Mystery of Lost Aviator Paul Redfern Has Links to Toledo.

A crowd of thousands gather to see Redfern’s Stinson Detroiter prior to his departure from Sea Island. (Redfern Family Collection)

It will be 97 years this summer since the world last heard from Paul Rinaldo Redfern. The dashing young aviator was trying to make history as the first pilot ever to fly nonstop from the North America to South America. Tragically, he did make history, but not the kind he was seeking. Paul Redfern and his Stinson single engine plane vanished into the fog of mystery after he departed an airport in Brunswick Georgia that summer morning of 1927, leaving a behind him, a cheering crowd of well wishers and his worried bride from Toledo. In days to come, the only signs of him came from some reports that Redfern had indeed made it across the Carribean Sea and was spotted just off the coast of Venezuala when he flew low over some Norwegian fishing boats, and dropped some notes, while on a heading towards the mainland. What happened after that brief sighting? Over the next weeks, months and decades, his fate would become the subject of mystery, conjecture, hoaxes, sightings, hope and intrigue. Some say he made it to land, only to crash in the jungle and was severely injured, then taken captive by aboriginal natives in the rainforest. Some say they found pieces of his aircraft, and pieces of his clothing. Others claim there were reports of him taking a wife among the native tribes and having a child. In the end. No one knows for sure. His fate remains as mysterious as other ambition seeking aviators of the day who dared to defy the odds, only to become the stuff of legends.

Who was Paul Redfern and what was his connection to Toledo? To answer the first part of the question; Redfern was a dreamer. An ambitious dreamer. Son of a preacher and educator. His full name was Paul Rinaldo Redfern. Born in 1902 to Blanche and Dr. Frederick Redfern. While raised for part of his life in New York and Ohio, he spent his teenage years in in South Carolina where his father was a dean at  Benedict College. His mother taught English at Benedict. As a child, Paul would show great promise and intellect. He was said to be musical prodigy, his father wrote of him:

At an early age, Paul showed a strong mechanical inclination. His fascination with the violin led him to create one from a cigar box and a single string. He displayed exceptional musical ability by playing any tune that interested him. His unique technique involved holding the cigar-box fiddle between his knees and the staff against his shoulder. By age eleven, his exceptional playing caught the attention of the Idaho press, which featured his achievement and published his picture in a playing position.

Gertrude Hillbrand Redfern, his love from Toledo.

But Paul also had an keen mind for mechanics. He had so much natural talent in the understanding of the science and mechanics of aviation, that as a teenager, he built several small planes and gliders. At 16 years of age, he was asked by the U.S. Army to be a production inspector for their aircraft plant in New Jersey. He stayed with them until 1919. After the World War was over, he returned to South Carolina and finished high school. He build several more airplanes and after he graduated from high school, Paul acquired and flew a Curtiss Jenny JN-4 and a Dehavilland DH-4. It was then he began to realize his boyhood dream of making a living in the cockpit of an airplane. Operating out of the airport in Columbia, South Carolina, Paul started performing acrobatic stunts at county fairs, and became an “aerial advertising artist.” In addition to being a barnstormer, later he would work for the U.S. Customs office in spotting illegal whiskey stills from the air during prohibition. He also began to pioneer the first commercial flights, taking passengers to points North. Canada, New York and Ohio . It is not documented as what took him to Toledo, but by 1925, he had taken up residence in the Glass Cityand likely spent some time with other famous members of this pioneer flying fraternity in Toledo, such as Lincoln Beachey and the great Roy Knabenshue. It is in Toledo where he also flew promotional flights for numerous products, including a cigar company working for cigar salesman, Charles Hillebrand. Redfern’s job was to drop packages of the cigar samples around the city. As the story goes, Hillbrand and his wife invited the young fier over to their home for dinner and that’s when he met their daughter Gertrude. He fell in love at first sight with the pretty auburn haired 20 year old. The attraction was mutual. It didn’t take long for the two of them to begin a relationship and soon, they were married ny January of 1925. They lived for awhile in Toledo, but Paul was offered a job in Georgia and they moved from Toledo to Savannah where he got his job with U.S. customs as a flying revenue agent, finding illegal stills from the air.

Redfern and his wife Gertrude pose with the biplane he built after high school. (Redfern Family Collection)

Redfern obviously loved challenges and with the arrogance of youth, he jumped at the chance to accept a challenge to become the first pilot to fly solo from North to South American, non stop. The year was 1927. Lindberg had just made history flying from the US to Paris. Redfern wanted to break that distance record for a solo flight and this would be that opportunity. It would be a 4600 mile flight and would require at least two-days of being fully awake at the controls. The City of Brunswick Georgia said they would pay 25,000 to the first pilot who could achieve the feat and fly from their nearby airport on Sea Island Beach. It was the same amout that Charles Lindberg had earned just, a few months before. Redfern was certain he could do the same and more.

Barriers to Reaching Brazil

On Wednesday morning, August 25, 1927, Paul Redfern and his wife Gertrude appeared at Sea Island to greet the thousands of well wishers, photographers and reporters who gathered to see him this attempt to set a new long distance flight record. His green and yellow Stinson SM-1 Detroiter monoplane that he purchased from his friend Eddie Stinson in Detroit had been christened “Port of Brunswick”. The signs around the airport exclaimed “Brazil or Bust”.

The arduous journey by air would take him over the Atlantic Ocean and the Carribean and then over the tangled and dangerous jungles of the Amazon rainforest before reaching his destination of Rio De Janeiro. No shortages of hazards were involved.

His marathon flight to Rio de Janeiro would cover 4600 miles, over miles of untamed and hostile jungles and mountains of Brazil.

The daunting itinerary provoked many questions. Could the plane stay aloft for those long hours of operations? Could Redfern stay awake? Even Lindberg admitted that he kept falling asleep on his transAtlantic flight to Paris. If he did crash in the jungle, would he survive? Or would he fall victim to the dangerous animals reptiles, and the hostile natives who inhabited the remote area? Redfern did bring some guns and a rifle with them for that possibility. He even packed some fishing gear and flares. He was undeterred and determined to break Lindberg’s distance record. If he did, he would eclipse that record by a thousand miles. And like Lindberg, in these early days of aviation, there was radio or altimeter or other modern avionics to help navigate. All he had was a compass and a map and a dream. And hopefully enough fuel.

He tried to allay the fears of friends and fears by saying he thought if he should have to crash land in the jungle he could still survive and someday emerge and not to give up on him “if you don’t hear from me maybe for weeks or months”.

Paul Redfern, Bound for Brazil

Paul’s take off from the beach airport in Georgia was officially recorded 12:46 p.m. He taxied the airplane down the beach and then as wife watched with a cheerful smile, the Stinson Detroiter slowly lifted above the horizon and then turned towards the sea on its way to South America. The crowd watched intensely as the planee droned over the water and out of sight. It was written by one reporter that his new Toledo bride, Gertrude Redfern watched tearfully and collapsed into the arms of a friend. Reality was upon her. Her beloved husband, Paul Redfern, was out of her embrace and out of her sight and she didn’t know if she would ever see him again.

The cheerful smile fell from her face and she couldn’t hold back her emotion and sobs. Paul soared over the Atlantic Ocean, heading southeast at 85 miles an hour. He managed to survive the first night in the air and the next morning off the coast of South America he saw a ship below him in the ocean. It was the Norwegian tramp steamer Christian Krohg. He dropped his altitude and descended to the ship and threw package with a note asking for directions to South America. The steamer captain pointed the bow Westward. According to this account, Redfern apparently had succeeded in traversing the miles over the ocean. Then later that day, Lee Dennison, an American engineer, reported seeing his plane, The Port of Brunswick, flying over Venezuela’s Ciudad Bolivar Plaza. But it was not a jubilant sighting. He said the plane was “trailing a thin wisp of black smoke.” If that indeed was Redfern plane, it was the last time it was seen.

Paul Redfern Vanishes

As Redfern was to wing his way south to Rio De Janeiro, hundreds of Brazilians were ready to great him at the airport and carry him into the city. Those in the waiting crowd were Washington Luis, President of Brazil, and Clara Bow, silent movie star. His plan was to drop some flares over the town of Macapa to signal whether or would make it to Rio or try to land at at the alternate site of Pernambuco. It would depend on weather and fuel supply.

As the hours dragged on, however, there were no flares sighted. No flares, nor any sign from the intrepid flier as thousands of people scanned the skies. watching and waiting. With no sighting that third evening, it was apparent that he either had run out of fuel and crashed, or had been forced to make a landing along a 2,500 mile route that stretched from the jungles of the Amazon to the mountains. Over the next days, the world was on edge awaiting some word from Redfern that he was okay. His wife, Gertrude was thrilled with the early story that he had been seen over Venezuela and believed at that time that her husband was safe, wherever, he may be.

Searching for Paul Redfern and the Port of Brunswick

The long days though would turn to long weeks, and the hope would turn to resignation that Redfern’s fate was dubious at best. Over the next ten years, Paul’s family, including his wife, all traveled to the remote area of Brazil in search expeditions to see if they could find some shred of evidence or a clue to provide more information of his whereabouts and whether he was dead or alive. Every now and then, this void of information was filled by bush pilots or missionaries who would come forward with stories that he was seen alive. That he had crash landed and stranded in the jungle. In 1932, an American engineer named Charles Hasler made headline when he claimed that Indian natives were holding an American pilot whose legs had been broken, but the information was so limited that no expedition was organized.

In 1935, another story emerged of a “white man who came out of the sky, had both legs broken, and lived in an Indian village”. Similar accounts surfaced from jungle inhabitants in remote villages. Rescue and search parties formed, but after weeks of exploration, nothing was ever found. Rumors persisted.

The Searches Continue and Hope Lingers

Pilot Art Williams (second from left) led a search in Brazil for Redfern nine years after he disappeared. (Courtesy of the Paul Rinaldo Redfern Aviation Society of Columbia, S.C.)

Pilot Art Williams, in British Guiana, reported that in early 1936, that he passed over an Indian village in Brazil and that the Indians fled into the jungle but he saw “a lone white man standing in the open and waving frantically to the plane.” Williams said he later took a friend and they went back to the area with a small boat in an effort, but says when they finaly got to the village, a heavily armed tribe of Indians met them and they narrowly escaped with their lives.

Another expedition was launched the next year in February 1936, when an American Legion Post in the Panama Canal Zone put together an attempt to find Redfern. CBSNews correspondent James A. Ryan also accompanied the expedition. To pay the trip, the group issued five thousand “Redfern Rescue” stamp covers that had postmarked from Dutch Guiana to sell to stamp collectors. One customer, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who bought two of the “Redfern Rescue” covers.

The search effort not only failed but ended in disaster and one man emerged from the jugle to report they found trace of Redfern and that CBS correspondent James Ryan had drowned when his canoe tipped over in a river. 

Wife and Family Suffer From Cruel Hoax

There were more than a dozen search efforts made to find the lost pilot, but none to cold a cruel and the one in 1936 that fanned new hope that Redfern may indeed be alive and living as “white god” among a tribe of natives. It turned out to be nothing more than a despicable hoax.

Alfred Harred, a freelance reporter said he and the former pilot Art William actually found Redfern on in area on the Brazilain border with French Guiana. They said Redfern was living with a tribe of nude Indians and was hobbling around on crutches. His airplane was still hanging in the branches of a big tree.

He says Paul Redfern told them that when he crashed the plane, his legs and arms were broken, but eventually healed and married an Indian woman. He says they had a son. Harred claims that he and Art Williams were chased away from the village because the tribe thought they were going to take Paul redfern away. They fled under the threat of poison arrows and violence. This fantastic story as related by Alfred Harred were spread quickly around the world, it fell apart like a cheap suit in the rain. When reporters tried to contact Art Williams, he denied everything saying he never met Redfern and never met Alred Harred who would eventually admit it was all fiction.

The Final Rescue and Search Attempt

Amelia Earhart

By the fall of 1937, there was yet another massive search effort underway to find yet another missing aviator.   The object of this search: Amelia Earhart who vanished in her Lockheed Model 10 Electra in July of that year. As the world trained its attention on a remote island in the south Pacific where her plane was last heard from on a round the world attempt, the Redfern story seemed to fall to the margins. The world’s press was not as interested it seemed and Redfern’s fate was fading from the newsprint.

That however did not deter Paul Redfern’s family in their quest to get some answers. Ten years had passed but they wanted to try one more time to find their son and Gertrude’s husband. In 1937, they requested New York explorer Theodore J. Waldeck to lead an expedition from British Guiana. This attempt was risky and deadly. The expedition became marooned at a place called Devil’s Hole on the remote Cuyuni River . One of the men on the trip, Dr. Frederick Fox of New York, contracted jungle fever and died. He was buried on site as the others kept travelling until April 27, 1938. On that day, Theodore Waldeck reported that he had found the wreckage of the Port of New Brunswick in Venezuela. He says he could prove that Paul Redfern was in fact dead, but for some reason he never did. So as far as many were concerned, the young aviator’s fate was still unknown. His parents never gave up hoping that someday he might walk out the jungle and walk back into their lives.

His wife Gertrude also held on to hope for many years, but finally, after she too had gone to South America on one of the many expeditions, she also became more convinced that his fate was tragic, and decided it was best to move on with her life, as best she could. While living and working in Detroit, she petitioned a Michigan court to have her husband declared legally deceased. They had no children, and Gertrude never remarried. The Toledo native lived the balance of her life as a single widow and and died in 1981.

.The story of Paul and Gertrude Redfern is hardly recorded in Toledo. More so in Redfern’s South Carolina. At the time, as the drama was unfolding, the Toledo papers heavily covered this local-interest real life adventure mystery. But news stories do have a limited “shelf life”, even one as compelling as this. When Gertrude Redfern passed away in 1981, there was no significant story in the Blade’s obituary, but just a mere mention of the fact of her dead pilot husband’s disappearnce in South America. The story had lost its luster with each passing decade along with the generations of Toledoans who might have followed its many twists and turns.

But Redfern’s tale has been given some new lift in recent years. The world it seems loves a good mystery and this is surely one of them. Will we ever really know what happened? And could there have been a seed of truth in all the reports that he in fact did crash and survived. There are many who still believe the end of the Redfern tale did not end with a fatal plane crash. And that he may have survived. There are others who think he may have veered far off course and the searchers were all loooking in the wrong place. Whatever and wherever his fate, Redfern’s name is now a legend. At Rio de Janiero, there is even a street named for him. Back at home, in South Carolina, his high school in Columbia bears a plaque and a sign in his memory, as does the airfield in Brunswick, Georgia. In South Carolina there is a group called the Paul Rinaldo Redfern Aviation Society. The group reportedly meets every August 25th, at exactly 12:46 p.m., the exact time that Redfern’s Stinson Detroiter, called the “Port of Brunswick” crawled down the runway, lifted into the blue and disappeared over the horizon on that summer morning in 1927. At that appointed time they hold a ceremony and they raise a glass, maybe more, to this one-time Toledo aviation pioneer, wherever he may be.

Paul Redfern and his Father Frederick Redfern in front of the Stinson Detroiter that took him to eternity

What Ancient Secrets Lie Beneath Maumee Bay State Parks?

Maumee Bay State Park is one of Ohio’s most popular tourist spots drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. But long before this Lake Erie shoreline attraction became a summertime mecca for swimmers, campers and golfers, it was reported to be the site of a stunning archaeological discovery. In 1895, on October 24th, it was widely reported in many newspapers throughout the country that a prehistoric Indian mound was found on the site which was known as the Niles Farm at the time, owned by well known writer and lawyer, Henry Thayer Niles.

Henry Thayer Niles owned Niles Beach along Lake Erie

Inside the mound, about 12 feet below the surface, 20 skeletons were found in a “sitting posture” and near each skeleton was a curious piece of pottery, “different from other mounds in other localities”. The skeletons, however were said to have crumbled upon exposure to air and “fell to dust”. However it was reported that two skulls were recovered and stayed intact. They measured about the same size as a normal human skull, but had much larger, heavier and stronger jawbones”. It was also reported that the niece of Henry Thayer, Niles who was a student of ancient cultures was there for the excavation, along with her uncle Henry. The newspaper wire accounts say each skeleton’s face was turned toward the east. And estimated that each bowl of pottery would hold about a gallon of fluid and that the edges of the bowls were “fluted” or “crimped” unlike most pottery of this type. The pottery also had pictographs or hieroglyphic type images on its sides. The age of the remains and mound were unknown, but Henry Nile’s niece estimated that they could have been several thousand years old. As to what other excavations may have followed on the Niles property, if any, is an unknown, as well as the eventual whereabouts of the pottery, the skulls and other artifacts that were unearthed that day. Such discoveries of earlier civilization in the Black Swamp during the 1800’s were not uncommon. Less than a year later in 1896, a similar revelation was made when several “ancient Indian” skeletons were recovered from an earthen mound in what used to be the Ironville neighborhood of East Toledo, roughly located in the area of Millard and Front Streets. That particular area was said by early settlers to be inhabited by several Indian settlements along the riverfront at Maumee Bay. However, what relationship those “ancient” burial sites might have had to the latter day Native Americans living in the area in the 1800’s is unknown.

It’s believed that in Lucas County alone there were as many as a dozen “ancient” sites. Perhaps more. Sadly though, most of them are invisible to us today. Assigned to obscure newspaper articles, diaries of pioneers or the conjecture of researchers. Most of the locations in the Toledo area that were discovered were never excavated with any scientific method, so as a result, we know relatively little about them or where they were. The only place that is officially marked, noting the existence of these ancient people, is found on Miami Street in East Toledo where the city’s earliest settlers found a large earthworks of an aboriginal fort situated atop the banks overlooking the narrow bend in the Maumee river. The fort was likely placed there strategically so that the ancient inhabitants could detect any movement from any potential adversaries on the river in both directions. Those earthworks and artifacts, however, were likely obliterated by the ambitions of a hungry plow. As the new residents of the 1830’s and 40’s were eager to work the soil and get crops in the ground, they were likely unconcerned with such historical curiosities in the course of their labor.

An article from the Toledo Blade in the 1930’s, featured an interview with the Herbert Whitmore, who was a descendant of one of the original pioneer families who settled along that area of the Maumee River. It was noted in the story that the family still had several artifacts taken from the fort site as the early settlers tilled the land for farming. Pots, arrowheads and even a French Axe was found as it was believed that the early French explorers in the 1700’s may have made camp at the site, long before the first pioneers from the East came to make it their home. At this time, a stone marker, is the only thing that denotes the prehistoric fort’s existence. It was placed there in the early 1940’s by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Today, it remains as a mere roadside curiosity dwarfed by the grain elevators that tower above it and discolored by the exhaust of the cars and trucks that speed past it. For what it’s worth: A street adjacent to the marker was even named Fort Street at one time, but even that has been changed. it is now Hathaway Street. So time moves on. As time moved on into the 1970’s, the desire by the state of Ohio to build a new state park on the area known as the Niles Farm in Eastern Lucas County was turning from talk to action.

Niles Beach(above) circa 1950 was a popular place for people to gather along the lake.

Long after the Niles family owned the land and operated a farm there, much of the lakeshore property had become a “resort” areas with summer cottages and a popular place for Toledo families from the 1920’s to the 1960’s to use the small stretch of beach as a summer playground on the lake. A massive storm and flood destroyed many of the little cottages in the fall of 1972.

By 1975, the land of the old Niles Farm was sold to the state and was even called a state park in advent of the project. One of the studies undertaken to determine what impact such an endeavor would have on this fragile wetlands environment along the lake was an archaeological evaluation. It involved some limited excavations in the sand bermed area known as Niles Beach. Roughly, just east of where the current state park lodge is located. The report from 1981 on the historical importance of the area was conducted by a team of well known and respected archaeologists. It included Dr. Michael Pratt, a familiar name in Northwest Ohio for other historic investigations he has conducted throughout the area. This particular survey of the old Niles Farm and the heavily wooded beach area did turn up a variety of artifacts of ancient peoples. Almost 90 in all. Some ceramic, such as ceramic pottery or sherds, and some made of stone, such as grinding tools, points and flakes from chert or flint. It was also noted that hundreds of artifacts had already been taken and removed from the site by a man named Eugene Paulsen of nearby Genoa. He told the investigators that he probably removed over 200 pieces of pottery and other lithic or stone items that he found embedded in the clay or washed ashore near the beach. What happened to those artifacts that were accumulated by Mr. Paulsen are unknown.

The final report said all of the artifacts found at the site in the 1981 search were probably from 1300 to 1500 A.D and were from the late Woodland people. Of the other artifacts found by other collectors – those artifacts represented every culture from the Paleo Indian through the modern day “Indians” of the 1800’s.. Missing from their report was the story of the 1895 burial mound that was unearthed with the 20 skeletons inside. That historical event was never mentioned, by ignorance of it, or design. Not sure. It did say that earlier artifact discovery sites were now obscured by the rising lake levels which had essentially puts hundreds of feet of historic shoreline underwater. The researchers concluded that the Niles Farm and Beach site had such little historical significance that it would not need to be put on the National Historic Register and should not impact the building of a park. Within a few years, the bulldozers and earth moving equipment began carving up the old Niles Farm into a plat of roadways, parking lots, campsites, a lodge and cabins and a golf course. And Maumee State Park is now a reality. One can only wonder what or whom may be buried beneath.

Toledo Showman Leaves Legacy in Lights

When Toledo was still in its adolescence as a city and flexing its Midwestern muscle in the world of industry and commerce, it required leaders with vision. And in the early years of the 20th century, it could be argued that Toledo had no shortage of such ambitious visionaries. Mayor Samuel Jones, Brand Whitlock, The Lamson and Tietdke brothers,  John Gunckel, Edward D. Libbey,  Michael Owens, Edward Ford  or suffragette Rosa Segur, Inventor Lyman Spitzer, and developer George Ketcham.   There are many others and the list is lengthy of those who left heavy footprints on the city’s pathway to the industrial and social future.  Public entertainment and theatre were also a key part of life in the city in those years and one man, Frank Burt, played a major role in creating venues where hard working Toledoans could find a few hours of relaxation and laughs.  Unlike many,  Burt’s legacy did not fade away with the decades. Even though his name has largely been lost in the dust of time, his venues continue to live on and and his creations continue to entertain. Frank, the son of a Confederate officer was born in Louisiana and his birth name was Frank Burton Fulenwider, but his father, frowned on Frank entering the world of showbusiness and forbade him to use the family name, so Frank became Frank Burt. In the 1890’s Frank came to Toledo almost penniless, but soon landed a job as manager of the Casino theater near Point Place and within time, his eager ambition made him a successful showman as owner of numerous theaters and entertainment venues nationwide. Ever the showman, he would became the focal point of his own melodrama that almost shortened his career and legacy. On a warm spring night in May of 1904,  he was shot and gravely wounded by his irate wife in front of his theater, the Burt Theater at Jefferson and Ontario.

The Burt Theater as it stands today on Jefferson

Addie Burt had pulled up in her carraige, and saw him talking with a man under the marquee of the theater and she wanted Frank to go inside the theater where they could talk. Frank refused. It was then she reached into the folds of her dress and withdrew a small pistol and opened fire on Frank. One of the bullets went through a cheek and exited out his eye socket, She hurried away and while Burt, who was still able to move, ran to a nearby saloon for help.  Frank later said that Addie shot him because she suspected he was having an affair with another woman. Earlier that morning he had served her with divorce papers.

The young Burt would later recover from his wounds, but the marriage didn’t survive. And ironically while Frank managed to live, six months later Addie Burt died of sudden brain inflammation.

That turn of events allowed to Frank to marry the young showgirl, Candace Morgan, with whom he was indeed having an affair.  That wedlock and his marriage to his ambitions as a theater promoter lived on for another two decades.

At the time of the shooting Frank Burt, a former Vaudevillian himself, was listed in the papers as owning more than eight theaters around the country including the Burt and Lyceum Theaters in Toledo, and other theaters in Ft. Wayne, Lima, Evansville, Youngstown and other cities in the area.

The Casino, circa 1900, Burt was part owner

He was also a part owner of the Toledo Casino at Point Place and had an investment in the newest amusement park on Lake Erie, called Cedar Point in Sandusky.

As for the Burt Theater in Toledo, he opened it in 1898 as a copy of a 15th century Venetian palace complete with a row of ornate gothic columns and balconies.

The 1565 seat theater also featured an extra wide row called a “fat man’s row”.

Patrons were offered a variety of daily shows of early Vaudeville performances and melodramas, but like many “live” theaters of its era, the popularity was eclipsed by the growth of moving picture houses.

In 1907, Frank Burt would have another brush with death, suffering painful injuries when he was trying to crank his automobile and it jumped into gear and pinned him against a light pole crushing his legs.

After healing and regaining his strength, Burt left Toledo in `1908 and moved into new areas of theatrical interest to pursue even greater achievements.

He was by most measure, a master showman and creative and enterprising amusement park manager and his reputation became legendary across the nation.

Lakside Amusement Park near Denver

By 1912, he was managing the popular Lakeside Amusement Park in the bustling city of Denver, and a few years later, he began dividing his time between Denver and California when he took the role as concessions manager of the Pan American Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915.

After the Exposition, Burt moved south to the coastal town of Seal Beach California where he developed and managed the Seal Beach Amusement Park, or “Joy Zone” in California which opened in 1916.

The Joy Zone at Panama Expo in 1915

His colorful presence there left an indelible impression on the town he is remembered fondly by local historians.

One of his claims to fame was the promotion of dare-devil air stunts including wing walkers, and aerobatic performers.

Some of his projects still live to this day as a legacy to his talents and vision, Cedar Point, The Lakeside Amusement Park near Denver and the still standing theater building that bears his name in Toledo, the Burt Theater.

After those ventures in California, like many at the time, Burt was bitten with the “movie” bug. He and his wife moved north to the San Francisco area to start a movie colony in that part of the state. But after a few ill-fated movies and bouts of illness. Burt’s star would no longer rise.

Frank Burt died in 1924.

But the old Burt theater did not die. In later years, it inspired a new showman for Toledo.

As downtown Toledo evolved, the old Burt theater would find a new life as the home venue for another great showman. Duane Abbajay. Duane took the reigns of the theater in 1962 when it was the very popular Peppermint Club where Jerry Lee Lewis would amaze audiences with his energy and musical prowess. Abbajay brought in many top acts, including Chubby Checker, Little Richard and the Everly Brothers. 

But as Duane saw the rising popularity of country music in the 1970’s, he took the theater in another direction and the club became the Country Palace and would fill the venue by booking top country acts of the day including Waylon Jennings.  It also earned a national claim to fame by being mentioned in Kenny Roger’s famous ballad “Lucille”.  Set in a “bar room in Toledo across the from depot”, the song’s creator Hal Bynum is reputed to have witnessed a scene at the Palace one day that inspired the song’s story.

After Abbajay sold the club, 725 Jefferson became a popular drag show venue known as Ceaser’s Show Bar. The operation and reputation of Ceaser’s flourished for well over a decade before, its lights were dimmed by time and an out of control city bus that rammed the front entrance. It was the proverbial show stopper.

 There was talk about tearing the building down, but thankfully rational heads prevailed. Its history and architectural features were saved from the wrecking ball of progress by those who recognized that it still had value and good bones. The county’s Land Bank took control in 2013 and it has since been rescued by a new owner who has plans for preserving this historic treasure of Toledo for future use.  Stayed tuned. The old Burt Theater at Ontario and Jefferson may yet have a new life and somewhere Frank Burt is smiling.

The Fostoria Company That Made History Come Alive.

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It hardly seems likely, but there was once a modest little red brick building on Center Street  in Fostoria Ohio that put more people under the lights of the stage and theater than probably any other drama producers this side of Broadway. From coast-to-coast, for most of the 1900’s, thousands of communities, large and small, would become seduced by the bright lights and the scriptwriters from this Fostoria company who helped those regular folks put on the grease paint and costumes so they could “put on a play”. Not just any typical community theater production, but grand outdoor pageants designed to highlight the histories of those communities that were celebrating centennials, or other significant milestones of their heritage.

The company was the John B. Rogers Company, started in 1903, by Mr. John Rogers, an attorney from Fostoria who used the various talents of local actors and musicians to stage his own local dramas and musicals. Enjoying early success, Rogers soon expanded the concept and began employing the talents and eagerness of other amateurs in other communities to celebrate the anniversaries and centennials.  Many of the early productions were performed on indoor stages as operas, or minstrel shows. As the years progressed the company began selling community leaders on the idea of staging elaborate Centennial anniversaries, or commemorations of notable events of history from their area.  

The shows would often utilize a cast of hundreds of people, a truckload of period costumes, various animals, a large rolling stock of wagon and cars, plus a wealth of music scores, and about a dozen choreographed dance routines. In later years, the Rogers’ directors included early forms of multi media complete with slide shows, sound effects and pyrotechnics. Most of these elaborate shows were performed on a hand-crafted grand stage, made of platforms, scaffolding and curtains about 200 feet in length. It was built strategically on a football field where thousands of people attended the spectaculars from the stands.

These pageants were usually the culmination of a year-long celebration of the centennial or the sesqui-centennial at a 150 years. After World War Two, company officials estimated the Rogers’ Company produced over 5,000 of these shows before they finally closed down operations in 1977 in Fostoria, however another company bought the Rogers inventory and moved it to the Pittsburgh area where it continued until the 1980’s. 
The Rogers company, on average, would produce about 70 shows a summer. Most of operations focused on small town America where local communities would pay a fee for the Rogers company to design a celebration plan for them, that included not just an outdoor historical pageant, but would also give them an organization “plan of action” with which the townspeople could use to stage the entire year-long celebration. Those festivities always included beard contests, vintage clothing sales, commemorative dinner plates, historical programs and photos, wooden nickels, and other souvenirs of the community’s celebration. In the final six weeks of the event, the company would assign a director-business manager to the town to direct the pageant and generally oversee the celebration to ensure that company procedures and fiscal policies were being followed.

 

This writer became very familiar with the Rogers Company when I went to work for them in the summer of 1969, as a wet-behind-the-ears 20-year-old freshly minted “director”. Yes, I was unusually young for this type of heady assignment, but not one to shrink from adventure. One spring morning, I flew to points south to begin my director’s training in the small southern community of Clayton North Carolina, a few miles south of Raleigh.

(My first association with Rogers came the summer before when I took part in their production of Genoa Ohio’s centennial pageant in 1968. I was a theater major at the time, and the chance to work for Rogers the next summer was an experience of a lifetime)

Because this story was intended to be about the Rogers’ Company, and not about me, I’ll try to refrain from too much self-indulgence, but I will attempt to provide a unique perspective of the company and the effect in had on the communities they worked with.

The Clayton show was special and somewhat atypical because it was being directed by the Vice President of the company, George S. Elias. A man as unforgettable as he was skilled at his craft. With hundreds of Rogers shows on his long lists of credits, George also brought to his mini-school of new directors, an unflinching passion for the world of show business and showmanship. His stocky build,his soft blue eyes, and a face framed by a shock of graying blond hair, combined with a friendly smile and quick wit, had little trouble getting the attention of those around him. Be they young directors, novice actors or the most influential community’s leaders. I was fortunate to have had George Elias as a mentor in those early years.

 

George’s proudest accomplishment as a Rogers’ director was no doubt his annual reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand at the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. It was a brilliant idea designed to raise money every year for the reservation and to tell the story of this great American story from the perspective of the Indians who crushed Custer’s 7th Calvary unit.
Elias for a number of years wrote and directed the spectacular battle scene, in classic Cecil B. DeMille’s style with bull-horn in hand, directing the hundreds of actors on horses with guns and arrows to be brutal and violent, while at the same time imploring them not to hurt anyone. Elias became so loved by the Crow Nation, he was made an honorary tribe member. By 1969, Elias was on set with director Arthur Penn, offering technical advice in the production of the movie “Little Big Man” with Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway. Elias called me in June of 1969 to ask if I wanted to come out for the weekend to see the battle scenes being shot and to meet with Penn and the crew. I declined. A decision I have always regretted.

George Elias was not the only Rogers’ director whose roots were buried deep in the loam of Hollywood and Broadway. There were many others, including screen writers, dancers, actors, and behind the scenes technicians, who joined this Fostoria company during the summer months to earn some extra money and to experience a rich slice of pure Americana. One of the most popular directors for the company during its last years in operation was Carl Hawley, a Hollywood scriptwriter and showman who delighted in lending his experience and talents to these small town productions.

 

In 1968, Hawley and his wife LaFaye, produced a show for Brookfield, Illinois’s 75th anniversary, called the Diamond Jubilee. The local paper wrote of Hawley.

Everything was coming together. In late June “congenial” Carl Hawley, of Hollywood, Calif., arrived in Brookfield to produce and direct the pageant. Apparently no local person could come up to the standards needed for this job, so Hawley was sent for by the Rogers Company.
Hawley was a true showman, in the best “S.E. Gross” style, brimming over with good nature, optimism and a fine sense of flamboyance. And he had 20 years’ worth of experience in promoting such spectaculars as this.
The July 3rd Enterprise reported that   “he has worked with a number of movie stars before joining the Rogers Company. He has assisted in producing and directing James Arness in ‘Gunsmoke,’ Red Skelton and others. He has also traveled with Bing Crosby and appeared in movies under the name Carlos Fernando.”
On his pinky finger, Hawley wore an outrageously large ring, with a gigantic diamond in it that would’ve made Eva Gabor jealous, if it were real. He wore it, he said, as a symbol of Brookfield’s Diamond Jubilee. In early July, his wife, LaFaye, arrived to help co-produce and direct.

There were many directors in the history of the Rogers company and they essentially became the public face of this mostly obscure Northwest Ohio company that provided a wealth of memories to hundreds of thousands of people across the nation. One of their long time directors, Phillys Shelflow, left her Hollywood home each year along with her husband to direct and choreograph the pageants. She said in a 1968 interview that she loved the work because it was all about “bringing America to Americans”.
And speaking from my own experience as a Roger’s director, this seemed to be the essence of each celebration and each production. Every celebration would not only feature the pageant, but a “queen’s contest” which allowed local women in the town to sell tickets to the big show and the woman who sold the most won the crown and a truckload full of prizes from local merchants. Each celebration also featured beard growing contests for the men any man who grew some facial hair was encouraged to join the “Brothers of the Brush” which involved buying a button, an old-fashioned bow tie, and maybe a top hat or some other type of historic fashion.

The ladies, as well could pick through the racks of beautiful recreation of historic period dresses of many type which were at the Centennial store.

This store was also the headquarters for the event and was the place where everything was coordinated, meetings were and a variety of commemorative items were up for sale. Items that were mostly produced or brokered by the Rogers’ company. In fact the Rogers company also owned another firm called the Ohm Company which specialized in various trinkets, badges, hats and ties that most folks, who got into the celebratory spirit were eager to buy. It was a win-win-win situation. The town, the Rogers company and the director all shared a cut of the profits.

While money and the American “profit motive” were certainly in play for the Rogers Company, I always sensed that the owners and directors were motivated by more than just the almighty dollar, and that the greatest reward was in the sense of community these productions created.  In the smaller towns across the country who got caught up in the spirit of the celebration, the people who took part often found themselves making new friends, sharing new experiences and generally painting some indelible memories they carried for many years.

 

One case in point, was my first show I directed on my own which was in Newell, Iowa. A small farming hamlet of 700 citizens in Northwest Iowa, not far from Storm Lake, and about 60 miles east of Sioux City. It was essentially in the middle of nowhere and I thought I’d be dealing with some pretty dusty folks who had corn silk in their ears. How wrong I was. This little town was as prosperus and progressive as any town I had ever known, and  . the townspeople of this bucolic village were as energetic and friendly and competent as any I have ever encountered throughout the rest of my life. These folks knew how to have fun. A small town with a big heart. I learned a lot from them and never forgot their hospitality and zest for life. The show and the celebration of the town’s 100th birthday was a grand success. I was proud to be a part of it.  In 2004, 35 years after the 1969 Newell Iowa Centennial. I decided to visit that small town again while on a trip out West. The intervening years had taken their toll.  Much of Newell had physically changed, with closed up store fronts, and fewer downtown businesses. But more importantly, the people had not changed. Many of the same folks instrumental in putting the celebration together were still there, 35 years older, but just as eager as ever to have a good time. They held a party for me and my family. I was humbled. We reminisced, we laughed, we drank, we traded stories, and we paid tribute to those who had passed on, and by the night’s end, we made the past come alive again.  I also realized that the Centennial they observed in 1969 was more than just a one week event. It had stayed with them for decades. Several told me that it was the biggest thing that had ever happened in their little town and it was a very important time in their lives. One they would never forget. Nor shall I.

The work of the Rogers Company may be over, but still quietly lives on in thousands of towns across America.

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  The Rogers Room At The Fostoria Museum

Mystery “Death Ray” Inventor Lived in Toledo

One of the motivations I had for starting this blog ten years ago in 2010 was my passion for discovering people and events of the past that had been largely ignored, forgotten or assigned to the junk drawer of history.

Every now and then I spend some time sorting through that old junk drawer and without fail, I tend to find a few gems. Such was the case this week when I came upon the story of Maurice J. Francill. Born in Marion Ohio just before the start of the 20^th century, Maurice, whose given name at birth, was Francis Marion Cowgill,(he changed his name later in life) would spend most of life exploring the mystery and magic of radio. In fact, he was known as the Radio Wizard, and by the early 1920’s he was stunning audiences around the country with his ability to use radio waves to control mechanical devices. From toys to cars to trains, Maurice Francill had figured out the technology of “remote control”. Recall that in the 1920’s, most people were still wrapping their head around the remarkable new concept of listening to people speak from far off cities on a crystal radio in their living rooms.

This was big magic to most people at the time. It was a technology in its infancy and radio stations were just at the early stages of development. Toledo would not have a radio station until 1925. But here was Maurice Francill, already showing people how radio waves could not only travel through the invisible “ether” of air, but how those waves could make things move.

Local Audiences Awed By Francill’s Shows

In the February 10^th , 1923 Edition of the Coshocton Tribune, Francill was demonstrating a remote controlled automobile on the city streets of Coshocton as part of a radio exhibition that was touring the country.

The paper wrote: The machine he will demonstrate tonight is valued at ten thousand dollars and required a year to build. The machine is equipped with a radio selector which makes it possible to perform an operation request from any member of the audience, much in the same manner as if it had “mechanical brains”.

From that description it may be safe to conclude that Maurice Francill, who would later move his operations to Toledo, was the inventor, not just of remote control, but the first autonomous car. That was almost 100 years ago.

Francill would continue his demonstrations for curious eyes in a broad swath of cities and towns across the nation. In New Castle Pennsylvania in 1926 Radio Wizard Francill gave demonstrations at a car dealership of his invention showing the crowd how he could start the automobile, flash its lights, honk its horn or turn its wheel “without the touch of a human hand”. The newspaper writer reflected on what this “remote control” technology might mean for future. Francill even allowed people in the showroom to thoroughly inspect the car to make sure it wasn’t rigged with a hidden driver or wires. It wasn’t. The article also said Francill demonstrated how to fry an egg on a block of ice using this technology, but didn’t elaborate.

His amazing feats before thousands of people would be repeated maimes over from Newark Ohio to Reno Nevada with many stops in between. In Waterloo Iowa in 1927, thousands of onlookers jammed various points of the city to watch in awe as he drove a Hudson Essex down a city street, turned on a washing machine at a city laundry, and started up an ice factory with the press of a button on his 15 pound radio transmitter from a remote location. He was theRadio Wizard. His creativity for finding new applications was impressive. In 1929, In Newark,Ohio he was demonstrating at a local dairy, how his radio device could operate a mechanical milking machine for cows. He repeated the same stunt on stage at a theater in Lima in 1929, and the newspaper reported that the cow, “Duchess” was calmly brought onto the stage and Francill, was able to extract 40 pounds of milk which cascaded into the bucket like “Niagara Falls”. On that same trip to Lima he also showed how radio could be used to operate a street car, and he did it for all to see.

It is not apparent if Francill had succeeded in finding commercial uses for his new radio technology. However, because Francill was seen by many as an entertainer and not a scientist, his credentials and credibility may have been questioned as a serious inventor. Especially when considering that many of his shows also included spiritualism and Seance features. But it was hard to deny that he did have something tangible to provide audiences who marveled at his ability to drive a car, or a play a violin or milk a cow without the aid of a human hand.

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It was the stuff of the future and in the 1920’s and 30’s, the science of radio was the new frontier of possibility and Francill brought some of that “wonder” to hometown America.

As far back at 1926 in an interview with a Reno Nevada reporter, Francill said he had built a death ray machine that could stop a beating heart and wanted to try it our on a convicted murderer who was condemned to die. He said he was asking some state governors to let him try it. He was convinced that the death ray technology would be the technology of future wars when armies would be able to use them to “annihilate people by the hundreds”. He also predicted it would become a popular crime fighting tool, for it not only could kill people, but kill the engines of speeding getaway vehicles and could start distant fires. His discovery of the“death ray”, he said, was found by accident while doing other experiments. He held its technology as a closely guarded secret lest it fall into the wrong hands of amateurs.

He also would later demonstrate the use of “light rays” which he touted as a new method to broadcast voice transmission on a,beam of light. He felt this was in many ways more effective and useful than radio waves. He was prescient on that thought, but light ray technology was not new. Hardly.

It had been invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1880. In fact the use of light ray photo-phones did become an effective stealth communication during World War Two. Today’s fiber optic technology is built on the foundation of light ray technology.

Francill’s one questionable claim was his public insistence that he had a “death ray” device. In 1940 he demonstrated it to reporters and witnesses in Toledo. In February of that year he assembled a group of reporters and witnesses to his home in North Toledo. Nine men, according to the article in the Toledo Blade, watched as Francill used a “queer machine” with port holes and coils, to deliver a death ray of sorts to a rat that rose up on its “shaky haunches, ran in a few agonized circles and died.”

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The reporter, Arthur Peterson, contended that the rat was a large brown alley rat and appeared to be in good health before it was taken out of a wire cage and put into a glass case. From 15 feet away Francill’s projector was trained on the rat inther glass case and caused its sudden death. How and why did it die? What exotic technology had this Toledo inventor uncovered? Francill told the reporter he didn’t know, but he theorized that the “ray” may have deteriorated the tissue of blood and flesh and nerves.

He also demonstrated another experiment with the strange projector by projecting a ray unto a pair of beakers in which were two unidentified chemicals. When hit by the “ray” the chemicals turned from a milky white color to blue color. Francill showed the witnesses assembled at his home other examples of his shadowy science including the projection of a ray from the secret box to a shaft of steel which became very hot. He also showed a “military” invention thathe says was a thermal compound that can be ignited by water and get so hot it can eat through the side of a battle ship.

Just how long Francill lived in Toledo I have not yet determined(still working on it). I do know that he was here in the 1930’s and through part of the 50’s before he returned to his hometown of Marion where he passed away in 1974 at the age of 77.

Was he a crackpot? A conman? Or was he the real deal? Maybe a little of all three. Not sure really, but what I can ascertain by what I’ve read in the limited research I’ve done, is that he made some of his money by selling sponsors to his shows. When he demonstrated his “remote control” automobiles, it was usually underwritten and marketed by a car dealership. Or a dairy if he was milking cows, or a street car company if he was “automating” the local street cars. His draft card and selective service application in 1943 shows he was living at 1702 N. 12^th Street in Toledo, was employed by the Massachusetts Protective Association(insurance company) and was married to his wife Josephine.

I am very curious as to what Francill’s “death ray” was. If it was not a hoax, I suspect that perhaps he had stumbled into some rudimentary microwave wave technology. The use of very high frequency radio waves to heat objects, which had been discovered in the 1930’s and even featured at the 1939 World’s fair in Chicago.

Regardless, even if Maurice Francill was just a clever huckster who could harness electronics to make a quick buck, he gave Americans of all ages and walks of life a sense of wonder of the world around them, a sense of the future wonders that would eventually come to fruition. Heat the very least a futurist, and a teacher who helped spark the imagination of the country.

Toledo’s Unforgettable Judge Austin

Judge Austin

Prior to the creation of a Municipal Court system, Toledo, like many cities, had for years used what was called a “Police Court”. In Toledo, that court was synonymous for several decades with one man: Judge James Austin.

Judge Austin was undoubtedly one of the city’s most powerful and colorful characters of the early 1900’s.  According to some accounts, he was the compelling reason that Toledo decided to create a municipal court system of four judges and structured the city’s court system.

It was said that a “certain class of citizens was being favored by Judge Austin.” In one edition of the ‘Police Journal’ of 1922, it was noted that “he withstood the continual howl of the newspapers and the public” for his actions in court.

Despite his critics, Judge Austin remained a popular figure in the city and was reelected to his judicial post many times over, even after the city had gone to a municipal court, Judge Austin was reelected to it and named its chief judge.

Even after assuming his new role as head of the court Judge James Austin continued to create headlines.

The ‘New York Times’ carried one story from 1920, when Austin couldn’t decide the guilt or innocence of a local grocer charged with running a gambling operation and bribery. So he asked the court audience to vote on it. He handed out 34 ballots and the vote came back 27-7 in favor of acquittal.

In another infamous case, a group of southern musicians had been arrested in the city’s notorious tenderloin district for panhandling, Judge Austin decided their best punishment would be to go get their instruments and come back and give the court a make shift concert, which they did.

It was his creativity in sentencing and his reputation for leniency that often sparked the most furor, for Judge Austin was of the mindset that a jail sentence was not always the best form of punishment. He believed it did little good to sentence poor people to the workhouse for crimes that “rich people” got away with.

He was known as the “Golden Rule” judge, believing that to be fair, you had to understand what people were going through and that sometimes the heart was a better measure of punishment than laws.

In 1908, back when Toledo had a workhouse near Swan Creek and City Park known as “Duck Island”, Judge Austin found himself “guilty” of curiosity and sentenced himself to a “day” at the prison, as an inmate, to see what the experience of a prisoner is really like.

On a bitterly cold day in February of that year, Judge Austin reported to “Duck Island” and subjected himself to endure the indignities of  being just another inmate. Citizen Austin was treated no differently than others, ordered to strip and get into prison togs, march to the dining hall and was sent to a pond to cut ice for the ice boxes at the jail.

Upon his release, Austin said, he would have to do some “tall thinking” in the future before sending a man to the workhouse. This was one of the reasons that Judge Austin had earned the nickname of the “Golden Rule” judge.

Another reason for his sobriquet was that the good judge was heavily influenced by the former Toledo Mayor Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones, who also believed that poor men deserve “second chances.” Like Judge Austin, Mayor Jones believed the court should not always punish, but serve to reform. He frequently took sides in favor of keeping families together.

In one case in 1909, a young girl appeared before his court to urge the judge to “Let Papa go” after her father had been arrested for “riding the rails.” Judge Austin listened to his heart and released her father from custody.

Austin was eager to listen to children in his court. In another case when a young “newsboy” was brought before his court on an assault charge against another “newsie.” Judge Austin decided to allow the young “newsboys” to serve as the judge and jury to decide verdict and punishment.

Judge Austin’s tenure as the “Police Court Judge” began in 1908 when he took the reigns of the court and lasted on the bench for another 20 years.  Within days after taking over the police court, the Toledo News Bee reported that Austin would not send a man to jail or fine him for drunkeness explaining that the Judge thought it was a disease. And one afflicted with it can no more combat it than he could typhoid fever. It was also noted that a defendant would not be sent to the work house on a first offense, however wife beaters would be shown no mercy. Shortly after assuming the robe, the Judge sentenced a man to 60 days in jail for taking a razor “strop” to his wife for punishment of an unknown transgression.

A native of Rhode Island, and a former Board of Elections member and police court prosecutor, Austin had been in some sort of public employment in Toledo for over 30 years. He was also a Unitarian as he was the son of a Unitarian minister.

Despite his taste for the dramatic while behind the bench, he was said to be a man of modest means, and an even temper. He didn’t drive a car, but took street cars and walked to work each day.

As a writer, he was also was popular on the speaking circuit as he tried to spread his ideas on how the “Golden Rule” should be applied as a tenet of justice. He was, by today’s standards, “liberal” of thought and was friends with many in Toledo’s so called “underworld.”

Judge Austin could be harsh and stern with those who took advantage of the poor and the weak. He was also a robust voice in the anti-gun movement of that era and often opined that guns had no place in a modern society.

It also became Austin’s goal to convince the city to give up its workhouse on Duck Island and start a prison farm.

Within ten years, the prison farm in Whitehouse was built which remained opened for another eight decades before it was eventually shutdown in the 1980’s. It stood vacant for decades and was recently demolished.

Judge Austin

A Tesla Treasure -Lost In Toledo?

Did Woodward High School in Toledo once have a real scientific treasure, and if so, where is it?   For those of you familiar with the famed inventor Nikola Tesla, you  already know that this Serbian-American genius was considered by many to be one of the greatest inventors and most brilliant minds of 20th century physics.  His legendary innovations include everything from alternating current, the radio, the induction motor, the neon light bulb and many others.  What you may not have known, according to a 1937 Toledo News Bee article, is that Woodward High School in Toledo was reportedly in possession of one of Nikola Tesla’s original Tesla coils that he used in his controversial laboratory in Colorado Springs, Colorado around 1900.  The article from April 20th, of 1937, reports that a Woodward High School electric and radio teacher, Alpheus Bitter, had acquired one of the ten original Tesla coils from Colorado from a “garageman” who was selling them.  The high elevation city of Colorado Springs, at the foot of Pike’s Peak,  is where Tesla spent a number of years in a laboratory, (now the site of the city’s Memorial Park), developing a system to transmit electricity without the use of wires.  It was Tesla’s quest. His long held belief that electric current at high voltages could be transmitted through the air and distributed without the cost of building wired networks.  It sounds wacky, but Tesla was not to be taken lightly, he was after all,  the man who invented,  and is credited with, the development of alternating current and the hydro-electric station at Niagara Falls, New York.   He was eccentric yes, but whether he had lost touch with reality with some of his ideas, is still up for debate. Historical records, for example, show that it was Nikola Tesla, and not Guglielmo Marconi who actually invented the radio, even though the latter is usually credited with fathering that major communication breakthrough.  

 

Nikola Tesla

But it was Tesla’s later efforts to find a sort of “wi-fi” system to transmit electric current through the air that brought skeptical attention to him.  Many thought he had gone off the deep and had become the prototype of mad scientist, working alone in his laboratory using a system curious looking towers, antennae and large coils to shoot out bolts of lighting across the night skies. The heart of those experiments involved his now famous “Tesla Coil”,  which can emit large bolts of artificial lightning by sending current through the air towards a grounding tower at the receiving end.  (Every good sci-fi movie of the 1950’s included at least one Tesla Coil scene.)

The coil became the working symbol of Tesla’s concept and his name has been indelibly coupled with the device. By the 1930’s, however, Tesla’s famed laboratory in Colorado has been taken down and Tesla had long since moved away back to New York to continue his experiments there. 

Tesla working in his Colorado Springs Lab
circa:1900

It was in the 1930’s that Toledo, Ohio teacher, Alpheus Bitter, is reported to have purchased one of the last remaining original coils from the Tesla lab that could generate up to a half million volts.  Bitter, according to the article in the News Bee, brought it to Toledo for use in his electricity and radio classes at Woodward High School.  And this particular news clippings says it was being displayed to the public for a special demonstration.

If the Toledo News Bee article is accurate, and Woodward High School did hold in its grasp one of the greatest science artifacts of the 20th century, where is it?  I asked a Toledo Public School spokeswoman who says she was not aware of it, but would look into it and see if she could answer just where the large coil may have ended up.   “It would be a find, indeed,” says Ottawa County antique dealer, and electronic hobbyist, Ernie Scarano, who owns Mantiques, a specialty antique store in Elmore. The centerpiece of his store, which features antiques for more masculine taste, is a working Tesla coil that he built himself. Ernie says that to his knowledge, no one in the world has an actual Tesla-made Tesla coil. There are thousands of Tesla coil winders around the world who are tinkerers and hobbyists, but he is not aware of anyone who actually owns a “real” Tesla coil. He thinks its value would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. “Lots of people around the world would want this, museums would want it.” But, once again, the question arises. Where is it? Did it get sold or salvaged, or stolen? Or it is gathering cobwebs in a forgotten closet.

Sadly, we may never find the answer to this mystery, as the historic Woodward High School building was taken down by wrecking crews a few years ago and the answer may have been buried deep in the rubble and carted off for salvage or junk.

As for the teacher who bought the Tesla Coil in Colorado and took it to Woodward High School, I have learned that Alpheus Bitter was not just a hobbyist-teacher who liked to tinker, but that he too was a brilliant engineer of electronic communication and had the credentials to prove it.  In his 1992 obituary in the Toledo Blade,  It is written that Bitter taught at Woodward High School until 1945 and influenced many young men to enter the field of electrical engineering. And that he was also responsible for helping put many Toledo TV and radio stations on the air, including WOHO, WTOD, WTOL, WSPD and WGTE-TV.   Alpheus Bitter’s resume also included a long time stint as a consultant for Willys Motors in Toledo, in the 1940’s and 50’s, in their attempts to build television equipment, and designed the electronic glass cutting process for Owens-Illinois. In his later years, he lectured on electronics at the University of Toledo.  Alpheus Bitter was 88 years old when he passed away from cancer at the Golden Haven Nursing home in 1992.  he was well known and well respoected, but there was no mention in his obituary of the novel Tesla coil or what may have happened to it.  He surely knew its value and perhaps he sold it to someone else who understood that this was, in the science world, as precious as a piece of art from one of the masters.  Mr. Bitter may have taken the knowledge of its whereabouts to his grave. We can only hope that someone, somewhere is still holding Mr. Tesla’s holy grail in safekeeping, maybe here in Toledo.

 

 

 

Toledo’s Dell Hair, First of a Rare Breed of Cop-Poets

Cops who put down their pistols and pick up pens in the gentle pursuit of poetry, may seem like a rare breed, but perhaps not as rare as you might think. Happened to read recently about an undercover cop in Los Angeles who is also a poet and says he is one of a growing number of officers who have something to say in verse. So he is trying to organize these poet-police officers into some type of national cop-poets-society.  If this should come to fruition, I will suggest they make a special place in their ranks for Toledo Policeman Dell Hair, the nation’s first cop-poet, at least the first one who was nationally recognized for his verse. While not considered a great poet, he was popular and was published numerous times in the course of a career that included walking the dark streets of downtown Toledo, fighting crime while composing rhyme.

 He was born Adalbert Hair on a farm near the small western Michigan town of Morrice back in 1871. Always the romantic, he left that community behind as a young man to join the U.S. Army Cavalry Regiment in the American West where it is said that he helped put down down the last of Geronimo’s Apache uprisings. From there, Hair eventually made his way to Toledo where in 1906, he joined the ranks of the Toledo Police Department. This of course was long before squad cars, so Hair spent much of his time on foot as a patrolman. While he was on duty, it is reported that he not only worked out poems in his head, but, often gave those suspects he arrested, on-the-spot renditions of his verse, as he hauled them back to the police station.  From those many days and nights on the streets, in 1908, he published a collection of poems that he wrote entitled “Echoes from the Beat”.

 About a year later, Hair left the Toledo Police Department, under controversial circumstances, and formed his own downtown private security company, which was really a poetic way of saying he hired out as a night watchman to check on downtown stores. But he did it well, and did it for many years until he died. All the while, writing and publishing his poems and even becoming involved in city politics.  A Toledo New Bee article in 1909 reports that Dell Hair spoke to a political rally in a campaign against Toledo Mayor Brand Whitlock, in which Hair claimed he was fired by the police department because Whitlock, also a writer, was “jealous of his literary accomplishments”. Hair was not shy about voicing his opinions and was outspoken on many issues of the times, often putting those concerns about city problems into iambic pentameter. He was also popular with many in the city, especially the downtown merchants whose stores he protected at night.  Hair even tried running for mayor in Toledo in 1915, but returned to his police work and his poetry.  Dell Hair, lived at 1005 Salem Street in Toledo and was married to his wife Charlotte, had several children and continued writing poetry and staying on the downtown beat, until his death from the flu in 1932.

 During his lifetime, he wrote and published many books of poetry. Many of which ares still available on E-bay and other used book sites. Some of the titles to look for are “Roses and Thorns”, published while he was in the Army, also “Songs of Darkness, Light and Death” from 1895, “Nature Beautiful”, published in 1929, “Violets and Thorns” and “Echoes from a Dell” in 1922.  Dell Hair was described by those who knew him, as a large man in stature, a big and burly guy who, despite his love of poetry, always put his respect and admiration first for his fellow officers and firemen. In dedicating “Echoes from the Beat”, he wrote : “In honor of the great love I bear for the police and firemen who, ​​without hesitancy, risk their lives for the welfare of others, I dedicate the third volume of my ​​poems”.​

 Just what motivated Dell Hair to be a cop and writer of poetry, we’ll probably never know for sure, maybe he didn’t know either. But Jessee Fourmy, the cop in Los Angeles who I mentioned at the start of this story believes it has to do with a cop’s natural instinct to study and understand human nature. He says they are seekers of truth, which also the goal of the poet.

 Fourmy says there are so many cops now writing poetry on the West Coast, they have started their own journal called “Rattle”, in which former Portland police officer-turned-poet James Fleming writes that”Cops and poets are intruders into other people’s lives. They both probe for character, motive, history. They both want to know what people are up to. A person of interest can end up in a poem or in jail.”

 And a police poem can end up in an editorial. In fact, the Toledo Blade used one of Dell Hair’s old poems in 1964 when controversy arose over the old Spielbush Fountain at the Civic Center at Spielbusch and Cherry Streets. The decaying old stone structure was destined to be torn down, despite the cries of those who wanted to save it. The Blade proposed that a marker be erected near the site of the fountain with a poem from Dell Hair, in which he waxed profoundly about how the fountain not only quenched his physical thirst, but satisfied his muse of inspiration. This from the “Echoes from the Beat”

 Old beautiful fountain so holy and good,adorning the place where the old market stood.

Where mammoth iron bars were bolted in rows, Where horses fought flies now a green carpet grows.

Thy dome is not lofty, thy cups are not gold,The people here flock like sheep to the fold.

Mothers to children, for pitchers will call, There is plenty to spare and enough for us all

On every morn between three and four, I quench my thirst from thy bountiful store

As in the tin cup, I thy purity view, A short little verse is whispered for you

Oh beautiful fountain this is my song of the memory erected to one that is gone

All thanks to the son who lowered the rod, that brought to the people one blessing of god.

To this writer’s knowledge that marker was never placed at the site and the Spielbusch fountain is long gone. But the words of poet-policeman Dell Hair live on. Likely will outlive all of us as his verse is passed from generation to generation, perhaps a little dusty with time, but still there, to drink in, like a fountain that just keeps flowing.

Mr. Dixon’s Very Strange Inn and Museum

  Found a story the other day from a 1920’s Toledo News Bee that got my attention. The date was June 12, 1928 and the front page headline read “Weird Dixon Estate Stumps Appraisers”. Turns out that at one time in Toledo, there was a well known inn that served not only food for the hungry, but those who hungered for the bizarre. Seems that a gent by the name of Charles N. Dixon ran the “famous” Dixon Inn at 44-48 St. Clair Street in downtown Toledo for a number of of years. The inn also doubled as a museum which certainly provided the topic of great dinner table conversation. The dusty rooms at the Inn featured a deviant’s delight, such as a stuffed sea serpent, a “greasy” hangman’s rope, a skeleton, a petrified man, tools used for torture, bloodied hand weapons, statues, swords, stuffed animals and a long list of oddities that might make Mr. Ripley green with envy. The gist of this particular story was not about the Dixon Inn, per se,  but rather about the fact that Mr. Dixon had died and his belongings were now up for auction and appraisers just weren’t sure what the market rate might be for a genuine authenticated sea serpent. As a group of local appraisers walked through the museum to get a better look, the News Bee reporter tagged along and recounted the tour this way:
  
      “the mounted animals, the stuffed fish and preserved specimens of rare fowl watched the procedure with glassy and impersonal stares…The Museum, once the gathering place of the demi-monde and the ultra Bohemian, now is a place of oppressive and profound silence, cluttered with all the nightmarish specimens that one eccentric could gather together in a  lifetime.”
  
   The reporter explains that Dixon began collecting these weird artifacts as a child growing up on a ranch in the West and kept collecting them through adulthood. After he moved to Toledo and opened the inn, he started stuffing the rooms of the building with skeletons, Indian hatchets, bloodied bayonets and weapons of all types and sizes that still hadn’t been cleaned from use. They piled up in the dusty and damp old rooms with other items of the weird including pillories, bones of unknown animals and the grinning skulls of prehistoric people.  One of his favorite possessions was a “Great Stone Face” that reportedly had been dug up on Monroe Street during the excavation for a sewer line and was thought to be the work of Mound Builders. As to whatever happened to Mr. Dixon’s den of darkness, I am still trying to find out. I can only surmise that such a collection today might actually fetch an substantial sum were it to go up for auction. As for the Dixon Inn, it would appear that its location would now be in the same block on St. Clair St. where Fifth-Third field is today. Kind of makes me wonder what’s buried under first base. 

This story has lots of unanswered questions and is really a work in progress, posted in the hopes that maybe one of our readers knows something about the Dixon Inn they could share. In the meantime, I am also embarking on a  search for more information about the fate of these strange artifacts and man who was responsible for this most unusual Toledo museum, Mr. Charles N. Dixon.   Updates, to be forthcoming.  By the way if you too are wondering about the word “demi-mond”,  according to one Internet dictionary  it is a  “group whose respectability is dubious or whose success is marginal: the literary demimonde of ghost writers, hacks, and publicists. Also called demiworlds”  FYI-  Lou

 
  

From the Trenches to Toledo: Letters Tell The Personal Stories of War

By the time the United States entered World War One in the spring of 1917, the  earth had already been shuddering with the thunder of battle for three years through Europe and on the high seas. Many Americans, but not all, were ready to join the fight against the Kaiser and put an end to the long nightmare of German ambition.

Toledo, like the rest of the country, sent her boys to the front to help in the cause. During this time, the news stories of the day reflect an emboldened American spirit of pride and patriotism and a compliant willingness to sacrifice  both blood and treasure to the effort. Toledo did both. Thousands of dollars of were raised to help fund the war through what were called Liberty Loans and Toledo was one of the top leaders in the country for such fund raising, and likewise, Toledoans also offered thousands of young men to fund the need for human lives on the front lines in France, in what would become a brutal trench war of attrition against the hated Germans.   By the time it was over on November 11th, it had been the costliest war in terms of human life, in the history of humanity. Over 8 million dead. For the United States, 116,000 military troops died in battle or from disease or accidents in the short 19 months of deployment.  Over 400 young men from the Toledo area would not return home alive, having died on the battlefield, or of disease or by accident.

The Toledo News Bee newspaper at the time was a great repository of war information, reporting daily on the situation at home and abroad. One of the most poignant features I found in the pages of the newspaper were the letters from Toledo “Yanks” serving in France during those months just before the fall of the Germans in November of 1918. The letters lend a human perspective to the events. A truly American perspective through the eyes of young men, many of whom had never traveled much beyond Lucas County, but whose sensibilities were now transported to a strange new world against the harsh landscape of war that would change their lives forever.

“When we landed in France we were shipped in boxcars, they packed us in like sardines. We had to split up and sleep in shifts during the ride at night.” So writes William Kieswetter to his father J.L. Kieswetter of 828 Michigan St. ” The speed of the French trains would make one seasick. One could walk backward twice as fast as we moved forward. We were five hours in going 20 miles. On the night of October 31st, we saw several bombs dropped on Nancy, killing many people.”

Private Edward Major wrote to his father F. Major at 1806 Ray St. Toledo..” I was wounded in the thigh on the morning of November 1st, just after daylight. We were going over the top. As we went over the top, a gang of German machine guns opened fire on us. We jumped into a shell hole and listened to the bullets buzz over our head. Soon it became quiet, so one of the fellows said “let’s go”, so we started. Started was all. From the minuteswere showed ourselves we drew a hornet’s nest of machine fire. But  this time our fellows kept going. I was one of the lucky ones. I got plugged. But it is not so bad, these hospitals are a great place to get some rest.”

“Wine, women and song are what Paris lives under” so wrote J Frank Coveney to his sister Mrs. Stanley Lanker in Point Place. “ I never saw the likes of it before in all the cities I’ve been in, both in the United State and over here.” Coveney goes on to write, “We are billeted and set in a small building about 10′ x 12′. It is pretty crowded. This is one of the battlefields and graves are all around us. One grave they say has 10,000 French soldiers in it. A good sized city – isn’t it?” Some of the German prisoners are sure bum looking fellows and gaunty. They seem to be glad to be taken. I guess their stomachs are full of war.”

For some of the Toledo soldiers, the adventure of war also involved other adventures besides those on the battlefield. Louis Gerding of Toledo wrote to his mother Ann Gerding of 119 Maumee Avenue about his new kindled friendship with a “French girl”.

“I’ve got the best little girl over here. She is teaching me French and I am teaching her English. I sent you her picture about a month ago. If you didn’t get it, here’s another one. In another month, your son will be able to speak French. Just think of it! We had a party about two weeks ago. I sure had a good time We had all the beer and eats we wanted. We also had a little show and also the band was here, so you see we never get time to get homesick.”

The sight of an American soldier, a Yank, with the companionship of a French girl was apparently not an unusual occurrence, so penned, Toledoan David Redding of the Chief Surgeon’s office to his father John Redding who worked for the Wabash railroad and the nephew of Rev. Thomas Redding of Maumee. “Everywhere..one can see an American soldier with a girl, while the French soldiers walk alone. The American soldiers are the cakes-of-the-walk in the town. I am learning French rapidly. I don’t mean I can speak fluently but just can make myself understood.“

Corporal Bennie Rosencranz of Toledo wrote to his family that it was candy that was in short supply in France. ” We get all of the tobacco and cigarettes we need and at less than they cost in the United States. Candy is very scarce, however, and when the Y.M.C.A. gets a supply, which is not very often, it lasts about a day.”

Other Toledo soldiers wrote of their eagerness to defeat the Germans and come home.

“At last we are here and ready to do our best to lick the Kaiser.” So wrote Toledoan Clinton Hart to Mrs. John Holzer of 1230 Oak Street. “We are all in fine condition, we were on the boat just 17 days.” One cannot judge the beauty of France by these camps, for Army camps in war times are not pleasing to the eye. Only old men and women are to be seen. All of the men who can wear the uniform have gone to war, but the women are making a wonderful showing. They keep the chief industry going, which seems to be the making of wine in this locality. Our long days of drilling are over and now the real show is about to begin. I feel good enough to lick any German that walks and I sure will hand it to him.”

Others were even more  belligerent in their regard for the Germans. “We are over here to lick Germany, all of us in the Army are willing to do that.” wrote Shirley C. Matheny of company C to his mother Mrs. J.W. Matheny of 319 12th Street. “If we can’t make these baby killing, conceited pig-headed Huns crawl and say Kamerad to us then we don’t want to come home. They have stopped calling us the contemptible little Yankee army now, we’ve gone up in the world. They now call us barbarians and they know whenever they are facing Yanks, they had better fight like hell or beat it while the beating is good. It’s very simple, get Fritz on the run and keep him running and the war will soon be over.”

For many of the young Toledo soldiers deployed to Europe, the experience was one of cultural enlightenment. They were getting the chance to see a world they had only heard of, or read about before. Many communicated those experiences to their loved ones back home.  Carl Hoefflin wrote to his mother Mrs. George Hoefflin of 1919 Hurd Street about his life in France “ The people surely do live strange over here. They wear wooden shoes. The girls drive three or four horses. The buildings are made of stone and are very pretty. The streets are also beautiful.”

“About 25 of us are living in a sawmill at the present time“, said Private Geogre Fulkert of 731 Pinewood, in a letter to his wife and family.  “Some of the boys are living in hay lofts. There are numerous ancient buildings here. One church is 289 years old. Some of the houses are older than this church. This is one place that indicates what women can do. They go out in the field and pitch hay and they operate street cars and do other things that I thought a woman could not do.”

And Miss Mary Ges of 137 Steele St. read in a letter from her soldier friend Walter Dieffenbach of his observations of this strange and foreign land. “It is rather interesting to note that the movie scenes and descriptions of French rural life depict conditions very accurately.”The farm houses, barns. sheds, etc that are built around a central court are very picturesque, but the romance of sleeping in the second story of a cowshed, as fell to our lot, is nothing to be enlarged upon from the standpoint of comfort.“

And while many of the Toledo Yanks reveled in these new experiences, they were also quick to point out that There is “no place like home”. Ferd Gladieux, a Company B machine gunner of Starr Avenue in East Toledo in writing to his father, George, summed it up this way.  “ We boys are all having a good time and all enjoying good health, so there are no kicks coming from any of us. I just got through with my breakfast. It was some breakfast. I had seven eggs. It makes me think of home and it’s the one thing Uncle Sam doesn’t give us.”