety of them, I never had an accident with a real gun. When I was young, like many boys, I played Army and Cowboys and Gangster, but always fully knew the differance between a toy gun and a real one. I had plenty of toy guns. The real ones were in the house, out away and I never once thought of taking them out.

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I remember dad's crazy side. Once we were going over to Pennsylvania and the sun was so bright that dad had a hard time seeing the road. I had just bought a pair of those enormous sunglasses that were popular in the 1960s as a gag. They were laying on the back ledge on the car. Dad wore glasses and did not have his clip-on sunglasses. He couldn't wear conventional sunglasses over his eye glasses so he told me to give him my huge pair. He found that they went over his glasses and shaded the sun very well. He wore those the rest of the trip with people in other cars looking at him. He'd smile at them and drive on. Mom and I laughed the whole trip.

Dad had a temper. But I remember that when he got angry, he didn't yell and curse like a madman, instead he said it like it was. While on that trip to Washington, DC, (Remember the gun story?), dad wanted to take a picture of me in front of the famous statue of the soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima. We got to the statue and I got into place. Before dad could snap the photo, an overweight woman in her late 60s had her elderly husband stand in front of it also for a picture taking. I was about to move when I saw dad looking at me and shaking his head, "no". So I stayed there. After a moment or so, the lady asked me to move so she could get a picture of her husband. Behind her, I heard dad say, "He's not going anywhere lady! We were here first and he's staying right where he is untill I get a picture. And I can't do that with your broad butt standing in front of me." The lady remarked, "Well, I never," and dad quickly replied, "lost a pound...yes, I can see that." Disgusted, The woman and her husband went around to the other side of the statue to take their pictures. Dad got his shot of me and we left. I chuckled the whole way to the car.

After eight years of working on the Pennyslvania house and with only the upstairs ceiling to finish, dad got sick. We were there at the time in Cook Forest and dad took to his bed for about two days. It was 1965. On the third day, he was really sick, and I think he knew something was wrong so he wanted a doctor. I was 14-years old at the time. Dad must have been feeling really bad because I remember he said something to mom about me taking the car and going to Clarington to summon the doctor. I had never drove a car at the time. We had no telephone and Clarington was over three miles away. But shortly after that Mr. Camel stopped by and he drove to Whiteman's store in Clarington to call a doctor.

I will never forget the doctor who arrived at the house. I figured we would get some old country doctor in an old car. It was around 6:00 pm and I was watching through the front window for the doctor to get there. All at once, in came a big new Cadillac Fleetwood sedan. This man got out with an old type doctor's bag and approached the house. He had a long black overcoat on that went to his ankles. He had to be around 75 years old. He came in and was taken to the bedroom. The overcoat, as it turned out, was totally lined with pockets on the inside and that's where he kept all of his medicine bottles.

When he came out of the bedroom, he asked mom where we were from. She replied that our home was Akron, Ohio. He told her that dad had to go back to Akron because the hospitals around Cook Forest was not equipped to take care of him. Personally, I think he knew what was wrong but didn't say it at the time. He gave mom some medicine for dad and it seemed to make him feel much better by the next day. Since mom was not a driver, dad had to drive us back to Ohio. He went to the Akron City Hospital the next day and had a series of tests run. The news wasn't good. He had pancreatic cancer in it's advanced stage and it was terminal. They gave him only about six months to a year to live. In the 1960s, there was no cancer treatments and very little they could do to make him comfortable. At times the pain was terrible. but he took it very well.

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Dad was in and out of the hospital several times over the next year. He had smoked all of his life. And he wasn't about to give it up now. But he was loosing weight and had a hard time holding the cigarette becuase he had very little feeling in his fingers. So mom bought him a cigarette holder and that seemed to help. Dad stayed at City Hospital for several weeks at one point and was in a room with another man. They became very good friends. The day came when the other man was taken out of the room for some sort of operation and later dad was told that the man had died in surgery. He took the news very hard.

In those days, there were no TV sets in hospital rooms. If you wanted a TV, you had to bring one. With the other man dead and dad having nothing to do but think of his friend, my sister, Louise and her husband, Tom bought dad an 18" portible television set for his room. It made him feel much better to be able to watch his westerns at night.

Dad findly came home to stay in the summer of 1966. Mom had a hospital bed put in the dinning room. It was a more private and secluded room, plus there was a bathroom on the first floor of the house. Dad seemed comfortable at first when he got home. At that time there were no agencies or places that would help like we have today. The Visiting Nurse Service came out a few times a week to help mom out. Thank Heaven for them. They were excellent.
But mom was pretty much on her own. I had an apartment in the basement.

One day I came upstairs and dad was up and dressed and sitting in his favorite chair in the living room reading the newspaper. He looked just like he had when he was well. But it didn't last. After a while, he layed down on the sofa for a nap. Later on he asked mom to help him back to his bed. He would never leave he bed again.

Dad slowly got worse over the next few months. He would drift off and back to the time of his marriage to mom. We had a dog named Lucy. She was great. She could sense that dad was in pain. He would feed her cookies from the side of his bed. She would very carefully take each one from his hand gently and go under his bed to eat it. He called her "Tiny". That was the name of the dog that he and mom had in the 1930s when they got married.

Starting in January of 1967, dad slept a great deal. He had lost a lot of weight. Old buddies from Firestone Tire and other places came by every day to see him. One day when he was awake for awhile, mom had me bring in my 8mm home movie projector and some of my old Charlie Chaplin films and some of the westerns. He watched them for probably two hours when I noticed that he was asleep.

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On March 17, 1967, at 4:00 am, mom called down to me that I needed to come up and check dad. She said that she thought he was gone. I went up right away and checked on him. He had died peacefully in his sleep. Dad had been worried about an autopsy. He had said that he had never been cut on in his life. He said that everyone would know what he died of so there was no reason to "carve me up". Mom called dad's doctor right away. He told her that he was aware of dad's fear of an autopsy. He said to call the funeral home. They would pick dad up and he would go there to prononse him dead. That is what she did. The funeral director came with an employee at around 4:30 am. I had to lock Lucy in the bathroom while they were in the house because she was going crazy scratching at the door and barking. Once they had taken dad out the front door, mom told me to let Lucy out before she tore up the bathroom door. I opened the door and she went flying through the house, jumped on the sofa and hit the front window so hard that she cracked the glass. She barked and barked at them through the window. Then she wined and layed under dad's hospital bed the rest of the day.

At the funeral home the next day, mom, myself and my two sisters sat in the office selecting the casket, burial vault and services. Dad would have a masonic memorial service. Paulbares would include my brother-in-law, Tom, his son, Mike and my other brother-in law, Roy. The others were dad friends. I don't remember why I wasn't a paulbare. As closely as I can remember, I refused to be one. I was 16-years old. I don't remember anything else about being asked. As close as I can remember, dad's funeral was on a Tuesday. It was March in Ohio and the weather was cold and wet. A light drizzle fell and it was around 30 to 35 degrees. Many of the ladies had umbrellas. After the graveside services, we went back to our house for a luncheon.

Mom and I would findly move to the Cook Forest house in 1969. But not for long. About eight months later she took sick. I took her to the hospital in Brookville and she stayed the night for tests. We returned to Akron and stayed with her sister, my aunt Faith for about a year untill mom had a series of strokes in a day and died on January 25, 1970. The following year I went into the Army. The house in Cook Forest was sold by my sisters and I and that was that. I returned to Cook Forest only a few times since. I plan to go again this summer (2008).