Jean Call interview, 15 August 2016

Abstract

Jean Call traces several generations of her family's life in the Cuyahoga Valley. She recalls her mother Metta Roberts Point's years teaching at the one-room Ira School, her grandfather Nathaniel Point's career as a clarinetist who taught Benny Goodman and played for silent films and at the Palace and Loew's theaters, and her husband Charles Call's work as Chief of the Ohio Division of Reclamation and locally well-known square-dance caller in Everett. Call describes many of the people, farms, and institutions that defined valley life before park establishment — the Howe family (including Nina Howe Stanford, raised in the Point household, and Abby Howe Shepard, the Ira postmistress and printing-press operator), the Cranz, Bender, Hine, Bobeck, and Jaite families, Howe Meadow, the Grace Reynolds house, Hine's Apple Orchard, the Ira post office and rail platform, the long-vanished cheese factory, and the Everett dance hall that now serves as a ranger station.

Interviewee

Call, Jean (interviewee)

Interviewer

Rosser, Arrye (interviewer); Farinacci, Ashley (participant)

Project

Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Date

8-15-2016

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

153 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Jean Call interview, 15 August 2016" (2016). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 343022.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1427

Related Resources

CVNP @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Arrye Rosser [00:00:00] This is Arrye Rosser from Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It's August 15, 2016, and I'm here with Jean Abby Call in Stow, Ohio, and we'll be talking about her memories of Everett and Peninsula. So, Jean, go ahead and tell us your full name and where you grew up.

Jean Call [00:00:21] I grew up in Tallmadge, Ohio, and I married Charles in 1944 and moved to Stow on the farm he was raised on. And we have two children. We have a son, Howard, and a daughter, Suzanne. And Charles is a fifth generation to live on this farm and work the farm. The farm was settled in 1803. Josiah Starr came from Connecticut with a group of 40 men and one woman. When he had a grandfather who lived in Darrowville, was a doctor, he stopped to see his grandfather, and he liked the area so well that he decided to settle here rather than go on to Indiana with the rest of the people and settle there. The area had not been surveyed, but there was a man by name of Darrow who was surveying Hudson. He said, you walk off the number of acres and you want. And then when I get done in Hudson, I'll come down and survey it so you have a title. So he surveyed, and on the corners of where he walked, he put stones to mark his boundary lines. And then the man, Mr. Darrow, came down and surveyed 200 acres. So he got title to 200 acres, and then he lived here. His name was Josiah Starr. And after he had built a log cabin and married the local schoolteacher, and they had seven children in a log cabin. And when she was pregnant with her eighth child, she said, I want a house. So he built the house, the present house that we're living in, in 1828, and the family moved into it. And there's been five generations that lived here since. Since then. Their oldest daughter, Mariah, married Moses Call, who was a schoolteacher in Hudson, and they bought the farm from Josiah. So that's how the name Call got on this property. And then there was a Charles Call and another Charles Call and a Howard Call. And now present owner is Charles, another Charles.

Arrye Rosser [00:03:28] That sounds wonderful. Tell us a little bit more about yourself side of the family, particularly who your mother was and where she grew up and how she came to be in the Cuyahoga Valley.

Jean Call [00:03:40] My mother was born in Akron, and her mother died when she was quite young, I think six years old. So the family didn't think that her father was capable of raising a little girl. So she went to live with her grandparents in Tallmadge. Her grandparents were Welsh and her grandfather came to Tallmadge to work in the coal mine. There were three coal mines in Tallmadge at one time. The Reeves Mine, Henry Beers Mine, and the Thomas Mine. He worked in the Thomas mine. The Thomas mine ran underneath what is now Chapel Hill. When they were digging, leveling off the hill to build Chapel Hill, one of the bulldozers went down the air shaft. Years ago, the air shafts were always laid up with timbers. And they eventually filled with water and the timbers would rot. But they got. The man was not hurt. They got the bulldozer out of the shaft. And then that stopped the bulldozing of Chapel Hill to build the shopping center. But they went ahead and built the shopping center. But underneath the shopping center are mines, old shaft coal mines. My mother lived in Tallmadge with her grandparents until she was, I think about 18. Then she went to Kent State and got her degree teaching. In those days you only had to have a two year degree to teach. So she. Her first job was in Ira. She taught the one room schoolhouse in Ira. And since she didn't have an automobile, which were very few in those days, she lived with Abby Howe. And she just had to walk just a little ways from Abby's house to the schoolhouse. Because the schoolhouse was built on part of the Howe farm. As I understand it, there is a family living in the house. The schoolhouse and an acre of ground was bought by Damon Cranz. He remodeled the house or the schoolhouse and then eventually sold it to a family by name of Portz. This Mr. Portz worked in Cleveland. And they remodeled it, made it bigger. And I'm not sure about this, but I think the lady who runs the school there on the Howe property lives in the house. And my mother had in this one room school. There were a lot of families. There were the Bender family, there was the Cranz family, there was a Howe family. And I had a picture that I loaned out, of her standing in front of the schoolhouse and on each side of her were all these children. And she had named every one of the children except the little boy. She couldn't remember his name, but he was raised in the cheese factory house. And as I said, I loaned that out so that the museum in town in Peninsula would have it to take a picture of it. I never received it back, so whether they still have it, I don't know. But she named every one of the children that were on- She stood in front of the doorway to the school and the children were lined up on both sides of her. And she named every one of them except a little boy that was raised in the cheese factory house and she taught there till she and my dad were married. My dad was from down in the valley and when they were married they moved to Goodyear Heights because my dad worked at Goodyear and it was closer for him to go to work every day. So mom then left Ira and went to Thomas Town to teach a one room school. Thomas Town was part of South Akron. It's no longer called Thomas Town now, but she taught there until they made a ruling before the Depression that a married woman could not teach. They had to save the positions for the girls or boys coming out of college single. So then my mother, they contracted to have a house built in Tallmadge because she loved Tallmadge. So there was a Mr. Flickinger who was the county superintendent. He liked my mother's teaching, so he went to the state board of education and got a permit for her to substitute. So we lived just a block from the school in Tallmadge. It was easy for her to go down on a minute's notice. If a teacher didn't show up by 9 o'clock, they would call mom to come be substitute teacher. So she did that until about, well, I guess it was maybe during the Depression when she stopped teaching because they had more teachers than they had positions to fill.

Arrye Rosser [00:09:48] Jean, what years was your mom teaching in the Cuyahoga Valley at Ira? Do you have a sense of it, even approximately?

Jean Call [00:10:00] Oh, gosh.

Arrye Rosser [00:10:03] Do you remember what year she was born in?

Jean Call [00:10:13] No, I can't even guess. I mean, I'm trying to associate different times. You know. 

Arrye Rosser [00:10:21] She was 18. Was it in the '20s?

Jean Call [00:10:23] It had to be.

Arrye Rosser [00:10:25] Do you have a sense of how many years she was there? Was it like one or two or was it longer?

Jean Call [00:10:33] Well, she must have probably, if she went to college when she was, say, 18 and then went right down there. Well, probably. No, she had two years of college. She was 20 and, oh dear.

Arrye Rosser [00:10:52] How old was she when she married your dad? Have any sense of that?

Jean Call [00:11:00] Well, let's see. I was born in. My brother was born in '21.

Arrye Rosser [00:11:07] And what's your brother's name?

Jean Call [00:11:09] William. I was born in '24. So,

Arrye Rosser [00:11:21] Ashley, here, you want to show Jean this photo? 

[unknown speaker] That's a picture of your mom at the Ira schoolhouse with all of her students in the back or in front of her. Then if you look on the back, all of them are named. And then that picture says in about 1917 written on the back.

Arrye Rosser [00:11:45] Oh, I know the answer to- So this would have been kind of the World War I years, even earlier.

Jean Call [00:12:06] Even though I'm not reading the back, when I see some of these pictures, I can pick out who those kids are.

Arrye Rosser [00:12:13] Who do you see in the pictures?

Jean Call [00:12:14] Right here is Nina Howe.

Arrye Rosser [00:12:16] Uh huh. And she's in the center? Yeah. How can you tell it's Nina? What does she look like?

Jean Call [00:12:25] She looks like she looked for years. I mean, she never changed. She had this beautiful blonde hair and her face was just like a china doll. 

Eilish McGee [00:12:33] Hold on one second. 

Jean Call [00:12:34] She lived with my mother. 

Eilish McGee [00:12:40] You gotta get the mic off from behind your head.

Arrye Rosser [00:12:37] Yeah.

Jean Call [00:12:39] I'm sorry.

Arrye Rosser [00:12:39] That's okay. Do you need a little light, Jean, to see that better?

Jean Call [00:12:45] Yeah. 

Eilish McGee [00:12:49] Let me see how it sounds with it just right there.

Arrye Rosser [00:12:58] So you were thinking Nina? I was going to ask you about Nina.

Jean Call [00:13:02] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [00:13:02] So how. So how old? I guess your mom had kids. Kids of a lot of different ages. One was. Tell us about her relationship with Nina.

Jean Call [00:13:16] Abby had all these nephews and two nieces and I don't know, I don't think I was ever told and I don't think I asked mom why those kids were all separated.

Arrye Rosser [00:13:30] This is the Howe the Howe, 

Jean Call [00:13:31] The Howe family, the how children. Isadore was the oldest one and they were just. Well, different ones in the family took different children. Well, my mother and dad took Nina to live with them in Goodyear Heights. When they lived in Goodyear Heights. That was after mom and dad were married. And Nina lived with them all through her high school because mom said she was so beautiful. She'd walk down the street and people would turn around and look at her again. They couldn't believe she had this beautiful blonde hair, curly. And she said she just looked like a china doll. But she lived with mom and dad until just before she was married, when she married Clayton Stanford. And we continued to be good friends. I would go down, if I had a chance to be in Peninsula or down in the valley, I'd go down to see her. Her husband was the caretaker for the Jaite people that owned the Jaite Paper mill. And the. The Jaite house was up, up on a hill. 

Arrye Rosser [00:14:59] Like down on Hinds Hill Road?

Jean Call [00:15:02] Down in Boston. And down below was a small house that was the caretaker's house. So that's where Nina and Clayton lived. And when he wasn't working on the property, mowing and farming and so forth, then he would go to the Jaite Paper Company and work. And after he passed, then Nina went and worked in the office for the Jaite people. And when the Jaites died, they willed her this house, and so she lived in that. She had two daughters, and she always wanted a son, but she was afraid to have another child for fear it wouldn't be perfect because her little girl, Shirley, had a hair lip. And then Glenn Howe, that was Nina's brother, he had a boy, Burdette, and he has cleft palate. But true, the miracles of surgery, they finally corrected her hair lip and corrected his cleft palate because he. You couldn't understand him. I mean, he couldn't talk right at all. Now, as far as I know. Bud, we always called him, Bud is living in Cleveland, but I haven't seen him or heard anything from him for a long time. He had a brother, Glenn Jr. And he died about two years ago. His widow is still living down in Bath. But Nina took foster babies, always took a boy, because she wanted a son so bad and would raise them. Maybe she'd have two at a time until they were two or three years old, and then by that time, they were up for adoption. So she'd lose that baby and, or that little boy. And so finally, her husband, Clayton, said, we can't go through this all the time. We're gonna try to have a boy. They did. They had a little boy. He was perfect. His name was George. She came here one day after Charles and I were married and brought George for me to meet. It was ornery, and he kept tearing through this house. And finally Nina said, we're going home. Gene won't have a house left. But I understand. I know. I saw in the paper where he died about two years ago, and I questioned people in Bath as to what happened, because he was young, and they said he died of a heart attack. So Nina's two daughters are still living, but they're not in Ohio. They're in the East. But they were every bit as beautiful as. And whether this is true or not, I don't know. But one doctor told her that since Bud had the cleft palate, her daughter had a hair lip. They thought there was some gene in the family that was not right. That's why she was afraid to have another child for fear it would have impairment of some kind.

Arrye Rosser [00:18:41] Do you know why they didn't just adopt one of those kids they raised?

Jean Call [00:18:45] I don't think she could. I mean, in that time, she could raise them, but she couldn't adopt them. Or I think she would have adopted one of the little boys.

Arrye Rosser [00:18:56] I know. Don't break your heart thinking about it.

Jean Call [00:18:58] Yeah. But the rules then were quite a lot different, you know, than they are now. They probably would have been glad to have her adopt a child, one of the children that she raised. But she turned her dining room into like a nursery. Sometimes she'd have two or three babies at a time, and she had these baby beds in her dining room. And I'm sure any baby that she took had a lot of loving care.

Arrye Rosser [00:19:31] Were the babies from Akron or from all over the place?

Jean Call [00:19:34] No, they were from Summit County somewhere, but they were through the Child Welfare Service or whatever the name of the association was at that time. And she got paid very minimal amount of money to take care of these children, and they didn't furnish anything. She had to buy their own diapers and food and stuff like that. But she was given a little bit of money every, I suppose, month or week or so to care for these children. But when they got to be two to three years old, then they would be put up for adoption.

Arrye Rosser [00:20:20] Did those kids ever turn up again, do you know? Did they come back to visit her? Or was it back in a day where nobody let them know.

Jean Call [00:20:26] They usually, if I remember right, they were about 2 years old when they could go out for adoption, and they probably didn't remember. You know, they got well acquainted with their adopted parents and, you know, and maybe other children in that family, you know.

Arrye Rosser [00:20:49] Let me go back and just ask a detail about how old was Nina when she went to live with your parents? And how old were you and your brother about that time? Like, were you. Did. Did she feel like a sister to you?

Jean Call [00:21:07] No, my mother and dad had Nina before I was born. She probably- Well, mom talked about her high school, so she was probably about 14, 13 or 14, because she lived with them when she went to high school and lived with them as far as I remember, until she and Clayton were married, which was probably pretty young.

Arrye Rosser [00:21:41] Was it a better high school where your mom was living in Tallmadge?

Jean Call [00:21:47] Well, the high school where she probably went was Goodyear Heights because that's where they lived. And Goodyear Heights. I went to school all 12 years in Tallmadge because when. When mom and dad were married and they contracted to have a house built in Tallmadge, and I- Well, this I lived when I was born. I was born in Goodyear Heights. And mom and dad contracted for this house to be built in Tallmadge. And Grace Reynolds. Now this is a lady that lived down on the hill at Ira Road, went up Ira Road on the left hand side about across from where Abbie Howe's house was. There was a house in the woods that this Grace Reynolds built. And as I understand she-

Arrye Rosser [00:22:54] Was it Riverview Road or Ira?

Jean Call [00:22:56] No, Ira Road.

Arrye Rosser [00:22:58] Oh, I. For some reason I was thinking it was by what we call Howe Meadow now, by the beaver marsh. But it was up Ira Road. Is it near where? Is it relative to like Hale Farm?

Jean Call [00:23:13] No, it's this- The Grace Reynolds lived in this house up in the woods on Ira Road. And it was up on the hill about across from where Abbie lived on Ira Road. And as I remember from what mom told me, she came from Chicago and she bought this property from the Howe family up in the woods and had this house built. She was going to go around the world. I think she was from moneyed family out of Chicago. And so she asked my mom and dad if they would come and live in her house while her house. While Mom and Dad's house was being built in Tallmadge. So we did. We went down there and we lived there almost a year. And I have some things here.

Arrye Rosser [00:24:14] I think we've got the pictures here. Give me a minute, Jean, and I'll find them for you. Now do you remember? So this was sort of uphill from Hale Farm.

Jean Call [00:24:29] No, no, not- It's not near Hale Farm. It's before you get to Hale Farm.

Arrye Rosser [00:24:33] Oh, I got you. This was closer to the Riverview Road at intersection.

Jean Call [00:24:41] Yes, it was. It was close to Riverview in our intersection.

Arrye Rosser [00:24:45] Gotcha.

Jean Call [00:24:47] There's a- there was a crook going down and a bridge across the creek. And because we had to cross the bridge, even to drive across the bridge to go up the hill.

Arrye Rosser [00:24:59] This would have been south of what's now Old Trail School, probably.

Jean Call [00:25:06] Yes. 

Ashley Farinacci [00:25:07] [inaudible] -picture of Grace Reynolds and her mom on that bridge to get over the creek to a house. 

Jean Call [00:25:16] The house is no longer there. The national park bought- Well, Grace, she worked in Akron at O'Neill's. She had an office there, and she was coordinator for all the garden clubs in Summit County. She had an office and she had a lot of books and stuff. If people wanted to know about flowers or gardening or stuff, they went. It was like a garden center. And she'd go in every day to work. And if you wanted to know how many garden clubs in Summit county, she could tell you the name of every one of them. So she worked in there at this Akron Garden center. And it was in O'Neill. She had an office in the O'Neill department store building. And so when she went around the world, she was gone a year. And my mother and dad then lived in her house. While their house was being built in Tallmadge, and nine of us, she was married by then. So it was just my brother and I that lived there with Mom and Dad. And-

Arrye Rosser [00:26:44] Who are you friends with in those time periods? Who was living around that area that you played with? Do you have any memories of, like, the other children you played with or who- 

Jean Call [00:25:55] Oh, yeah. 

Arrye Rosser [00:25:57] Your playmates?

Jean Call [00:26:59] Well, Glenn Howe and Gladys had the two boys, Burdette and Glenn Jr. Now, as far as I know, Burdette's still living in Cleveland and- But Glenn Jr. has passed on. His widow is still there. She's remarried, but she lives in Bath. Yeah. No, well-

Ashley Farinacci [00:27:35] Hold on. That picture, which is number 19, is a picture of- [crosstalk]

Jean Call [00:27:45] That was- That was my- That's my mother there.

Arrye Rosser [00:27:48] Give it. And this is your mom's full name. I don't think we gotta-

Jean Call [00:27:53] Meta Roberts Point. Well, Metabel was her middle name, but her maiden name was Roberts. And this in this picture, that is Gladys Howe. That's Glenn Howe's wife. They lived in down in the Valley, too, and I think that was me that she was holding.

Arrye Rosser [00:28:17] And were they the ones that sort of stayed on the Howe property? 

Jean Call [00:28:21] Yes. 

Arrye Rosser [00:28:22] On Riverview Road. What we-

Jean Call [00:28:24] Well, no, they didn't live on Riverview Road. They lived- Well, you went up Ira Road, and then there was a road that turned left that went up the hill. I can't remember the name of the road.

Arrye Rosser [00:28:34] Yes, I got that right here. 

Ashley Farinacci [00:28:36] Miller?

Arrye Rosser [00:28:38] No, that's Martin. It's hard to see it, but that would be Martin Road.

Jean Call [00:28:47] Okay. Well, they had a house right there at that intersection where Ira Road went this way and the other road went that way. They had a house. 

Arrye Rosser [00:28:56] Right up at, it's almost like with the road splits in a Y. If you went straight through the Y and up the hill. 

Jean Call [00:29:01] Yeah. 

Arrye Rosser [00:29:01] That's now called the Ira Dorm. So we used that as a place that our seasonal employees stay.

Jean Call [00:29:07] Yeah, well, they had a house right there. It- it faced our road. Then there was the Heinz apple orchard up on the hill.

Arrye Rosser [00:29:17] Yeah. And I- I think I've gotten a little confused about whether the folks living this would have been Glenn and Gladys living in that house and whether they were raising the apples.

Jean Call [00:29:29] No.

Arrye Rosser [00:29:30] Or if it was a separate family and where.

Jean Call [00:29:32] It was a separate family up on the hill where all the apple trees were and on the. I mean, the trees were on the hill and down the hill, you know, and then at the bottom of the hill was this quonset hut where they stored the apples. Well, when Abby Howe gave up being postmistress, then they moved the post office to what was the Apple Orchards Quonset Hut.

Arrye Rosser [00:29:59] Yeah, it was like a farm stand, am I correct?

Jean Call [00:30:03] Yeah. It was a building. It had a round roof and the Heinz family stored apples there and sold apples there, you know, then when Abby gave up the post office there behind her house, there was a building behind Abby's house that was the post office. And when she gave that up, then they moved it up to Heinz apple storage house, I think it's in that book.

Arrye Rosser [00:30:38] Was the driveway right there by the same driveway that Glenn and Gladys's driveway? Were there two driveways in there? The, the Heinz house-

Jean Call [00:30:47] You went up our road and before you went on to where Hale Farm is, why it was right there at the bottom of the hill. And then eventually it was moved to Bath. I think the post office was moved to Bath the same way as her one room school. The children then were bussed by a wooden school bus to Bath to the central school and all that's in that book. But

Arrye Rosser [00:31:29] What about- can you describe a little bit about the school where your mom worked and where it was located and anything about what it looked like or what she used to talk about being a schoolteacher?

Jean Call [00:31:43] Well, this, the- her one room school was just sort of a plain building, long, you know, it wasn't a square building, it was sort of a long building. And as I say, she had all the kids in school there that were like farm families. The Benders, the Cranzes, the Howes, you know.

Arrye Rosser [00:32:10] How many kids did she teach? Do you have know?

Jean Call [00:32:13] No, I don't know. But there, I imagine because they like the Bender family and the Howe family. Well, the Bender family, there was only three children. There was Frank Bender, Irvie Bender, and then there was a sister, I think her name was Catherine, I can't remember for sure. And they lived up on the hill. [00:32:38] That house should still be there in the barn.

Arrye Rosser [00:32:40] Yeah it is.

Jean Call [00:32:41] Because a fellow used to work for us was a carpenter and they wanted that house to be restored and the barn to be restored. And Steve worked down there a long time on restoring the barn and the house.

Arrye Rosser [00:33:00] What time period was this?

Jean Call [00:33:02] What time period?

Arrye Rosser [00:33:03] Yeah.

Jean Call [00:33:07] Oh gosh, that was probably 30 years ago. And then whoever was footing the bill, I think it was an independent person. I don't think it was the national park, ran out of money.

Arrye Rosser [00:33:24] Oh, you're talking about the Howes. Yeah, that was maybe more like 20 years ago, back in the 1990s.

Jean Call [00:33:35] Because then Steve said, well, they would notify him when they had more money to go on with it. So I think the house was pretty well restored. But the barn. It was a lot of work to do on the barn. Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [00:33:50] Yeah. Our maintenance staff have worked on that barn and at least stabilized it.

Jean Call [00:33:56] Yeah. And. But Frank Bender, I used to see a lot of him because his wife was a second cousin of my mother's. Lil Harrington was her name before she married Frank Bender. And eventually they separated and she came to live with my mother and dad in Tallmadge and went back to Kent State to get her teaching degree. 40 years old, eventually. Then she went to England and a couple foreign countries to teach English for the United States government. When she retired, she retired to Penney Farms in Florida, which was started by a church company to build this retirement home for, well, at that time it was ministers and different people that were in foreign service, you might say. And that's where Lil lived until she died. Penney Farms in Florida. And that's still going on because I have a friend who lives there now.

Arrye Rosser [00:35:20] And can I ask you to talk a little bit more about Abby Howe?

Jean Call [00:35:24] Okay.

Arrye Rosser [00:35:25] And that relationship with your mom.

Jean Call [00:35:27] Well, Abbie Howe had this big house and mom lived there while she taught at the one room school. Abbie was married to a man by name of Shepherd. And I never knew him, so he must have either died or divorced. I know he had a son by a previous marriage that used to look out for Abbie. He lived in New York City. But I think financially he helped her out. She. They had a fire in the house. Abbie's, I think it was, Abbie's grandfather was the surveyor of Akron. In this house. It was a big wood frame house. But in this house there was a room that was a library. It was beautiful. All these bookshelves of walnut and just loaded with books. And I think all of the history books were kept there because my dad used to love to go down there and just sit in that room, take books out of the shelves and read the history. Well, one night in the kitchen, her refrigerator was behind the back stairway. And through, I suppose, faulty electric or something, it caught fire. And Glenn and Gladys at that time lived there. And with her they got out of the house, but she couldn't get out. By the time they got her awake, she couldn't come down the stairway because it was all fire. So she crawled out her bedroom window on top of the roof, porch roof. And she had a brooch with precious stones that was to be mine when I was married. She also had a beautiful diamond ring that was a carat or more. Well, she didn't take her jewelry when she crawled out the window. She grabbed a shoe and her girdle. To this day, she would say, why did I take my girdle? And why did I take one shoe? Well, anyway, she got out on the porch roof, and Glenn, with a ladder, got her off. Of course, in those days, they didn't have fire departments. The house burnt down. So for weeks after that, she sent sat sifted ashes to try to find her jewelry. She found her ring and. But she never found the brooch because it probably got so hot it just melted, you know, or something. And so then when she got sick and had to go to the hospital, of course she wore her ring. And the nurse took it off of her finger and put it in the nightstand stand next to her bed. Somebody stole it.

Arrye Rosser [00:38:49] Oh, that's awful.

Jean Call [00:38:50] Yeah. And so she was very heartsick over that. But she didn't live too long after she was in the hospital.

Arrye Rosser [00:39:00] From the- was she sick from injuries from the fire?

Jean Call [00:39:05] No. I can't remember what. What her ailment was, but something other. No, it wasn't the fire, because she went to Glenn and Gladys, then built a house. It was a yellow tile. It wasn't cement block, it was tile. They built another house there right beside where her house was. And so they lived there with her then until she passed.

Arrye Rosser [00:39:38] Did they make a tile so it wouldn't burn?

Jean Call [00:39:40] I suppose they did, but it wasn't. If I remember right, it was a very small house, you know. Yeah. But then Glenn and Gladys went up to their old house and lived with the boys. And where was their old house? Huh?

Arrye Rosser [00:40:01] Where- where was their old house?

Jean Call [00:40:03] It was up there at the- Just below the hill from the Heinz house. Where the road divided.

Arrye Rosser [00:40:10] Yes.

Jean Call [00:40:10] Where our road went up into Bath.

Arrye Rosser [00:40:14] Yeah.

Jean Call [00:40:14] And the other road went.

Arrye Rosser [00:40:16] Martin Road.

Jean Call [00:40:17] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [00:40:17] Yeah.

Jean Call [00:40:17] It was right there where the road divided, because that was still part of the Howe farm.

Arrye Rosser [00:40:23] So they were probably on the north side of the road there because they owned a good chunk of that property. That's all to the north. And it. I think it went to Riverview Road. And maybe for a time period, on the other side of Riverview Road.

Jean Call [00:40:39] Well, even up on the hill where Grace Reynolds built her house, that was part of the farm because she bought that from them and had this house built. She always felt sorry for Nina because the rest of the kids all got a piece of the farm, but Nina didn't. So Grace Reynolds willed her house and probably an acre or whatever. I don't know how much land that was there to Nina. So then when Grace Reynolds died, Nina moved into the. No, she didn't. She didn't move in the house. The national park come along and bought the property from Nina and they tore the house down. There was another house up the hill towards Glenn and Gladys's property that was built by Glenn Jr. And the national park bought that and tore that house down. The-

Arrye Rosser [00:41:41] How did, remind me, how was Grace Reynolds tied into like how did Grace Reynolds end up having that property?

Jean Call [00:41:51] She bought- she bought some land from the house up in the woods and had that house built.

Arrye Rosser [00:41:57] I gotcha. So they were sort of selling off parts of the property.

Jean Call [00:42:01] Yes. It was the- the Howe farm was a big, big chunk of property because where the- the school is that was part of the Howe farm and. And because the mom's one room school was built there. And Damon Kranz bought that and then sold it to the Portzs' and it's still there. I think someone said they thought that the woman that ran the Old Trail School lived there.

Arrye Rosser [00:42:34] It could be. There is like I would say, say maybe like a headmaster headmistress's house, I believe on that property. I can picture that.

Jean Call [00:42:43] Yeah. Because where Old Trail School is built, that was part of the Howe farm. And there was land on the other side of Riverview. Riverview Road. Between Riverview Road and the river. Yeah, that was. That was owned by. There was a small farm there that was owned by Dickow.

Arrye Rosser [00:43:11] Now that I hadn't heard about. I've seen the various property maps. I knew the house owned some property and I was trying to understand how the Carter family. How their property was sort of separated in from the Howes was property in my family by the canal. Might have been one side was of the east side versus west side. But where was Dickow's house? Do you have any recollection of where that was?

Jean Call [00:43:43] Well, as I remember there was. Our road went across. There was a bridge there across the river. And there was a railroad track there. Well, was a railroad track next to Abbie's house because she used to. From when she was postmistress, she would bag up the mail to go out. She'd climb up this metal platform and this mail bag had a ring at the top and a ring at the bottom. And she would hook it on to the- to this metal post. And then the train would come along and one of the men on the train had a pole and he would pull. Pull that bag, pull it right into the train. Then he'd throw another bag down that had her mail outgoing, you know. Mail. And I, to this day, I can see her climbing up those metal steps, standing on that platform, hanging that bag of mail. And because I used to stay down there once in a while. And her bed, her house was right next to the railroad track. And every time a train would come through at night, he would blow his whistle at the railroad tracks there, you know, the crossing, wake me up and. But I, as a kid, I would go down and I'd stay with her for a week or so. Always had to stay with my grandparents on their farm. My grandmother had a lot of children. She had 10 children, but she liked. She always said she never got one baby out of diapers till she had another one. And I believe it. And. And I used to stay with Grace Reynolds, and I'd stay with Lillian Bender.

Arrye Rosser [00:45:51] How old were you at this time?

Jean Call [00:45:52] Lillian Harrington. She was about a second cousin of mom's, and she married Frank Bender, which ended in divorce eventually. And then she came to live with mom for a while until she graduated from Kent State and got a teaching degree with the United States government. So she was in different foreign countries.

Arrye Rosser [00:46:17] Jean, how old were you when you were spending time with all of your extended family and friends in the Cuyahoga Valley?

Jean Call [00:46:26] I was probably. Anywhere from 10 to 14 years old.

Arrye Rosser [00:46:36] About what time, time period was this?

Jean Call [00:46:39] Well, let's see, I was born in 24 and so say '30, '35. I mean, 1935, because I graduated in high school in '42. So it was before that I was married and came here in '44. But every year Ira had what they called the Ira Dale Picnic. And of course, everybody in Ira or Bath would go to that. And the picnic was always at the Hale farm or at the Cranz farm, the Cranzes. There was one family lived across the street from the Hales, and that was the highlight of the year, really.

Arrye Rosser [00:47:30] You know, what did they have at the picnic that made it so fun?

Jean Call [00:47:34] Everybody took food and I don't remember that they had. Oh, maybe they had a wieners or hamburger or something like that. But mostly everybody took food and there'd be everything from fried chicken to potato salad, you know, typical picnic and. But that was a good reunion for, you know, like my mother, since she had so many of those kids in school, you know, and she would own. And not living down there, she would see them at that Ira Dale Picnic is what they called it.

Arrye Rosser [00:48:15] Yeah.

Jean Call [00:48:16] And it was usually either at the Cranzes' or at the Hale homestead.

Arrye Rosser [00:48:22] And what do you remember about the Cranz property or the Hale property? Do you have memories of that

Jean Call [00:48:32] other than just going there for the picnics, I don't think I went there too much. I have a postcard that Mr. Hale sent my mother. And it's a picture of the house, the brick house. And someday I should give it to them. But I haven't. I still haven't.

Arrye Rosser [00:48:58] Maybe we could scan it and at least I could give them the scan. I'm sure they would appreciate it. What do you remember about those families? Or what did your mom talk about?

Jean Call [00:49:12] Well, she talked a lot about Mr. Hale.

Arrye Rosser [00:49:15] He was a character, wasn't he?

Jean Call [00:49:16] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [00:49:20] We're looking at Images of America: Cuyahoga Valley. Yeah. So you're talking about C.O. Hale.

Jean Call [00:49:27] Yes. And C.O. Hale had a sister, Richie. Mrs. Richie. Was it Mabel?

Arrye Rosser [00:49:35] Is it Clarabelle? Richie.

Jean Call [00:49:36] Clarabelle. That was it.

Arrye Rosser [00:49:37] Or was that. Hold on. That was his great granddaughter. Anyway, keep going.

Jean Call [00:49:44] Yeah. And she had a brother who lived in Tallmadge and his property back. Well, there was Overdale Drive. Separated the back of my parents' property and his property. He was quite a wealthy man. He had mines in Canada.

Arrye Rosser [00:50:06] Is this Mr. C.O. Hale? I've lost track. Is this C.O. Hale?

Jean Call [00:50:11] No, his name was Richie.

Arrye Rosser [00:50:13] Okay, this was. Is this who Clarabelle married?

Jean Call [00:50:17] Clarabelle's brother.

Arrye Rosser [00:50:19] Brother. Sorry. Okay, I'm with you.

Jean Call [00:50:20] Yeah. And he. He was married and had no children. And his sister, Mrs. Marsh, lived in a little house behind his big house. He had a big beautiful big home. And I used to do a lot of baking on weekends. My mother did the washing and I did the ironing, and she did the cleaning. But anyway, I would bake on weekends. And so if I bake cookies, I'd take a plate of cookies and go over and give them to Mr. Richie, Mr. And Mrs. Richie. Because this house was so beautiful. And they had so many beautiful things in the house. My mother said I took the cookies just so I could get in the house to see the things. But he- Tallmadge has a circle. And there's the historic church and the town hall in the circle. He took care of that circle. He paid for the mowing. He paid Davey tree to come. There were big elm trees in the circle and to trim the trees. And he was just very proud of that circle. If the church needed to be painted, he paid for the painting. The town hall the same. And I always felt so bad because his money was in trust in a bank in Akron. The trust officer tried and tried to get him to sell the house to him. He said, no, when I die, that house goes to my sister, Mrs. Marsh. Well, his wife died first and then he passed on. And this trust officer, by hook or crook, probably more crook, he got a hold of the property and he tore the house down and he built apartments, a big apartment house that you could come in off of 261, which was the road to Kent, or 91. The apartments, this big building had apartments on both back and front, you might say. People in Tallmadge were really upset to have that big house torn down. And there was a lot of maple trees in front of the house. It was a large yard. Of course, they cut those all down. And I've never had any faith in a trust officer at a bank since then.

Arrye Rosser [00:53:00] Yeah, it sounds awful.

Jean Call [00:53:02] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [00:53:03] Do you remember Eugene Cranz or any of the Cranz kids? Do I remember what Eugene Cranz or any of the Cranz kids. Anything about that, that that farm is gonna become this. We have a non profit partner called Countryside that helps us manage farms in the valley. And they're gonna make their headquarters there at the Cranz property.

Jean Call [00:53:27] Well, there were several. There was Damon Cranz, Eugene Cranz, I forget the. One of them went to Ohio State.

Arrye Rosser [00:53:37] That would be Eugene.

Jean Call [00:53:39] Yeah. And one of them was a pilot. And that was quite something different. To have him flying around the valley and having an airstrip on the farm, you know.

Arrye Rosser [00:53:49] Oh, that is interesting.

Jean Call [00:53:52] And yeah, the Cranz family were quite a prominent family and they did a lot like soil conservation, you know. And I was on the Summit County Soil Conservation board for about 15 years. And we went several times down to the farm to see some of the practices he put in that were new because he learned when he went to Ohio State.

Arrye Rosser [00:54:29] What time period was that?

Jean Call [00:54:31] Pardon?

Arrye Rosser [00:54:31] Do you remember what time period was that?

Jean Call [00:54:35] Oh, gosh. Well, let's see. I went off the board in '76. This. I was on the board probably from '60. No, let's see. I went on the board in 74. Because Charles went to Columbus to work in. Now, we had the fire here in '74. He went to Columbus to work in '76. And that's when I went on the board in '76. And I was on probably about 20 years then when he came home from Columbus from working in Columbus, I got off the board. He was chief of Division of Reclamation for the State of Ohio. Had charge of all surface mining, coal, sand and gravel, limestone, any of that. He lived in Columbus and I ran the farm with help.

Arrye Rosser [00:55:36] This is your husband, Charlie. Right. So let me think. Go back to my notes here a minute. Did your mom, tell me a little bit more about Glenn and Gladys and what they were farming.

Jean Call [00:55:57] Glenn and Gladys, kind of how the.

Arrye Rosser [00:55:59] They had kind of interesting marriage in terms of.

Jean Call [00:56:02] They had like a- Now, Glenn worked in Akron for one of the paper companies, but he still farmed the farm. They. They raised produce. They had a little market there where they sold corn and beans and so forth.

Arrye Rosser [00:56:19] This was on Ira Road?

Jean Call [00:56:20] It was on Ira Road and Riverview. It was- There was that whole corner. They- they- they use that corner now for, like, art festivals and stuff. You see in the paper where they call Howe Meadows or something.

Arrye Rosser [00:56:35] Yeah. Okay. Yep, yep. Yeah. So that's up a little bit across from the beaver marsh. So it's a little bit north of the Ira Road. It's kind of- You can walk between that meadow and Old Trail School. There's kind of a cut back there. So they were up on that. Up in that area. There's still a barn standing there. Was that their barn?

Jean Call [00:56:59] Yeah, I think so.

Arrye Rosser [00:57:01] Yeah. And so they had a, like a stand somewhere on the road there.

Jean Call [00:57:06] They- I think- I think it was on Ira Road.

Arrye Rosser [00:57:10] Okay.

Jean Call [00:57:11] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [00:57:12] Down by where the railway station was and where the post office?

Jean Call [00:57:16] Yeah. Behind Abbie's house was a building that was the post office. She had a print shop there, and she used to print, well, a lot of material for teachers and. And her printing press, she had to pick out all the letters. It was. You know, it wasn't an automatically set printing press. And she used to get. She used to get plays, and then she would print. We'll say if it was Maribel's part that, you know, there would be a printing of for all of her speeches, you know, and then she sold those to the schools. She had to pay the copyright to do that from the companies that originally printed those. Then her brother, Frank Howe, came up here to Darrowville on 91, and he built a building and he had a printing press, and he did the same thing. Now, the Grange up there, their yearly program, see, printed and, well, a lot of small stuff, you know, that he would print. That building is still there. One of the boys, he took one of the boys to raise. And let's see, then the son that he took, the Howe boy that he took continued to live there and was married and had a daughter, Audrey. We had two daughters and a son. The daughter Audrey then was married to a Cunningham, and she continued to live there. Well, just this last six months, she passed on. But I said to her once, I said, Audrey, what did you do with all of grandpa's printing press and stuff. She said, I gave it to Hudson High School. So all the printing press that he had up there went to Hudson. Now what happened to it? Now it was so outdated they probably threw it away.

Arrye Rosser [00:59:43] Maybe it made it to the Historical Society.

Jean Call [00:59:45] Well, they might have, yeah. I know some of the things I went down. One time I went. Went to Peninsula for something and I went to visit Nina and in her dining room, her table was loaded with Howe artifacts she was registering and getting ready to have all that appraiser was coming to appraise it and then she was going to give it to the Summit County Historical Society. And I remember one thing I had never seen before was a Victrola that instead of them using the round cylinders to make the music, these were flat discs and the box that they fit on had this great big horn for a speaker. And I thought it was so unique, you know. But she had a whole table full of different things that were the Howes' that she was having a praise and that all that was going to the Summit County Historical Society.

Arrye Rosser [01:00:48] How did the Howes' kind of go from being really wealthy to sort of. Was it because they had so many kids to being more down on their luck, it sounds like? Or were they always-

Jean Call [01:01:02] I don't think- [crosstalk]

Arrye Rosser [01:01:03] They were prosperous, but they just had so many kids with the parents still around or did they still kind of puzzling about these kids having to go live with other families?

Jean Call [01:01:12] Well, I- That's what I- I don't remember that I ever asked Mom. In the book it tells who the father, you know, the father's name. Was it Irwin or something?

Arrye Rosser [01:01:22] I don't know.

Jean Call [01:01:22] Well, anyway, evidently the parents died and these kids were all too young to shift for themselves and there was too many for- for Abbie to take care of. I mean they were her nieces and nephews. Now when I was in. Let's see, when I was in high school, I was down there once and Abbie said, I have something for you. That chair over there on the other side of that lamp she gave me and I made a needle point for the seat. Well, it's worn out now, but I had it reupholstered. She said in the post office upstairs there's a rocker to match it. She says, someday I'll give you the rocker. Well, I asked her then later on I said Abbie. I called her Aunt Abbie. I said, I have that chair finished. I took it to show it to her. I said can I have the rocker now to make a needle point? She said, Jean, somebody stole it after the fire. I guess people went through the building where her post office was and took a lot of the printed stuff, you know, and- But my dad always felt so bad to think all those old records and those old books burnt because there was nothing left, you know, and. But- but all of those children that I had listed on that paper, they were all farmed out somewhere. Now, Isadore, the oldest one, is over a hundred, and she's still living in New Jersey.

Arrye Rosser [01:03:16] What's her married name? Do you know?

Jean Call [01:03:18] No, I don't. All they've ever talked about is Isadore, you know, I mean, I don't know her married name.

Arrye Rosser [01:03:28] Did Abbie have a married name that she went by or did she go back to being called Howe?

Jean Call [01:03:33] She went back to Abby Howe Shepherd.

Arrye Rosser [01:03:36] Shepherd, huh?

Jean Call [01:03:38] And I never. I never knew. I think her husband must have died because all. All as I was growing up, I never saw a husband. I never saw a Shepherd. But he did, evidently, had been married before, had a son in New York. And once in a while he would come to see her, but just different things that my mother said. I think he provided a little. I think he was an attorney in New York City. And. But I'm not sure.

Arrye Rosser [01:04:14] How old was Abbie when she. When. When you remember her? Like, how. I'm kind of wondering when she was by herself as a single woman.

Jean Call [01:04:23] Oh, gosh, she had to be 70s or 80s.

Arrye Rosser [01:04:28] Is this. When did she lose her husband? How old do you think she was?

Jean Call [01:04:31] That? I don't know because I've never, you know-

Arrye Rosser [01:04:33] Was she a young woman?

Jean Call [01:04:38] I- I never- I never knew her to be living with a man or a man living in her house. Yeah, but she went by Abbie Howe Shepherd.

Arrye Rosser [01:04:48] When did you- when- about what time period were your earliest memories of her? Would this have been the '40s, '30s?

Jean Call [01:04:59] Oh, I remember her ever since I was born, you know, because as I said, mom used to spend, you know, time down there. We spent a lot of time with Glenn and Gladys Howe. Because they had the two boys, but no girls. So Gladys was very partial to me. And as I said, at Christmastime, I get things from her that, you know, like one year she bought a little. It was an ironing board, a child's ironing board and a little electric iron. I still have the iron. Well, I think upstairs, I still have the ironing board too. And then one year she gave me a little tin electric stove with some little pots and pans that I could cook on. Mom would never let me. She was afraid I'd set fire to something. You know, but there was just a couple real pretty dolls. You know, One year she gave me a real fancy dress with some lace on it. My mother was a beautiful seamstress, so all my clothes were made by my mother. Coats, suits, everything. So when somebody gave me a frilly dress, I thought it was wonderful. And-

Arrye Rosser [01:06:24] But what were their personalities like? I'm kind of curious. I think of Abbie Howe as, she must have been a very independent woman to have all these different things that she was. She was very entrepreneurial.

Jean Call [01:06:36] Yeah, she- She was, but she was a very- Oh, she was a nice lady. I mean, she- she was always a lady. We'll put it that way. I think she was very well thought of in the area. You know.

Arrye Rosser [01:06:56] And she was at least 10 years older than your mother. Is that right?

Jean Call [01:07:01] Oh, yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:07:01] Or maybe more than that.

Jean Call [01:07:03] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:07:03] Yeah, yeah.

Jean Call [01:07:06] Because once when I said something to mom about her going by Abbie Shepherd, you know, I said, mom, did you ever know her husband? And mom said, no. So that's why I don't know whether they were married that long, you know, that he passed on or whether they were divorced. I- I don't know.

Arrye Rosser [01:07:30] Yeah. What was- What were Glenn and Gladys like, just in terms of their personalities?

Jean Call [01:07:37] Very nice. Very nice. I mean, they thought an awful lot of mom, too, because they would pick, say, beans or they'd pick corn. And if she didn't sell it in the market, she'd call up at night and she'd say, Meta, have Arch bring you down with your cans. And if you help me can tonight, I'll give you half of it. Well, my folks living in town had no garden, you know, so my dad got home from work, pack us all up, and we go down. And my dad had helped if it was beans, you know, snap beans or cut off corn or whatever help Gladys and Mom can. And then they'd bring half of it home. Mom would go down if she. They had a big strawberry patch. So mom would go down, Daddy take her down before he went to work. She'd pick strawberries to sell for Gladys to sell. They'd pay her 25 cents. Well, they sold them for 25 cents, but they pay my mother 5 cents to pick a quart of strawberries. But, no, they were a very nice couple. Very nice. And the two boys, Bud and Glenn Jr were nice kids.

Arrye Rosser [01:09:07] You have a photo of- They call him Buddy as well, or Bud sometimes. What was he like? Or what did he do for a living?

Jean Call [01:09:16] He was pretty near my age, a little younger, but he was a nice boy. The kids, both those boys were nice. But I must call Eleanor sometime and find out because she may not be living because he went to Independence to live and worked in Cleveland. Well, I just saw- Lost track of him, you know, so. But Eleanor would know whether he was still, because she just lost Glenn Jr. two years ago.

Arrye Rosser [01:09:59] So I have Henry down, too. Were there any of those other kids that were memorable in the. Of the Howe children?

Jean Call [01:10:09] Oh, no, see. They were all.

Arrye Rosser [01:10:13] They were sort of scattered.

Jean Call [01:10:14] They were all older, you know, I mean, And now, like this one that. That had the little farm there along the river and Riverview Road. For some reason. I remember mom saying that he sold his little farm, took his family and moved to Florida. And which.

Arrye Rosser [01:10:42] Which one is this?

Jean Call [01:10:43] That was. I lost it.

Arrye Rosser [01:10:50] Henry or-

Jean Call [01:10:52] No, no. Richard. They called him Dick.

Arrye Rosser [01:10:58] Dick.

Jean Call [01:10:59] Yeah. Huh. And it was kind of a coincidence. I had a. One of my home builders that worked here, her name was Ruby. And somehow she. She found out that my name, middle name was Abby. And she said, Abbie Howe? I said I was named after Abbie Howe. She said my maiden name was Abbie or my maiden name was Howe. And I said to her, well, what was your father's name? She said, Richard. So I was kind of putting two and two together. And I said, did he ever live in Ira? She said, I don't know. He never talked about his family much. But she said, I'm going home tonight. He lived in Rochester, New York. She said, I'm going to call him and see him, see if he was named. But we kind of pieced it that the Richard Howe in Ira would have been her grandfather, not her father. So she went home that night. There was a message. She lived up around Cleveland. There was a message that her father had died. She had a cousin who lived with him. And so she called the cousin and the cousin said, yeah, he died today. What do I do with the body? She said, oh. She said, well, call the funeral home there in town and because I have written instruction that he's to be cremated and I'm to take his ashes to Hawaii and sprinkle them in Hawai'i. And so she said, I can't come tonight. It's too late. Because that was probably a five, six-hour drive for her. She said, I'll be there tomorrow morning. So she told me, she said, I went up and I found my dad's will and papers where he signed his pickup truck over to me. So this cousin said, I'm not moving. She said, I'm staying here. And she produced a fake will. She said I knew it wasn't my dad's writing and I knew it wasn't his signature. So she said, I took out of the house what I wanted loaded on the truck, hired an attorney because there were some evidently CDs or bonds or something that had to go through probate. So she said, I hired an attorney to handle it. She said, I told this cousin, I've taken everything I want out of the house. Now you get out, but you can have what furniture is left. Well, they served her three notices of eviction. And so this, the Ruby doesn't work here anymore. So I don't know whether she- What happened the last time she was here? She said, I'm going up because I got a call from some woman who wants to buy the house. And so she said, I have to go up and see her. And she said, I didn't even put a price on the house. So then I- The next thing I heard that this Ruby broke her hand and had it in a cast to her elbow. And so she isn't working anymore.

Arrye Rosser [01:14:25] Wow.

Jean Call [01:14:25] So I don't know what happened. So I never found out whether she was one of the Howes or not. I mean, her grandfather, you know.

Arrye Rosser [01:14:34] Sounds like most likely, huh?

Jean Call [01:14:36] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:14:36] Well, do you want to take a little break at all?

Jean Call [01:14:39] I'm fine.

Arrye Rosser [01:14:39] How are you doing? Do you.

Jean Call [01:14:40] I'm fine.

Arrye Rosser [01:14:41] You want to- Because I wanted to ask you also about your dad's family. Tell us your dad's name and just who, who, who he was.

Jean Call [01:14:51] Okay. My, my dad's name was Arch and they had a farm which is still there.

Arrye Rosser [01:14:59] What's his full name?

Jean Call [01:15:00] Pardon?

Arrye Rosser [01:15:01] What's your dad's full name?

Jean Call [01:15:03] It was Arch Harris Point. And-

Arrye Rosser [01:15:11] So where did he grow up?

Jean Call [01:15:13] Huh?

Arrye Rosser [01:15:14] Tell us a little bit about where he grew up.

Jean Call [01:15:16] Well, he grew up down on the farm. And when he graduated from school, he went into Akron to work at a meat company. And then that's evidently living in the Valley. He met my mother when she was a one room school teacher. My grandfather was a musician. He taught music in North Hill. So there was a while that he lived in North Hill. But when the grandfather died.

Arrye Rosser [01:16:01] This is Nathaniel Point, right?

Jean Call [01:16:02] Huh?

Arrye Rosser [01:16:03] This is Nathaniel Point?

Jean Call [01:16:04] Yes. And my grandfather didn't want his sister to inherit the farm, so he left North Hill and left the music and came down to farm. He was not a farmer. He should have stayed in North Hill teaching music. He played clarinet at the Palace Theater, Loew's Theater in Akron. They used to have an orchestra that played for the silent movies. He played in that orchestra. He taught Benny Goodman how to play the clarinet. As a child in North Hill, Grandpa bought him his first clarinet and turned out to be a very good clarinet player and orchestra leader. But there were 10 children in my dad's family. My grandmother always said she never got one child out of diapers till she had another one, and I believe it. But he never- Grandpa never taught one of his children how to play an instrument, piano or anything. He had no patience. And he was good to my grandma. I'll say that, and I won't say he was mean to the kids, but, you know, he was just a very stern man. I was scared to death of him. He used to cuss. I mean, he didn't cuss you out. He just used the words all the time, you know. So when I went down there to stay with my grandma, which had to be every year, I hid. Well, I saw him. I'd hid because I didn't want to be around him.

Arrye Rosser [01:17:56] How old were- This is sort of when you were 14, 15. That kind of age?

Jean Call [01:18:01] Well, younger than that, even. Probably 10 years old, you know.

Arrye Rosser [01:18:06] And you said he had horses, huh?

Jean Call [01:18:08] He had two. He had a pair of horses. He didn't have a tractor. Had a pair of horses. And the barn was across the street, which is still there. And he'd harness the horses and come out. He decided he wanted a drink. Not always water. He'd yell at me, come hold the horses. So he'd come across the street, get a drink. And so I learned that when I saw the horses were out and he was out, I was nowhere to be seen because I was scared to death of those. Well, you know, those big Belgian horses. And I was a little girl, I was afraid they'd run away with me, you know. And so that was one thing. I. When I had to go stay with grandma, I never. And the house was very primitive. There was no water, no bathroom, you know. And there was a back porch that she had her washing machine on. And she'd always wash when I was down there. So I'd have to stand and turn the ringer crank from the washing machine to the rinse and from the rinse tubs out so she could hang them on the line. And- But my grandmother was a very sweet woman. I mean, she just was very lovable. But there was. Bertha was the oldest child. Then my dad, Arch. And then there was another boy, Wilbur. And then there was Leona and Nellie and Betty. And the last one, let's see. Oh, there was Gwen and Mary. I forget get them all mixed up here. But anyway-

Arrye Rosser [01:19:57] Was there Nathan Junior, huh?

Jean Call [01:20:00] And then there was a boy, Nathan Jr, when he was 19, he had his girlfriend. They had, I think a Model A or Model T. It was older than a Model T Ford. And they were coming back from being at a movie. This girl lived in Peninsula, and he was taking her home. Come down Akron Peninsula Road, and you saw this car weaving all over ahead of him, coming towards him. So he pulled off the road as far as he could get without getting in the ditch. Put his arm around this girl because he just felt this car was going to hit him head on. And it did. Well, the girl didn't go through the windshield, but he did and scalped him. Killed him. The worst funeral I ever went to. Because my aunts were all very emotional. And this is a little brother, you know, know he was 19 and I- Then I was 15. And so by then my grandfather had died and my grandmother didn't have anything. And so the family took this fella to court. And his uncle, or I think it was an uncle, was a very prominent attorney in Akron. In fact, he's still in Akron as an attorney and went to court and got him off. All the judge said was pay her funeral costs. He never did. Never paid grandma a cent. And. But, you know, he was same age as my brother. He was 19 when he died. So then-

Arrye Rosser [01:21:56] What do you remember about the farm itself? What were your grandparents farming?

Jean Call [01:22:04] Said he wasn't a good farmer. There was one hill across the street from the house that was all sand and gravel. He tried to sell that to the county when they were building roads, but because he was a Republican and the powers to be in Akron were Democrats, they wouldn't buy from him. So up on this hill, he raised melons. He raised wonderful muskmelons and watermelons, and he would take the into Akron. They had a farmer's market every Saturday. So he would take a load in and sell them at the market. Then when the melons were done, he'd pull the vines up. He'd have a truckload of salt spread on this hill, on the top of this hill. He'd disc it in and then he would raise turnips. And never had any problem selling turnips because the salt kept the worms. They didn't. They wouldn't get wormy. The turnips wouldn't get wormy. So whenever he'd go to market with picks or half bushels of turnips, he sold them right away because people knew they could buy his turnips, and they wouldn't be wormy. And so that was. Well, he raised some sweet corn because the farm backed up to the lay's and the river was back there, too, so he raised some sweet corn. He'd sell sweet corn and melons and turnips, whatever he had there at the house. But every Saturday, he'd go to Akron to the farmer's market with whatever he had. And he had one cow. They'll give him that they had their milk from. And grandma had Rhode Island red chickens running around everywhere. And so she had her own eggs. But as far as being a progressive farmer, he wasn't.

Arrye Rosser [01:24:15] Did he still teach music on the side or anything?

Jean Call [01:24:17] No, he didn't. You know, my dad always said he had such a good. Between playing himself and teaching, you know, he should have stayed in North Hill, let his sister have the farm. But the sister's name was Annette. I don't know what her last. That's all I ever heard him call her was Annette. And so- But I think she was a sister to grandpa. Grandpa. She lived there in the. Down there on- let's see, what road was it? Must have been the road that went up to Bath.

Arrye Rosser [01:25:05] Road, huh? Yeah, Bath Road. So was he involved in, like, the jazz age? Was he playing when Akron had a lot of jazz clubs?

Jean Call [01:25:18] I don't know.

Arrye Rosser [01:25:18] Or that. That would have been the '20s.

Jean Call [01:25:21] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:25:21] This would be earlier.

Jean Call [01:25:23] I don't remember that.

Arrye Rosser [01:25:23] What kind of music did he play? Or this was all before?

Jean Call [01:25:28] Oh, he. Oh, he played the clarinet.

Arrye Rosser [01:25:30] Yeah. Do you know what kind of. What style of music he played? Popular music?

Jean Call [01:25:34] No. I know when my son Howard started high school, he wanted to play the clarinet. And my Uncle Wilbur lived up in Macedonia. I knew grandma said he had Grandpa's clarinet. She was still living then. So I went up and I asked him, I said, Grandma says you have grandpa's clarinet. Can I buy it or can I have it for Howard? He said, no. And he went in the bedroom and brought this towel all wrapped up. He unwrapped it. He was married. And he said, it's not worth anything. I said, yes, it is. He said, but it would need new cork. I said, I will take it and have it repaired and buy a case for it. Because there was no case. And he said, nope, it's the only thing I have of dads, and I'm not giving it up now. He didn't play, but he was kind of mad at me because my grandmother had some antiques. Well, it was a blanket chest that her dad had made. Wood one. And a straight chair and a rocking chair. And when grandma moved from Everett down to the trailer park, while she was cleaning out the garage, she gave. My dad was down helping her. So she gave daddy this blanket chest and these two chairs. And he didn't want them. He brought them up to me. Well, Wilbur found out about us, and he- That's what he was mad about, was I got grandma's furniture. He told me, said, you got grandma's furniture or got Mom's furniture. And I said, well, I didn't ask her for it. She gave it to Dad, and Dad gave it to me. Well, anyway, I don't know what happened to it because he died. And his wife, now, she knew - Marie was her name - she knew that I wanted that clarinet. So she probably threw it away, you know. So I don't know whatever happened to it. 

Arrye Rosser [01:27:56] Break your heart, huh?

Jean Call [01:27:58] But, no, he was- From what I understand in the family, he was a very good clarinet player. And he played in the orchestra that played at the palace, or the Loew's Theater. I think it was the Palace Theater because the orchestra- And they had a- they had an organ that was down in the orchestra pit. And after the orchestra didn't play anymore, then they would turn something on and this platform would come up level with the stage. And then there was an organist that played. He was really good. And it was a good pipe organ because when it would be up on the stage and they'd open the curtains, you'd see the pipes in the back of the stage on the wall. But I think that organ is still there. Because not long ago, I saw in the paper where some man restored it. Took all the pipes down and what had to be repaired and cleaned and all that. So I think that organ is still there. But. My one aunt, Gwen, always wanted to learn to play the piano. And she kept after her dad to teach her to play. They had a piano in the living room, an old upright. He says, no, go to Aunt Nell. Nell Fiedler taught piano, but she said, I didn't have nerve enough to go to Aunt Nell and ask her to teach me because I didn't have any money and she got paid. So she said I wouldn't go to her.

Arrye Rosser [01:29:52] So explain the relationship between your grandmother, Nellie Point, and Helen Fiedler's family.

Jean Call [01:30:02] Okay. Nellie Fiedler wasn't. Oh, let's see. How was she related? My dad always called her Aunt Nell. And. She must have been related to grandpa on the Point side.

Arrye Rosser [01:30:29] Yeah, she is. I think Winnie has figured out the relationship there.

Jean Call [01:30:34] Now, in that book that. That Helen wrote about the family, it should be in that.

Arrye Rosser [01:30:40] Yeah, yeah.

Jean Call [01:30:41] But I couldn't look it up because I don't have it.

Arrye Rosser [01:30:43] You know, we have a. I have a digital copy of it. If you'd like one. I can give it to you and we can print it out anyway.

[unknown speaker] [01:30:50] A book?

Arrye Rosser [01:30:51] Yeah, I think it's online, actually. I definitely have a digital copy I got from Winnie.

Jean Call [01:30:56] Because I know Helen came here a couple times when she was writing that book to ask, to pick my brains and- So that. But we never could- my aunt in Cleveland, Leona, seemed to have more knowledge about the family. And so I asked her once, I said, where did grandma and grandpa come from? Where did the Point family come from? She said, I think. She said, don't quote me, but I think they came from Alsace-Lorraine. That would be France. Now, up in the Ira Cemetery near the Cranzes there, there is a headstone of grandpa Point's parents. Because this fellow that wanted the picture of the schoolhouse, he came and got me one day, or I met him down there. Anyway, we went through the cemetery because he wanted to take rubbings from the headstones.

Arrye Rosser [01:32:13] This Randy Bergdorf.

Jean Call [01:32:15] Huh?

Arrye Rosser [01:32:15] Randy Bergdorf from Peninsula Historical Society.

Jean Call [01:32:19] No, it was- Oh, God, I can't think of his name. He's- He- He died. He's not living. They lived in Bath.

Arrye Rosser [01:32:34] Oh, he-

Jean Call [01:32:38] His daughter still-

Arrye Rosser [01:32:39] Is that Lee?

Jean Call [01:32:40] Lee?

Arrye Rosser [01:32:41] Yes, yes. We did an oral history with him. I'm also just forgetting the name. And he died maybe two years ago, something like that.

Jean Call [01:32:50] Yeah, yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:32:52] They lived in the Bender property, I think as renters.

Jean Call [01:32:55] Yeah, they rented it. Yeah. Because I remember Lee telling me that they had such a time with the deer, and so she put up this high fence. Well, then somebody told her that was illegal. And she said, yes, but she said, you don't spend the time I spent. They had a little greenhouse there, raising the plants and planting my garden and having the deer come in and take them all. But then she had to get special permission. 

Arrye Rosser [01:33:30] To get our fence up? This is back in the park Service.

Jean Call [01:33:32] Yeah. And to keep that fence, you know. But yeah, they lived in the house. They- they lived upstairs. There was an apartment, I guess, and they lived upstairs. And they were like caretakers too. And. But it was Frank Bender and Irvie Bender. And then there was a sister. What was her name? She taught school in Akron.

Arrye Rosser [01:34:05] What were the Benders like? Do you remember their personalities?

Jean Call [01:34:11] Well, I remember Frank because he loved to dance. And that's what broke his marriage up. Lil didn't care to dance and he wanted to go into Akron every, was it Wednesday night or to dance. So he'd find some woman somewhere to go with him to dance. And Lil didn't like it. And so that's what broke their marriage up was his- So. So. But Lil. It was Lil. Her maiden name was Harrington. Lil Harrington. And she-

Arrye Rosser [01:34:51] Was she the daughter of the Harringtons that owned-

Jean Call [01:34:57] No, she wasn't a daughter.

Arrye Rosser [01:35:00] Owned the store in Everett? She was part of the store.

Jean Call [01:35:04] I don't think she was related to the Harringtons that my grandmother was related to. I think it was another. Another family because when they split up, she came to live with my mother and dad. She was a beautician. And for a while she took my mom and dad's bathroom and she would do hair there at their house while she was to have extra money to go to Kent State. Then when she got her teacher's degree, then she went with the U.S. government to teach in English in foreign countries because she was in England for quite a while teaching.

Arrye Rosser [01:35:48] These intrepid women.

Jean Call [01:35:53] And then when she retired, she was kind of funny. She- when she left England, she put her money in a little cloth bag and pinned it to her bra on her way from England to Penney Farms in Florida. She passed out on the plane and they took her to a hospital. And it wasn't anything real serious. But anyway, of course they undressed her and they- Whoever did it took this little.

Arrye Rosser [01:36:35] Took her money?

Jean Call [01:36:35] Money.

Arrye Rosser [01:36:36] Oh my goodness.

Jean Call [01:36:37] And she was so mad that she had to call my mother for some money because she said they stole my money.

Arrye Rosser [01:36:47] Oh, that's awful. Well, let me ask you some questions about just what did you used to do for fun when you were a little girl and you were visiting either the Point farm or some of the other friends and family. What did you guys do to enjoy yourselves?

Jean Call [01:37:06] My mother and dad were great dancers. My mother had a cousin Bill Roberts in Akron who had a dance studio. And she used to go in on weekends and helped Bill teach round dancing. And she danced with the single men. So that's- I think one of the places that she met my dad was my grandparents danced a lot. And over that- It wasn't Woodcliff. What was it? The store in Bath. It's in that book. Was a grocery store and they had a fire and it burnt, then they rebuilt the store and then the upstairs-

Arrye Rosser [01:37:54] I think I read about it in the paper.

Jean Call [01:37:57] It wasn't Woodcraft. It was- What was the name of the man that built- It's his name. Yeah, it's in there. Anyway, so when they rebuilt this grocery store, they put a dance floor on the second floor. And my dad always said it was a spring floor. It was so good to dance on.

Arrye Rosser [01:38:19] Now this wasn't the one in Everett, though.

Jean Call [01:38:21] No, this was in Bath. 

Arrye Rosser [01:38:23] Because there was another one in Everett that was in what is now the ranger station. And that is the second floor was also- [crosstalk]

Jean Call [01:38:32] Yeah. I know. That was next to the church.

Arrye Rosser [01:38:36] Oh, this one I'm looking at too. This one? Yeah, the dance.

Jean Call [01:38:44] No, it wasn't Bouton.

Arrye Rosser [01:38:46] It was the Osbornes.

Jean Call [01:38:48] Osborne, yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:38:50] It was not. Not Marge Morgan's family. I think I'm just getting forgetful, but I want to say it was her aunt. Maybe.

Jean Call [01:39:00] There was a store up in, on the corner of Route 8. Is it Route 8 and 303 in Bath? Yes. I don't think it's there anymore. Well, if it's there, it's an antique store.

Arrye Rosser [01:39:13] Hold on. Not wouldn't be Route 8 and 303, because that would be Peninsula.

Jean Call [01:39:18] Yeah, this was in Bath. 

Arrye Rosser [01:39:20] 21? 

Jean Call [01:39:21] 21 then. 21 and 303. It's- It was right on the corner. It was a grocery store and it burnt. Then they rebuilt it. When they rebuilt it, they put the second story on and it made a dance floor. So they had dances there every weekend. And my mother and dad used to go there to dance. My grandparents did too. I never saw anybody waltz as beautiful as my mother and dad. They just. My dad had a little bit of a stomach. And if you leaned against that stomach, anybody could dance. I mean, you know, it was. But so as a child, they went dancing a lot on weekends. And I remember going to this place and there was wooden benches around the room. They'd take a pillow. They lay me on that one of those benches, and I'd lay there and sleep while they danced. Very seldom did I have a babysitter.

Arrye Rosser [01:40:28] How old were you at that time? Were you a little tiny?

Jean Call [01:40:31] Probably four or five, six years old.

Arrye Rosser [01:40:34] What about when you were an older girl and you went off to visit the relatives or family down in the Valley? What were the things you did with the other kids or by yourself?

Jean Call [01:40:45] Just whatever there was to play. Oh, well, when I used to go to down to and stay with Glenn and Gladys, we went to the old quarry because then it was-

Arrye Rosser [01:40:58] Were they swimming there?

Jean Call [01:40:59] Oh, yeah. And in fact, that's where I really learned to swim. Because with Glenn, you swam or you sunk. You know, I mean, he'd throw you in. You learn to swim. He was always watchful. He'd never let you drown. But the boys and I and my brother, we go swimming.

Arrye Rosser [01:41:19] Did you used to play in the woods a lot too?

Jean Call [01:41:21] Oh yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:41:22] Just run around?

Jean Call [01:41:24] Yeah. And-

Arrye Rosser [01:41:25] Did you ever get in trouble?

Jean Call [01:41:28] No. Well, most of the time we stayed down in, you know, along Ira Road or. The only time we were up in the woods was when we went to Grace's house. And it really wasn't that they had cut so many trees, you know, but I remember I was about three or four years old and I had a dog, Trixie. It was a collie. That dog followed me everywhere. And if I would start down the hill, that dog would follow me. My mother, if she let me out to play, she would always watch. There was a screened in porch on the front of the house. She'd watch me, that dog would always follow. And if I got close to the creek or the bridge that you went across, that dog would grab my pants and hold me from going any further. Then we moved to Tallmadge and I would sit on the front steps and I'd play a mouth organ. That dog would howl. My mother got so tired of hearing that dog howl, she'd come and take the mouth organ away from me. So I wouldn't play it to make the Trixie howl. But that dog, when we moved to Tallmadge, lived probably two years. Mom let it out one Sunday morning, went down the road, got hit by a car and broke his hip. Well, in those days, you know, they didn't try to repair anything, they just shot the dog. So Mom said after that I was broken hearted. She said after that, no more dogs. You can have a cat, but no more dogs.

Arrye Rosser [01:43:22] And did everybody have pets down in the valley?

Jean Call [01:43:25] HmMm. Yeah, yeah, there was always mostly dogs, you know, and- But they stayed around. They didn't run off, you know. Yeah, stayed close to them.

Arrye Rosser [01:43:38] But what did the Valley look like at the time, do you compare to now? Was it more open with a lot of farm people?

Jean Call [01:43:47] The hillsides were all woods, you know, beside the apple orchard, beside Heinz's apple orchard. That was a real nice family. Then beside, beside their house, there was two other houses that were built. Real nice ranch type houses that were owned by men who are families. But they, the men worked in Cleveland because I remember this one family, this man never liked his shirts to be laundered at a laundry. So Gladys always washed and ironed his shirts and hung them on a hanger and earned herself a little extra money that way, you know. But yeah, it'll be between the Portz family and I can't remember what the other two family family's names are or were then, you know.

Arrye Rosser [01:44:43] Do you remember the cheese factory?

Jean Call [01:44:45] Oh, yeah. It. All I remember is a house or is a building.

Arrye Rosser [01:44:49] Was that on the south side of the road opposite where the station was and the post office was.

Jean Call [01:44:58] It was down on- It was on Riverview Road. 

Arrye Rosser [01:45:03] Kind of right where Riverview Road and Ira Road come together. My understanding kind of somewhere near the railroad tracks.

Jean Call [01:45:10] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:45:11] Yeah. What did it was the house the cheese factory or was there previously some other buildings?

Jean Call [01:45:18] No, it was a- If I remember right, I don't remember too well, but it was a building where they lived in the cheese factory too. It was a combination. And they build it because some of the farmers down there had excess milk and they couldn't ship it into Akron. In those days, if you had- Of course, they didn't have electric bulk tanks then. But later on, if you had an electric big bulk tank, your milk went into, it was grade A milk. If you shipped it in milk cans, it was grade B. So most all the farmers then, when I first came here to live, we had milk cans. That square building out there was where we'd bring the milk down, put it in a big trough that the water. There was a well there and the water ran fresh into that trough to cool the milk because your milk had to be so cold before they put it on the milk truck because they didn't put hot milk in with cold milk. And then eventually we bought a big milk tank. But in those days, everything was shipped in milk cans. And most farmers only had maybe one can or two cans. And they wouldn't take it into Akron to the- to the dairies there was Akron Pure. There's probably three or four dairies in Akron. So they built that cheese factory to take the milk.

Arrye Rosser [01:46:59] And they were processing it. I've seen a picture of, I think it's Edwin. Bill, the photographer, Edwin Howe with big wheels of cheese outside of the. That was there in Ira. But they. They were calling it the Hawkins Station and they were shipping it by train. But I don't know if they kept doing that or there was trucks that came later.

Jean Call [01:47:26] I remember this one picture I had of mom in the schoolhouse. She was standing in the doorway and these kids were lined up on each side of her. And she named every one of those kids. Kids except this boy. The only thing she could remember was that he was from, he lived in the cheese house factory.

Arrye Rosser [01:47:52] We'll never know their name.

Jean Call [01:47:55] But I think in that book I was reading that last night, I think it named the family in that book that lived in that cheese factory. So that would have been his name.

Arrye Rosser [01:48:10] So. And were they processing the cheese there in their house?

Jean Call [01:48:15] Well, I think the house and the factory was all one building, but they- Their house was separate quarters, you know. 

Arrye Rosser [01:48:23] I understand. 

Jean Call [01:48:24] Because to make cheese, they had to have these big vats. They were around years ago. They were round copper. I've got one out here that I got flowers in that we bought from Cherry Valley cheese factory a number of years ago because the government come along and told them they couldn't use those copper kettles. They had to use stainless steel vats. And so he was selling these and we bought one, made a flower pot out of it. But, yeah, they. Now, there was a-

Arrye Rosser [01:49:03] Here's the page. I'm looking at the pages in the book here that have a picture of the station. I'm looking too.

Jean Call [01:49:11] Oh, Mom's- The school, the schoolhouse is in that.

Arrye Rosser [01:49:16] Here we go. On page 99, there's that picture, but I also see this picture of the- Not quite sure what the view is, but this is on page 97. Was that the cheese factory back there in the background, or am I- am I getting the wrong angle? That was right. Abbie lived right there. Yeah. Jan Thomas, who's Bertha Carter's daughter, she has memories of her. This is her aunt and uncle who lived on the property. Let's see, the Carter farm, that was. They were just up the Towpath Trail kind of from what we- Right near where we think of the Beaver Marsh as being. And they were taking their cheese there to the- Their milk to that cheese factory.

Jean Call [01:50:16] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:50:17] Yeah.

Jean Call [01:50:18] Well, if it- If they were- If it was- If they put it in cans, then they- They could sell it to the cheese factory. And yeah, you had a grade A and a grade B milk. And they always got more money for the grade A milk. And now even now, up in Middlefield, there's a cheese factory that was built for the Amish up there. And their milk goes there and is made into cheese. My daughter Suzanne, over the weekend, she had two friends. Well, they were sisters from Maria Joseph Assisted Living in Dayton. They came up to see Suzanne, and she took them up there to get some cheese. And now all that cheese milk comes from the Amish up in Middlefield, Burton area. A lot of Amish up there.

Arrye Rosser [01:51:24] So here I'm looking at now the Ira school picture. So this is saying the Ira school operated from 1853 to 1922 when it closed. So was your mom maybe the last school mistress there at that school?

Jean Call [01:51:42] She was probably. She was probably the last school teacher because then they went up to Bath to the central school.

Arrye Rosser [01:51:48] Yeah. So it kind of all happened about the time she got married, too. So there was just a lot going on.

Jean Call [01:51:55] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:51:56] Yeah.

Jean Call [01:51:58] I have a museum at the fairgrounds in Tallmadge, and in that museum, I have one of the old wooden school buses. It was pulled by horses.

Arrye Rosser [01:52:13] Did they go around and pick the kids up?

Jean Call [01:52:15] Yeah, yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:52:18] That's amazing. So is your mom in this photograph? Is she the woman standing in the background? It's hard to tell, but-

Jean Call [01:52:31] Probably was. Well, that- That one isn't- Let's see. That's not Mom there.

Arrye Rosser [01:52:42] That's the-

Jean Call [01:52:43] This looks like Nina here.

Arrye Rosser [01:52:46] This is the picture of Ira Post Office on page, what is that, 99?

Jean Call [01:53:02] Well, this is probably my mother right here.

Arrye Rosser [01:53:04] Yeah. In this- In front of the schoolhouse, in the door. So that was a little class of kids.

Jean Call [01:53:13] You know, see Mr. Portz, the Roscoe Portz salesman for Perfection Stove Company. Yeah. But yeah, this- It was on part of the Ira property. I mean, that farm was big. Was a big farm. And they gave each one of the kids, well, so many acres, you know. And that's why Grace Reynolds felt sorry for Nina, because she didn't get any.

Arrye Rosser [01:53:49] How was she cut out? Was she. Was there some riff in the family?

Jean Call [01:53:53] No, I think it was because she was married to-

Arrye Rosser [01:54:00] Clayton.

Jean Call [01:54:01] Yeah, she was married to Clayton Stanford, and she didn't live down there, you know.

Arrye Rosser [01:54:05] Oh, so she didn't need it.

Jean Call [01:54:08] Yeah, they didn't probably thought she didn't need it because she had a house. And he was on the. The Jaite. He. He was caretaker for the Jaites, and the Jaites had a- a little house where they lived. It was down the hill from the big house. And so that's why Grace Reynolds willed her house. And I think there was an acre, but I'm not sure. And then she never lived in it because she no more inherited it until this national park come along and bought it.

Arrye Rosser [01:54:51] Yeah.

Jean Call [01:54:52] Tore the house down.

Arrye Rosser [01:54:54] Do you have any memories of the Jaite or Jaite Mill or any of that?

Jean Call [01:54:58] No. I remember going up to the Jaite house just once or twice. It was a was a beautiful home and beautiful furnishings. But I don't remember the family at all because I think when the time I went up there, of course they weren't there. But when the Jaites died, the last one, they willed Nina the little house and- Because I know that when the national park was buying land down there, they wanted to buy it and she said no, as long as I'm living, I'm not selling.

Arrye Rosser [01:55:46] Yeah, there's a house that's called the Nina Stanford house on Stanford Road that's closer into Boston. Maybe that, that's probably the property you're thinking of. Do you remember going in like to Everett or to Peninsula or Boston and just, you know, doodling around when you were a kid, did you go visit or did you mostly stay on the farms? Like did you go to buy candy or anything at the shop, at the stores?

Jean Call [01:56:13] Oh, I remember when I go to grandma's she'd always say, go over to Everett to the post office and get my mail. Well, my uncle was still living then, so most of the time he would walk with me. We'd go down Bolanz Road and go back by Suzu's house, Bobek.

Arrye Rosser [01:56:38] And that was by the river, close to the river, right?

Jean Call [01:56:41] Uh huh, yeah. And we'd smell - we'd go by the house - we'd smell the most wonderful smells. 

Arrye Rosser [01:56:48] This was by the Bobeks?

Jean Call [01:56:50] Yeah, she, she made apple strudel. And so my uncle would say, well let's go get the mail. When we come back, we'll stop and see Suzu. And so we'd stop, we'd take her mail, we'd knock on the house. Oh the house was so primitive, just an old wood table in the kitchen and cook stove and a couple old wooden chairs and I mean she had nothing nice at all. And there was two boys, Mike and Martin. And so we'd knock on the door, she'd come to the door, no shoes, cotton dress down to her ankles practically. And we'd say, Suzu, we brought your mail. Well come in, I just made apple strudel. We knew. We could smell it. So we'd go in the house and she'd give us a piece of apple strudel. It was so good. So we'd visit a little bit. Usually Mike or Martin, one of the boys would be there and every year they would buy her a hoe. They cut the handle off. She'd go out in the cornfield and she'd hoe corn, bent over, completely bent over, hoeing corn. Every year she'd wear out a hoe. They'd have to buy her a new one the next year. Out there with this long skirt, no shoes on, barefoot, hoeing corn. And I don't remember ever seeing him. I'm sure he was around.

Arrye Rosser [01:58:24] The husband?

Jean Call [01:58:26] Uh huh. But I remember Mike and Martin and it hasn't been, but, I don't know, [crosstalk] four or five years ago- 

Arrye Rosser [01:58:36] I'm trying to- Or she was a widow, I think. I- Somebody was telling me about her. I'm trying to remember. It may have been Jan Thomas. She has a similar memory. I think that they were very, very meager means. She was remembering that they were immigrants and didn't speak much English. Do you remember that? Suzu that way or not? Maybe they're Eastern Europeans. I don't know.

Jean Call [01:59:05] They- I know both the mother and the father died and Martin and Mike lived there for a while. And then one of the boys, he didn't live too long. He'd gotten kicked in the head with a horse. And he had quite an indentation here in his forehead and it just was not quite right. But then that was Mike, I think. And then Martin lived quite a long time. I mean, he just died, oh, maybe 15 years ago. And he wrote to my Aunt Gwen all the time.

Arrye Rosser [01:59:54] Where did he move to? Do you remember?

Jean Call [01:59:55] Oh, gosh, I think he moved into Akron somewhere, but I can't tell where it was.

Arrye Rosser [02:00:03] So he stayed local though?

Jean Call [02:00:05] Uh huh. And because I know Gwen, Gwen told me that. That she heard from him quite often and somehow she found out that he had died. Now he may have married, you know, it may have been his family that notified her. I don't know.

Arrye Rosser [02:00:26] Did he have children? I wonder if I could track them down.

Jean Call [02:00:29] Well, he probably did.

Arrye Rosser [02:00:31] Yeah. It's an unusual name. So it might be able to find him.

Jean Call [02:00:35] But he didn't live in the valley anymore.

Arrye Rosser [02:00:36] Yeah.

Jean Call [02:00:37] And he might have different memories.

Arrye Rosser [02:00:40] He's in one of those photographs with Helen and Bertha and Evelyn. And he's the little boy, I think in that photograph of like third or fourth grade at the Everett School. Trying to think. So he was around. Did he have a horse?

Jean Call [02:01:03] I think so. They didn't have- They never had a tractor. I think they had a couple horses or they had a cow. Yeah, for the milk.

Arrye Rosser [02:01:11] I think someone remembers going horseback riding with him.

Jean Call [02:01:13] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [02:01:14] Yeah.

Jean Call [02:01:15] So I'm sure they had a horse.

Arrye Rosser [02:01:17] Did you go and buy candy and stuff? No, some of the late- some people remember buying penny candy.

Jean Call [02:01:23] Yeah. When. When we'd go to the store to get Grandma's mail. It was always a store and the post office, you know, all together.

Arrye Rosser [02:01:31] Is this Mrs. Kepner? The Kepner store?

Jean Call [02:01:33] Uh huh. And on- Now let's see, down in Everett, one of Dad's aunts lived there. And there was. The house had a dance floor on the second floor.

Arrye Rosser [02:01:57] That's the ranger station now.

Jean Call [02:01:59] Yeah. And I remember going there with my mom and dad and grandpa and grandpa. Because my grandfather and grandmother loved to dance too.

Arrye Rosser [02:02:10] Yeah. I was wondering why they didn't dance at that dance more often. Or maybe they were just going everywhere.

Jean Call [02:02:19] I think they danced where there was an orchestra and the orchestras would move around.

Arrye Rosser [02:02:24] Gotcha. How big was an orchestra? Was it just a couple of musicians?

Jean Call [02:02:31] Usually there was a piano player and a drummer and a clarinet or saxophone or something like that. In the dance orchestra that Charles had, he had a piano, which was Hazel Osborne. And the drummer was her husband, Dewey. And then there would be one of their grandsons and their last name was Morgan. J. Morgan. J. Morgan. I can't remember now whether he played the saxophone or the clarinet. No saxophone or the trumpet. But he was. Until a couple years ago, he was principal of one of the great schools here in Stow. Just retired a couple years ago.

Arrye Rosser [02:03:22] What was- What's his name?

Jean Call [02:03:23] J. Morgan.

Arrye Rosser [02:03:27] Check. Track him down.

Jean Call [02:03:28] And he was the grandson of Hazel Osborne. Hazel had a daughter that married a Morgan that had a.

Arrye Rosser [02:03:36] That's Marge Morgan.

Jean Call [02:03:37] Yeah, Marge Morgan.

Arrye Rosser [02:03:39] Yeah. She'd love to see you. She had a. In. She fell and broke a bone and so she was laid up a bit, I think the last few months. But hopefully she's getting around again. Yeah, yeah, she'd love to come see you.

Jean Call [02:03:54] Well, she was a daughter of Hazel Osborne that played the piano for Charles's orchestra. And there's a picture in that book.

Arrye Rosser [02:04:05] Yeah, I'm looking at it right now on page 95. And this was a street dance?

Jean Call [02:04:10] Yes, the Grange down there had a street party and they hired Charles and the orchestra and they were on a wagon and you can see the back of Hazel playing the piano and her brother Dewey. And Charles was calling and-

Arrye Rosser [02:04:34] So how did Charles get in with all these folks too? Well, was it through your connection?

Jean Call [02:04:41] No, Charles had a- His mother was Irish and she had a brother that played the fiddle. He wasn't a violin player, he was a fiddle player. He couldn't read music. And they. Up the Grange hall up here. They used to have square dances though. They had another woman that played the piano. Well, she got too old. So how he found- I don't know how he got Hazel to play.

Arrye Rosser [02:05:14] I know that they were. I know there was a lot of Grange involvement down there in Everett, so maybe they just knew each other, you think through the Grange?

Jean Call [02:05:22] Yeah, there was a Grange in Peninsula. They called it the Union Grange.

Arrye Rosser [02:05:27] What was this one?

Jean Call [02:05:28] Darrowville, Darrow Street. Grange up at Darrowville there was a townish Grange. There was 12 granges in the county at one time. There was a Norton Grange, Manchester Grange. And. But up here at Darrowville, where Charles belonged, they had another woman that played the piano and his uncle played the fiddle. And they'd have dances every month up there.

Arrye Rosser [02:06:00] This is the dance at the Grange Hall.

Jean Call [02:06:03] Yeah. And they were always square dances. But when Charles, he started calling when he was 16. And then

Arrye Rosser [02:06:16] Was it just square dances that he called or was there different kinds of dances?

Jean Call [02:06:21] No, there were square dances. But he also had what they called the old fashioned round dances, which were heel and toe polka, the mazurka, some of those that were round dances. But they were danced to a certain kind of music, you know. And then Charles has a beautiful voice. Hazel knew it and she said, why don't you sing some of these songs and call to them? And so he did. And that made his uncle mad because there were. He couldn't read music. He couldn't pick it up by ear. So he quit. So then that's when Hazel brought one or two of her grandsons, whoever was available. So it was either a saxophone or not a clarinet, a trumpet. Hazel playing the piano and her husband Dewey playing the drums. And we- Well, Charles, he was doing that when we were married and we played. There was a lot of groups. Silver Lake had a club. The Congregational Church in Hudson had a club. So we would play Wednesday night at the Y. We'd go in and teach at the Y on Wednesday night in Akron. Then Friday and Saturday night we'd have a club, different one once a month.

Arrye Rosser [02:08:00] Were you teaching? Was it dancing or music?

Jean Call [02:08:03] We taught square dances and we taught these heel and toe polka. And we taught them a circa and some of these round dances. Well, then Hazel could play anything. So when we play for these clubs, we'd play a square dance, which was. There was, in a square, there was four couples. And then the next time she'd play, she'd play either a polka or heel and toe polka or mazurka or maybe a waltz, you know. Then Charles would go back to call them another quadrille, a square dance. So we do that. Well, we'd start at 8 o'clock. We dance till 12 o'clock. And we did that one night we were at a club. Charles had a PA system and two big speakers and a mic. And so we go there. Because before the dance started to set up, because he'd hang up the speakers, set up his mic and everything. Well, when Howard was little I took him in a basket, I put him behind the piano. That kid slept anywhere. And one night I went and got him out from behind the piano and carried this basket. And this woman said, was that kid back there all during the dance? I said, yeah. I said every night at home he was in bed by 8 o'clock, he'd sleep. And I said, you know, he sleep right through the pound of the piano. That didn't bother him any. You know, I always fed him before I put him back and then I had to feed him when he got it, when I got him up before I got home because he was a bottle bed, bottle fed baby. But when Suzanne came along three years later, oh no, you didn't put her behind no piano. She wouldn't go sleep anywhere. But anyway. 

Arrye Rosser [02:10:20] So this is. How old were you at this time? Or what was the year? Roughly the years. Like how long did you guys used to do this?

Jean Call [02:10:27] How old was I when we danced?

Arrye Rosser [02:10:29] You went and did the dances and were teaching?

Jean Call [02:10:31] Oh, well, right away, I mean, Charles was calling for square dances and we were married and when you were newlyweds. I was 20 when we were married. And you know, so then.

Arrye Rosser [02:10:46] A lot of fun. You had a lot of fun.

Jean Call [02:10:48] Yeah, yeah.

Arrye Rosser [02:10:50] So did he. Did you get paid for it? Did they get. Did you. Were you able to.

Jean Call [02:10:54] Oh, yeah, they got paid, I think. Let's see. I think they each got $5 a night. And that helped us because Charles's dad didn't pay very much for him to stay here and farm. So that helped. And then in 48, Smith Supply in Cuyahoga Falls was an implement dealer. And Mr. Smith said to Charles, would you be interested in coming down and running my business? So Charles thought about it because there Howard was, was born '48. This was in '48. So he told his dad, he said, Mr. Smith offered me a job. He said, I got to think to the future. But now we got Howard. He says, well, I'll sell you the farm. But boy, the conditions went with it. So Charles asked me, he said, dad will sell me the farm. And he wanted to farm. I mean, he didn't finish Ohio State because he couldn't stand to be cooped up in a room, school room. And that was a sore spot with his mom and dad because his dad was a graduate of Ohio State. His uncle was dean of the College of Agriculture and Home Economics at Kansas State.

Arrye Rosser [02:12:26] Which uncle was this? Which uncle was this?

Jean Call [02:12:30] Charles's uncle Elon, his dad's brother. And so his brother, he didn't mind riding a tractor, but he didn't like any other type of farming. He didn't like cleaning manure. So when he graduated in '44, he says, I'm getting out of here. So he went to Ohio State five years younger than Charles. And he before he finished his degree, he was drafted in the Army. He went in the Air Corps part, where he was a paratrooper. And so he served his time in the service, come back to Ohio State and got his degree. And he also worked for Central Ohio Breeding association, which is the organization that does artificial insemination in cows. They didn't do horses, just cows. And so his Uncle Elon said, how about coming to Kansas State and setting up a breeding program here at the college? So his brother did. He went to work at Kansas State. In the meantime, he found he couldn't get anywhere without a Ph.D. So he went on working at Kansas State and took and got his PhD at the same time. Then he stayed out there and taught animal husbandry at Kansas State. And just this last Christmas, he died. He was five years younger than Charles. He developed lung cancer and didn't live very long once he diagnosed it. But anyway, that was thrown up to Charles forever that he didn't finish college.

Arrye Rosser [02:14:31] Can I ask a question about your mom going to college? It's interesting. Both of my grandmothers went to college, and I just find that fascinating. So your mother going to college, like, how did that come to be? Was it really unusual at the time to go to Kent State?

Jean Call [02:14:49] Well, I didn't. I took a straight in high school, a commercial course, had typing, shorthand, bookkeeping, all that. So when I got out of school, I didn't want to go to college. My brother offered to pay. He had his Ph.D. at Ohio State. He said, I'll pay your way. He worked in the Pentagon. They. He was assistant Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. He said, I'll pay your way. I said, nope, I don't want to go to college.

Arrye Rosser [02:15:24] This is you, though.

Jean Call [02:15:26] I said I could work and I did. I worked at the Polsky Company in Akron. I was a paymaster. And then I left there and went to US Stoneware in Tallmadge. And I did accounts receivable and accounts payable there. Then I was married.

Arrye Rosser [02:15:44] What about your mom, though? Like, how did she end up going. How did your mother end up going to college? Was that unusual? Was she-

Jean Call [02:15:52] Yes, it was.

Arrye Rosser [02:15:53] Was she really proud of.

Jean Call [02:15:55] I don't know whether she decided to go to college because she wanted to be a teacher. She knew she had to go to college to be a teacher. I don't know. I never asked her why she decided to go to school, but she did. Because as soon as she graduated from high school in Tallmadge she went to Kent State. And her girlfriend was a Finn, lived in Tallmadge and across the street from Kent State her grandmother had a house. So Mom and Doris went there to live and could walk across the street to Kent State. So they both got their teaching degree and then from [inaudible] Mom graduated she went to Ira. Be a one room school teacher.

Arrye Rosser [02:16:46] Yeah. So she just did she was. Did she talk a lot about like why she wanted to be what she liked about being a school teacher or why she.

Jean Call [02:16:56] She liked teaching. I don't know why. Unless when she went to school she had some good teachers that sort of influenced her. I don't know. But. So she was from Ira, then she went to Thomas Town and then from Thomas Town came to Tallmadge. But in Tallmadge she was just a substitute teacher because she was married. And in those days a married teacher couldn't have a full time job.

Arrye Rosser [02:17:27] Yeah.

Jean Call [02:17:29] And. But I didn't want to be a teacher.

Arrye Rosser [02:17:37] I think it was different in the third. Well that was a lot earlier. Let me ask you as we just want to wrap up maybe do you have any memories of like the Soleil Farm or Helen Toth when she was young? Any.

Jean Call [02:17:50] Anything there more about Everett I didn't see. I remember going to my grandmother's and going back to where Helen lived. I mean the Fiedlers, you know-

Arrye Rosser [02:18:07] It's now called Hunt Farm.

Jean Call [02:18:08] Yeah. And playing there a while. But Helen was younger than I was and but me living in Tallmadge and she down there was quite a distance, you know. And I didn't go to my grandmother's. Well, we went there every Sunday for dinner. But to stay I was only about one week out of the summer. And I probably have seen more of her since then, I mean, you know, because she'd come here. She was- I have a cousin in Cleveland, Joan. And she and Joan were very good friends. And so every once in a while she and Joan would come down here and we'd go out to lunch and. But well she had, she had a couple boys, you know, she had her family.

Arrye Rosser [02:19:12] One thing that strikes me is just how everybody kept up with each other so much. Do you have any thoughts about how that came to be? That people were friends with each other for so many years really their entire lifetime?

Jean Call [02:19:27] Well, the points always had a family reunion every year. So that was a big deal because everybody came. They usually had it at Fiedler's or my grandparents farm. And-

Arrye Rosser [02:19:44] How long did that go on for?

Jean Call [02:19:46] Oh, for years. I can't tell you how many years, but, well, probably until my grandparents died, you know, really, because I had two aunts that lived in Cleveland. They'd always come. And the one aunt had two boys and they lived in Cleveland until Herb was with the White Motor company. He decided to buy a dealership in Canton and sold trucks. And so they, they lived in Canton. Then there was the two boys. And I used to go there a lot and stay a week. And now there's one boy. My aunt and uncle are gone and the one son is gone. The other boy lives in Asheville, North Carolina and I see him about once every two years. He still is involved with the company, Young Truck Sales in Canton. He has turned. He and his brother inherited it. And then when Bob died, Bob turned his half of the business over to his brother. And then when Dick retired and moved to Asheville, he returned. He turned his over to his son. So the two, the two sons run the business. But as Dick's wife said, Doris, he's got computers and he's got all this stuff in an office in North Carolina. He keeps his finger in the business, you know, and he comes once in a while to see how the boys are getting along. Yeah, because I guess it's quite, quite a successful business. I know one time in Canton there's a farm that they took the barn and made a restaurant out of it. And there's an apple orchard there. And I don't know at all, but it's quite a lovely place to go. So Dick called and he said, how about meeting us down there and I'll get my kids. And Howard couldn't go for some reason, but Charles and I went, went to this restaurant and Dick says, I said to him, now how, how are we going to arrange this? Each family going to get their own check or what? He says, nope. He says, my son told me he sold 15 trucks today. He's picking up the bill. Boy. The 15 trucks would be a good sale. And sold them to some company that hauls garbage. He just sold a bare truck. And then they put the garbage business on it. And so Dick's son picked up the check. But that was probably about four years ago. And I haven't seen him since. I hear from him. He writes me every now and then. And the day that we were at the restaurant out in the waiting room, he walked in, he looked at me and he says, hi, mom. I said, what? He says, you look just like grandma. And. But of my dad's family having 10 kids, I don't have many cousins because, well, there was two boys in that family.

Arrye Rosser [02:23:40] You don't have many cousins? Even with all those 10 kids? Yeah, they just didn't have children.

Jean Call [02:23:45] I think, I think the, the aunts and uncles, they lived in such poor conditions that they didn't, they didn't want any kids. I don't know. But my aunt Bea, the oldest one, she had one girl, Joanne, and her husband, they're both gone now. But her husband in 1996 was the Olympic gold medal winner from tumbling and they're both gone. The cousin Joan is still in Cleveland. She's the one that was friendly with Helen. And because Helen lived up there and they, they went back and forth. So I had Joanne and Joan and the two boys was the only cousins I had out of all my dad's family.

Arrye Rosser [02:24:36] That's incredible, huh?

Jean Call [02:24:38] And Joanie and the, and Dick, the one boy, are all that's living. Rest of them are gone. Yeah, all died of cancer.

Arrye Rosser [02:24:46] Did you feel like, was Nina kind of like a part of the family too? Like did your family sort of feel like Nina was part of your family?

Jean Call [02:24:56] Yeah, I did. But then still when I was. See, she didn't live with mom and dad. She was married by the time I was born. But I'd go see, I mean, I just felt I had a close connection. So if I went to Peninsula for something or down in the valley and I had time, I'd go see her and she'd come up here once in a while.

Arrye Rosser [02:25:19] What was her personality like? I know Ranger Rebecca knew her well, at some point maybe we'll introduce you to Rebecca. She'd love to meet you. But she, she has very strong memories of Nina. But I never met Nina. What kind of woman was she like when she was a younger woman? What's her personality like?

Jean Call [02:25:38] So ordinary.

Arrye Rosser [02:25:40] Even with all that extraordinary beauty, huh?

Jean Call [02:25:42] Yeah, but she was, she was a very nice person.

Arrye Rosser [02:25:46] You know, she must have been kind hearted to have all those foster children.

Jean Call [02:25:51] Down there where she lived. She loved flowers. She had a big flower garden behind and one beside the house. Between the house and the drive, well, the driveway and then the flower bed. People used to drive down there and stop in front of her house just to see her flowers. And the one time I went down and stopped, she was- She had a screened in porch on the back of the house and there was like a day bed and she was laying there. I said, Nina, are you all right? She says, yeah, but I'm just hot and tired. I've been working out in this on the garden all day. I said, don't work so hard. Well, she said, I love it. She said, I love the flowers. And she always. A lot of perennials, you know, that came up every year. And her garden was just beautiful.

Arrye Rosser [02:26:40] Is this when she was living in the house that's down closer to Boston Mills Road, that intersection? Or was this when she was at the Clayton Stanford house, up on the hill? Up on the hill or down.

Jean Call [02:26:57] No, this was down. The Stanford, well, the- the house that they lived in most of her life. I mean, married life was the house that was provided for them. I don't. She never lived in the Stanford house up the big farmhouse.

Arrye Rosser [02:27:23] She was in the house that was just up the- just on the high ground above it. Right.

Jean Call [02:27:30] Uh huh. Clayton had a brother that lived in the farmhouse. He was married, and I think they had one girl, if I can remember, right.

Arrye Rosser [02:27:40] Yeah.

Jean Call [02:27:44] Nina had two girls and the boy, George. Shirley was one of the girls. What was the other girl's name? Oh, both the girls are living. They live in the east somewhere. But George died a couple years ago. And I asked somebody from Bath, I said, what happened to George? And she said, he died of a heart attack. Now, he would have. Let's see, he was born about the year we were married in '44. And because she brought him here a couple years old after we were married. And

Arrye Rosser [02:28:31] Did you keep up with Nina until the end of her life?

Jean Call [02:28:35] I would go down to see Nina every once in a while. And as I said, she came here a couple times with George. And when my. When my mother died, she came to a funeral home. And I hadn't seen her for a couple years before that, but she was very, very sweet, lovable person. I just loved her.

Arrye Rosser [02:29:05] What was your mom's personality like?

Jean Call [02:29:07] My mom?

Arrye Rosser [02:29:08] Yeah.

Jean Call [02:29:11] Very domineering, I'd say. Even me. Well, mom ran things, we'll put it that way. I mean, she controlled the money. You know, at times I thought she was too bossy with my dad. She never let the man sit down a minute. It's always rush, rush, rush. You know, he'd mow the lawn. They had another big lot besides the lot the house was on and it backed up to their lot, but faced the other street. He'd get done mowing and he'd come in and he'd sit down on his recliner, being hot. He no more sit down five minutes until Arch. What do you want? Well, I want you to run the sweeper or wash the windows or scrub my kitchen floor or something. I mean, she had a back problem so she dust but anything heavy she couldn't do. And when, when I was a baby, she was in Akron and Polsky's and O'Neill's were across from each other. She was crossing the street from O'Neills to Polsky's and State Street was beside O'Neill's. It was kind of a hill and a car come down that hill and turned onto Main Street and hit her. She was carrying me and I went up on the running board of the car and she went under the car. Well, she didn't think she hurt herself but she dislocated her hip. And it was quite a while, a couple years until the doctor found that that hip was out of place. So he put it back, kept putting it back in place and finally he told her, he said, you're going to have to get a full-length girdle, put it on in bed because your hip will be in place and then get up. So she did. She wore a full-length girdle just to keep that hip in place. So when it comes to scrubbing the kitchen floor or running the sweeper, she had my dad do it. 

Arrye Rosser [02:31:30] Your poor dad.

Jean Call [02:31:31] Daddy came up here once. She had to go every, every day she had to go somewhere. She quilted at two churches. She had a garden club. The girls from Kent State had a Kent State Club and I don't know. But anyway, one time she went to Silver Lake to one of the Kent Club girls meetings. My dad come up and he sat down in the chair. Oh, he was so tired. I said, what have you been doing? He said, your mom's been running me ragged. I'm so tired. Well, so the next time I saw her I said, ease up lady. I said, he's tired. Why? I said, because you're making him do all the work. You know, she didn't like him. But anyway, mom was very domineering person. Not with my brother though. Boy, she started issuing orders to him. He set her down. Of course he only saw her about twice a year cuz he lived in Bethesda, Maryland and they'd come at Christmas time and summertime. Once, you know.

Arrye Rosser [02:32:44] We should probably wrap up and get on with. But you've been absolutely wonderful. It's been a delight and I hope that we'll come back. I think we covered everything that I was hoping to cover. But I'd love to, to bring some connect you up with Winnie and some other folks, Marge Morgan and others who just would enjoy meeting you again. It's probably been a while now.

Jean Call [02:33:08] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [02:33:09] Well, so thank you so much for your time.

Jean Call [02:33:13] You know, it'll be three years in May that I had a stroke, so they won't let me drive anymore, so I feel-

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