Cleveland: Dad worked at Johnson Plastics, now where was that?

I've written before about how we moved from the little mountain town of Frostburg in Western Maryland in 1952 so that Dad could pursue a better executive position at a plastics plant. You can read about those times and our move here and here. Mom, who usually looks beautiful and very happy in photos, both then and now, somehow looked sad or perhaps worried. Here she is below, first on the start of the journey from Frostburg, Maryland and in the next photo, just after we landed in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.

See how this picture tells a story: we're leaving Frostburg for Ohio.

Mom looks sad or worried, Dad looks happy and excited, and there I am holding Dad's briefcase and pretty thrilled.

Mom now living in Chagrin Falls, standing next to my tricycle. The rental house was at the top of a big hill leading down to the village, so maybe she was worried I'd try to coast all the way down;)

And here she is, below, with her usual smile.

1942, with Uncle Delbert Kelly.

So my brother and I were emailing in plans for this very recent trip to Cleveland and wondering about the old Johnson Plastics plant where Dad worked. Where was it, exactly? Luckily, I thought, I had a photo of one his old business cards, so I checked it out and this is what I saw.

So off I went trying to find a street address, because as you see, all it gives is a post office box in Chagrin Falls. That's not going to help us!

I called the library in Chagrin Falls to see if they had any old phone books or directories from the 1950s. None. Tried to search "Johnson Plastics Corporation" on Google but that was a dead end. What to do? Then I remembered that I like genealogy and it might help to start thinking about this as a genealogy problem and not a missing persons problem:)

Using one of my newspaper subscription web sites, I searched for "Johnson Plastics" and found a series of articles from the Cleveland Plain Dealer about an incident in 1958. It was fascinating reading and when the dust bunnies that had accumulated in the deep corners of my mind shook themselves out and cleared, by gosh I remembered something vague about it all. Here's how the first article, dated June 26, 1958, began:

Pickets' Bullets Chase 7 Youth
Five pickets around the struck Johnson Plastic Co. in Chardon, mistaking seven teenagers in a car for strike breakers, chased the youth and fired three rifle shots at them last night, said Geuga County Sherriff Louis Robusky said.

Yeah, I do remember that: pickets striking the plant trying to unionize without luck, then shots fired. There were five articles in all running from June 26, 1958 to October 8, 1958. The articles drew out the facts and the story painted a picture of some rough action on the part of the pickets. The newspaper reported that they were convicted and sentenced by October.

But where was the plant? The first article mentions that the teens were driving on Munn Road. The second article running on June 28, 1958 mentions that the plant was on Stafford Road. So off to Google Maps and Satellite View to look at the corner of Munn Road and Stafford Road. Humm! That looked like the plant! Now I used Street View and placed the "little man" right at the corner. Yup! That's the plant!

OK, now this might not sound like a whole lot of fun to you, but my brother and I have very fond memories of that plant. Dad took me to work with him a number of times. I got a tour of the plant, which always fascinated, and a bunch of plastic toys and hula hoops to take home, which they made right there. Wasn't overly impressed with the plastic pipe or flooring;) Plus, both my brother and I fished for sunfish in the pond on the premises, and we both love to fish! Great fun!

On Monday of this last trip, I had to jet off home, but brother took on the task of hunting down this plant we thought might be at the corner of Munn and Stafford. Here's what he emailed me a few hours later:

I swear, I shouted “that’s it;  that’s the plant” as soon as we came over the hill and saw it.  Even though it looked all new(ish) and well maintained, I could see the original in my mind as soon and we saw it.  No question about it.  And we saw the Johnsonite sign, I knew the reason we couldn’t find anything about it when we searched on-line.  Remember me telling you Mr. Johnson may have been a chemist or something because I saw all the hits on “Johnsonite” when I searched for Johnson Plastics? 

So it all fits together now.  We solved the puzzle.  Really wish you could have been there for the final discovery.

 Me too. And here's the photo he took.

 

 

Yes! That's the plant for sure. And how nice for us that they choose to keep the original blue and white color scheme so that we could more easily recognize it! This adventure was really "our kind of fun"!

Dad at his desk, before we moved to Ohio and Johnson Plastics.

 

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/10/cleveland-dad-worked-at-johnson.html

Cleveland: The ugly part of change, at least to me

When we moved from the little mountain town in Western Maryland of Frostburg in 1952, we landed in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. It was near Dad's work and the loveliest little town you'd ever want to see. Don't believe me? Check the town web site here. See what I mean? Every building has that Colonial design and flavor about it, and some date back to the founding of the village in 1845. Cute, cozy, charming: those were the words my sis-in-law and I used from the back seat to describe what we saw on our recent visit to Cleveland.

After a short while, and I have to ask Mom exactly how short but I think it was about a year, we moved to the bedroom suburb of Maple Heights. Mom and Dad bought their very first house for about $20,000, as I remember. So of course we had to visit Maple Heights on our trip to Cleveland last weekend! The houses were all there and just as tidy and well-kept as ever, but much older, 50 years having passed since we lived there. You can tell the area homes were all part of a post WWII building boom: all Cape Cod style and almost identical in size and floor plan. Here was ours, below.

Grandpop Kelly (John Lee Kelly 1892 - 1969) on the right, me holding baby brother on the front steps of our house in Maple Heights.

Our house, this photo taken on our last trip to Ohio in 2007.

As we drove from downtown Cleveland to Maple Heights there came a point when I saw my old library, now a senior center, and I knew exactly where I was. Next stop was my old elementary school: Saint Wenceslas School. What a sad sight! It was all boarded up and there was a "for sale" sign out front! First the demolished the nun's residence and the candy store on the opposite corner disappeared too. Now this!

Here's the video I took on the spot as my brother navigated around. As you can, see it was a rainy day.

Saint Wenceslas parish was a heavily ethnic neighborhood full of hard-working Polish, Czeck, and Hungarian folks. I was the only "Irish" in my class, so I was a minority and knew it because the sisters who taught there made a point of it on a few occasions. (Here, we could start with the nun stories, but I'll pass on that for now. And yes, there were hard rulers involved!) As you've probably guessed, it was a heavily Catholic neighborhood back in the 1950s.

The church year drove the local lives of those kids who attended Saint Wenceslas. Celebrations and processions, first communions, confirmations were all milestones in our little lives, and the big guns were Christmas and Easter. I remember clearly going with Mom downtown to shop for Easter hats at Higbee's Department Store. That was fun!

There were other events that were kind of spooky for a little girl: word spread that every girl or woman was not to be alone with one of the priests. "Do not go into the priest's rectory alone under any circumstances," my good friend told me. I didn't understand then but I do now. Click here for more info. A sad shame.

Classes for us Baby Boomer were gigantic by today's standards and the 48 students in my class was not an unusually large number. Some classes easily reached 50 students. Those poor nuns really earned their pay. Somehow we all learned.

I got sad, I have to tell you, when I saw the old boarded up school. It was as if a part of my young life had been boarded up and closed out. I would never be able to go in that school with its attached church in the future, never be able to see the old classrooms, never be able to walk those halls.

Well, that's life: we live it and then it passes into our personal history.



The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/10/cleveland-ugly-part-of-change-at-least.html

Cleveland: A city changing while I was gone



This isn't the city I remember: river on fire, too many poor people all unemployed, polluted Lake Erie, boarded up buildings littering downtown, plants closed. That was the Cleveland of the more recent past, the one with the bad rep.

The Cleveland in my mind's eye from the 1950 was prosperous and aspirational in all aspects. Families grew and moved to better and better suburbs with larger homes and better schools, each increasingly distant from the city center. Downtown was where you went for big-time shopping and museums. Mom bought the furniture for our new house in Hudson at Sterling, Linder and Davis, downtown. I went on the bus and then the trolley to the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland of my youth was a good, solid place to grow up.

But this city of Cleveland in present day was, what? Completely redone. Downtown full of lofts, 20 and 30-somethings popping into cafes with their Mac Books. Is that a software development company I see in the Rockefeller building? Good restaurants and corner bars, all with a vibe and personality of their own. New towers going up, newer stadiums, and of course, that destination unrivaled by others: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! Cleveland had a new personality. But pirogues and brats were still on her menu.

We stayed at a centrally located hotel right downtown, the Marriott Residence Inn Downtown, a historic hotel built in the last decade of the 1800s and now redone and symbolizing what Cleveland was and what it is now. We enjoyed the buffet breakfast in what must have been the grand ballroom, bedecked with fine stained glass windows, two in the ceiling and a bunch over windows. An arcade occupied one part of the hotel footprint and it was fun to walk down a balcony that in olden days held offices for various professionals, now mostly empty. The arcade main floor, and if you aren't familiar with their function in such cold weather locales then click here, holds a small and busy luncheonette, a chocolatier, a olde time barber shop, and numerous small but fascinating shops. It took me right back to the 1950s when Mom and I "went downtown" on the bus and trolley to shop.

 

 

The new Marriott Residence Inn that was the old Colonial Hotel.
(Photos courtesy the Marriott web site.)

 

 

Two of our old neighborhoods stayed exactly the same, excepting the new builds around the edges. We found Chagrin Falls and Hudson to be pretty much as we left them in 1964, with the addition of malls, larger stores, a supermarket or two, and of course plenty of new restaurants. The old stores had changed hands no doubt, and new ones took residence in their place.

 

 

Two ladies drinking tea at Sterling, Linder and Davis.

Courtesy of the Cleveland Memory Project.

 

The big Christmas tree at Sterling, Linder and Davis.

Courtesy of the Cleveland Memory Project.

 

 

I love to think about the flash and excitement of going downtown to see the big department stores in the 1950s, especially at Christmas time. If you are a fan of that holiday staple, "A Christmas Story", you'll be all too familiar with The Higbee Company and their store windows. The Cleveland Memory Project has a dandy selection of images from all the department stores and you can find them on their main page for the "Golden Age of Downtown Shopping". Just use the menu at center to find your favorite store.

 

The Terminal Tower still takes center stage on the square, but the Higbee Company is gone. I was thrilled to see the big brass sign still in place on the side of the building next to one of the display windows.

 

 

 

We all talked and talked as we drove around, about the old times and memories from childhood. Nice to hear Mom's version of events that I half remember. Even my brother remembers shopping for furniture with Mom for the new house in Hudson.

 

Sure, Cleveland has changed, but I'm liking her quite a bit now. She's getting back to that up-and-coming spirit I remember so well. I could see myself living there, either downtown with all the young people and the cafes but probably out in Chagrin Falls or Hudson, my old turf. More about those next time.

 

 

 

The Halle Department Store's Japanese Tea Room,

our favorite lunch spot. I still remember the children's luncheon special with all the little compartments for food, when I was happy to eat my spinach because it came in a little ceramic hen!

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/10/cleveland-city-changing-while-i-was-gone.html





Sentimental Sunday: When We Moved To Ohio

In the early months of 1952 Mom and Dad were living in their hometown of Frostburg, Maryland. They were both born and raised there, all their family was there, and all of their friends were there. When Mom didn't know why she felt so icky, she talked to her sister, Dot, who guessed correctly that she was pregnant, with me.

Frostburg was the kind of place the boys gladly returned to after World War II, married their high school sweetheart, bought a house, and started a family. Mom often talks of the decline of the Road Houses where the Big Bands of the war years and before played because people just wanted nothing more than to be home with family and friends. It was, after all, what the boys had fought for.

Their Friends

Mom and Dad at a gathering of friends during the War years.
Mom is seated and leaning in on the right and 

Dad is the guy with the big smile and striped tie.

Looks like fun!

 

Their Families

The Kelly side.

That's Dad on the very left, about 1942

A Kelly back yard picnic in the 1950s.

Mom's side with Mom left,

her Mother next and then her sister and brother.

Circa late 1930s.

 

Dad had a nice job as a boss at a munitions factory during the war. While he was there and nearing the end or after the close of fighting, a man from a plastics plant in Ohio came to visit and he and Dad hit it off. They stayed in touch and eventually Dad was offered a really excellent job in Ohio. Dad took it in October of 1952.

Mom wasn't thrilled. I know she wasn't thrilled because I found these photos of them having dinner with the next door neighbors, the Mendelsons, the evening before they left. That's the top photo. She's the only one not smiling. Then look at the one below that. It's Mom, Dad and me leaving the next morning to drive all the way to the village of Chagrin Falls, Ohio and start our new life. I'm oblivious but Mom is still not working up a smile... and she always smiles for the camera.

There's another photo of Mom and me in Chagrin Falls just after we moved. Darn it, I can't find it right now when I want it and that tells me I need to go back to my photo file and do more organization! It's always something.

Mom and Dad and the Mendelsons the evening before the trip to Ohio.

Mom is in the light color dress and Dad is to her left.

Here we are leaving little Frostburg for the mysteries of

Ohio and Chagrin Falls in October of 1952.

Sentimental Sunday is a blogging prompt of Geneabloggers:)