Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Hugh A. Frost

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Image Credit: Delta Heritage Project Exhibits | Hugh A. Frost

Hugh Frost was a prominent Black leader in Youngstown during the years I grew up there. He was a member, and eventually vice president of the Youngstown Board of Education during the years I was going through Youngstown Schools. At the time I was a student at Youngstown State, he was an assistant to the president at Youngstown State. Three times he ran for mayor of the City of Youngstown. He made history during his first run in 1967 as the first Black Republican candidate for mayor of a U.S. City. He also served in leadership roles in a number of community organizations.

He was born in Youngstown, September 29, 1926, the son of Anthony L. and Celie Jones Frost. He graduated from The Rayen School. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War Two and then attended Bluffton College, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in social sciences, lettering in football, basketball, and baseball, being invited to try out for several professional teams (Rams, Browns, Eagles, and Colts). He went on to earn a Masters Degree in Education and Psychology and pursued additional coursework at Western Reserve University, University of Dayton, and Youngstown State.

After a short stint in 1955 as membership secretary of the YMCA in Indianapolis, he returned to Youngstown in 1956 to serve as the Executive Director of the McGuffey Centre on Youngstown’s East Side, where he served until 1969, presiding over the construction of and move to its current facilities. He led a team of 17 staff and 200 volunteers engaged in a variety of community programs.

In 1963, he was the first Black member elected to the Youngstown Schools Board of Education, eventually serving as vice president. He took his position as assistant to the President of Youngstown State in 1969, serving under several presidents until 1984 to serve as an employment consultant. In 1987 Governor Richard Celeste appointed him to the regional Workers Compensation Review Board.

He served on a long list of local and national boards including the YMCA, the McGuffey Centre, and the Associated Neighborhood Centers. He was on the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He also served on a variety of community boards including the Red Cross, Youngstown Society for the Blind, Youngstown Playhouse, Mahoning County Drug Programs, Inc, and advisory boards of the Youngstown Speech and Hearing Center and the Salvation Army.

He received an equally long list of awards from the Youngstown Junior Chamber of Commerce (1961-1962), Rotary Club (1969) Bluffton College Outstand Alumnus (1970) and Hall of Fame (1975), Urban Family of the Year (1971), Buckeye Elks Lodge outstanding civic award (1973). He also received commendations from the Ohio Senate, Youngstown City Council, Youngstown City Schools, and Youngstown Area Urban League.

He married D. Lillian Benson on September 30, 1950. They had three sons and a daughter. Lillian was a school teacher at Lincoln Elementary, Madison Elementary and served as guidance counselor at East High School, South High School and Choffin Career Center. She was active as a member of the Mother’s Club at the McGuffey Centre, a Cub Scout Den Mother, the Northeast Ohio Homeowners Association and AKA Sorority. They were active members of Rising Star Baptist Church.

Hugh Frost died on July 23, 1998 in a one car accident on Route 616 in Coitsville Township. The reason for the accident was unknown, the car going off the road, hitting two trees. He was buried in the Tod Homestead Cemetery, where Lillian joined him in 2016.

He served as a community organizer, an educational leader, and political leader. He was widely sought out to serve on various boards, a recognition of his status in the community. Even though never elected as mayor, he made history in his 1967 candidacy. He chose community service over a possible sports career. His family life was recognized by the community. He not only served the Black community but all of Youngstown, including the Youngstown Schools and Youngstown State student. Thank you, Mr. Frost.

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

Review: The Art of the Commonplace

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The Art of the Commonplace, Wendell Berry, edited and introduced by Norman Wirzba. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2002.

Summary: Twenty essays articulating an agrarian vision for society that offers health to land, food, and the wider society.

If you have followed Wendell Berry over the years, you probably have encountered most of the essays in this collection in other works. In this collection, edited by professor of theology and environmental writer, Norman Wirzba, we are given twenty essays that articulate Berry’s vision for the reform of agricultural practice and what that can mean for food, for the land, for local communities, and the health of the wider society. Wirzba’s fine introductory essay underscores key themes of Berry’s writing: that an agrarian vision focused on wholeness with the earth, each other, and God simply reflects a proper understanding of our place in the world and that is significant for all of society, both rural and urban.

The essays are grouped into five sections with a brief introduction to each. The first is “A Geobiography” and consists of a single essay, Berry’s early “A Native Hill.” and is Berry’s description of the history, topography of the upland on which his farm and community is situated. the evidence in pastures and old walls of those who farmed there before him, his many walks over it, through forests, hollows, the soil, and his own place in all of this.

Part Two, “Understanding Our Cultural Crisis” connects our cultural crisis to agricultural practices. He speaks of the harm to land when we make food a “weapon” and pursue endless growth. He challenges “Big Thinking” suggesting we need to “Think Little,” planting our own gardens, and focusing our production within our communities rather than importing energy and exporting produce and waste. He observes the seemingly intractable problem of racism, aggravated when agricultural was industrialized and the “competent poor” able to subsist on the land were forced into our cities for which they were not prepared. In “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine” he explores how separating work from the household has changed marital relationships. Where once couples worked together, indeed families, in the work of a household, what is shared now in marriage is little more than the marriage bed. In this he also defends the way he and his wife work together as she edits his handwritten work, not as an act of subordination, but shared work in the body, believing they are better without computers.

Part Three offers the positive counter to the preceding negative critique in “The Agrarian Basis for American Culture.” This begins with a long essay on “The Body and the Earth.” Berry challenges the ways we divide up the body medically and the dualism of soul and body that downplays the vital importance of our embodied, material existence. He returns to how this plays out in sexual relations, households, and our changing ideals of fidelity which includes our fidelity to the place of our shared life. These ideas recur in “Men and Women in Search of Common Ground” considering how place, shared work, and community sustained the fabric of fidelity between couples. He asks questions about our health care system including why rest, food, and ecological health are not basic to our approaches to staying healthy and to healing. He maintains that key to restoring community is restoring local community and the respect of the differences of different communities. “People, Land, and Community” uses the example (again) of the hillside farm, and how the skillful, multi-generational work of a community is required to preserve that land.

Part Four focuses on “Agrarian Economics.” He writes of the problems of relentless competition for agriculture, and the destruction of pleasure in work, leading to our vapid pleasure industries. The first essay, “Economy and Pleasure” closes with Berry spending a day doing farm chores with his grand-daughter, letting her drive the team, unloading dirt on a barn floor, at the end of which she said, “Wendell, isn’t it fun.” In “The Two Economies” he contrast our industrial economy where we create value with the Great Economy, which recognizes the inherent value in things and what is lost when they are used–soil for example. “The Idea of a Local Economy” is perhaps Berry’s clearest articulation of how the Global Economy has been destructive of the local, and how his vision of what a local economy built on neighborhood and subsistence would look like. “Solving for Pattern” includes a list of farming and land use practices that preserve farm economies..

The book closes with “Agrarian Religion,” in which Berry makes more explicit the theological convictions that undergird his agrarian vision. Interestingly, the section begins with “The Use of Energy,” citing our sewage systems and the internal combustion engine as two prime examples of wastefulness. Good energy use recycles into the environment in a cycle of production, consumption, and return. He reads Genesis 1 as “The Gift of Good Land” to be stewarded with the care with which we’d handle the sacrament, not desecrating it. He affirms that the charges by conservationist against Christianity are, by and large, warranted. He criticizes the focus on the holiness of churches but not on the holiness of all of life and the dualism that denigrates the body rather than understanding our souls as dust plus the breath of life from God. This leads us to deny the goodness of physical work and to be indifferent to the physical creation. Like the economy we are concerned with relentless growth. He also articulates the political captivity of the church that has risen to extremes in our own day. It is a trenchant critique from a churchman.

In one sense, the final essay brings together all he has been saying as he discusses “The Pleasure of Eating.” He urges urban audiences to “eat responsibly.” This simple act, followed to its logical conclusions addresses all the concerns discussed here. As we can we grow our own food, prepare our own food, learn the origins of what we buy and buy food grown as close as possible, dealing with local growers where possible. We become aware and wary of what is added to food, learn about the best farming and keep learning by observation. Eating responsibly, we become reluctant to eat food, animal or vegetable, that has been grown under poor conditions.

These essays challenge us to think of agriculture not as a reality separate from the daily existence of most of us but rather the bedrock on which that existence rests. They challenge us to see that the health of our bodies and our culture cannot be separated from our agriculture, and our highly industrialized agriculture has put the fabric of our communities and our health at risk. Berry focuses so much on local community, but I wonder if these have been so decimated that it will take several generations to restore them. I wonder if a beginning is to think about seeing states or regions become as self-sufficient as possible in agriculture, reducing long distance logistics and diversifying local production and in the process, improving land use and crop rotation. In my own part of the country, studying how the Amish do (and prosper) might be helpful. But what will ultimately drive this is the idea of eating responsibly. That will require a different agricultural economy. And if Berry is right, it will change our culture.

Review: The Way of Perfection

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The Way of Perfection, St. Teresa of Avila, Foreword by Paula Huston, Translated by Henry L Carrigan, Jr. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2009.

Summary: St Theresa’s reflections on growing in love, humility, and the life of prayer.

About a year ago, I reviewed a different, out of print, edition of this work from the same publisher. The folks at Paraclete were so generous that they sent me their “in print” edition of the same work, published for the 500th anniversary of the writing of this work. In addition to a foreword by Paula Huston reflecting on her own encounter with this work, the translation is one into contemporary English, with instances where the translator changed sentences in the passive voice to active. In reading this edition, I felt like Theresa was speaking directly to me.

The Way of Perfection breaks down into two parts. The first focuses on the spiritual life and how one of those in the Carmelites might progress in becoming like Christ. She explains the benefits of poverty, the importance of unceasing prayer and the necessity that women love each other equally without favoritism, which can wreck the harmony of a house. She instructs on detachment from all earthly affections to focus on the love of God. This includes gifts from family. She addresses answering unjust accusations:

“No one can ever blame us unjustly, since we are always full of faults, and a just person falls seven times a day. It would be a falsehood to say that we have no sin. Even if we are not guilty of the thing we are accused of, then, we are never entirely without blame in the way that our good Jesus was” (p. 57).

She devotes several chapters to mental and vocal prayer and contemplation. She urges people to pray as they are able and that the Lord is as pleased with our vocal prayers as our silent mental praying. She stresses that the state of contemplation, resting in the Lord, is a gift that may come equally to those praying vocally or mentally.

The second part turns to the great vocal prayer of the church, the Our Father. Theresa takes us through the prayer phrase by phrase, mining its richness. She marvels how much Jesus gives us in the first words, “Our Father.” She reflects on the significance of “hallowed be thy name” and “thy kingdom come” side by side, that the presence of God’s good rule on earth reminds us of the holiness of his name. She acknowledges the challenge of yielding our will to God. She tends to spiritualize the idea of daily bread, focusing on the bread of Christ. Perhaps it is well that our need for daily physical bread be a reminder of the need to be daily nourished in Christ. She emphasizes the underlying love of each other behind the prayer to be forgiven as we forgive. “Lead us not into temptation” is not a shrinking from spiritual conflict but our awareness of our vulnerabilities to temptation and the protection of God.

I’ve but touched on the richness to be found in these pages. It certainly did not hurt me to read The Way of Perfection again. I suspect that multiple readings are warranted because, in each reading, we are different people and will hear different things.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: James Patterson by James Patterson

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James Patterson by James Patterson, James Patterson. New York: Little, Brown, and Company. 2022.

Summary: The life of this storyteller in a series of stories, arranged roughly in chronological order.

True confessions. This is the first James Patterson book I have read. I think I understand why he has sold so many books and is so popular. The guy can tell stories. In this case, he tells stories on himself, recounting his life in story after story. He’s hardly the first person to try to do this. You know the person you listen to for a while, and then look for an excuse, even nature’s call, to make a graceful exit. Not so with Patterson. Break out the Depends. I’m sticking around.

We learn about the period he worked in a mental ward, the same one in which James Taylor wrote “Fire and Rain.” It was the place where he began reading and writing like crazy.

He jumps back to his Catholic upbringing with stories of eating the unconsecrated communion host as an altar boy. He describes his first kiss from Veronica Tabasco, and later encountering her grave next to his grandfather’s. His dreams of being a star athlete when writing was nowhere on the radar. His college days ushering at the Fillmore East for some of the biggest rock acts of the time. His Woodstock experience. His grad school days at Vanderbilt, curtailed by the Vietnam war, although not because he served.

Perhaps one of the biggest revelations was that Patterson made it big…I mean really big in advertising as a “mad man.” He created the Toys ‘R’ Us jingle for J. Walter Thompson, one of the big Madison Avenue agencies that he helped turn around. We learn about the financial advice he successfully followed when offered three lucrative packages to choose from.

His encounter with Jimmy Breslin, who was cruel, taught him to be kind at book signings. He recounts his early efforts at trying to get published and how Francis Greenberger got him his first book contract, for which he won an Edgar and gave what was probably the shortest acceptance speech on record. He reveals his writing secret: outline, outline, outline. He also talks about all the co-authors he’s loved working with and how he works together with them.

We learn of his two great loves. There was Jane, who he was with for seven years until cancer took her. And there is his wife Sue, who he met at the ad agency and to whom he’s been married since 1997.

He’s golfed with three presidents. He thinks Trump the best golfer but he loved hanging around with Clinton. Perhaps that’s why they’ve written two books together. He even called him an [expletive deleted] when he missed a put. Who does that with a former president unless you have a special relationship? He wrote a book with Dolly Parton as well, who sang him happy birthday and called him J.J. He has nothing but good to say about her.

He’s passionate about getting kids to read and even launched a series of books for kids. He is thrilled when someone says they became a reader because of his books. I loved his reading list toward the end of the book. I think I’ve read about half. Maybe after I’ve read some of his, we could talk books. Probably not, but I loved his taste in reading. He shares his passion for helping bookstore owners and staff, and how it warms his heart when he hears that one of his grants allowed one to go to the dentist.

He tells a compelling story of the five balls we juggle in life, the four made of glass that can scratch or shatter, and the one made of rubber that bounces back, telling you which one you can afford to drop. He shares the time when he let one drop to be with a dying friend.

There’s lots more where this came from. He not only helps us understand his take on the writing life, but his take on life and what it means to be a (mostly) decent human being who has never forgotten his roots and remained “a hungry dog.” If you’ve never read one of his books, this one might get you started and make you want to read a second, and a third…. We’ll see.

Review: Christianity and Critical Race Theory

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Christianity and Critical Race Theory, Robert Chao Romero and Jeff M. Liou. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023.

Summary: A critical and constructive engagement with Critical Race Theory in light of the Christian faith.

The fallacy of the excluded middle seems present in most conversations I’ve observed concerning Critical Race Theory (CRT). Either someone is utterly dismissive saying things like, “You’re a Marxist, divisive and if you don’t like the United States, you should leave.” Or there are those who are so wounded by their experience of racism that they have withdrawn, believing the United States as incorrigibly corrupt and that Critical Race Theory not only describes what was and is, but also will always be. Sadly each set of voices often feeds off the other, often without real understanding of what Critical Race Theory is and isn’t. There is no middle ground.

For Christians like the authors, who come out of a Reformed background fond of saying “all truth is God’s truth,” the question is whether there is truth in Critical Race Theory, even if, as in so much of scholarship, there is an admixture of error. Are there insights which ring true with scripture? Perhaps more tellingly, as is sometimes the case, are there truths that open our eyes to truth in scripture, that have been cultural blind spots? And are there insights from scripture that correct what is in error or supply what is missing? The subtitle of this book is “a faithful and constructive conversation.” And this is what I found the authors doing. Beginning with the Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation framework of a Reformed Christian faith, they assess key ideas of Critical Race Theory for where these resonate (or not) with scripture. Furthermore they bring their own racial background helpfully into this discussion as an Asian-Latino American (Robert) and an Asian-American (Jeff).

First of all, they offer a brief introduction to the history and basic tenets of CRT. It arose among legal scholars who asked why there was a failure of racial progress despite advances in civil rights. A key insight is the recognition of racism as ordinary, baked into the way we do business as a country, that it advances the interests of the white majority, that “race” is a social construction not based on biological realities, and the “voice of color thesis” that says that people of color may be able to communicate with white counterparts about realities not a part of white experience (if whites are willing to listen).

They begin with Creation and the CRT concept of “Community Cultural Wealth.” This idea contends that rather than some cultures having deficits vis a vis other cultures, that every culture has cultural capital. This recognizes the cultural mandate and blessing of Genesis 1 to fill all the earth, reflected in the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 and God’s judgment against the mono-culture of Babel. This diverse wealth is reflected in the glory and honor of the nations brought into the new Jerusalem of Revelation 22. The writers also observe that Jesus as a Galilean was also part of a marginal community, not considered to have the cultural capital of Judean Jews, and as today’s Galileans, they bring a richness to our understanding of Jesus from their own experience.

The Fall is evident in the analysis of racism as the ordinary business of society. A true understanding of the doctrine of the fall understands that sin is more than our individual sins. Sin pervades the human order and how things are done. Even when we say we do not have hatred toward a person of another “race,” sin manifests itself in a system which is set up to benefit some over others, whether in real estate deed restrictions and redlining, differentials in property tax education funding, policing patterns and practices and more. The good news of the gospel in this is that the effects of the fall are remediable, contrary to the beliefs of many secularists. But we have to see it first, and CRT helps us with this.

Turning to Redemption, the “voices of color thesis” offers hope of understanding the realities to which those of us identifying as white may be blind to. More than that, this thesis reflects the idea of the body of Christ in which every part is needed for the health of the whole body. We dismiss voices of color to our own loss. A major part of this chapter focuses on how one of the authors was the lead candidate for a top diversity, equity, and inclusion position at a Christian university, which would have meant leaving a recognized role at a public university. Sadly, top leadership at the school subverted the search committee, choosing an internal candidate who was not a person of color. The author reflects on how his secular institution seemed to recognize the worth of his voice of color more than the Christian institution. He writes tellingly of the role “color blindness” played in this decision and the model Acts 6 of recognizing minority voices, with the resultant flourishing of the church.

Under Consummation, the authors argue for the one of the distinctive contributions Christians may make to CRT. They contend that CRT offers no grounds for an eschatological hope. And sometimes, the resistant response of dominant culture results in deepening alienation, a critique that only envisions divides with no hope of healing. Instead, the authors point to King’s idea of “the beloved community.” In contrast, the authors identify the “gloomy eschaton” of CRT. Christians with a biblically informed eschatological hope live toward a vision of a diverse multitude worshipping a common Lord in Revelation 7:9, sustained by the resurrection of Jesus as the foretaste of his final victory.

Sadly, “Critical Race Theory” has become a rallying cry of our political right. The phrase, unfortunately, lends itself to this, even though few who rail against the theory understand what they are railing against. And because of political alignments, many dominant culture Christians join them. The writers of this book occupy that neglected middle ground, appraising CRT fairly, recognizing both the way it reflects biblical insights into the human condition as well as its shortcomings. They denounce any association of CRT with Marxism, one of the author’s parents having fled the Marxist revolution in China and seeing the havoc it wrought. Perhaps their most original contribution is the recognition of the hope of the gospel rather than the counsels of gloom that prevail in some CRT circles. CRT exposes the insidious character of racism beyond our personal acts, the ways it has been woven into society. The scriptures understand that this, too, is sin. As God’s people, we know a remedy for sin. But we have to face it and repent and lament and confess and turn away, finding pardon and restoration in Christ. That’s painful, but that is often the way it is with healing, whether of our own lives or our nation’s soul.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Humble Confidence

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Humble Confidence, Benno van den Toren and Kang-San Tan. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: A model of dialogical apologetics for a multi-faith world committed to accountable and embodied witness that is culturally sensitive, holistic, and yet centered in Christ.

The world in which Christian witness and the work of the apologist has changed. Once it could be assumed that both the apologist and the person or people he or she was engaged with shared a common, Western outlook. Today, even in the West, let alone other contexts, that assumption no longer holds. The Christian witness finds oneself in a multi-faith, pluralistic context of Eastern religions, primal religions, Islam, secularism, and cobbled-together spiritualities.

In place of the foundationalist apologetics once assumed, the authors propose a model of apologetic dialogue that takes the multi-faith, multi-cultural realities of mission in today’s world seriously, exercising a posture both of humility as learners understanding the outlook of those with whom they engage and confidence centered around the person and work of Christ and its universal relevance to the human condition.

The co-authors, who have lived and worked in missional contexts in various parts of the world contend that such apologetic witness must be embodied in the witnessing community. Theoretical discussions must reflect the lived realities of the witnessing community. This witness also must reflect awareness that truth is embedded in cultural contexts, both of the witness and the listener, but that we are not imprisoned by those cultural realities.

They grapple with how we ought see other religions, refusing to see them merely as idolatrous falsehoods on the one hand, nor their adherents as simply fellow pilgrims on the other. Rather, they employ multiple perspectives undergirded by seeking to discern the work of the triune God in the particular context. This also leads to an understanding of apologetic dialogue as a witness to the God who came to us in the person of the Son and remains present in the world through his Spirit. Apologetics cannot be separated from our witness to the work of the Triune God.

At the same time, just as this entry of God into the world was culturally embedded in Israel and the Greco-Roman empire, apologetic dialogue respectfully listens and learns about the cultural embeddedness of other beliefs while gesturing to a reality beyond both partners in the dialogue against which we reckon our understanding. This includes both tensions between beliefs and realities and also with the desires and will of our dialogue partners.

Along the way the authors address issues such as the trustworthiness of the biblical witness to Christ, the uniqueness of Christ amid cultural relativism, and the critique against the use of Christianity as a cloak for Western imperialism.

The second half of the book applies this framework to case studies of apologetic dialogue with a variety of faith perspectives: primal religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, secularism, and what they call “late-modern spiritualities.” We explore ways Christ may subvert some forms of the Hindu quest, tensions in Buddhism between the oneness of all things and the significance of persons, and the dismissal of evil and suffering as illusion that inadequately address lived experience. and the integrity of Christian faith, including the idea of the Trinity in dialogue with Islam.

The case studies are helpful in seeing how they apply their ideas of apologetic dialogue. In particular, I appreciate the focus on attentive listening and understanding of cultures, of embodied and accountable witness, centered in scripture’s witness to the work of the Triune God in the person of his Son and the continuing ministry of the Spirit. Rather than a “we’re right/you’re wrong approach” on one hand and a “let’s all just walk in pilgrimage together” approach on the other, this assumes that while we witness to Christ from within our cultural contexts and others similarly live and believe from theirs, there is truth beyond to which we witness yet do not own, but to which we, and all, must give account.

The book also includes a study guide with recommendations for further reading. It answers a significant need for a resource speaking to how we engage in witness and even apologetic persuasion, yet with humility rather than arrogance, with cultural sensitivity and respect rather than imperialistic blindness to the other.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — The Wick Building

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Screen capture of artist’s drawing of the proposed Wick Building, The Youngstown Daily Vindicator, November 19, 1908.

I’m sure I walked by the Wick Building (now Wick Tower) numerous times when I was working downtown. It was the building you passed just before Strouss’. I don’t think I gave it much thought. I’m not sure I ever looked up and realized what a tall (for Youngstown) structure it was. Some posts by Charles Curry in the Western Reserve History Group on Facebook called my attention to the beginnings of this building including the Vindicator article from which the graphic above was found.

Aside from a brief mention in an article on the Erie Terminal, I’ve never written on this structure which deserves far more attention than at least I have given it. When it was built, it was the tallest structure in Youngstown at 184 feet and thirteen (not twelve) stories, to be surpassed in 1929 by Central (later Metropolitan and most recently First National) Tower on the Square. It was designed in the style of the Chicago School by one of the most distinguished architects of the time, Daniel Burnham of D. H. Burnham and Company of Chicago. He not only designed buildings all over the country including Marshall Fields in Chicago and the Pennsylvania Station in Pittsburgh, but he was a city planner who developed a plan for Chicago as well as other major cities including San Francisco, Cleveland, and Baltimore. The structure was built with Cambria Steel from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, faced with red brick, and decorated with terra cotta. One of its distinctives is the row of arches above the windows at the crown of the building. The building is registered as of 1980 in the National Registry of Historic Places.

The building was on the site of W. Federal and Phelps, replacing the old building formerly occupied by the Wick National Bank which had been consolidated with the Dollar Savings and Trust, just down the street. The building was purchased by Myron Wick for the Wick Brothers Trust Company, whose money was behind the construction of the new building, including funds from industrialist George Dennick Wick, who perished on the Titanic. The building was the same width as the old but extended 110 feet deep on Phelps. The article announcing the building said no expense would be spared on marble, mahogany woodwork, and ironwork. It would have modern, high-speed elevators and movable partitions on each floor allowing for various office configurations. It was ready for occupancy on April 1, 1910.

The Wick Brothers Trust and other Wick businesses occupied the building for many years. Later on, Wick Brothers became City Trust and Savings Bank, renting out the upper floors to other tenants. The building was sold to Burdman Brothers for $230,000 in 1969. They invested over $1 million in mechanical and interior renovations between 1988 and 1993 anticipating selling the building to Phar-Mor for a headquarters building. Sadly, as Phar-Mor fell into scandal, Burdman Brothers were not able to capitalize on their investment and in the end donated the building as well as a parking lot to the City of Youngstown.

The City of Youngstown managed the property until 2005 despite repeated offers by attorney Percy Squires to purchase the building. Repairs piled up but tenancy rose to 72 percent, helped by several city departments. The city finally sold the building in 2005 to Lou Frangos, a Cleveland developer for $125,000. He had plans to renovate the building at a cost of $13 million for student housing but was unable to secure the needed financing.

In 2012 Dominic Marchionda, representing the NYO Property Group, purchased the building for $150,000 with plans to convert it into 33 apartments and four extended stay suites along with a first floor restaurant. The renovations were completed and the building, re-christened The Wick Tower, was opened in 2015. The building is managed by LY Properties and a visit to the website can give you some sense of the facilities. Sadly, the developer, Dominic Marchionda, has faced numerous legal problems and owes money to the state on various projects including The Wick Tower.

Distinctive architecture. Youngstown’s second tallest building. A connection with one of Youngstown’s leading families. A part of Youngstown’s downtown renaissance. One hopes this 113 year old building, obviously one with good “bones,” will continue to be well-cared for and grace the downtown landscape.

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

Review: Lucy by the Sea

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Lucy by the Sea, Elizabeth Strout. New York: Random House, 2022.

Summary: Lucy Barton goes with her ex-husband William to a house on the coast of Maine during the COVID lockdown of 2020.

On a premonition, Lucy Barton cancelled her book tour in Europe. Then her ex-husband William, a parasitologist, shows up at her apartment and insists that she pack up and leave with him to get out of New York City to an out of the way place in Maine. It is early March of 2020 and COVID-19 has arrived in New York City. William has followed the epidemic and can foresee what is in store. He wants to get Lucy and their daughters out of the city. Reluctantly, she closes up her place and goes with him to an old house with character on the coast of Maine, found for them by an old friend, Bob Burgess.

Much of the book is Lucy’s interior monologue. We go through those early weeks that we all remember of hearing of the rapidly climbing number of infections, of friends getting sick, of worries about family, particularly Lucy’s younger daughter, who wants to stay in New York with her loser boyfriend. We re-live socially distanced and masked encounters. And we remember lives reduced to daily routines of household life, Zoom calls, walks outdoors, punctuated by the news. At points, like many of us, Lucy wonders if she is losing her mind, or at least her memory. We relive that growing recognition both of how bad things were and that this wouldn’t be solved by a few weeks of lockdown.

Sharing a house with your ex raises all kinds of memories for both of them. William had gone on to a number of affairs and failed marriages. Chastened by age and health issues, he takes stock of all the failures in his life. For both of them, as they watch one daughter in an unhealthy relationship and another unable to have children and going through a rocky period in their marriage, they relive their own failed relationship as they try to offer what help parents can and cannot do, as they re-negotiate their relationships with their adult children, and with each other. I will leave you to find out how being in lockdown together works out for them.

Bob Burgess, whose wife is the town minister, becomes Lucy’s sounding board as they take walks together. Like so many of us, Lucy has to sort out all her feelings about those who don’t wear masks, including a sister who has converted to a conservative form of Christianity, who nearly dies but doesn’t. for all those who support the current president, for those who refuse the vaccine including a woman who she works with at a food pantry.

What is striking is that we see both her interior reactions and a posture of listening, of just trying to understand and not change. Coming to terms with some of the wounds of her own past, she finds herself in a place of gentleness with others, something I wish I could have achieved at times during this period.

Strout portrays people who grew during the isolation of lockdown. They examined their own and other’s flawed and broken and yet unique lives, and the efforts to love as best as they could. They nurtured relationships even as it appeared the country was trying to tear itself apart.

This is not a book to read if you don’t want to relive those years. But I found that the reading reminded me of my own journey of trying to make sense of our radically changed lives and country. And I got to do this with this delightful woman, Lucy Barton. I wonder to what degree she is an alter ego of Elizabeth Strout. What I do know is that I’ve loved her Olive Kitteridge books and this as well (Olive makes a kind of cameo appearance!). And there was the delightful discovery, in writing this review, that there are several previous Lucy Barton books. You can bet that I will be on the lookout for them!

Review: The Power of Group Prayer

/ rtrube54 / 3 Comments

The Power of Group Prayer, Carolyn Carney. Downers Grove: IVP/Formatio, 2022.

Summary: A practical guide for intercessory prayer groups, casting vision for how these may transform both the intercessors and their world.

I am so glad Carolyn Carney wrote this book! I have seen both the power of God unleashed when Christians pray together and I’ve seen painfully dull gatherings that never get beyond the participants aches and pains, usually with more talk than prayer. Carney, who has led gatherings of students and church leaders in prayer believes in intercessory prayer that is an act of rebellion against a worldly status quo and the building of highways in which we join God in the coming of his kingdom, fueling our sense of mission.

She begins with our preparation to pray, helping us identify the way we may be blocking intimacy with God and how we may nurture that attachment. She makes the biblical case for corporate intercession from scripture and identifies four marks of effective intercessory groups:

  1. Good leadership
  2. Targeted focus
  3. Listening
  4. Hunger for God’s kingdom to come more fully

Good groups have a clear focus, a sense of what they are aiming at that may be expressed through a guiding image. In praying for a community, they survey the land and identify both fertile and fallow ground. Carney offers a number of questions to help groups in this process. Well-led groups help break the habits of jargon-y, long-winded, unfocused prayer and vague requests. She talks about praying in agreement, in which groups listen to and add to what each person briefly prays about the prayer topic of the meeting.

Prayer is also listening to God, and Carney offers a number of way groups may do this as God prompts us in prayer, brings to mind scripture, a picture or vision, or physical sensation. Listening together, people can discern whether what individuals share rings true and if so, confirm what God is saying, leading to discerning how to pray and act. Scripture and worship play an important role in enlarging our vision of God and informing our prayers concerning what God wants.

Carney describes ways intercessory groups can “take it to the streets.” She gives tips on prayer walking, prayer mapping, and praying for events from worship services to major Christian conferences. She shares a vivid example around the latter of being part of an intercessory team at a major conference, where there had been a great moving of God. Organizers wanted to start “tear down” early, asking the team to vacate their room. All of a sudden, it seem everything went awry and the enemy attacked the good God was doing. The team resumed praying!

This underscores that intercessory prayer is a form of war and will encounter resistance. One of the appendices of the book includes a prayer for praying on oneself the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-20). She offers counsel on facing opposition, including the role of worship in countering it, and the care intercessors should take when coming off a season of intercession. She concludes with encouraging a vision of intercession over the long haul and five practices that sustain it:

  1. Lament, sometimes with groans over how little of God’s kingdom we see.
  2. Fasting for breakthrough
  3. Expanding our view of God through worship
  4. Getting physical, whether through things like hand-held crosses, “walls” that we tear down in prayer, etc.
  5. Leaning on others.

The appendices of the book offer more practical help in specific areas from dealing with distorted views of God to specifics of planning a prayer meeting to specific counsel for prayer before worship and at large events, and finally “Lion’s Roar Prayer for Breakthrough.”

Even those of us who have been part of great movements of prayer and who have seen God work can lose our vision for the power of people seeking God together. Carolyn Carney’s vision, stories, and practical instruction may be just the thing to encourage you to gather with others to seek the work of God where he has placed you or help take to new places that prayer group that feels like it has gotten into a rut.

The pandemic years, with all their turmoil underscore our need for revival, pretty much anywhere in the world. I cannot find accounts of revival where intercessory prayer was not a central feature. It’s my prayer that every copy of this book will be like fertile seed, giving birth to prayer movements, through which God in his good pleasure may move to prepare the ground, to build the highway, through which he visits his people with revival. May it be so!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: A Caribbean Mystery

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

A Caribbean Mystery (Miss Marple #9), Agatha Christie. New York, Morrow, 2022 (originally published in 1964).

Summary: A Caribbean holiday after an illness is just what the doctor ordered for Miss Marple, who helps solve a string of murders at a resort.

Miss Marple is recovering from an illness and her nephew Raymond sends her on a Caribbean holiday. Little did he realize how rejuvenating it would be as Miss Marple employs her polite nosiness and the insistence that only an elderly spinster can exercise, to solve a string of murders.

It all begins with Major Palgrave’s interminable and repeating stories. He begins to tell her one of a repeat murderer who had remained unapprehended. He was on the point of showing her a picture when he looks up, puts his wallet away and hastily changes the subject. When he is found dead of an apparent stroke the next morning, Miss Marple has her suspicions. It had been noised about that he had high blood pressure and a bottle of medications was found among his effects.

Except in the course of talking with different members of the party staying at the resort, run by a young couple, the Kendals, Victoria, a housemaid, claims not to have previously seen the medicine. That evening, she’s found dead of knife wounds by Molly Kendal, who has been acting more and more erratic, experiencing lapses of memory and agitation, and had been seen carrying a kitchen knife. Tim attributes her agitation to a family history She’s understandably quite upset, having found the murdered girl and even wondering if, in a fit of madness, whether she is the murderer. She is comforted by Miss Marple, who has her doubts.

Miss Marple’s fears are growing. There are other strange events going on, including finding rich old Mr. Raffiel’s assistant Jackson looking through his papers, and later through Molly Kendal’s cosmetics. People aren’t what they seem. The Hillingdon’s, a seeming perfect couple are sleeping separately, while he is caught up in an affair with “Lucky” Dyson, wife of nature lover Greg Dyson Meanwhile, Miss Marple’s suspicions about Palgrave’s death result in his exhumation and a finding that he was poisoned.

There is one more murder yet to occur and one narrowly prevented. It’s a case of a murderer who overlooks a couple of gossipy old women, Miss Marple and Miss Prescott, Canon Prescott’s sister, and the handicapped Mr. Raffiel. Appearing frail, among the “uglies,” they mobilize action at the right time to save a life and capture a murderer!

How can one not love Miss Marple! And how can one not be amazed at Agatha Christie who spins the perfect Caribbean holiday murder mystery, forty-four years after her first mystery in 1920. In this one, she was still at the top of her game as was her main character, a quietly gossipy busybody who knits her way to another crime solved!