Frank Wetmore interview, 12 July 2022

Abstract

Frank Wetmore is a descendant of one of the original European settlers of the Cuyahoga Valley area. The Wetmore family was funded by the United States government to settle in the Conneticut Western Reserve and open a business. Frank Wetmore grew up visiting his grandparents in the summer, who remained in the Cuyahoga Valley (Not the original settlers). In this oral history, Wetmore recalls memories of his childhood, his time as a National Park Service Ranger for Glacier National Park and the changes he has seen in the Cuyahoga Valley in his lifetime.

Interviewee

Wetmore, Frank (interviewee); Wetmore, Linda (participant)

Interviewer

Jones Macko, Rebecca (interviewer); Schnack, Erich (participant)

Project

Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Date

7-12-2022

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

114 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Frank Wetmore interview, 12 July 2022" (2022). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 343015.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1434

Related Resources

CVNP @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:00:00] My name is Rebecca Jones. And today we are here with Frank Wetmore and his wife Linda. Linda. His wife of a mere 56. That’s a great record. And you were- You were starting to tell us-

Frank Wetmore [00:00:15] We both grew up in Stow. A little bit about my history. I never really lived here, but I was here a great deal in the summer. And I did live one year in the apartment in the Zelinski store. There was an apartment on the- There were two apartments, one upstairs and one on the, cell. My parent. My parents. Hallie Major was the Hallie you had. Hallie and Tom Major were the children from Selwyn Major and Ruth Major.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:00:50] What was his first names?

Frank Wetmore [00:00:51] Selwyn. Selwyn and Ruth Major, who lived in the big house up on Major Road.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:00:59] Okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:01:00] And my father was out in Wetmore and he married Hallie Major. The reason he met her, he owned. He and Bill Ellsworth owned the mill in Hudson. And they were delivering feed to the Major farm. And she met my mother, who is the brother of Tom then. So my dad had the farm. It was- I see the barn had- They’ve covered the roof now, but I have a picture of it. Spring Hill Farm with the barn and the house on the other side of the road. The reason I was here so much is because we came over to visit grandmother. And when I say grandmother, I mean Ruth Major and grandfather, Selwyn Major, a great deal. And there were three of us kids. Well, two of us would stay with grandmother. And I would stay with Mrs. Pramel. Now Pearl Pramel and James. They were caretakers of the Montgomery farm. The Montgomery farm, when Montgomery heard that Lloyd Bigelow wanted a farm, he put the whole farm up for sale and sold it to Lloyd. And Lloyd Bigelow was the owner of Bigelow Motors

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:02:29] Right there in Peninsula.

Frank Wetmore [00:02:30] Right. So he sold the farm to Lloyd Bigelow and then Mr. And Mrs. Pramel, who I stayed with from when I was three or four months old. Because my parents went hunting in Vermont or something like that. They were big on that. And my brother and sister stayed with grandmother.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:02:54] So why did they split you up?

Frank Wetmore [00:02:57] 3 is too many for grandmother to take care of. Plus, Mrs. Pramel never had any children. And I was her baby from when I was tiny. And so I stayed with her year after year. And then they moved from there. And I’ll get to it later, they moved over across from the Kennedy, King Kennedy’s farm on Route 303. They moved to a house there. And when that was not available, Lloyd Bigelow built a house on the farm for them to live. And he was always the caretaker at the farm.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:03:34] So Lloyd Bigelow managed what had been the Montgomery farm.

Frank Wetmore [00:03:38] Right.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:03:39] And Montgomery Farm specialized in?

Frank Wetmore [00:03:42] He was a rich. He didn’t farm any. He was a rich man from Cleveland. And he came out there. In fact, I remember back in the back there was this round building way up on stilts, and they used to go back there and play cards and drink beer and have a big time. And you could see all out through the fields there. Lloyd never used it, but we would. Dick and Doug are Lloyd Bigelow’s two boys. We used to go back there and play quite a bit in that old building. Anyway, I can start.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:04:15] So just so we have some background, can I ask what year you were born?

Frank Wetmore [00:04:22] I was born in 1936.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:04:25] And you grew up in Stow, but you were visiting in the summer here in the Valley. 

Frank Wetmore [00:04:33] Right. And I’m from the Stow Wetmores that settled Stow. Joshua Stow and Judge William Wetmore is our family line.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:04:43] That was actually one of the questions we were going to ask a little later. So there were three of you growing up?

Frank Wetmore [00:04:49] Right. And my brother is gone now. My sister lives on the farm in Stow, and I’m probably the last Wetmore name here because my brother’s boy is in Dallas and my son is in San Diego. So I don’t know that there’s any more Wetmore names around.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:05:10] So what did your parents do?

Frank Wetmore [00:05:13] My father, after he had sold the mill in Hudson, we moved to Stow. This was before I was born. Moved to Stow in 1933, bought a 40-acre farm there. And then he worked at the Williams Brothers mill in Kent, which recently burned.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:05:33] That was the one. Okay. That was near campus. It caught fire. Right, okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:05:38] That caught fire. They don’t say, but I’m sure bums were staying in there and it was cold and they lit a fire and anyway, he worked at the mill for years until the war came on. And then it wasn’t a good fit for him because he was a horticulturist and a farmer. But anyway, he went to the Gougler machine shop and became a machinist and worked there the rest of his time until he retired as soon as he got out. My mother was a homemaker and led Girl Scouts and girls camp in the summer, day camp and all that stuff, but she never worked outside the home.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:06:16] But so he actually. So your dad actually was. Was doing two jobs. He’s doing the farm at home and also being a millwright and then later a machinist.

Frank Wetmore [00:06:26] Machinist. And our farm had- We had every- We had everything. Rabbits and sheep and cows and goats. And we had lots of trees, cherry trees and grapes and quince and just everything like that. He was a great horticulturalist because his father was. Grew. Had a nursery. Grew little trees. A nursery.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:06:54] So growing up, did you sell this produce?

Frank Wetmore [00:06:56] Yes, we would sell. People would come out and sour cherry tree and they’d give us $20 for the tree. And I always said, we want the tree back because my swing is on that tree. But they’d pick all the cherries. So, yes, we sold grapes. And the lambs usually went to the Jewish community in the very early spring. And the goat’s milk. People who had ulcers would come out and get the goat’s milk from us because evidently goat’s milk is better for people that have ulcers. Anyway, I grew up on that farm and I had a paper route there and did the papers on North River Road and Marsh Road and a little bit more about my life. Then in 1959, I was drafted after I graduated from high school. So I was drafted in 1959, and I don’t know why, because there was nothing going on. And I went to the. You’re drafted for two years. But I went to the draft board and I said, now look at what’s the longest school you had? And the longest school was nine months. It was a cryptograph repairman in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. And so I enlisted for three years, not realizing that if I didn’t pass the tests, I wouldn’t get to school. I would be washing jeeps or something. So anyway, I did go to Fort Hood, Texas for basic training. And then Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, for nine months of school. Then I went to Fort Benning, Georgia, where I stayed the rest of the time. And I had a security clearance. Cryptograph repairman. It was to my advantage because first off, I was AD which means exempt of duty. I never again pulled KP or guard duty because the army knew they spent that much money to send me school.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:08:48] Return on investment.

Frank Wetmore [00:08:49] Yes. Plus it got me four years of college when I got out, which I then went to Kent State and got my four years of college. And then I started teaching in Canton city schools where I taught earth science. And I kept going in for 14 years until I had my master’s plus 32 degrees because that was the highest pay scale. And stay in the classroom. I didn’t want to doctorate degree because you couldn’t stay in the classroom and I didn’t want to out of the classroom. So anyway, that was to my advantage. I didn’t like it at the time. It turned out all right.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:09:25] So you were majoring in Earth Sciences?

Frank Wetmore [00:09:29] Well, Biology and Geography. But at that time they didn’t have a real Earth Science program. But I knew it included Astronomy and Geology and Oceanography and Meteorology. So I took all those courses. And then I stayed in Canton City Schools 27 years. Then I bought my three military years and I got out in ’95 as quick as I could. And I never worked in the summer. We always took canoes, two canoes, and went to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area or down the Missouri River, or down the Current River or the Buffalo River in Arkansas. We took trips with our kids.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:10:06] And he took you on this? Oh, yes.

Frank Wetmore [00:10:09] Well, she was. We got married in May, the last May. And I had to be in Glacier National Park 10 June. That was our honeymoon in the national park. So we went out there and it rained all the way out. So we camped in the rain. We had a tent and camped. So that was her introduction. And she was out there for our honeymoon. And I worked in the national park. And in 1967–68, the national park had much more money than they have now. And I was at St. Mary’s there were 16. They called them ranger naturalists then. Now they’re interpretive rangers. And I was on the trail or on the boat or hiking up over Saya Pass someplace or the Visitor Center every day. And in the evening I gave the. I had two nights. I had to give presentations in the Visitor Center or at the campground.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:11:04] Campground.

Frank Wetmore [00:11:04] Build a fire in the campground. That’s all gone now because I was back to Glacier a couple years ago and that’s all gone. There’s no hikes, no anything. They have, I think, three interpretive rangers. And they just don’t have enough people to take the hikes and do the trails that they used to. Things have changed because we had 16 there. And I went into- If you ever get a chance, read the book Night of the Grizzlies. I hiked, I met at Logan Pass, and the people would be there at 9 o’clock in the morning. We’d hike seven miles into Granite Park Chalet, which was built by 3C [CCC]. It’s along the Continental Divide they call the Highline Trail. And then I would stay all night. But the ranger who came in the day before would take any of my group out who didn’t want to stay all night. Then I’d stay all night with people. And the next. Well, of course in the evening you had supper and you had to sing. And then about 8 o’clock or 8:30 the cooks would call us and we- They threw the garbage out back because they had a garbage tub and we’d see the grizzlies there. So we went out and looked at the grizzlies and all on the porch. Okay. Gene Devereaux came in the next morning, next after about noon with her gang. And I took out the part the people that wanted to leave. And that night the grizzly, there was a campground say a hundred yards from the chalet. That night the grizzly came in and killed the girl. Michelle Coutts was her name. Killed her. And the same night the same thing happened at Trout Lake, which is in from McDonald. And they had been catching lots of fish there and they skinning the fish and the bear had been coming in. Well, four kids from Lake McDonald came in with a little dog and they were camping there and the grizzly came in and came to the girl and she couldn’t get out of her- Couldn’t get her zipper down and killed her also. This is all the same night.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:13:24] I have read Night of the Grizzlies.

Frank Wetmore [00:13:26] You’ve read it? Okay. I’m surprised. Nobody ever reads that.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:13:32] Yeah, it’s- Yeah. It was actually talking about how the Park Service has changed.

Frank Wetmore [00:13:36] Oh yes. And they don’t tell you in there, but there was a bear has a keen sense of smell and a menstrual cycle has part to do with it. They don’t tell you that in the book, but we talked about it there. And they put up a sign there. Close the trails and everything. Anyway, those were our visitation out there. Well, let’s get to the things here.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:14:07] If you wish to fire. And then we have some questions too that we can. I have some images here that Melissa was kind enough to give us yesterday. I did fail to mention earlier in the recording that Melissa Arnold is here with us today from Peninsula Library. Oh my.

Frank Wetmore [00:14:32] This is for the national park. These are. I don’t think they’re all small ones. I had a whole cigar box full of them. My dad picked those up where you have the Wetmore barn. And there’s a big flat area just east of there. Of course, the river’s around there. There’s a big flat area. And dad picked those up there. And a lot more. I had a whole box of them. Those are perfect ones. I picked up at least half of them are all chipped that I had because he said 100 years of plowing and disking wears them out.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:15:08] Yeah, breaks them. So what Mr. Wetmore has just given us is a box of mixed flint points, chert points. Some of them are from the late woodland period and some are mid woodland and there is a couple of spear points with them but most of them are what we would call light woodland.

Frank Wetmore [00:15:33] Yeah, some of those there were scrapers and everything in there. This is some that I had left I had a great deal of. Dad tells about they had a lot of burlap sacks stacked up A whole stack of them that all had holes in them and they weren’t any good so he. His dad told him throw them all over the bank into the river. So he carried him down from the barn and threw them over the bank and they just floated away. No, they didn’t get into the river. The bank is too much brush and everything. Anyway, a week later the buggy and it’s the junk dealer came along and he said oh, I’d buy those burlap sacks if you bring them up. So Dad said he made three trips and he carried them all up. They were wet by then. Carried them up to the road and the next week the junk man came along and gave him a nickel for all the sacks. He called up there he said it wasn’t worth it.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:16:37] Wouldn’t that get you a Coke though?

Frank Wetmore [00:16:44] Here is a picture. And I mentioned Mrs. Pramel here’s a picture of her in her later years.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:16:53] Can you make a note for Mrs. Pram?

Frank Wetmore [00:16:55] That’s James Pramel and I called her Auntie but Pearl Pramel, and she was very, very good to me as her adopted son, like, from when I was little, from when I was maybe 3 years old or something. On Saturday night we had to go to Richfield every Saturday night. She had a model A of course and we went down the brick road to Richfield and on the right hand side there’s a bar there. Now this is not West Richfield. No, this is West Richfield. I’m talking about West Richfield at Richfield the dance hall is on the right.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:17:37] Yes, yes.

Frank Wetmore [00:17:38] In fact the dance hall is where Dad was. My dad liked to dance and he and a bunch of them were there when the Moody and Thomas mill caught on fire and he said they got in their buggies and they came charging down there as fast as they could to see it. But anyway, Aunt- Mrs. Pramel and I would - and Uncle Jim - we would go to West Richfield and he had to sit at the bar and drink beer with all his buddies. We’d go there about 8 o’clock and stay till midnight. And I was maybe three or four years old. I was very young then, but we did it for several years. And the guys at the bar would always buy me potato chips. I remember they would give me a dime for this machine they had. You turned the crank, you turned it very slowly, and there was all these cards in there and there was a tripper there and they would- You turn it and it was a slow movie. As the cards changed, it gave you a little movie, and I turned it nice and slow. I think it cost a nickel. They would always give me a nickel or so to do that. Needless to say, I never told my parents what we did on Saturday night because the Wetmores were very much teetotalers. If you looked up the Sons of Rest, that was not a drinking club.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:18:56] Yes, I have.

Frank Wetmore [00:18:57] They were very teetotalers.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:18:59] It was a- the Sons of Rest was a fraternal organization that- Yes.

Frank Wetmore [00:19:05] And I’m not sure where they met, but the church. I should say something about the church.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:19:13] They met in Peninsula somewhere, but I don’t know where they met. 

Linda Wetmore [00:19:16] At the library.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:19:17] They met at the library?

Linda Wetmore [00:19:22] It was plaque down there with all their names and everything.

Frank Wetmore [00:19:23] Yeah, but I mean back in the ’30s, ’20 or so. I suppose you know the story about the church. That’s the story about the church.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:19:41] I do know that they were a fairly liberal-minded church for their time.

Frank Wetmore [00:19:49] Sorry to say the Methodist Church has become that we have separate- Our church has separated. Oh, I wanted you to have this.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:19:56] Yes.

Frank Wetmore [00:19:57] I don’t know if you had a chance to read that.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:20:00] So he has just given us a copy of the American Legion Veterans Strengthening America, their magazine. And it’s the Green and the Gray. The National Park Service director. This is Director Sams, talks military connections.

Frank Wetmore [00:20:14] Yeah, I wanted you to have that. This is from the church. A history of Methodist Church. You already have a copy of this. And to Mr. And Mrs. Selwyn B. Major who presented the new Wurlitzer organ to the Methodist Church in Peninsula Ohio as a memorial to their respective parents. Mr. And Mrs. Thomas E. Major. This is Andrew Osman. And here if you read this it tells you quite a genealogy of T.E. Major who was the banker.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:20:51] Okay, can we keep this? And I have your address. Can we take a look at this and return it to you?

Frank Wetmore [00:20:57] Yes.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:20:58] Okay. Because I have your address still in the box that you gave it to me.

Frank Wetmore [00:21:02] And when I mentioned T.E. Major. T.E Major was the original owner of the major farm. And he was the banker. And the bank is the building as you come across Route 303 from Peninsula, just across the bridge. It’s the little brick building on the

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:21:18] Right if you’re heading west. Yeah, they’re remodeling it now to be a coffee shop.

Frank Wetmore [00:21:23] Oh, is that it? Coffee shop. The history of the farm was they farmed it for years. And then during the Depression, FDR shut down the banks. And of course he had loaned. All the depositors had their money in there. He had loaned the money out to farmers and anyone who needed money. And when they shut down the bank, they never.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:21:47] Just keep. Keep going, keep going.

Frank Wetmore [00:21:49] They never opened the bank again. It never opened. And then he mortgaged the farm as to the hilt. He got all the money out of the farm that he could and he paid back all the depositors so no one there lost any money.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:22:04] I had heard that about that bank.

Frank Wetmore [00:22:06] But he could never recover. And then, and I think it was during the war, he sold the farm to Roush. And Mr. Roush was the owner of Roadway Express. And grandpa built that other house that’s just to the east, the big house. The east of the big house. Now, it looks funny now. They took the shutters off and everything. I don’t know what they’re doing with it. And there was a- Do you have the picture of the big house copy tell you about that little.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:22:46] Is it this one?

Frank Wetmore [00:22:49] Oh, here it is. This is the one. Okay. This little house here, that was the caretaker’s house. And that house was moved from there down behind the house that grandfather built, that Selwyn built. And Selwyn and Ruth lived in the house, the new house, a little while after they sold the big house to Roushs. And then Mrs. Pramel lived in that little house. It was moved down. So James Pramel and Pearl lived in that little house.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:23:26] So what was the relationship between Pramel?

Frank Wetmore [00:23:32] No relationship. Just caretakers for the Montgomery farm and just friends. Just friends. And like I say, three kids was too much for grandma to take care of. So I got to go to her place. Plus, she wanted a baby. And anyway, they live- Pramels lived there. They moved the house down. In fact, I remember Andy telling me when she told me they moved it down there because I was in both places when it was up there. She said, yeah, I rode in the house where they moved it down. Anyway, they moved it, oh, 80 yards or so. And they lived there until Uncle Tom, who was Dad’s mother’s brother, Tom, who was the choir director at the church and everything. He and his Aunt Ellen, Major, they wanted to come out from the city, so they moved out there to the house that grandfather had built. So then grandfather and grandmother moved back to this little house. Then Pearl Pramel and James moved to the house across from the Kennedys. And King Kennedy’s house. Yeah, King Kennedy’s. Do you know where the Kennedy property is on 303?

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:24:46] Vaguely.

Frank Wetmore [00:24:48] It was- Well, the major road used to come straight out. It’s kind of close there where it comes out.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:24:54] Okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:24:54] Anyway, that was a big farm. King Kennedy was the owner and Finney’s farmed it.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:25:03] For him. Okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:25:05] And for the- I knew the boy, Bob Finney. He and I were good friends. Anyway, the Finneys and Mr. Miller, now his wife was a teacher in the school system. Mrs. Miller. Anyway, they had a big orchard there on Major Road, and they had on 303. They sold apples and everything there was- Anyway, she lived- Mrs. Pramel lived in the house there for a while. And when they wanted the house, then Lloyd Bigelow built a house over there for them on the Bigelow farm. So listen-

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:25:42] How many moves in one lifetime?

Frank Wetmore [00:25:45] Nine. We’re not going to remember all this stuff.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:25:48] That’s why we record. That’s why we record. So how did your family, if you were living in Stow, was it the fact that your grandparents were here? How did they get. How did your family first come to live in the Valley?

Frank Wetmore [00:26:04] Okay. My father’s grand- his dad, who died in. I was born in 36. He died about 1938, I think, or so they were in Tennessee. He had a nursery there. And then they moved from Tennessee up here and just bought the farm there. But we came over here every other weekend to go to church. And I can remember every summer the church door would be open and a nice day, nice Sunday. And here comes Rolling Thunder into the Peninsula. And they line up the motorcycles all the way down through there for the. For the hill climb. It’s Rolling Thunder when you’ve got 100 motorcycles in there and they’d line up through there. And then- I’ve watched them.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:26:56] That would be an interruption to your church service.

Frank Wetmore [00:26:58] Yeah, I watched them once. The guys would be lined up along the hill and they had these long hooks and every motorcycle had a thing around his sleeve and it went to the motorcycle somehow. And if he took his hand off, the motorcycle would stop and he’d fall over and the motorcycle would start sliding downhill. Well, these guys have these long hooks and you try. Tried to catch the motorcycle before it slid to the bottom of the hill. Just long stick with a hook on it. Anyway, but we came over.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:27:33] Were they the size of our motorcycles today? How big were these guys?

Frank Wetmore [00:27:39] They had chain drive, bill folds and everything, just like they do now. But so I can remember that lots of times at church. But we came over here and we came down the brick hill. That’s bypassed now, but that was brick down through there. We always came down that. Well, I can give you a little bit about- I haven’t mentioned Erne Dickerson. Erne Dickinson was Fanny Hatch’s dad. And Fanny’s house is the brick house or the stone house with a lake in front of it. Right up here.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:28:22] Oh, okay. Right up here going into Peninsula?

Frank Wetmore [00:28:26] Right.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:28:26] Okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:28:27] Now, and Ern Dickinson, for years he lived on the hostel place,

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:28:38] What we call Stanford Hospital.

Frank Wetmore [00:28:39] Right? Yeah. Here’s a picture of me. He had- He had horses. And so he said, yeah, you can take a ride on that horse. And so that’s out at the Stanford house. Yeah. And so I was riding along, of course I fell off because there’s no saddle and I could hardly get my legs around it. And I jumped up. I was afraid the horse was going to run away. He just trotted back into the barn. He wasn’t a bit worried. But we’d have the family reunion at Ern Dickinson’s and then when he got older, we’d have it at Fanny Hatch’s.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:29:21] And this was the Wetmore family reunion.

Frank Wetmore [00:29:23] Wilcox.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:29:23] Wilcox.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:29:26] Okay. So how were you related to the Wilcoxes or why were you at their reunion?

Frank Wetmore [00:29:32] It wasn’t called Wetmore. But if I looked in this book, I can tell you exactly what the connection is. This is a genealogy of all the Osmonds and everybody. Fanny Wilcox. And what- How does it connect up now?

Linda Wetmore [00:29:50] Great Grandma.

Frank Wetmore [00:29:52] Okay, great. Because my dad’s mother was May Peterson. Okay, now that’s. I always called him Uncle Charlie. Uncle Charlie Peterson.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:30:07] And.

Frank Wetmore [00:30:14] I don’t know where it is, but anyway. And Uncle Charlie was the son of the canalboat men. So. And his house is behind the restaurant in Peninsula Canal.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:30:32] This was the [Jorgen]? Okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:30:35] Yeah. Scandinavia was the name of the canal boat. And the- [crosstalk]

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:30:49] I see thrushing- 

Frank Wetmore [00:30:50] The diary from that, my dad gave to-

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:30:54] Peninsula. 

Frank Wetmore [00:30:56] Jackson, who was a writer for the Beacon Journal. And it is now in the Akron library.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:31:05] I’m rustling papers because I’m looking for this. I have Josephine Major. The houses. Houses. Threshing at the majors. I’m not seeing.

Frank Wetmore [00:31:25] Here’s the Jurgen Peterson book also.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:31:28] Yes, and I’ve seen a copy of that at her- I don’t have a copy of it, but I’ve seen it at-

Frank Wetmore [00:31:35] Yeah, you have it. It’s very clean printing. And of course we have all these pictures. All these pictures of these people didn’t.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:31:44] No, I don’t have any canal boat or Jorgensen.

Linda Wetmore [00:31:46] It was just the house. It was a picture of the house.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:31:51] Which one?

Frank Wetmore [00:32:15] Here it is. I don’t know who did that, but that’s a picture of the house. It’s a hand-drawn picture. I don’t know who made that, but we used to go and see Uncle Charlie all the time and he lived to be quite old and he moved to Ravenna, right, just before he died to be with his daughter.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:32:43] So while we’re talking about relations, how are you related to- is it Frederick and Amelia Wetmore?

Frank Wetmore [00:33:00] Ralph and Irvin.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:33:04] There’s a Frederick and Amelia Wetmore.

Frank Wetmore [00:33:06] Fred. Yes, Fred. Okay, you had Ralph and Irvin and Fred.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:33:11] Okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:33:12] And Ralph had a farm in Northampton. Irvin has a farm right across from the Hale homestead. And Fred lived in Cleveland. He was a wild or animal photographer. Dairy cattle, things like that.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:33:32] Animal photographer, dairy cattle. No, wait a minute.

Frank Wetmore [00:33:36] Any show cattle or beef cattle or decorative type cattle that are in shows and fairs and everything, he went around, took pictures of those.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:33:47] So are you related to them through the Wetmores or- So how is that relation?

Frank Wetmore [00:33:53] Well, if you go up Wetmore Road, the first house, I don’t think it’s even there anymore, but the first farm on the left was Frank Wetmore, who was the brother of my dad’s father.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:34:08] Okay, okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:34:09] And he died in 1919. Now I was named after him, but I’m not a junior because he was dead for a long time. And when you go to the cemetery there, the big stone is for him. The great big one is Frank Wetmore. Ours are there too, but I had ours put there because when we die there might not be anyone who remembers our name. We won’t be able to get our stone in there of Melissa. And I have our stone there.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:34:43] So how. How were they. So Frederick was? 

Frank Wetmore [00:34:47] Frederick and Ralph and Irvin were sons of Frank.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:34:53] Okay, okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:34:56] And very good people.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:34:58] And did I hear you say earlier that you were related to the judge, William Wetmore, who was-

Frank Wetmore [00:35:04] Who settled Stella.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:35:05] Yeah, the Western Reserve. Yep.

Frank Wetmore [00:35:07] Write that Wetmore line.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:35:12] So do you have any Wetmore family stories that were passed down to you?

Frank Wetmore [00:35:19] Oh, yes, I have. I listed all the stories and this is all the people that go with them. Because I sometimes can’t remember people’s names. Okay. Zelinski Store. The Richfield Dance Hall. I mentioned that. The Moody and Thomas Mill. I have a picture of that here. Pretty soon, I’ll show it to you. The Motorcycle Hill Climb. Oh, the Oak Hill picnic. We always went to the Oak Hill picnic at Albert Bell’s. And everybody would come from all around, and he’d have bales of hay out there. And. I remember behind the barn, the lake wasn’t there. There was a little stream there because Henry hadn’t built his house back there. And there was a buggy behind the barn. And we turned the kids, all us kids would turn the buggy around. We’d ride down backwards. But by going backwards, it went straight down. If you went forward, the thing would want to steer anyway. We push that down, back and forth. We’d play with that after we ate. All the old ladies, there must have been six, five or six of them. They get all the kids together and we’d hike back through the woods to what was called Wintergreen Hill. There was wintergreen growing all over the place. You pick and you could eat it. It was just little shiny leaves.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:36:49] Wintergreen flavor. Yes.

Frank Wetmore [00:36:51] We all walk back there and get wintergreen. And I have-

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:36:56] What a great way to get rid of the kids.

Frank Wetmore [00:36:58] Yeah, I have pictures of here. Well, this is a Wetmore reunion. Well, I’ve got pictures of us at the Oak Hill picnic. This here Peninsula. Here we are. If you come in, come and grab these pictures. You can just look at them. They’re all- Here’s another one. Oh, here’s Eunice. These are all Oak Hill picnic. These are all Oak Hill picnic. All these.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:37:49] 1968.

Frank Wetmore [00:37:56] The Welton reunion at the Majors, 1938. If you hadn’t seen these, these are- Mom wrote on the back of them quite nicely. This is Aunt Alice.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:38:16] So you recognize some of the people. So this is Wetmore or Welton that I’m looking at right here.

Frank Wetmore [00:38:21] Yeah. This is Oak Hill picnic at Henry Bell’s. Henry Bell. Henry Bell’s here? Yeah, this is Eunice, Aunt Alice’s. Oh, here’s Selwyn. Grandfather. That’s Grandfather right there.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:38:48] I got a picture of that one.

Frank Wetmore [00:38:49] I don’t know whether I brought these for you or not. These pictures. Here’s- Oh, here’s the Woody and Thomas Mill. What’s left of it, or you can only see part of it. You can have that.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:39:09] Was this after the fire?

Frank Wetmore [00:39:10] No, that’s before the fire. 

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:39:12] So you don’t want that? 

Frank Wetmore [00:39:13] I don’t need that. No.

Linda Wetmore [00:39:15] Yeah, that’s before the fire.

Frank Wetmore [00:39:17] And here’s Brandywine. You can see a little bit of what was left of the mill. A little wood over there.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:39:26] Yes.

Frank Wetmore [00:39:27] That’s all now. You don’t need to take a picture of that. You can have that one. I don’t need these pictures. Here’s. Here’s some more.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:39:35] The fact that the overshot wheel is there. Oh, there’s the bridge. No, this is above Brandywine Falls?

Frank Wetmore [00:39:57] I don’t know.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:40:00] That looks really high.

Frank Wetmore [00:40:02] I didn’t take those pictures across the back. That.

Linda Wetmore [00:40:05] Because there was a railroad bridge. That one.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:40:10] Bingo. So this is Brandywine. So. Yes. So. Yes, it would be the.

Linda Wetmore [00:40:16] Yes, it goes across the back.

Frank Wetmore [00:40:19] Yeah.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:40:21] Do we- do you have a pencil by chance?

Erich Schnack [00:40:23] I do.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:40:24] Can I borrow your pencil? I didn’t think. Because I don’t want to write on any ink. Put this one aside for.

Linda Wetmore [00:40:49] I don’t.

Frank Wetmore [00:40:50] Rebecca.

Linda Wetmore [00:40:50] Okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:41:15] Here’s the barn. And you can see the name on top of it. Before it was covered by the metal

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:41:23] with the old slate roof. So they called it Spring Grove Farm. And why did they call it that?

Frank Wetmore [00:41:35] I don’t know whether there was any spring. They’re not. Those are pictures of the house. This is the barn. I pointed out that.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:41:42] So this. Which house is this? This is the- 

Frank Wetmore [00:41:46] Dad’s house. Right across from the barn, just directly across the road. But they’ve taken off the pillars and everything in front. It doesn’t look like that at all anymore. Okay, then. As I have on the buggy. Okay. Do you know where the Dugway Hill is?

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:42:14] No.

Frank Wetmore [00:42:15] When you come out of- You come down from Grandma’s house, you come down and at Hunt’s, you turn right and you go past Scobies and Albert Bell’s.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:42:26] Yes.

Frank Wetmore [00:42:27] And you keep going. And as a youngster, my brother and Elwood and Gerald- Elwood and Gerald were Uncle Tom’s children, okay.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:42:36] Okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:42:37] We would ride our bikes down there because we wanted to go swimming in Furnace Creek under the covered bridge. The Dugway Hill is a rather steep and extensive hill. It goes way down. And in those days, our bicycles had new departure or Bendix brakes. They were in the hub. They weren’t grabbing the rim. And when we’d go down there, it was always the same thing. You’d see the grease dripping out of your brake because it was so hot, because it was a long ways down there. Anyway, we’d go down and go swim in there. And then we’d push back up the hill and come back. Of course, that was all gravel, too. [00:43:16] That’s the Dudley Hill, though, in Furnace Creek. Okay. West Richfield. Saturday night, Frank Wetmore Farm, the Miller Kennedy Orchard. I told you. Oh, and at Roush’s. Mr. Roush was very nice about this grandpa’s barn. He put a new floor in one of the haymows in the side and put baskets up. And we played basketball in there inside. And he allowed just about anyone to go in there, which you wouldn’t do in this day and age, but he allowed anyone to play in there. We’d play basketball in there and we’d play hide and seek in the barn and everything like that. He always lets go in there. Grandfather, that’s Selwyn, told me as a young man it was his job to go up on the roof and oil the windmill. There was a windmill right on top of the center of the barn. And well, the shaft went right down through the center of the barn.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:44:17] To bring up water for the cattle?

Frank Wetmore [00:44:18] Yes, the well evidently was right in the center of the barn. And he said he had to go up periodically and oil it. And he said he went up there one time and the thing was running and he’s oiling away. And he looked down, his sleeve was about an inch from the gears where the gears are coming together. He said it scared him. And he said he never went up again when it was running. But the windmill was gone when I. When I played out there. But he said when he was a kid he would go up. And now the barn has been moved. It’s not where it was at all. It’s been moved over to the side. There is a barn.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:44:53] I wonder if the well is still there.

Frank Wetmore [00:44:55] Yeah, they covered it all over because they built another barn there. But he told about that. Okay. The basketball. Oh, Grandpa worked.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:45:09] Grandpa Selwyn.

Frank Wetmore [00:45:11] Right.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:45:11] Ok.

Frank Wetmore [00:45:14] When he moved back to the small house, out of the big house because Uncle Tom lived there and Aunt Ellen, he moved to the small house and he wanted to draw Social Security, and he never worked under it particularly. So he went to the Jaite paper mill and he worked in the Jaite paper mill. And he was kind of a custodian like, because he would old paper to throw away. He’d take it out and they would burn it.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:45:39] What years was this when he was working for Jaite?

Frank Wetmore [00:45:41] Okay. I was. So it’s 1941 or 42. During the war.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:45:48] During the war.

Frank Wetmore [00:45:49] Because I went with him and I was maybe 8 years old. And they made paper bags to show donuts and things like that. And they had a little window in them. They cut out this little cellophane window.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:46:05] Yes.

Frank Wetmore [00:46:07] Well, these little pieces of paper, they come flying up there and into this room. And when the room got a lot of them, he carry them all, get them together and take them down and burn them. And I walked around through, watched all the machines run and everything with him. And he would say for us, it had a big roll of cellophane like this, it was about this wide. And when that roll got down small, they took it out and threw it away. And he’d give us those rolls of cellophane to play with. And you already know the story anyway, so when we’d come over to grandma’s every other weekend, we’d have this cellophane. We’d string it out the back of the car and it would flap away. And we got- One time we came through Chittenden’s Corners. Do you know where that is? Yes, yes. And the police were there and they stopped us and they made us take it all in. So when we got down to Major Road, Dad said, well, you can put it out again now. So we let about 10 or 12 feet out and went up the road. Of course it flaps around for a while. Pretty soon it breaks. And then by and by. In the newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal. Bordner, who wrote for the Beacon Journal says he thought he was going up the road and he thought he saw the shedded skin of the Peninsula Python. He got out, said, no, it’s a 10 foot chunk of cellophane. Anyway. Well, Frances Murphy also wrote for the Beacon Journal. Her rest areas as you go north. That’s Frances Murphy rest area on 77. She was always there. She was, I saw her, an early hippie. She wore. I don’t know. Anyway, she was before her time hippie and she was always at the- at the Oak Hill picnic.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:48:13] Francis Murphy, free spirited, as we would say.

Frank Wetmore [00:48:16] Yes. Okay. Oh, we used to. The 4H always met at the schoolhouse and we had. I don’t remember very much about the meetings, but- but I do remember the dances we had. We had square dances. And they weren’t line dances, they were real square dances for couples. And I always enjoyed that because one of our 4H club members was a caller and we had the records. And I always liked to dance with Cindy Wells. Cynthia Wells was the daughter of Cleon Wells. And Cleon Wells was an excellent carpenter. He’s the carpenter who built the water wheel up on Route 8. The water wheel in the store there. I think it’s a wine store.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:49:10] Yes.

Frank Wetmore [00:49:11] Yes.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:49:11] Okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:49:11] I’m feeling that waterwheel there.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:49:14] So this is on State Route 8.

Erich Schnack [00:49:16] So Tamsen Park.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:49:17] Yes, in front of Tamsen Park.

Frank Wetmore [00:49:19] You’re right. And so I always danced with Cindy. She had lots of fun dancing. But I don’t know whether we had any meetings or not, but we. We had a good time dancing.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:49:30] And this was the 4H dances.

Frank Wetmore [00:49:32] Right? The 4H club. Okay. The Wilcox Reunion. And the Reunion. Oh, then evidently the canal was navigable when dad was a young boy. Now, he was born. What year?

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:49:52] 93.

Frank Wetmore [00:49:53] 93. Well, it must.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:49:55] This is 1893, right?

Frank Wetmore [00:49:57] Yeah, it must have been 19, five or six or so. The canal must have still been operational, because he said he was. He- he went down to the. From his farm, walked down to the canal, and he was fishing, and he had his dog with him. And his mom made some dough balls. And dough balls are made out of, I think, cornmeal and maybe some bacon fat or something about the size of a marble. And he was using them to fish with. And a vacationer boat came by, and they stopped to talk to him when he said he was talking to them. And his dog ate up all the dough balls laying there beside him. Then they asked him if he wanted to go for a ride. So he got in with him and he rode into Akron with him. And it must have been a power boat.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:50:47] This is on the Cuyahoga River?

Frank Wetmore [00:50:48] No, on the canal.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:50:49] On the canal.

Frank Wetmore [00:50:52] When he was- He had to have been, I don’t know, 10 or 12 years old, a youngster, he said.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:50:59] So they would lock through the-

Frank Wetmore [00:51:01] Evidently they did for a tourist boat or something.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:51:05] Yeah.

Frank Wetmore [00:51:05] And it must have been a motorized boat because there were no mules there or anything. So it had to have been motorized at waters.

Linda Wetmore [00:51:13] Book on Sunday excursions was that time period. That’s what they were doing. They were taking the trips with-

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:51:20] Okay, so.

Frank Wetmore [00:51:21] So he rode in with them, and they turned around and he came back and dropped him off there on the canal.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:51:28] What about his dog? Did they take his dog?

Frank Wetmore [00:51:30] Yeah, they took his dog along with him. 

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:51:32] Guilty dog. 

Frank Wetmore [00:51:36] A little dog. Okay. And I mentioned Montgomery Light, Dingo Pearl and James Bramplesow and Ruth Major Tom and Ellen Roushs, Cleon Wells, Reinhardt’s. We used to go swimming at Reinhardt’s Pool Lake by a lot King Kennedy. I mentioned Finney and Bill Miller and Marie Erne Dickinson, Fanny Hatch. T.E. Major I told you about.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:52:03] So. T.E. Major. It was to Thomas. What was the E for?

Frank Wetmore [00:52:10] Okay. Selwyn was the son of T.E. Major. Tom. Uncle Tom, which again T. Tom. Major was my mother’s brother.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:52:23] What was the T.E.? What did that stand for?

Frank Wetmore [00:52:28] I suppose Tom. I don’t know. They always call him T.E. Major. I never heard the. I never heard the names down in the- in the store it’s not there anymore. But in the grocery store it used to be back on the right hand side. It told his obituary and told it to T.E. Major. And when the new owner bought it, he took that down. So it’s not there anymore. But I suppose it was. Tom. Henry Bell built the house. House across there and put the lake in. And we used to have the Oak Hill picnics at Henry Bell’s. Also Fran Murphy. Oh, I need- I need to show you a little bit about. I know it’s-

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:53:19] So remind me, which Major was the Major Road named after? Which, who is the first?

Frank Wetmore [00:53:25] It has to be T.E. Major.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:53:27] It has to be T.E., right.

Frank Wetmore [00:53:36] Let’s see if there’s any pictures in here you’re interested in. I don’t know. There’s Aunt Mildred and Aunt Merdy and. Well, here’s. I can show you pictures of. Here’s Tom and Aunt Ellen.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:53:54] Tom.

Frank Wetmore [00:53:54] Here’s Tom. Here’s a fire. Here’s the same thing. You might as well put this in

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:53:58] There in front of a fire. And this is Uncle Tom.

Frank Wetmore [00:54:02] Right, That’s- Oh, here’s Uncle Charlie. Uncle Charlie right there.

Linda Wetmore [00:54:09] That’s what he looked like.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:54:10] Okay, so this picture looks to be from like the early 50s. This one in front of the fire.

Frank Wetmore [00:54:18] Yes.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:54:20] 1941. I was wrong.

Frank Wetmore [00:54:25] That’s Uncle Charlie there.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:54:26] Myrtle, Haley. Okay, so this is a group shot.

Frank Wetmore [00:54:29] That’s Uncle Charlie there. Peterson.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:54:32] And Mr. Peterson is sitting facing to the right in the image. Who’s the wedding picture?

Frank Wetmore [00:54:42] Yeah, that’s my mother and dad. It’s not. Not too good. It’s got a mark on bad.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:54:48] That’s a shadow. It’s a wedding picture. 1932.

Frank Wetmore [00:54:55] Here’s my dad when he died. He was the oldest Marine in the United States.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:55:02] Oh, my.

Frank Wetmore [00:55:03] When he died. He died at 98 in ’92.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:55:08] These are colorized photos. The late 90s. Oh, the white hat here looks like a white spot in the picture.

Frank Wetmore [00:55:19] This is. This is all of us at the cemetery. That’s the Wetmore stone that I mentioned at the cemetery.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:55:31] So who’s the good looking guy in the back with the white shirt?

Frank Wetmore [00:55:37] Yeah, yup. That’s younger. Okay, here’s-

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:55:48] So the good looking guy in the back is Mr. Wetmore here himself.

Frank Wetmore [00:55:53] Okay. Now, I don’t know how interested. Do you have picture of Ruth Major and Selwyn?

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:56:04] I don’t know that I do.

Frank Wetmore [00:56:06] Fairly good picture. Here’s grandma and grandpa over there.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:56:10] So grandma and grandpa are to the right. Who’s the little one in the front in the baby? Who’s the little baby? Well, that would be Anita’s child. Ah, okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:56:18] My sisters.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:56:20] And she’s sitting holding the baby.

Frank Wetmore [00:56:24] Yeah, that’s my sister. Now we’ll switch to- Oh, these are just more wedding pictures. Oh, that’s Uncle Tom again.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:56:36] I will turn these into files, send all of you.

Frank Wetmore [00:56:38] We’ll switch to the. Dad had three sisters. And the oldest one was. Aunt Myrtie was the oldest. Aunt Myrtie and Mildred and Carrie. Carrie died young. But I can show you a picture of Mildred. Here’s Mildred. Mildred and Myrtie, these two. And here’s Mildred also.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:57:23] So I have a picture of Mildred with her art.

Frank Wetmore [00:57:26] Yes, she was a quite well known artist.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:57:31] And the other one of Mildred and Myrtie. Take that one back.

Frank Wetmore [00:57:34] Okay. This one. That’s the two of them on the right. And I don’t have.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:57:42] Ah, okay. So we’re back to picture. Picture with Mr. Jorgensen. And Mildred and Myrtie are on the left. He’s sitting facing to the right. Who’s the little baby in this picture?

Frank Wetmore [00:57:59] It’s got to be my brother.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:58:08] You just keep going with- with

Frank Wetmore [00:58:10] Well, this I’m very proud of Ann Miller. I thought a great deal of her. She was a- a very accomplished artist. And. Like she. She was an illustrator.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:58:28] Illustrator.

Frank Wetmore [00:58:29] Illustrator. Oh, here’s the pictures in the Peterson book. This is one of the pictures. Pictures in there. I’ve got quite a few of those. She was a well known illustrator in New York City. And of course she lived in Greenwich Village.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:58:43] And this was her sister.

Frank Wetmore [00:58:45] Dad’s sister.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:58:46] Dad’s sister, okay.

Frank Wetmore [00:58:46] Dad’s sister. And she did- Well, here, this- You can see her name’s on there. She did a great deal of- 

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:58:54] Ohhh, Mildred Wetmore. 

Frank Wetmore [00:58:56] Great deal of this type of thing. She did these and all of these. These were government- 

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:59:02] Government issue. 

Frank Wetmore [00:59:04] During the- And then- 

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:59:06] World War II.

Frank Wetmore [00:59:07] Right. And these. And always you can tell her by very rosy cheeks. She did lots of lots. Now, she couldn’t put her name on these, but she has her initials on these inside. Oh, she always has.

Rebecca Jones Macko [00:59:21] When comes peace. Vitality for victory. What a great name. Our need is not for a sudden gay bravery, but for an enduring courage. I don’t see her initials on them yet, but I’m looking on the very back. Oh, here it is. Illustrated by.

Frank Wetmore [00:59:58] Yeah, Sometimes she said sometimes you could, and sometimes you couldn’t. That’s fun. She was quite a poet. Also, she wrote these for cards like this.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:00:18] So. For the inside script. Yes.

Frank Wetmore [01:00:21] Yeah, she was quite a poet.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:00:25] Eskimo. Eskimo. Boy, a pair of huskies we may be, but I’m no iceberg. You’ll soon see.

Frank Wetmore [01:00:38] These are-

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:00:40] A sailor’s gal his star should be. Now won’t you be a star for me?

Frank Wetmore [01:00:44] These are- 

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:00:45] Books that you did there. 

Frank Wetmore [01:00:47] Books. There, she has her name there. Those- And this is- These are Little Red Riding Books. And again, you can always recognize her illustrations.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:01:00] Rosy cheeks.

Frank Wetmore [01:01:01] Rosy cheeks. And so she was. These are most of them. Saalfield-

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:01:10] Saalfield out of Akron.

Frank Wetmore [01:01:13] Yes.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:01:20] So we have a Saalfield book called the Tracing Book.

Frank Wetmore [01:01:27] This. I prize this a great deal. So. Oh, here’s a. Here’s a poem she wrote. It says, o bury me not whether weeds grow high. Who knows? But maybe a weed am I whether they weed or whether not. Don’t bury me in the churching church parking lot, but bury me where the weeds grow high. And she wrote that poem. It goes on and on. This. You can read it.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:02:02] I’ll just take a picture of it for now.

Frank Wetmore [01:02:07] Well, it’s. Yes, it’s talking about.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:02:15] So it’s a letter from Mildred. What beautiful handwriting.

Frank Wetmore [01:02:19] Yes, it’s talking about this.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:02:21] Here’s the lineage.

Frank Wetmore [01:02:22] When you read it. It’s. This is what it’s talking about. And she tells in there, if you read that, that she was in New York and they thought that they were going to be bombed. And she sent it to my dad. It’s on the second page. They sent it to my father here in Stow. And then- Because they figured they were going to get bombed. Wow. So, anyway, this is-

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:03:11] Beautiful handwriting she has.

Frank Wetmore [01:03:11] Yes, she has- She has- And this one is written the same way. She has very beautiful handwriting.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:03:23] And I can’t speak for Eilish or Eric, but mine’s pretty bad. So when I see handwriting that has beauty like that, I’m appreciative.

Frank Wetmore [01:03:32] This is Fanny Hatch. There’s Aunt Mildred. Yeah. I don’t think there’s Aunt Mildred again. I don’t know.

Linda Wetmore [01:03:44] There.

Frank Wetmore [01:03:45] Those are new. Do you have the genealogy of the Wetmore family?

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:03:57] Only what I just saw in that one letter.

Frank Wetmore [01:04:00] Okay. I don’t know whether these will copy. You can take a look at these.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:04:05] I’ll see if I can take a picture of them.

Frank Wetmore [01:04:07] I don’t think they’ll copy very well. They’re already copies.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:04:11] Do you have copies, Melissa?

Frank Wetmore [01:04:13] They’re already copies. And so we. Again, they’re not going to copy.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:04:18] So we may wish to see the Peninsula Library about getting copies.

Frank Wetmore [01:04:22] Maybe this one’s-

Linda Wetmore [01:04:23] Some of those were-

Frank Wetmore [01:04:25] Yes, some are better than others.

Linda Wetmore [01:04:26] Read some of them.

Frank Wetmore [01:04:27] Yeah, but that one is not very good. And here’s the crest. That’s cool. Crest, the colored one. Yeah, I have one. That’s that Aunt Mildred painted in. Yeah, those are. Those are some of the main things I had.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:04:54] So you’ve mentioned some of the stuff you did as a kid. Would you. What you do all summer out here in the valley besides go to the 4H dancing and ride push buggies down hills.

Frank Wetmore [01:05:09] Well, I remember over that house across from Kennedy’s there had been a big chicken house. They had fallen over and there was this roof. Oh, it was 25 feet long and 20 feet wide, just laying there. I used to stand on that and pretend it was a boat and sailing along. And she would pick raspberries and sell them. I’d help her. She always picked- She always had a garden, too. And I had a garden.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:05:43] Ms. Pramel. Thank you.

Frank Wetmore [01:05:47] And I remember we’d have. She’d have a pack of seeds and the row would be from here to the wall. We’d spread seeds along there, get to the end. There’s still some seeds left. Well, she dumped. We’re gonna make a king hill here. She dumped them all right there in the end, which was a waste, but- And the Montgomery farm and the big old farm, they raised rabbits or chickens on their own. He allowed them to use a chicken coop. So then he would dress chickens and we would take them to Cleveland and deliver them around different houses. We’d go up in the Model A and deliver them up there.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:06:31] Was that prearranged, like he knew he was, or you would sell them from the Model A?

Frank Wetmore [01:06:36] No, she knew she had certain people, about 10 different people, that she would deliver them once a month, a dressed chicken like that.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:06:44] Making donuts?

Frank Wetmore [01:06:46] Oh, yes. She would make donuts for me and just a frying pan with grease in it. And I cut out a W and of course put it in there. And it ended up being a blob. It wasn’t a W at all.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:07:01] So did you make round or twisted donuts?

Frank Wetmore [01:07:04] Mostly I cut out pictures and letters, things like that, donuts. And they never came out to be letters like they were when we go to the. There used to be a meat market right about where Fisher’s is.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:07:24] What is it? Bergdorfs. 

Linda Wetmore [01:07:27] Bergdorfs. It’s not spelled the same as Randy’s, but they’re called Burgadorfs.

Frank Wetmore [01:07:31] And we go in there and she was always buying hot dogs for me. And she, the- the butcher, he come on back here and I’ll give you a weenie. So he give me a wienie and I eat it right there. Over there.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:07:49] Uncooked.

Frank Wetmore [01:07:50] Yeah, I eat it right there.

Linda Wetmore [01:07:53] It’s probably real.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:07:54] It’d be just like bologna. Yeah, it’s probably. Yeah, bologna. Hot dogs today are pre-cooked and you don’t have to.

Frank Wetmore [01:08:03] And, oh, once a month during the summer we go to Hudson and go to the movies in Hudson. At the theater we saw some old westerns. What else did we do? Oh, she got me my first bicycle because Montgomery had several bicycles there. They’d taken the front wheels off and they made a cart out of just the front wheels.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:08:35] Okay. Okay.

Frank Wetmore [01:08:36] The rest of it was there. So she bought another wheel for me and tires, and that was my first bicycle. And she walked along 303, holding it while I learned how to ride down through there. I said, I learned how to ride. And she did. No, not that far. Just from Bigelow’s farm to her house across from Kennedy’s there, not too far. So we walked there and she helped me ride. And she babysat quite a lot for other people when I wasn’t there. She would babysit for a lot of the people around there. And she read to me a lot. And she always had dogs. In fact, my dog came from her. She had little, little lap dogs that she played with.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:09:25] Did you ever visit, like Virginia Kendall when you were. It wasn’t a park when you were real little, but did you visit it when you were younger?

Frank Wetmore [01:09:32] As a teenager, we hiked there. We hiked not with her, but one of my brothers and sisters. We went there to Virginia Kendall and all the parks around Nelson Ledges and. And Adele Durbin and Stowell.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:09:48] So what was different about the parks then?

Frank Wetmore [01:10:00] I can’t think of much. We just went to the shelter houses. The shelter houses I knew were made out of wormy chestnuts, mermaid chestnut and everything like that, as is in the house that grandpa built. There’s a lot of wormy chestnut in there. In that house that he cut back there, we used to swim. There’s a little stream that runs under the road just west of the house. The big Major house used to be open space. We go playing in there. It was three feet deep or so. It’s not like that anymore.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:10:42] Waterways change.

Frank Wetmore [01:10:45] I can’t remember it, but I hear mother tell about it. That Osmond who made this genealogy and Alice made the genealogy, this thick one. Anyway, her brother took their car. It was a Holtzman car that was in the machinery shed. And it was a rope drive thing. It had the motor and had a rope that went around a big pulley at the wheel. And the car was sitting there forever. And so he talked him out of it. He was out there all the time and he drove it. Then he settled at Keystone in the Black Hills. Keystone, South Dakota.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:11:36] He drove it out there. A rope-driven vehicle.

Frank Wetmore [01:11:41] He drove it out there. He drove it further than that, but I think he drove clear to California. Anyway, he settled there. We visited him once in Keystone, Black Hills. One of the summers when I was in college, I couldn’t get a job, and so I loaded everything, my tent and my stove and everything in my car, and I started west. And I had a chauffeur’s license. And I got a job with the Forest Service in Custer, South Dakota. And I found a campground where no one camped because it was right on French Creek. But there wasn’t any drinking water there. The drinking water was a half mile up the road. So I set up my tent there and I tended all summer there. I stayed there all summer and worked for the Forest Service drive in truck and doing different chores around there. Fortunately, right next to it there was a cabin. And this lady was there with her daughter. And they would invite me over a couple times a week because on the weekend her husband would come out and fish. And he had too many fish in the freezer. You’re only allowed to have so many. So I’d go over there and have fish once or twice a week. But I slept in a tent and worked in the Forest Service all summer. And of course, while I was there, we panned a lot of gold. We went out panning gold at every place we could. I went with one of the fellows there and we panned. Linda and I panned gold in Alaska, too. This is a gold nugget ring. We’ve gone to Alaska a couple times.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:13:27] So you got enough gold to make a ring? Make a ring.

Frank Wetmore [01:13:31] And she has a penthouse. Yeah, she has another one that used to be a wedding ring, but then I got a bigger one. But that was fun. It makes your hands cold and your back hurt.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:13:44] Yes. Yes. I was easily bored panning gold, but my husband loved it.

Frank Wetmore [01:13:51] Yes. We did too.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:13:53] So were you involved in any clubs or. You said you were involved in 4H. Were there any other community groups or community clubs that you were involved in?

Frank Wetmore [01:14:01] We were- We always went to church, the Methodist church in Kent, from when we were little. Church and Sunday school. Now that was the Plain Methodist Church, not the United Methodist Church. 

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:14:17] Just Methodist. 

Frank Wetmore [01:14:18] We are separated from the United Methodist Church now, but it was just the Kent Methodist Church. In fact, the building’s gone now. But when I came back from the army, I found that they had abandoned the church and built a new one. And I went to the church there. There were all the pews and the pipes and they were breaking the windows in all the stained-glass window and the rose window and everything. So I got a box and I took a snow shovel and I shoveled up half a box of stained glass where they were smashing the windows. Those were leaded windows too. Anyway, I took them to a place down on the way to Canton. It’s a glass place. And wanted to see if I could sell it to her. She said, throw that in the dumpster back there. Well, I didn’t. I gave it to someone else who used quite a bit of it. My mother used quite a bit of it. Putting a gluing on the side of glasses and things like that. But it was stained glass from the windows. Yeah, she made candles. That was from the church in Kent Methodist Church. So we were strong in that.

Linda Wetmore [01:15:36] You played drums for the-

Frank Wetmore [01:15:37] Oh, yeah. I played in a dance band too. I wasn’t- Played the drums. All during high school I played the drums in the marching band. 

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:15:44] Wow. 

Frank Wetmore [01:15:45] And then we had a dance band for a little while too. What other clubs? I think those are.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:15:58] You were in marching band? Yeah, he mentioned marching band. [crosstalk]

Frank Wetmore [01:16:00] Marching band at Stow.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:16:02] So your grandfather was involved in Sons of Rust? So what- 

Frank Wetmore [01:16:07] My dad.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:16:07] It was your dad. I apologize. So what can you tell us about that, generally?

Frank Wetmore [01:16:12] I don’t know very much about that. I just know that- 

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:16:16] Other than they were teetotalers. 

Frank Wetmore [01:16:18] Yes. That’s all I know about. He never told me what they did. They just met. He never told me where they met or anything. And I guess as a youngster I wasn’t that interested, which is unfortunate, but that’s the way kids 10 or 11 years old or teenagers are.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:16:37] I’ve heard it was a fraternal organization. They did do some social activity. Not social, but community improvement projects. It actually, from the research that I’ve done, it started in England. And moved over here.

Frank Wetmore [01:16:55] He was a Mason. He was a past Master at Hudson. And I never could learn enough about the Masons to really be that interested because they’re very secretive to be that interested in joining it. I knew you had to memorize a bunch of stuff. And I was in college, like I said, it took me 14 years to get where I wanted with all the degrees. And I never was that interested because I didn’t know that much about it. And they’re so secretive that they. And you have to go to them. They never come to you. I know my dad was disappointed that I never wanted to join, but I never did. But he was a Past Master. And right now I had. My mom was in Eastern Star, also in Hudson. And I have a- She was past worthy Grand Matron. I have a big thick scrapbook of her years in. And I wanted to give it to the Eastern Star in Hudson, but I have not been able to. I don’t know when they meet. I’m trying to disperse these things because my kids- One’s in San Diego and one’s in Denver. A lot of that stuff. We don’t know what this is. There it goes. So understand that I have- I even have quite a number of pictures. My mom graduated in 1929 from Kent State of Dr. Engelman. And there’s a building named that. And a lot of the big people, I have pictures there that I intend to give to them because they aren’t going to take the time to do it.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:18:43] So one of the things that we’re doing research on right now is African Americans that were in the valley. So we’re doing research on them. Like, do you remember anyone from the Lee, Duncan or Harris family?

Frank Wetmore [01:18:59] I remember them. Speaking of Lee, they had a farm down there on the River Road, but I never knew them or anything.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:19:08] Did you know anything about any of the social clubs that were in the valley, like Cabin Club or Stonybrook?

Frank Wetmore [01:19:17] I remember- 

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:19:18] Camp Mueller?

Frank Wetmore [01:19:20] No, I remember them telling me about Hunt. And one of the older ones hung himself in the barn. I remember that. I didn’t see it or anything, but I remember telling me, telling me about it. The barn behind Hunt’s house.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:19:39] Behind Hunt House.

Frank Wetmore [01:19:44] But I didn’t- I didn’t know- I didn’t see it or anything, but I remember them talking about it. There used to be Major Road comes down here and then the road down to Bells go- There used to be a triangular piece with a tree, and our mailbox was right there because grandma and I’d walk down there, and it’s gone now a long time, but right there, just as there used to be a watering trough and in front of Bigelows, a watering trough and a center- There was a center statue something in there too.

Linda Wetmore [01:20:18] It’s in the cemetery now.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:20:20] Yeah.

Frank Wetmore [01:20:20] Oh, is it?

Linda Wetmore [01:20:21] Yeah, it’s up there.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:20:22] Just like the little park. Boston park had a well, yeah, that was-

Frank Wetmore [01:20:29] Yeah, I remember the bridge. That was a beautiful metal over the top and everything. Well, they took all that off and it’s just a bridge now, but it had a big metal structure on top of it.

Melissa Arnold [01:20:44] It’s on our book.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:20:45] The Boston Bridge.

Melissa Arnold [01:20:46] No, the one in Peninsula.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:20:47] The one in Peninsula. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Melissa Arnold [01:20:50] John Osmond’s in there by the way too.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:20:52] Okay.

Melissa Arnold [01:20:53] Out of this car.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:20:56] So you said you were a schoolteacher and was that your only occupation or vocation?

Frank Wetmore [01:21:05] Yes, yes.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:21:07] Okay.

Frank Wetmore [01:21:07] After I got out of the service, I went to college. This book, you can take a look at it. But-

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:21:13] And do you have copies of this at the library?

Frank Wetmore [01:21:15] I’m not. No, this is a copy and it’s not good. This was. And it has all of our. All the relatives. And as you go to the first page or so and you can see how they’re done. Yeah, like this.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:21:34] Oh yes, I love that.

Frank Wetmore [01:21:36] And they go around there and it’s got Wetmore.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:21:40] So he’s got a book and the first few pages have the genealogy in a fan shape.

Frank Wetmore [01:21:46] This was done by Aunt Alice Osmond and it has all the- the different families that are related to us.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:21:58] The Wilcoxes. Major Chief T.E. Major Thomas E. Colonel Thomas E. Major doesn’t say what his.

Melissa Arnold [01:22:10] That’s in the Osmond stuff that we have.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:22:12] I think it doesn’t have. Was he a colonel from the Civil War?

Frank Wetmore [01:22:19] Which one?

Linda Wetmore [01:22:19] Major Colonel Thomas Major Ted.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:22:36] So there this- She has done her research back into 1620s. Here’s Alan Welton.

Frank Wetmore [01:22:47] Well, I gave her-

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:22:53] Melissa?

Frank Wetmore [01:22:53] Melissa. A bunch of Welton [inaudible] letters. Some of those go back before the Civil War- [crosstalk]

Melissa Arnold [01:23:02] Before the Civil War because I run through some of them and-

Frank Wetmore [01:23:03] Some of them will be tiny little- They’re hard to read, aren’t they?

Melissa Arnold [01:23:06] They’re hard to read.

Frank Wetmore [01:23:07] Yes, I’ve read some of them, but I couldn’t read them all.

Melissa Arnold [01:23:10] All they talk about is not major things of just chitchat with people.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:23:15] Well, sometimes that chit chat if you read between the lines, if you have time to do that.

Melissa Arnold [01:23:21] And there’s one that’s a Peterson one that you can’t read because it’s in with. Addressed to Jorgen or Charles W. Of the two. But it’s in Scandinavian. So unless you know Scandinavian language, I have no idea what it says.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:23:35] Make me a copy.

Melissa Arnold [01:23:36] Do you know somebody who knows?

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:23:38] Yes, we have a Norwegian who’s in the park this summer.

Melissa Arnold [01:23:40] Oh, maybe they can scratch.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:23:43] So we have a Norwegian. So you were in the NPS and you work for the Forest Service too.

Frank Wetmore [01:23:51] In fact, I was going to continue working. I took biology and everything in college. I had intended to go into the Forest Service, but then after being in the army for three years and being in the National Park Service, I found out that there was too much-

Linda Wetmore [01:24:12] Bureaucracy. Politics.

Frank Wetmore [01:24:13] Yeah, politics. And too much who, you know. And so then I branched off and I thought, well, I’ll do a job where I can have all summer off every summer. So that’s why I took the branch, the direction I got. Oh, in biology, in a graduate course. I was doing graduate work before I got a job. We all had to write a paper. So I wrote a paper about the Night of the Grizzlies, and he had it presented in class. And the science coordinator and superintendent from the Canton city schools was in the class taking an advanced course. And he heard it and he said, we’ve got a job for you down here in Canton. So I went down there and had the job right away. And I stayed there then my 27 years.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:25:05] Wow.

Frank Wetmore [01:25:06] And I was 10 years in a high school, which I really enjoyed. I liked the high school kids. Then I went to a junior high, which is seventh, eighth, and ninth. And then as the population decreased in Canton, the Canton McKinley took the ninth graders back and the sixth graders came into the- Called them. Now it’s a middle school.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:25:25] Middle school.

Frank Wetmore [01:25:25] So sixth, seventh, and eighth. So there was my last. Later years were in there. But I always taught the 8th or 9th graders.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:25:35] Most people go up in grades. You seem to have gone back down in grades there. My mother was a teacher and she was kindergarten for 10 years. And then they put her in second grade and she told everybody in the family I graduated to second grade. So as we’re winding up here, what do you miss most about the way Cuyahoga Valley was? What do you miss the most?

Frank Wetmore [01:26:05] I think the thing I miss most is getting old. I don’t like that. I used to go out and I’d hoe the whole row in the garden. I could do a half a row and I have to sit down now. That’s what I miss most. And I’m a vendor at tractor shows. I’ve done that for years. I have original technical literature, tractor manual and operators, manual parts, manual or barn lanterns and things like that. And I set up all the way from Portland, Indiana to Cool Springs, Pennsylvania at the big shows. But I used to unload everything, set up the tables and I’d be ready to go. Now I unload a little bit and I sit, maybe I have a beer, unload a little bit more. I sit for a while.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:26:55] Is there a tractor that’s your specialty?

Frank Wetmore [01:26:57] I had John Deere’s. I had John Deere, I had six John Deere Hs. And my kids were very active in the tractor shows. I bought the first one from my neighbor there in Stow and it was electric start and she wanted to be in the starting contests and the slow races. So it’s an old two cylinder on 1942. So I took off the electric start and put the hand start flywheel on, which is just smooth so that she could sit on the seat, the two of them. And they jump off, run around, start the tractor and get back on their seat, see who can do it the first, the fastest. So she had the hand start, which I still have on it because it starts easy enough. And then she wanted to be in the slow races. So they have slow races and they have a backing contest with a wagon where you back it. Try to back the wagon between the.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:27:50] I would not.

Frank Wetmore [01:27:51] Those are not so easy. And then the pulling contest where you pull the weighted slip. So she did all those and she’s.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:27:59] This is your neighbor that did this?

Frank Wetmore [01:28:00] No, my daughter.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:28:01] Your daughter. I’m sorry.

Frank Wetmore [01:28:04] I bought the tractor from my neighbor.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:28:06] Okay. That was, okay.

Frank Wetmore [01:28:07] There in the Stow and I’m the second owner. In fact, I had six of them. Each of the kids, both kids had a tractors, but I’m down to one now which is ready to sell anyway. I don’t spend that much time down here anymore. I miss Auntie Pramel and Uncle Jim. They were very good to me. I wonder what’s happening to the- the- this. The house grandpa built because- Have you been up by them on Major Road recently?

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:28:43] Yes.

Frank Wetmore [01:28:44] Why are those- Why are the shutters off of it? It looks like they’re going to tear it down, doesn’t it?

Melissa Arnold [01:28:49] That is Mr. Sergey. I have no idea what that man is doing out there. I drove by there the other day and I was like-

Frank Wetmore [01:28:55] The house looks terrible. 

Melissa Arnold [01:28:57] I’m shocked. I was like-

Frank Wetmore [01:28:58] It was a fancy-looking house when Grandpa built it. I don’t know what-

Melissa Arnold [01:29:01] I don’t know what he’s doing up there. I have no idea.

Frank Wetmore [01:29:03] I don’t know either.

Melissa Arnold [01:29:04] All I know is Randy warned me that when I slowed down, he’s got cameras everywhere. So if you drive down that road and slow down in front of the house, you’re on camera. 

Frank Wetmore [01:29:13] I had, and I gave it to you. It’s just a piece of paper mother wrote up. And mother wrote, who built the house, when it was built, the whole history. And I went up there and of course, I pushed the buzzer and the gardener came out. What do you have? I said, I have the history of your house. And I said, I have quite a lot of pictures and stories. I have pictures of me in the house and I’d like to present. Well, you leave the stuff here and we’ll look at it and see if we like it. That was it. So I left. I didn’t give him anything. I gave you the- He’s very private.

Melissa Arnold [01:29:52] You will not.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:29:52] Yes, no, he’s very, very private.

Frank Wetmore [01:29:55] He was divorced. He had a previous wife who had. They had a separation and she evidently did in all his cars and stuff he had collected. So he’s, he’s pretty secretive now. But he lives. His store is two miles from where I live in Tallmadge, right there. And of course, he owns the dragway out west of the here.

Melissa Arnold [01:30:20] But they’re very nice. They support the library, they support the park. You know, they do support everything down here, which, you know, he might be very private, but they’re very supportive of the organizations within the park.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:30:31] So he’s definitely a different bird.

Frank Wetmore [01:30:35] I used to walk from grandma’s house all the way. I thought it was the longest walk down to the corner, all the way over Major road over to the Montgomery, the to Bigelow Farms. It was a long walk. I’d go over there when James Pramel was working over there. Then I’d ride home with him. But I had fun with the Bigelow boys. Jack and Doug Bigelow, we played with them quite a lot. And they always had an old car, something that we could run around in the woods in, and something their dad had given them.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:31:08] Gave them an old car to run around in the woods.

Frank Wetmore [01:31:15] One of them was a Model A. It didn’t have any title or license or anything. It was just there. So we were driving around in the woods.

Melissa Arnold [01:31:24] I think of the roads down here, driving around with the Model A when there wasn’t roads to drive on the towpath. Drive on the towpath.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:31:34] Yeah. I’ve heard stories about Model A’s here in the Valley. So do you have any for clarification?

Erich Schnack [01:31:47] Yeah, I have one question here. So Ruth’s husband, Selwyn Major. [crosstalk] How do you spell that?

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:31:56] S, E-

Frank Wetmore [01:31:58] S, E, L, W, I, N.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:32:02] Sorry, his name is on the back of some of the pictures.

Erich Schnack. [01:32:04] Oh, gotcha. 

Linda Wetmore [01:32:05] Y, N. 

Frank Wetmore [01:32:06] It is?

Erich Schnack [01:32:07] That’s the only question I have.

Frank Wetmore [01:32:11] S, E, L, W, Y, N? Okay. Y, N instead of I, N. 

Erich Schnack [01:32:16] Gotcha. Thank you. 

Frank Wetmore [01:32:19] Yeah, he’s the one who worked at the Jaite Paper Mail. There’s a lot of houses there in Jaite. Not so many there now, but there’s a lot of them there. Yeah.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:32:28] Well, the three duplexes in the middle burned, as you know, so.

Frank Wetmore [01:32:35] As did the big hotel at Many Glacier, in Glacier National Park. It had a gigantic fireplace, copper fireplace thing. And these great trees all the way up to the top and the balcony around a beautiful. And it’s gone too. And those were all built by the Great Northern Railroad.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:33:03] Using virgin timber from the area at the time.

Frank Wetmore [01:33:07] And I was back. In what year were we back there?

Linda Wetmore [01:33:12] ’17.

Frank Wetmore [01:33:13] ’17. And where I used to hike up to Grinnell Glacier, I would hike with a group up there and we’d walk out on the glacier and we looked down in the crevasses and all that. Now it’s a lake there. There’s no glacier. That’s all just water. And I. One time she and I went up my day off, she and I went up there with a group. We went up with a ranger and hear what he had to say. And then the group left and we were playing around on there and. And I was taking pictures of her and everything like that. Pretty soon we looked down and there goes the boat because there’s a lake there. There goes the boat. And you went across one lake and walked away as you went across another lake to. So we had to run, jog all the way back. One of the other rangers, he was on the hike and it was really hot and he took his felt hat. I still have my hat at home. He took it off and he laid it down there and I come back and get it and a marmot came up and ate off the sweat band because he was sweating.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:34:33] And that was the days when the hats in the National Park Service were still the Stetsons.

Frank Wetmore [01:34:37] Right?

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:34:37] Mine’s a Stetson and it was a beaver. Beaver felt Stetson.

Frank Wetmore [01:34:42] Yeah, mine’s a Stetson. And one day I would take the boat around St. Mary’s Lake, part with the visitors. We’d go up the lake a ways and we’d get off and we’d hike around the rest of the lake. And at three o’clock. They’d pick us up on the other side and bring us back to the dock. Another time I’d be there and I’d hike up to the waterfalls and watch the. What are those called? What are those?

Linda Wetmore [01:35:19] Dippers?

Frank Wetmore [01:35:19] Yeah, water dippers. Water dippers. They’d always head upstream and they’d have their wings like this, and they’d be underwater and everything. We’d watch them and everything. And Linda would walk about seven miles from where we were in the. They were in a camper up there for a little.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:35:36] That’s a heck of a honeymoon, let me tell you.

Frank Wetmore [01:35:42] But I was surprised when I was there. They had campfire talks, but it was by a native girl, a native Indian girl. And she said she was very negative and had a chip on her shoulder. But anyway, she said, well, they said I’m not Indian enough. Well, she just had regular clothes on. She didn’t have leather clothes or a feather in her hair or anything. She just. You didn’t. You couldn’t tell her she was Indian. But she. She gave a talk which wasn’t too good, and another one in the Visitor Center, she. She tried to read some stuff and she didn’t have enough light. Anyway, the quality has gone down the drain because we had an old time ranger who came around and listened to your talk all the time or went along in your hike and gave you an evaluation, evaluated you, and it was pretty good. High quality when they were ranger naturalists doing it. But now not. Not so good.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:36:57] We do show up on programs.

Frank Wetmore [01:37:00] But the government has strangled the parks because it’s easy to cut out funding to the parks and it doesn’t seem to be very obvious to the public. However, she and I camped for 25 from 95. For 25 years we camped and we would go to the Corps of Engineer parks. They were much better maintained and much better than the national parks because they’re

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:37:23] maintained by the army.

Frank Wetmore [01:37:25] They were not as crowded and better, in better shape.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:37:31] They’re maintained by the army and the Department of Defense gets a good budget. Well, thank you so much. I will return this book to you. We may take a look through it. And I’ll return the one that’s the history of the Methodist Church.

Frank Wetmore [01:37:56] Do you have the Peterson book about the Peterson family? You have it, right?

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:38:04] If the library has a copy, Randy and Melissa are always gracious enough to share.

Frank Wetmore [01:38:09] Okay. I have a copy that you can take and copy if you want to.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:38:13] We do have some paperwork that we do need to get signed.

Erich Schnack [01:38:18] You know, Rebecca, I do have one follow up question just for clarification. When we were talking about the Lee family, the African American family, you mentioned that somebody hung themselves behind the Hunt house just to be sure that was the. The Lee family.

Frank Wetmore [01:38:33] No, that was the Hunts.

Erich Schnack [01:38:34] Oh, that was the Hunts.

Frank Wetmore [01:38:35] Hunts.

Erich Schnack [01:38:36] Okay.

Frank Wetmore [01:38:36] Yeah.

Erich Schnack [01:38:37] Thank you.

Frank Wetmore [01:38:40] I remember them telling. Talking about it. I didn’t. I did. Never saw it or anything, but it was.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:38:46] Don’t. That was before Helen Fedler. That had to be before Helen Fedler

Linda Wetmore [01:38:50] probably because I don’t think Wayne put that in her.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:38:53] No, that was in the notes. So, let me eyeball your pad. Well, I’m going to fill out my part all here. But if I can ask you.

Frank Wetmore [01:39:19] This is a release on the pictures and all that.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:39:22] This is just a release on the interview for the pictures. I’ll have to contact you later. So if you would put your name and your signature.

Erich Schnack [01:39:39] I’ve got to find me one of those old Stetson hats now.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:39:44] I have one.

Erich Schnack [01:39:45] Oh yeah.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:39:47] I’ve been working for the park service since ’89. So thank you. Oh no, you get this back.

Frank Wetmore [01:39:57] Yes, I wear mine to some of the tractor shows. Not this time of weather, but in the early spring and fall. And they all call me Sergeant. The Marines had a hat very similar.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:40:08] Well, our uniform, you know, this is based on an army military army uniform. Except we went to gray shirts because the army in 1916 wore white.

Linda Wetmore [01:40:23] Which made no sense.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:40:24] Right. Why would you do that? Right. But we thought, you know, gray would show the dirt less. So we started wearing green pants and gray shirts.

Frank Wetmore [01:40:32] We never had short sleeves in Glacier, even in the-

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:40:36] It is a little cooler there.

Frank Wetmore [01:40:39] Never had. Yes. When I would get there in June, the Going-to-the-Sun highway was not open yet. 

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:40:44] Yes.

Frank Wetmore [01:40:45] They had- they, Then they would cut a channel through there. I remember her going up there and writing her name in the [crosstalk] side of the snow and everything like that.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:40:56] Yeah.

Melissa Arnold [01:40:59] A place I want to go.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:41:00] Haven’t been there yet.

Melissa Arnold [01:41:01] It’s on my list because I just want to see it.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:41:04] Can’t see Grinnell anymore.

Melissa Arnold [01:41:08] No, I know.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:41:09] Nope, that was gone.

Frank Wetmore [01:41:10] Salamander Glacier on the wall. There’s not much of it left either.

Linda Wetmore [01:41:14] But our kids have done a lot of 14-

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:41:18] 14ers? 

Linda Wetmore [01:41:19] Outside of Denver and they say Saya Pass is the one to go on. And we did that. We broke the trail the year I was out there.

Frank Wetmore [01:41:27] I would go, they would assign us certain trails as the snow, snow melted and Linda and I went the day before I was to take it. We went over snow patches all the way up. It starts- It starts at the road and you go up through the. It’s on near- Going to Sun Mountain. Going to Sun Mountain is the highest one where the Indians said the creator went back to the sun by going to Sun Mountain. It’s on the highway to Logan Pass. Anyway, you hike up to the pass and then you come back, back down again. It’s a nice loop. It’s about 10-mile trail. And I would go with visitors there.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:42:04] So you just worked at Glacier in ’66 to ’67 and you had worked the Forest Service?

Frank Wetmore [01:42:08] Earlier than that. I worked with Forest Service in Custer, South Dakota.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:42:16] Wow.

Frank Wetmore [01:42:16] Yeah. There. Oh, on Saturday night they would. Somebody would come, they would have a hold up and everything like that, with shotguns and everything, banging them, shooting them in the streets. And they would hold up some cars, tourists, and have a fake hold up.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:42:37] I was thinking, now wait a minute, this was.

Frank Wetmore [01:42:40] They would have shotguns and they would be shooting in the air and everything. And they’d have their cowboy hats on and horses and all that. And they would stop some tourists and then they would take the tourists out to eat. Whoever they stopped, they would go out to eat at a restaurant or something like that. And I know, I remember Crazy Horse, the park Service didn’t like him doing that very well. But that is going to be an ongoing project forever. It’s a money maker. And now they have the- They have the hole through here and everything. That wasn’t there at all when I was out there, but- And they charge you to get in and charge you for a tour to walk around and look at. It’s a. The parking service didn’t like it very well for them to do that.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:43:30] Yeah, but we don’t always control private industry, private carvers and private works. So you have no control over that.

Frank Wetmore [01:43:42] Yeah.

Erich Schnack [01:43:43] When was that project started, the Crazy Horse Memorial? Must have been a while.

Frank Wetmore [01:43:51] Oh, yes.

Erich Schnack [01:43:52] I mean, I was there a couple years ago and it was still under construction. Right.

[Crosstalk]

Frank Wetmore [01:43:59] I was there about ’56 and they were starting. Well, it had been started for quite a while, but yeah, it’s going to go forever.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:44:11] Yikes.

Frank Wetmore [01:44:13] And I read. I read the story about Rushmore too, where he started and did Stone Mountain, which they wanted to erase. And my dad took us back there. When he just drove back there and saw it now charge and everything, but we just drove back and saw it.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:44:30] Well, the park, Mount Rushmore is free, but you have to pay to park.

Frank Wetmore [01:44:39] The reason he left is because he designed a coin and they were supposed to sell that coin and have money to finish Stone Mountain. Well, they sold a few of them and the money went someplace else. And he was like a lot of artists, he was a little bit eccentric. And so he got mad and he said, the heck with you, and left. And it only was partly finished. They tried to get other people to finish it and they didn’t do a very good job.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:45:11] This isn’t Mount Rushmore or the Crazy Horse?

Frank Wetmore [01:45:14] Stone Mountain in Georgia. So then he went to Rushmore and did that, and his son finished it. And there’s a big tunnel behind it. He was going to have everyone store, all sorts of people, papers and everything behind the faces. It’s just there.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:45:32] Do you remember Chris Ryan?

Melissa Arnold [01:45:34] Yeah.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:45:34] Chris Ryan’s been behind it.

Melissa Arnold [01:45:37] Oh, really?

Frank Wetmore [01:45:37] He’s been back in that tunnel because he’s.

Melissa Arnold [01:45:39] He’s was head of.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:45:42] He’s the superintendent now somewhere. So, yeah, that was Chief Ranger.

Melissa Arnold [01:45:46] Wondered if that was really.

Frank Wetmore [01:45:47] For 25 years, we took our camper and we would spend a week or a month in Death Valley. And I went in ’95. That’s the first time we went. I would go back into every mine. Of course, being a geologist, I love that. And you’d walk back in there and the pack rats would run ahead of you. And in the end of the tunnel, there’s a bunch of their last drill holes. They all hop into those holes. And one of them, I. Of course, there’s tracks still, the rail tracks in some of them parts. And why don’t we walk back in? And here’s up this high. There’s this rock sticking out. I reach up there, here’s a snuff box full of caps, dynamite caps. Oh, my God. So I looked at them, I put them back up there. And another one I go, the Monarch Mine, the Indian Mine. You go back through there, and here’s a big room and there’s a winch there. And everything went down in there. And the rope’s gone, but the winch is standing there and everything. And you can see how they winch the stuff up from way down in there.

Melissa Arnold [01:46:59] How are we going to take it out?

Frank Wetmore [01:47:00] You know, lots of fascinating. And another place I have to hold

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:47:05] my husband back when we’re in Colorado from going into those mine shafts. He’s like, I want to go now.

Frank Wetmore [01:47:13] And down in the talc. Well, I went back into where Manson was captured.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:47:20] Oh, my.

Frank Wetmore [01:47:21] And that was all there. And it’s gone now. But you could see right under the sink where he was hiding. If you’ve read the story about Manson. He was hiding under the sink. Yeah, it was still there. And on the shelves there were canned stuff, canned vegetables and everything that the girls put up. The wash basin. That’s a big pool there where they all went swimming. And there’s irrigation pipes going down to their garden. And there’s a chicken house there and everything. All that was there at the Parker ranch, right?

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:47:55] It was a commune. Yeah.

Frank Wetmore [01:47:56] Yes. And for years someone had been taking care of it. And then someone burned it down. So it’s burned down now. It’s gone. But I went back to the Parker ranch and looked at that. And then on that same road on the side of the, on the opposite side of the mountain, you go back to the talc mines and great big tunnel back in there. Of course, it’s all shield. It’s all shielded, gated. But there’s a swimming pool there. And there’s the bunkhouse, the superintendent’s house and the grub house is there. All those buildings are still there because it’s nice dry country. And one place they had drift mines going back in. And they pushed the dirt up there like that. One of them settled down like that. And if you’re careful, you can crawl over there and walk back in there. But the talc is this. Yeah. Deep in there. And I was afraid to go back. I would go back 50ft or so, but. And it went off in every direction. And it was big enough to get a front end loader in, so it was big. I didn’t go too far back in there, but I looked at those. But now he won’t go back in any of them. Because they spent a lot of money wiring them off.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:49:26] Because they didn’t want to. Yeah, they didn’t want people to be injured or lost.

Melissa Arnold [01:49:31] And that were fine people. They’re back in those mines, but we don’t know where.

Frank Wetmore [01:49:34] But there’s lots of fun things to see in those.

Erich Schnack [01:49:38] I went four years ago or so and there were a couple that were still on the fence that I may or may not have gone in. Yeah.

Frank Wetmore [01:49:46] In Death Valley. Yep. And did you go in and look them over?

Erich Schnack [01:49:49] I looked in two of them with my friend.

Frank Wetmore [01:49:52] Kind of exciting, isn’t it?

Erich Schnack [01:49:53] It was. I was very scared, but it was very fun.

Frank Wetmore [01:49:58] I went out of Death Valley, into the town of Beatty. Beatty and Rhyolite. Rhyolite is where they have the house that is made out of bottles. There’s a whole house made out of beer bottles and whiskey bottles and. And anyway, there’s lots of tunnels around there that you can go back in. And I walked back in there, and I could see they wrote on the side-

Melissa Arnold [01:50:21] Boston, like that. The foundation is made out of milk and whiskey bottles.

Melissa Arnold [01:50:27] Really?

Frank Wetmore [01:50:27] Wow.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:50:28] This way? Up Main Street, huh?

Melissa Arnold [01:50:32] Which one is it towards the cemetery?

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:50:34] It’s towards the cemetery. I think it’s the second to last. It’s before the horse one. It’s the one before that. Zoned by- He did some work, and I had to stand by as the archaeologist. And the foundation is just hundreds of broken milk and whiskey bottles.

Linda Wetmore [01:50:52] Hey, they used what they had, I guess. Yeah.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:50:55] He was thrilled because he’s like, I want to wall this off and make this, like-

Melissa Arnold [01:51:01] Keep it for big plexiglass shield.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:51:03] Right. You wanted to have your highlight.

Melissa Arnold [01:51:05] Embarrassing. There you go.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:51:07] So. Well, thank you all so much. I will get this book back to you.

Frank Wetmore [01:51:12] Okay.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:51:14] And I’ll get the stones on to.

Frank Wetmore [01:51:20] Oh, I have.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:51:21] Let’s see. Unless you’re. Are you still at 1204 Old Forge Road in Kent, Ohio 44240? I got it right here in the box. I got it in the box.

Frank Wetmore [01:51:34] There’s a sticker.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:51:35] Yep, it’s right there. Same thing.

Frank Wetmore [01:51:37] Yep. Stickers. Everyone’s got these to throw away.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:51:42] So this is the Sons of Rest Pen.

Melissa Arnold [01:51:43] Yeah, that’s what we got, too. Is it the same? Oh, no, we got a different one. Mine’s different. That’s an older. I got a gold one, but that’s. Yeah, that’s the other one.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:51:55] So. Thank you for bringing Melissa along. We have haven’t seen her in a while.

Frank Wetmore [01:51:58] Okay. Well, she wanted to hear the stories again, I’m sure. Let them sink in, because I probably won’t do this again. And the stories. It’s like I would go to the reunion. You go to the family reunion. We don’t have them anymore. But the first. When you go, they elect you president right away. You know that nobody wants to job. And I’d have the meetings afterwards, and everyone had to give a story, a family story. Because if you don’t give the stories and pass them on, they get. They’re lost.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:52:34] Yes.

Frank Wetmore [01:52:35] But then it got to be where nobody would come except one family and us. That got less and less so. But when we have the Wilcox reunion at Ern Dickerson’s or Fanny Hatch all. There was a gang there. We play. We played croquet. There was a lot of them, a lot of kids, but those are- That’s in the past. Okay. I. I appreciate you.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:53:02] No, thank you.

Melissa Arnold [01:53:04] Thank you.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:53:05] It’s fun to relive things that making me think the stories my uncles are telling. Yeah, you know what? I am really. I understand your comment about age. I’m really regretting all those Rice Krispies cereals I ate when I was young because now they’re in my knees and in my wrists. And sometimes when they listen to me going up the steps over in the middle building, it sounds like Rice Krispies cereal. Snap, crackle, pop.

Linda Wetmore [01:53:40] Every step of the way, every year.

Rebecca Jones Macko [01:53:45] All right, the time is now 2:45.

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