Happy Birthday, Lorain – Part 6

Here’s the Grand Finale of that April 5, 1924 50th Anniversary edition of the Lorain Journal that I’ve been posting on this blog.

There are several articles to recommend.

At the top of the page is a well-written editorial by David Gibson that takes a look at what Lorain had accomplished in a mere fifty years of existence. It’s pretty impressive, thanks not only to the many industries that called Lorain home at that time, but to the city's civic-minded citizens.

Photo of Lampman House, courtesy of
Lorain Historical Society

Elsewhere on the page is a capsule history of the Thew Shovel Company; a tribute to George Wickens, Sr. and his many contributions to they city he loved; a photo of one of the city’s first hotels, Lampman House, operated by M. Z. Lampman; a funny story about Mrs. Angeline Brooker of 10th Street and her reminisces about her childhood; a story about the oldest store in Lorain at that time, Weigand’s Shoe Store; and the charming poem below by John Milburn Harding about Lorain’s Erie Avenue.

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ERIE AVENUE

On East Erie avenue
Folks, as people elsewhere do,
Live in homes where vines and trees
Whisper with each gentle breeze
Here the flowers and grassy lawns
Glisten when the morning dawns,
Decked in dewy diamonds; here
Wafts Lake Erie’s atmosphere;
Here the songs of many birds
Reach the ear in Nature’s words;
And from almost everywhere.
Rolling by on compressed air,
Tourists pennants flaunt in view,
On East Erie avenue

I, in more nomadic days,
Lived by many public ways;
Dwelt at beach and camped near stream;
Watched the stars and moonlit gleam
Over solitudes; I’ve been
In the cities’ moils, where men,
By the thousands, night and day,
Wore their little lives away;
Laughed on deck, to later pray
In my berth storms to allay;
But nowhere have I e’er found
Landscape, water, air or sound
Better far to hear or view
Than on Erie avenue

– John Milburn Harding