Youngstown biographies

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown–My Hall of Fame

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John Young Memorial, photo by Jack Pierce. (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Flickr

One of the things I’ve enjoyed as I’ve written about Youngstown is to learn about the people who contributed to making Youngstown a great, good place to grow up. I thought I would share my personal “Hall of Fame” of people I’ve written about. I’ve limited it to ten, which was tough because there are so many others who could be on this list. The links embedded in each name take you to the article I wrote about that person. See what you think of this list!

1. John Young. He gave Youngstown its name, purchased the township from the Connecticut Land Company in 1797, surveyed the township, layed out the initial plats that formed what is now downtown Youngstown, living there for a short while as one of the early settlers.

Judge William Rayen

2. Judge William Rayen. An early settler, he established a tavern and mercantile by Spring Common, held a number of civic offices including a judgeship. He was prosperous and owned extensive lands and from his estate bequeathed the money to establish Youngstown’s first public high school, The Rayen School.

P. Ross Berry, Courtesy of the Mahoning Valley Historical Society

3. P. Ross Berry. Speaking of The Rayen School, this was one of the many building projects in or near downtown Youngstown in which Berry, a Black bricklayer and architect was involved. He owned his own brick foundry, manufacturing a distinctive red-orange brick which you may observe in the still standing Rayen building on Wick Avenue.

Governor David Tod, Public Domain via Wikimedia

4. David Tod. He inherited his father’s farm in Brier Hill, discovered the block coal beneath it the fueled the iron industry in which he made his fortune, leading the transformation of Youngstown into an iron and steel center. If that wasn’t enough, he was Ohio’s governor and Lincoln’s confidant during the Civil War.

Unknown. Source: The Youngstown Telegram. Public Domain-US, via Wikipedia

5. Joseph G. Butler, Jr. If you have visited the Butler, not paying any admission, you have benefited from Butler’s bequest, the fruit of his labor. He was a steel magnate, civic leader, political insider and friend of William McKinley, author of a history of Youngstown, and consummate art collector.

Volney Rogers, Public Domain-US via Wikipedia

6. Volney Rogers. Without him, there would be no Mill Creek Park with its lakes, bridges, pavilions, and trails. Mill Creek would have been one more industrial river. The city broke his heart when they won a fight against him to run storm sewer lines into the park, resulting in problems to this day.

William F. Maag, Sr at the time he was elected to the Ohio Assembly. Photo via New York Public Library Digital Collections

7. Wiiliam F. Maag, Sr. He and his family owned The Vindicator for much of its history after getting his start with German language papers. Under his son, the paper grew even further while he also developed radio and television outlets.

James Anson Campbell. Public Domain

8. James Anson Campbell. Along with George Dennick Wick, he formed Youngstown Sheet and Tube in 1901. He rebuilt East Youngstown after the 1916 riots, built some of the best worker housing in the country, and he was remembered when East Youngstown was renamed after him and became Campbell.

Hamilton, Headshot from Vindicator “Around Town” Columns in the 1960’s

9. Esther Hamilton. She wrote “Around Town,” a community news column for nearly 70 years, 52 of those years as a daily column. She emceed The Vindicator spelling bee and organized an annual Christmas fund-raiser, the Esther Hamilton Alias Santa Claus Show, recruiting community leaders to work as “candy butchers” to raise money from other well-heeled attendees. Truly one of a kind!

Boots Bell at a record hop. Photo courtesy of Leslie Bell Redman

10. “Boots” Bell. “Yes, indeedy, doody-daddy. Have yourself a happy!” Many of us still can hear that rich, buoyant baritone voice in our minds. He was a Purple Heart veteran of the Korean War, introduced The Beatles at their Pittsburgh concert, invited us all to join him on his “Booter scooter” during his afternoon broadcasts on WHOT and spun the tunes at record hops all over the Valley.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with my list. And you’d be right. There are so many others who could be on it. What they all had in common were there contributions to making Youngstown the city it was when we were growing up. For some, like Butler or Rogers, there influence continues to be felt to this day. I’d love to hear who you’d add to the list. Chances are, I thought of them and probably have written about them.

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

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown–Michael J. McGovern, “The Puddler Poet”

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Michael J. McGovern, Public Domain.

On March 17, we are all Irish (or at least most of us) even if we are not. In that spirit, I thought I would write about one of Youngstown’s most illustrious Irish residents, Michael J. McGovern, also known as “The Puddler Poet.” Puddlers had a special function in the mills, They stirred pig iron that was heated in the presence of oxidizing elements in a furnace, converting it into wrought iron. He worked in the old “Siberia Mill” of the Cartwright-McCurdy company. When not working, he wrote poems about work in the mills and other subjects. Many of them were hard-edge social critique of the times, for example “A Rythm Upon Our Trusts”:

This country is o’erran by trusts
And each within its sphere adjusts
Production and the price of that
Which it controls, not caring what

The people it plucks may say
For trusts possess the right of way
On all our great commercial trails
To crush the slow industrial snails
The trusts economy is seen
In big combines which seal the doom
Of those who live half way between.

Michael McGovern was born in Ireland in October of 1847 in the townland of Castlefield, near Williamstown, County Galway, to John Govern and Bridget Flynn. McGovern was educated in one of the secret “Hedge Schools” learning the basics including Latin. He sailed to England in 1866, finding work in Sheffield City, Yorkshire, as a steel mill laborer. He married Anne Murphy in 1872, around the same time he began secret efforts with the Irish Republican Brotherhood. By 1880, he had to flee England, with Anne following soon after.

He found work as a puddler at Catasauqua Steel and Iron Company in Fullerton, Pennsylvania around 1882. He brought his family to Youngtown around 1890, living there for the rest of his life. It was here that he began writing poetry, another way to express his advocacy for labor beside his membership in the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers. Here is another of his poems, “The Puddler’s View of Present Systems”:

The plutocrats, the goldbugs, and the tariff lords who rule us all;
The press and the politicians that will tell us lies to fool us all;
The ministers and bishops who e'er preach on Christ and pray for all;
The warriors who kill the foes that would invade and slay us all;
The hoboes and the millionaires who never work at all, at all;
Would one and all be starving did the workingman not toil for all.

In 1899 The Vindicator published a book of his poems, Labor Lyrics and Other Poems. He contributed poetry regularly to The Vindicator and The Youngstown Telegram. He was also an accomplished landscape artist, even though he had no formal training.

He never forgot Ireland, returning in 1904 for a three month visit, and a number of poems celebrated his Irish heritage, including “Welcome A.O.H. Men” (A.O.H. stands for the Ancient Order of Hibernians):

Welcome men of Irish blood,
With open arms we meet you
In the name of Irish Nationhood
And faith we hospitably greet you.
We welcome you with all the love
And friendship men shroud owe each other,
And hope each grasp we give may prove
The honest pressure of a Brother.

For Ireland’s triumphs and her woes:
For virtues that enhance her glory;
For wrongs inflicted by her foes
That go to make the blackest story.
For love of Freedom, –always her’s;
Which love, may yet its crown accord her
Ceud Mile failte –Visitors –
True members of her 'Ancient Order'

Michael and Anne celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1930. McGovern wrote poetry up to the time of his death on April 2, 1933 of a heart attack at age 85. His funeral service was held at the old St. Columba Cathedral and he is buried in Calvary Cemetery. Anne followed him in death in 1935.

I’ll close with one more Michael McGovern poem, “St. Patrick’s Day”:

Again arrives that holy day,
As Earth its yearly circuits makes;
That much revered St Patrick’s Day
That day of days which e'er awakes
Within each heart of Irish race.
A Christian thought- a loving thrill:
When kindled memories kindly trace
Some verdant vale; some shamrocked hill,
From which the thinker had to roam
Upon this rugged earth's highway
That day of days for Irishmen
With blessed traditions comes again
All hail! St Patrick’s Day.

Michael McGovern is the likeliest candidate for Youngstown’s greatest poet. Fittingly, much of his poetry celebrated the workingman and his labor.

[If you are interested, Jim Fahy, an Irish journalist has been researching his life and has compiled a 138 page online biography of McGovern.]

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

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Sue Thomas

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Imagine a little girl growing up in Boardman, Ohio who suddenly loses her hearing at eighteen months. All of her hearing. What kind of life do you think she could have hoped for? This was the story of Sue Thomas, which you can listen to her tell in the YouTube video above. At the time, her parents were encouraged to place her in an institution. Her parents refused that advice and worked with the Youngstown Hearing and Speech Center (which closed in 2017), where she learned to read lips and speak.

This amazing young child was the youngest Ohio State Champion free-style skater at age seven. She had a coach who skated with her in practice, beating time to the music until she learned her routine. Then he motioned her when the music started and performed–a championship performance! She also learned to play piano, feeling the vibrations, studying classical piano.

School was hard but she hung in there. She was considered a “slow learner” until a typing teacher recognized her potential. She attended Springfield College in Massachusetts with a double major in political science and international affairs. She subsequently went on to do graduate work in counseling at Case Western Reserve University and Columbia Bible College and Seminary.

She looked for months for work until the FBI came calling. She started out as a fingerprint examiner and then worked in undercover surveillance. She said, “I followed the bad guys around and I read their lips and I told the good guys what the bad guys were saying.” She was involved in solving a number of high profile crimes.

In 1990, She wrote an account of her life, Silent Night, that later served as the basis of a TV series inspired by her life Sue Thomas, F.B. Eye, that ran for 56 episodes from 2002-2005 on the Pax Network, one of two most highly rated programs. Production ended because the Pax Network decided to discontinue original programming. She was asked who she would like to play her, and she asked for a tall blonde, and Deanne Bray was chosen. The real Sue had cameo appearances in two episodes.

As is evident in the video, Sue is a very religious woman with a strong faith in God. Despite being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2001 and cancer in 2020 (now in remission), her website says that at 71 she continues to travel around the US speaking about her faith, with her service dog Sir “Rodney” the Great and her full time associate. Her website states, “Her audiences range from 1 to 45,000  and her keynotes are geared towards education, civic, corporate, sports, and non-profits along with medical in the areas of deafness, multiple schlerosis and diabetes.” In recent days, her ministry has been working to provide supplies to Ukrainian refugees in Poland.

When not traveling, she lives in a small log cabin in Vermont. She has written a sequel to her 1990 biography, Staying in the Race, and is working on a third book.

I’m struck that Sue’s faith certainly has animated her life but also that her parents, speech and hearing therapists, skating coaches, piano teachers and that typing teacher played a large role in her life from her earliest days growing up in the Youngstown area. Sue would no doubt attribute all this to God’s plan and goodness. I won’t argue with that. Listening to her, though, I also hear a woman with the grit and resilience of someone who grew up in the Mahoning Valley.

[Update: I just learned from a reader that Sue Thomas passed on December 13, 2022. Here is the WKBN story.]

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

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Betty Allen

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She performed in opera performances as a mezzo-soprano on stages around the world to standing ovations. She was part of the first generation of Black opera singers, along with Marian Anderson to achieve wide success, breaking down racial barriers with her voice. She collaborated with the foremost American composers of her generation: Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Ned Rorem, and Virgil Thomson, among others. And it all began in the Mahoning Valley on the streets of Campbell.

She was born on March 17, 1927 to James and Dora Catherine Mitchell Allen. Her father, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, had trained to be a math teacher but because of prejudice, could not find work. He came north and found work at Sheet & Tube. Her mother added to the family income by taking in laundry. She grew up in a Greek and Sicilian neighborhood and it was her she had her first exposure to opera. In 1999, she told The New York Times, “On Saturday, walking down the street, you could hear the Met broadcasts coming from the windows of everybody’s house. No one told them that opera and the arts were not for them, not for poor people, just for rich snobs.”

All seemed to be going well until her mother died of lung cancer when she was twelve. The loss resulted in her father sinking into depression, drinking heavily. Betty tried to keep up the house while becoming spelling bee champion at Gordon Ave. School for two years. One day, fed up with it all, she went to Judge Ford Agey and asked to have a real home like other children. The best that could be done at the time was a series of foster homes, some abusive.

At age 16, she moved into the YWCA, supporting herself by cleaning houses while finishing high school at The Rayen School in the top half of her class, excelling in Latin and German. A teacher, Dorothy Seeger, befriended her and helped her get a scholarship to attend Wilberforce College. One of her classmates was Leontyne Price. Her German teacher, Theodor Heimann, a former opera tenor, encouraged her to sing. She went from there on scholarship to Hartford School of Music in Connecticut.

In 1950, while studying at Tanglewood, she came to the attention of Leonard Bernstein who chose her to be the mezzo-soprano soloist in his Symphony No. 1, the “Jeremiah” Symphony. She debuted in her first opera the following year, Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts. In 1952, she won the Marian Anderson Award, a singing competition in Philadelphia. A series of opera roles followed throughout the 1950’s: Tin Pan Alley, Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, Queenie in Showboat with the New York City Opera among others. She made her recital hall debut in 1958 at Town Hall in New York City, performing a program that included Brahms and Faure.

She appeared with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s. She performed on opera stages in New York, Boston, Santa Fe, San Francisco, Washington, Canada, Buenos Aires and Mexico City as well as concert performances in France, Italy, and North Africa. Two of her standout performances were as Jocasta in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex with the Santa Fe Opera in 1964 and as Monisha in Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha with the Houston Grand Opera in 1975.

By the 1980’s she stopped singing, except for a handful of concerts, because of lung problems, which she attributed to growing up near the mills in Campbell. She devoted herself to vocal instruction as executive director of the Harlem School of the Arts, as well as serving on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, and adjudicated many vocal competitions. She died on June 22, 2009 in Valhalla, New York of complications of kidney disease at age 82.

Learning about Betty Allen’s story, I’m struck by both her personal drive, reflected in going to a Youngstown judge seeking a better home, supporting herself from age 16, and the influences of others from those Campbell neighbors who thought opera was for everyone to a high school teacher at The Rayen School who became a friend and mentor to a college professor who persuaded Betty to sing. Obviously, she used all her opportunities to hone her talents while benefiting from a once in a lifetime opportunity to perform works of Leonard Bernstein. Hers is yet another amazing Mahoning Valley story.

To give you an idea of the beauty and richness of her voice, I found this recording of her singing several classic spirituals.

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

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Elizabeth Hartman

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Elizabeth Hartman, From a publicity still, 1966. Photographer unknown. Public Domain.

The recent passing of renowned actor Sidney Poitier on January 6 of this year reminded many of us from Youngstown of Elizabeth Hartman who played opposite him in A Patch of Blue. In 1966, she received a Best Actress Nomination in the Academy Awards for her role, the youngest actress to do so. I remember how proud all of us were. We’d point to her on the screen or in a news story and say, “She’s from Youngstown!” And she was a slender, freckled redhead with all-American good looks that turned all our heads.

She was born Mary Elizabeth Hartman on December 23, 1943 to Claire (Mullaly) and Bill C. Hartman, a local building contractor. Even while in Boardman High School, she already was gaining notice for her acting, playing Laura in The Glass Menagerie as well as having roles in productions of A Clearing in the Woods and Our Town at the Youngstown Playhouse. She won a statewide award for her role in The Glass Menagerie.

After graduation in 1961, she attended Carnegie Mellon University, known for its theatre program. During summers, she acted with the Kenley Players and at the Cleveland Playhouse, where she had roles in The Mad Woman of Chaillot and Bus Stop. During her time in Pittsburgh, she met her husband Gill Dennis, a future director and screenwriter. They married in 1968.

In 1964, she moved to New York, auditioning for plays, and winning the leading role in Everybody Out, the Castle is Sinking. The play was not a success, but she received recognition and screen tests with MGM and Warner Brothers. That fall, she was offered the role in A Patch of Blue. Sadly, her father died at this time. In addition to her Academy nomination in 1966, she won a Golden Globe award as well as an achievement award from the National Association of Theater Owners.

She played in several major films between 1966 and 1973: The Group, You’re A Big Boy Now, The Beguiled, and the blockbuster Walking Tall in 1973, portraying Pauline Mullins, the wife of Sheriff Bufford Pusser. In 1975, she starred in the Tom Rickman play, Balaam, and played various TV roles over the next years. She began in a touring role of Morning’s at Seven in 1981, but left due to declining mental health. Her last on-screen performance was in a horror spoof, Full Moon High, playing Miss Montgomery. She also did acclaimed voiceovers for Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH in 1982. It was her last role.

Elizabeth Hartman had always struggled with depression. In 1978, she spent a year at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut. She separated from her husband in 1979 and they divorced in 1984. She moved back to Pittsburgh, continuing to receive treatment for her depression from the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, while working at a local museum. On the morning of June 10, 1987, she called her psychiatrist saying she was very despondent. Later that day, she fell from her fifth floor apartment window to her death. No note was found. She lies at rest back in Youngstown, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park.

She was a brilliant actor, who could “become” a variety of roles. Her brother-in-law, Robert H. Shoop, Jr said of her, ″She had an unbelievable talent. She was able to portray so many people on the stage and yet, she wasn’t like any of them.″ In her New York Times obituary, Elizabeth Hartman is quoted from a 1969 interview, saying, ”That initial success beat me down. It spiraled me into a position where I didn’t belong. I was not ready for that. I suddenly found myself failing.” She rose meteorically, and then the roles slowed down as fickle Hollywood turned to others.

Given her early, meteoric rise, one wonders whether she ever had a chance to figure out who she was beyond her roles. Her struggle throughout her life suggests a physiological condition that the talk therapies of the day could not greatly help. The most effective anti-depressant medications only came online after her death.

One can never answer the questions of “what if?” All we can do is remember Elizabeth Hartman’s artistic excellence and honor her memory. We also can take pride in the local institutions, from high school theatre programs to the Youngstown Playhouse and the Kenley Players, that gave her the opportunity to develop her craft. Seeing those images of her with Sidney Poitier once again reminded me, “she was from Youngstown” but also that we lost her too soon.

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

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown – Rev. James W. Van Kirk

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Rev. James W. Van Kirk, Image from screen capture of The Youngstown Vindicator, June 14, 1946 via Google News Archive

He traveled around the world four times in the cause of world peace. He designed the World Peace Flag that was adopted by the League of Nations in 1920. He wrote a Declaration of Interdependence that he read both to President Woodrow Wilson and to the League of Nations on July 4, 1920, the day his flag was raised at the Peace Palace in Geneva, Switzerland. He did all this while serving as a minister in Youngstown, Ohio.

He was born February 27, 1858 in Feed Springs, Ohio and grew up in southeast Ohio. Watching his uncle march off to the Civil War had a profound impact on his life. He fell from a rail fence, and despite seven operations, his right leg had to be amputated. He wore a wooden leg the rest of his life, and in the words of his obituary article, “stamped his way around the world four times on a wooden leg.”

He started working as a plasterer in Canton. Wanting more education, at age 27 he enrolled at Mt. Union College, attended a business college in Canton, and then Boston College and finally Harvard. He returned to Ohio to serve a church in Twinsburg for $500 a year, before coming to Youngstown as the pastor of Grace Methodist Church. He helped erect a new building for the church, helping with much of the lathing and plastering and achieving the goal of dedicating a debt-free church, due in part to his efforts.

He then requested a leave to travel around the world the first time to speak on world peace, talking to school and civic groups wherever he landed. He called himself “Moving Van.” It was during his second trip in 1909 that he drafted his Declaration of Interdependence. He contended that in a world that had shrunk to a neighborhood, we must foster brotherhood to survive. For a third trip, in 1911, he designed a World Peace Flag. The flag has a blue background, the seven colors of the spectrum arranged in a rectangle at the left, with white lines merging into a white bar on a brown circle representing the earth. The stars scattered on the blue field represent members of a World Federation, an effort preceding that of the League of Nations

World Peace Flag

It was this flag that was raised at the Peace Palace of the League of Nations on July 4, 1920 as Van Kirk read his Declaration of Interdependence. The League, a vision of Woodrow Wilson, was formed that year as an intergovernmental organization similar to the United Nations, with the intent of preserving peace between nations after the “war to end all wars.” It must have been the moment of a lifetime for this minister from Youngstown to see the realization of the dream that had already driven him around the world three times.

Sadly, the dream did not last. He was on his last tour in the late 1930’s and barely escaped China when the Japanese invaded. He left behind six trunks of flags and buttons which fell into the hands of the Japanese. They were not interested in world peace at that time. His flag was flown for the last time in 1938 on Central Square. That same year, he published a memoir titled A Life: Stranger Than Fiction. He was honored by a citywide gathering at Trinity Methodist Church.

The following years would not be years of world peace but rather world war. In 1942 on his 84th birthday, he ate milk and crackers for his meal in sympathy with the hungry and starving around the world. He lived to see the end of the war and a new flag, that of the United Nations, in 1945. He died on June 14, 1946 at 5:20 am at South Side Hospital.

It is common these days to hear the phrase “think globally and act locally.” That was James W. Van Kirk–except that he also acted globally. What also strikes me was that for him to act globally as he did, he must have enjoyed local support. One does not do these things alone. It’s obvious that many in the Youngstown community were behind him.

I don’t know if he was at all conscious of Rev. Van Kirk, but in the wake of the Vietnam War in 1975, Jack Cessna, a runner, organized the The Peace Race of Youngstown bringing runners from around the world for a day of “friendship, competition, and understanding.” While Youngstown has not always been a peaceful place, it’s interesting that the efforts of a pastor with a wooden leg and a runner have promoted long term and wide-reaching efforts to promote world peace. I wonder what it would mean to focus on those aspects of our history more?

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