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Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown –Ralph Ellis

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Lanterman’s Mill by Ralph Ellis. Photo courtesy of Ted Barnhart (modified from original)

Many of us who grew up in Youngstown at one time or another have been enthralled by the view of Lanterman’s Mill and Falls, viewed from the north looking south up the Mill Creek gorge. Perhaps no one was more enthralled with this view than Ralph Ellis, who painted over 800 copies of the Mill during his lifetime, including the one above, owned by Ted Barnhart of Byesville, Ohio. It was originally owned by Frederic Theodore O’Connor who lived on North Maryland Avenue in Youngstown. He was the instructor of a Masonic Class at the Argus Lodge 545 in Canfield, of which Ralph Ellis was a member in 1945. The painting was presented to Mr. O’Connor at the conclusion of the class, passed on to his daughter, the mother of Ted Barnhart, upon his death. The painting is 18″ x 24″ on a wood panel.

Ralph Ellis was born in Elmira, New York on May 22, 1885, son of Victor and Rachel Crook Ellis. He moved to Youngstown in 1909 and was employed as a sign painter and painted murals for many commercial establishments in the city. He formed the Ellis Art Club for other painters, that met in the studio behind his home. He was also an accompanist, playing at the Opera House on the Square. Among the stars with whom he performed was Sarah Bernhardt. He also accompanied silent movies and loved playing the “chase” scenes!

He was active in Masonry Work, as a member of the Western Star Lodge 21, F & AM. This lodge was originally in Canfield and moved to Youngstown, the Argus Lodge taking its place. His largest Lanterman’s Mill painting was a 28 foot by 16 foot mural for the Masonic Temple. He also painted murals on the four walls of a large meeting room on the third floor of the WPA Memorial, built in 1937. The building housed a branch of the Reuben McMillan Library on the first floor along with a theatre where movies were shown, also used for community activities. The second floor housed the American Legion and Ladies Auxiliary. The Argus Lodge used the third floor, and hence the commission to fellow Masonic Brother Ellis. Here is a description of the mural from The History of the Argus Lodge:

The mural in the East depicted the Trial of the Iron Monger before King Solomon. Many of the characters in the mural bore the resemblance of members of the lodge who had given their time and talents to the craft. The other walls depicted the Tyler’s Gate, the Sun in the South, the Sword, the Pot of Incense, the Naked Heart, and King Solomon’s Temple with a path that, because of the optical illusion, seemed to lead to the Temple, no matter from which angle it was viewed.

The work took Ellis two years to complete with his wife keeping him company many weekends.

“WPA Memorial Building” by Jimmy Emerson, DVM is licensed under CC BY ND-NC 2.0

Sadly, the murals have been covered with dry wall with several businesses currently using the building.

Ralph Ellis went on to paint every nook and cranny of his beloved Mill Creek Park for many years. He passed away at the age of 80 of pneumonia on September 27, 1965. Beyond his obituary in the Vindicator on September 28, 1965 and the Argus Lodge History, there is little information that I could find on him. If others have paintings by him, it would be wonderful to see images. The Masonic Temple closed in 2016 (although it was used for a film in 2022). It would be interesting to know if Ellis’s mural has survived and if there are any efforts to preserve it.

[I would like to acknowledge my appreciation to Ted Barnhart, who suggested the article and provided the picture of the Ellis painting as well as a copy of Ellis’s obituary.]

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown – The Passing Fad of Coueism

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Émile Coué

“Every day in every way I’m getting better and better”

If you were a fan of the Pink Panther movies, you will remember this line. In The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Commissioner Dreyfus is in an mental health hospital, having been driven crazy by his Inspector Clouseau. His “therapy” is to repeat the phrase on a regular basis, “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.” Of course, it only works until Clouseau shows up.

Fifty-odd years earlier, people around Youngstown were repeating this very sentence as a result of a series of excerpts from the work of French psychologist Émile Coué. Beginning December 7, 1922, the Vindicator printed portions from his book, Self Mastery Through Auto-Suggestion. Each day in the Vindicator, short excerpts from his work would appear on the front page, like this one from December 9:

The basic idea was that positive thoughts could overcome whatever may ail you. People were encouraged to repeat to themselves “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better” twenty times or more. Coué believed that two selves existed in every person and that positive thoughts could overcome bad thoughts and that by auto-suggestion, a form of hypnosis, these positive thoughts could result in the healing of both physical and psychological maladies. Underlying this idea was the belief that ideas occupying the mind can become reality. He didn’t preach against medical treatments but believed his auto-suggestions could enhance other healing measures.

Title Page of Self Mastery from Internet Archive

It may be that the publication of these excerpts were timed to go along with Coué’s visit to the United States from France in early 1923. As far as I know, he never visited Youngstown. But for a time, his ideas took Youngstown and other parts of the nation by storm–and like a fast-moving storm front, they passed. A Boston Herald investigation six months after found that while most “healed” by the Coué method felt better initially, they relapsed into their previous ailments soon after. In addition, much of the medical established shunned him, if the could not openly oppose him.

While have heard of Coué today, his signature phrase has passed passed into the culture. The Wikipedia article on Coué lists twenty-one instances in literature and film where it is used between 1922 and 2012. One wouldn’t dream of seeing similar material in what is left of today’s paper, but little articles of “positive thought” were not uncommon on the editorial and other pages of the Vindicator in the 1920’s. It was a different time.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Devil Strips

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© Robert C Trube, 2023

Not long after we moved into our current home in central Ohio, I asked a neighbor a question about putting trash onto our devil strip. When I received a quizzical look, I realized he was trying to figure out what I was talking about. So I said, “You know, the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. The devil strip.” He responded, “Oh, you mean the tree lawn.”

In that moment I realized two things. One was, “We’re not in Youngstown anymore.” The other was that what I assumed was a universal term for that strip of grass might be unique to the part of Ohio I grew up in.

A Harvard University blog devoted to regional English cites usages exclusively in northeast Ohio from Youngstown to Cleveland to Akron, stating that “[The term] is known throughout the Youngstown, Ohio, area.” The Urban Dictionary states that the devil strip refers to “The grassy area between the street and the sidewalk. This term is unique to the Akron, Ohio area.”

It’s not quite that simple, actually. References to the term have been found as early as 1883 in Cleveland, Ohio referring to the construction of a strip of land between street car lines going in the opposite direction, “known by the significant rather than elegant name of the devil’s strip.” The next earliest reference was in 1887 occurring in Toronto, Canada, describing the construction of devil’s strips:

“The sub-grade is carefully prepared, levelled, and rolled, if found necessary, for solidification.  The kerbs are placed in position, either being set in concrete or gravel.  The subsoil is drained by four-inch tile drains running parallel with the kerb in three rows, one under each kerb, and one under the devil’s strip, or centre of the roadway, the former making connections with the catch-water basins.

If electric car tracks are to be laid, the sub-grade must be excavated to twelve inches extra in the track allowance, this being then filled in with six inches of ballast and compacted.“

Even the Akron Beacon Journal acknowledges an 1890 article in its own paper referring to Cleveland:

“Mayor Gardner ordered Supt. Schmitt to stop all traffic on Woodland avenue street railroad from Wilson to East Madison for failure to obey State law which gave Cleveland [the] right to compel street railroads to pave a strip 16 feet wide. This meant all space between the tracks, the devil strip and two feet on the outside.”

The same article notes that at one time the term was widely used throughout Canada and in New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Minnesota and Iowa. But northeast Ohio seems to be the only place where it stuck.

So, how did the term go from referring to the strip between street car lines and the strip between street and sidewalk? The Beacon Journal article cites an Athens Daily Messenger from 1912 with this editorial comment:

“There are no double track street car lines in Athens — yet. But the proverbial ‘Devil’s strip’ is here just the same. Did you ever note how often, between a well-kept lawn and its adjacent sidewalk and a well-paved street, you see a strip of unkempt stony and weed-grown ground? It mars the otherwise beautiful street, especially when a dead tree or two helps to add to the neglect of this ‘devil’s strip.’

This suggests why it was called a “devil’s strip.” The WordSense Dictionary definition of “devil strip” adds this insight:

devil + strip, from the area’s status as a no man’s land between private and public property, devil or devil’s in place names meaning “barren, unproductive and unused”.
Compare devil’s lane (“narrow area between two parallel fences”), devil’s footstep (“barren spot of land”).

Others have suggested that it is a strip of land that a property owner must maintain and pay taxes on but that the city can dig up or plant trees on. The “devil” in this case is the city or the tax collector. I can see how this explanation would appeal to a lot of Youngstowners.

So what else is the “devil strip” called? A Wikipedia article on “Road Verge” lists 46 terms and where they are used. Others used in Ohio include: berm, boulevard, curb lawn, park strip, street lawn, and the one we use where I now live, tree lawn.

Devil strips play an important role in separating pedestrians from vehicles. Curbs and trees provide at least some protection from vehicles straying from the road, and more separation of foot traffic from road traffic. It also puts one a bit further away from getting splashed by vehicles going through puddles in the rain. We have some areas lacking sidewalks and tree lawns and, sadly, I know of pedestrian-vehicle accidents along these areas.

As for bragging rights, I’d like to think that, like cookie tables, Youngstown was first. It just sounds like a term Youngstowners would think up. I’ve found no evidence for that, but I still like to think that it is a name that just fits Youngstown.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Mahoning National Bank

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It was the one bank whose name showed its connection to the Youngstown area. Its main offices graced the southwest part of Central Square, designed by one of the distinguished architects of the day. A fiscally sound institution, it operated 132 years until it merged with another bank. It was my mother-in-law’s bank, and at the end of her life, we had professional and efficient dealings with them as we helped her manage her finances. The tellers at her branch were like family to her and a number had worked there for years. That was the Mahoning National Bank many of us knew.

The Mahoning National Bank was established in 1868 as the Youngstown Savings and Loan Association. The founding directors were a veritable who’s who of business leaders in Youngstown: David Tod, Chauncey Andrews, W. J. Hitchcock, F.O. Arms, T. K. Hall, Joseph G. Butler, Jr., T. H. Wells, John Stambaugh, David Theobald, Richard Brown, A. B. Cornell, B. F. Hoffman, and William Powers formed the board of directors. David Tod was elected president but died two months later to be succeeded by F. O. Arms.

They first operated on the northwest part of Central Square until moving to the southwest part in 1873 in a building connected with Andrews and Hitchcock. In 1877, the association adopted a national bank charter under the name Mahoning National Bank. Then in 1909, the bank bought out the Andrews & Hitchcock interest in the property and razed the old structure to erect a modern high rise building.

The building was designed by Alfred Kahn, known at the time as one America’s foremost industrial architects. He also designed the Stambaugh Building and North Side Hospital. He designed a number of industrial facilities in Detroit including Ford’s Highland Park plant where the Model T was assembled. The building was completed in 1910. You will note that the building above is only part of the present day complex. A four story addition was added on the site of the old Opera House, and the building was extended southward by 72 feet. This video, produced by Metro Monthly shows the stately lobby of the bank as well as giving information about its architect:

The bank grew with Youngstown, opening branches as the city expanded and people moved into the surrounding suburban community. In 1924 the bank had assets of $6.3 million. By 2000, its assets had grown to 818 million and it had twenty-one offices.

The end of the twentieth century was marked by numerous bank mergers. In June of 1999, it merged with Sky Bank, part of Sky Financial Services, an upstart company formed in 1998 in northwest Ohio that grew rapidly through mergers. At the end of 2001, it changed its name to Sky Bank. Then in 2007, Sky Bank was acquired by Huntington Bank, based in Columbus.

Huntington Bank had offices in the old Mahoning National Bank building but has moved to smaller offices in the Stambaugh building. In December 2022, The Business Journal reported the sale of the building for $2.3 million to a New York based investment group operating under the name 22 Market Street Ohio LLC. The company intends to use the bottom four stories for office space and convert the upper nine floors to residential units, preserving the historic character of the building.

It sounds wonderful if it unfolds as promoted. There do seem to be the beginnings of a downtown renaissance. But I wonder if the Youngstown economy can yet sustain it and whether there is sufficient “draw” to live downtown. I, for one, would love to see historic buildings like this and the Stambaugh buildings (both Kahn designed) preserved and used well.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Locks and Lockers

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Remember these?

It all started with my morning walk yesterday. I locked up the house, enjoyed a pleasant walk and went to put the key in the front door and I couldn’t unlock the door. After various efforts were successful, it was time to replace this thirty-seven year old lockset from when our house was built, which led to getting some extra keys made and making sure some other locks worked smoothly–you know how it goes!

In the weird way my mind works, it took me back to junior high and high school and the days of putting padlocks on our lockers at the beginning of each school year. At West and Chaney, I remember being told that they had to be combination locks, not key locks. I guess they were afraid keys would get lost more easily than combinations. I know that when I would get a new lock, I’d practice opening it about a dozen times to get the combination ingrained in my head. After a few days, you didn’t really think but it was as if the dials turned themselves to your combination

Lockers. The one space at school we could call ours. Some did really fancy jobs decorating their lockers. I think the most I ever did was tack a poster from a record album inside the door of mine one year. Supposedly lockers weren’t actually that secure. It was said you could bust one of those locks open with a well-placed blow with the heel of a shoe. I never tried it and don’t ever recall getting my locker broken into. But I wasn’t exactly a fashion pacesetter and didn’t keep much in the locker but a jacket, a sack lunch, maybe a gym bag, and whatever books I didn’t need for that part of the day. As I think about it, I probably didn’t need to put a lock on the locker, but probably better safe than sorry.

It always seemed your locker was at the other end of the school from where your next class was, and so it was a dash to make it before the bell–a controlled dash that is because we couldn’t run in the hallways. There were those tales of kids getting stuffed in lockers. I was probably too big to stuff and I can’t think of anyone I knew who had this happen–of course, would they admit it?

Then there were gym lockers. These weren’t assigned, you just grabbed an empty one. I think they all smelled of sweaty socks! You stripped off street clothes, donned gym clothes (including those embarrassingly short shorts!), and locked up your things before lining up in front of Mr. Angelo. For me, the most precious thing I locked up was my glasses–we weren’t allowed to wear them during gym. That was fine when we had to run laps or do calisthenics. But then as now, I’m pretty near-sighted and that was a distinct disadvantage in any competition with a ball. Mostly, people learned pretty quickly that it was a disaster to pass to me, so I would just stay on the move, defending, looking busy–the trick was not to look like a slacker. When I went to shower and change, I had to get within a foot to see the combination–I wasn’t trying to keep others from seeing the combination so much as seeing it myself in my glassless state!

I’ve noticed that the lockers these days tend to be brighter colors (I recall ours being pretty drab) and they have locks built in. It makes me wonder, do the schools change the combination each year. I wonder how that works. It’s been a long time since I put a lock on a locker–I’m surprised we still had one around the house! It was my wife’s and she even remembered the combination. I can’t say that I remember any of the combinations of my locks.

It’s funny how memories are triggered. Now you are probably thinking back to getting a lock at the beginning of school for your locker. Maybe you can still see that locker in your head. Maybe, like my wife, you remember the combination of your lock. I’d love to hear your locker stories. They were so much a part of our school days but probably not the first thing you remember.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Bell-Bottoms

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McKelvey’s ad, Youngstown Vindicator, March 4, 1973 via Google News Archive

I make a regular habit of looking at the Vindicators from fifty years ago. Boy, this one brought back memories. For one thing, I worked at McKelvey’s when this ad appeared. I might have hit that sale, using my store discount. And I remember wearing jeans that looked like that, complete with “patch” pockets. My most far out ones were maroon pants with orange patch pockets. I wore them with two-tone platform shoes. (I sincerely hope there is no photographic evidence of that outfit, which I often wore with a matching paisley shirt).

Some bell-bottoms just had a slight flare while others, “elephant bells,” were so wide they completely covered your shoes when you were standing still. Often, we wore them long, where they actually touched the ground and became frayed over time. That was part of the look. Some flares had a triangle patch of sewn-in material of a different color to make them bigger. I never figured out if they came that way from the store or were “homemade.” I suspect a bit of both. Girls’ were often low-waisted, hip hugging. The belt loops were big to accommodate the wide belts we often wore. At one points, they were combined with cuffs. I never liked them–too much fabric flopping around the bottom of your legs.

You probably know this, but bell-bottoms have been worn by sailors since the 17th century. The wide bottom legs were functional, easily rolled up for washing decks and other chores. One article suggests bell-bottoms could be pulled off over boots and inflated to serve as a kind of life preserver for sailors who fell overboard. Not certain about that one. They first became popular in Europe in the 1960’s and spread to the U.S. in the late 1960’s. Eric Clapton, singing with Derek and the Dominos, popularized bell-bottoms in “Bell-Bottom Blues,” performed here in a YouTube video from 1991:

Most “bell-bottom historians” consider The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour which ran from 1971 to 1974 as the time when bell-bottoms became popular, but I seem to remember wearing them earlier than that and that they were popular in the hippie culture from 1967 on. By the late 1970’s most of us wouldn’t be caught dead in them. They had a brief comeback in the 1990’s as “boot cut” jeans, but gave way to those skinny jeans and leggings.

What goes around comes around. According to Brunette From Wall Street, in answer to the question “Are bell bottoms back in style?” she writes, “Yes, bell bottoms are one of those fashion trends that came back in fashion for 2023 together with rave trend.” An online search yields scores of ads from a variety of well-known retailers for all sizes and shapes of bell-bottoms with prices from $30 to over $100, just a bit more than the $4.99 to $8.99 in the ad (that $8.99 would now be about $70 adjust for inflation).

Personally, there are some things that are best left in the past, along with that 32″ waistline! But it is fun to remember…

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Superintendent of Schools, George E. Roudebush

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His name is one few of us may recognize today. But he was the superintendent of Youngstown City Schools from 1931 to 1937. That would have made him superintendent through most of the years my parents were in school. A mark of his success was that he went on from there to serve as superintendent of the Columbus Public Schools from 1937 until 1949.

George Edward Roudebush was born on September 3, 1892, at about the time children returned to school each year. He was the fourth of ten children born to John and Mary Roudebush of Goshen Township, a farming community in Clermont County southwest Ohio outside of Cincinnati. He graduated from Goshen High School in 1910 and went to The Ohio State University, graduating a year later with a teaching certificate. He returned to Goshen in 1911 and rose rapidly in this rural school district from assistant principle in 1912 to school superintendent in 1915. In 1918, he entered the Army Chemical Warfare Service, supporting the American war effort in World War One. When he returned from the war, he completed a BS degree at Ohio State and an MA from Columbia in 1923. He went from an assistant principal in Middletown, Ohio to principal of a high school in Lima to the superintendent of Grandview Heights schools outside Columbus from 1924 to 1927, then assuming the position of assistant superintendent for the much larger Columbus schools in 1927.

The last years of N. H. Chaney and the successive terms of O. R. Reid and J.J. Richeson were marked by bitterness and dissension in the school system. George E. Roudebush came into the superintendent’s office in 1931 after years of conflict and in the throes of the Great Depression. Under his leadership, he restored harmony within the school system and mobilized voters to support the schools amid straitened financial circumstances. Even so, revenues declined and he was able to reduce costs to balance budgets when revenues dropped by $700,000 between 1931 and 1933. Howard C. Aley recounts once incident when he had to deal with complaints from one well know area resident who demanded action because he was a tax payer. Roudebush responded, “I’ll listen to you when you can show me your tax receipt. You haven’t paid your taxes.”

Roudebush expanded vocational training and support for those with disabilities. While he supported athletics, always important in Youngstown, he also made sure there was support for journalism, music, drama and other school activities. He advocated the importance of religious training in the context of the family, for both adults and children. He believed parents should know the Bible to set an example for children. There is evidence that he had reservations about the New Deal. He emphasized that “schools have built up much of their program in the past around the maxims of burning the midnight oil, the dignity of labor, the habit of saving a penny, etc.” and saw those emphases being reversed under the New Deal. Certainly his own school leadership had emphasized hard work and austerity, while enjoying the support of Youngstown’s residents.

Others also recognized his excellence and when the opportunity came to lead the Columbus schools in the fall of 1937, he took it. Having led one school system through the Great Depression, he led another through the Second World War and the explosive growth in Columbus that followed the war. He worked with Columbus civic leaders to reshape the schools to reflect post-war realities. He retired in 1949 and was living in Upper Arlington, a Columbus suburb, when he died on July 4, 1959. His wife, Mabel Haight, who he married in 1920 lived until 1972. Both are buried in their birthplace of Goshen Township.

It seems that from early on, people recognized Roudebush as a capable leader. In both Youngstown and Columbus, he gave vigorous leadership that built public confidence. In the case of Youngstown, he healed a decade-long time of dissension in the middle of trying financial circumstances. It seems his life would be a good one to study for qualities of an exemplary school leader. He was that for Youngstown.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — East Palestine

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“Downtown East Palestine, Ohio” by 636Buster is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

From time to time I’ve written articles on the suburbs and small towns around Youngstown. East Palestine is a little further afield, about twenty miles south of Youngstown near the Pennsylvania border on the eastern edge of Columbiana County. Growing up, I mainly heard of East Palestine on Friday nights when newscasters were reporting football or basketball scores from high schools in the region. My dad loved to go on Sunday drives and we might have driven there. Now much of the world is paying attention to East Palestine as evident in this BBC story of the aftermath of the derailment on February 3 and its impact on the life and business of one East Palestine family.

The current situation continues to unfold and is receiving abundant news coverage (and should). I thought I would write about the history of the village, how it began and what it was before the crash on February 3.

The village had its beginnings in 1828, when it was named Mechanicsburg. The name only lasted until 1836 when Dr. Robert Chamberlain’s wife Rebecca wanted a “holier” sounding name and suggested the name Palestine. Village officials agreed. Under Christian influences, many area towns had names connected to places in ancient Israel, for example, nearby Enon Valley and Salem. There was just one problem with the proposed name. There was already a town in western Ohio named Palestine. Hence the village became East Palestine (pronounced East PAL-ə-STEEN). The village was incorporated in 1875.

The Chamberlains lived in the Log House at the corner of West Main Street and Walnut Street. Dr. Chamberlain came from Fairfield County, Ohio at 20, read medicine, and practiced in the area for 30 years, also serving as a railroad surveyor, a store owner, and the first postmaster and township trustee. The Log House, built in 1840, was moved in 1886 to 55 Walnut Street, where it sat until 1978 when it was given to the East Palestine Historical Society, who moved it to 555 Bacon Street.

Nearby clay pits supported a pottery business, the East Palestine Pottery Company, which became the W.S. George Pottery Company in 1909, employing many people in the town until it was closed in the 1950’s. The railroad lines, so much in the news of late, supported in the 1920’s, the growth of automobile tire manufacturing by the Edwin C. McGraw Tire Company, and a variety of other factories producing steel tanks, foundry work, electrical refractories, food products, electric wiring devices, wooden ventilators, fireproofing material, synthetic ice, and lumber. Around this time, orchard concerns also flourished and continue, along with other farms, to be part of the local economy, a part very concerned by the toxins released by the derailment.

The village reached a population topping 5,000 in 1920, attaining the status of a city, which it kept until 2011, when it reverted to a village once more, with a population of 4761 in the 2020 census. Some of the important manufacturers currently include Stocheck Incorporated, a copper fabricator; and Cardinal Welding Service, a metal fabricator; also well welders, and companies that do machining, ceramics and drilling. All told, Manta lists 324 companies under businesses in East Palestine. About 1300 students are enrolled in the East Palestine schools.

Perhaps one of the most famous of East Palestine’s residents was Martha Hill, the first director of dance at the Juilliard School. In sports, Wayne Firth Hawkins was the right handed pitcher for Cleveland in 1960 who gave up Ted Williams 500th home run. Also, all of us who love Mill Creek Park have East Palestine to thank as the birthplace of Volney Rogers.

It awaits to be seen what the long term impact will be of the derailment and the release of toxic chemicals in the streams, on the ground, and in the air around East Palestine. We will all be watching what happens here. There are few of us that do not have rail lines running through our communities. CSX has a busy line running within a quarter mile of my house. What happened in East Palestine could happen anywhere. Such a catastrophe could spell the end of a place where people work hard in a variety of pursuits. The burden is on Norfolk and Southern and our elected officials to see that doesn’t happen, and to justly reimburse the residents for what this accident has and will cost East Palestine. I want to see East Palestine celebrate its 200th birthday in 2028.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Fredonia Manufacturing Company

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Many of us think the Mahoning Valley’s history of automobile manufacturing began in the 1960’s at GM’s Lordstown Assembly Plant. Actually, the history of automobile manufacturing in Youngstown goes back to the beginning of the twentieth century–and maybe a little before.

The Fredonia Carriage and Manufacturing Company was a carriage builder with a factory just east of the Market Street bridge near the present location of the Covelli Center. In 1895, Dr. Carlos Booth, a local physician, commissioned the company to build him an automobile that he had designed. They helped him become the world’s first doctor to use an automobile to make house calls–a Youngstown first. He eventually gave it up, claiming it made “a commotion among the horses.”

In 1902, the company changed its name to The Fredonia Manufacturing Company and started making automobiles. In their first year, Fredonia automobiles came in “neck and neck” claiming the top two spots in a 500 mile reliability run from New York to Boston. A Packard was also among the top finishers. Then in 1903, a Fredonia set an unofficial speed record on a run between Youngstown and Tyrell Hill, covering the 36 mile distance in 35 minutes, nearly 62 miles per hour or 100 kilometers per hour. Pretty fast in 1903!

The reliability and speed of the cars reflected the work of the company’s engineer, Charles T. Gaither, who also worked as a pressman for The Vindicator, where he invented a process for photo engraving pictures for printing. The engine he designed was a single cylinder 5 inch piston with a 5 inch stroke. The engine was flat mounted, water-cooled, and set up as a mid-engine design, just in front of the rear axle, with a two speed planetary gear transmission.

The company manufactured both a two seat touring car and a five seat tonneau. In all they built about 200 cars between 1902 and 1904 when the company went bankrupt. The factory where they were built was destroyed in a fire in 1907.

Howard C. Aley, in A Heritage to Share, records that Charles Stewart, who was known for many years as “Youngstown’s safest driver” bought his first car in 1904, a five seat Fredonia. He sold it a year later, but it continued to appear in parades, running under its own power for 75 years.

We may think that Detroit was a good place to build cars, but Youngstown has a century-plus history of building cars. Now it is electric vehicles and batteries at Lordstown. We’ll see if the Mahoning Valley will become a new “Motor City.”

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Why I Don’t Write About Organized Crime

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Youngstown Mob Talk Podcast episode produced by Johnny Chechitelli

A friend of ours asked me if I had heard of The Crooked City: Youngstown, Ohio podcast. A friend of his from Youngstown was talking about it. In short order, I noticed several articles about it and realized, “this is a big deal.” In a Business Journal article this past Thursday, I learned that it was one of the top ten podcasts nationally for a number of weeks last year. Turns out I’m not much of a podcast guy, although I’ve been listening to episodes of Crooked City as I write. It’s pretty good stuff. National crime podcaster Mark Smerling puts these podcasts together, but local WKBN producer Johnny Chechitelli, who also produces a local podcast, “Youngstown Mob Talk,” contributed from his archives of research to the project. I also learned that there is a “Youngstown Mob” Facebook group with 28,000 members. On February 9, Johnny Chechitelli and Joseph Naples III are doing a live “Youngstown Mob Talk” at the Robins Theatre in Warren.

I’ve never focused on writing on organized crime in Youngstown, other than passing references. Hearing about all the interest in the mob, it occurs to me that if I wrote on it, there might be a lot of interest. But as interesting as it is, I’m not going to go there.

This is not to say that the history of organized crime in Youngstown is not a significant part of Youngstown history. Part of its history I grew up with. I saw the headlines of the latest mob hit or car-bombing or fire-bombed business. I knew that our politicians were enmeshed in mob influence. The Jim Traficant years, the focus of The Crooked City, which focuses on first person narratives, came after I moved away, though I heard him give one of his drug talks during college. He was riveting. I understood his appeal.

I’m impressed with the work Smerling and Chechitelli have done, and so many others have done and are doing to tell this story. Hopefully, it will inspire everyone in the Valley to say “never again.”

Here’s why I’m not joining them.

  • Whenever I tell someone I grew up in Youngstown, the first thing they bring up is “Crimetown” or “Bombtown” or “Youngstown tuneup.” Seems like everyone, whether from Youngstown or not, knows about this history. And I did as well. I’m not always that keen to re-live it.
  • There are already a number of good people who are in this lane, many who have spent years researching this stuff from Johnny Chechitelli, or James Naples III, a local mob historian and nephew of Joey Naples, or long-time Vindy reporter Bertram D’Souza. I want to drive in another lane. In their lane, I’d just be a wannabe.
  • I tell those who ask me about the mob scene in Youngstown that despite all this, Youngstown was a great, good place to grow up in the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s. My articles, in part are an explanation of why Youngstown was a great, good place. So many of us who came of age in those years feel the same way and that story also needs to be told.
  • I write about the people and institutions that made Youngstown a good place. I often hear back, “I never knew this about Youngstown. Why didn’t we learn this in school?” I wonder about that as well. I think we need to hear these stories as well. It is one thing to purge corruption. The question is, what do we put in its place? There are some amazing models from William Rayen to P. Ross Berry to Volney Rogers to Mayor Charles Henderson.

Because of work, I don’t live in Youngstown, but as the saying goes, “you can take the boy out of Youngstown, but you can’t take Youngstown out of the boy.” I not only love what Youngstown was, but also what it can become. There are people in education, in health care, in the arts, in the religious community, in the professions who are doing good work. There are people investing in neighborhoods and starting businesses. I loved the library as a kid and love the new library on the Westside and the renovation of the main library. I know there are serious problems as well. But one of the basic principles of building good places is not to focus on the problems or look to some outside “sugar daddy” but to build on the assets inherent in the community. The people of Youngstown, past and present, who have invested in Youngstown are a big part of those assets. Those are the stories I want to tell.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!