I first encountered Al back in the 1990s at the old Spitzer Renaissance Hotel, where he was displaying a collection of vintage Lorain postcards. I was there with my parents, and was surprised when the gentlemen behind the event greeted my father by his first name (“Hi, Eddy!”). I guess everyone knew Al.
I officially met Al when I was just getting this blog off the ground. One day we were both in the local history area of the Lorain Public Library, and he struck up a conversation with me. He was doing some maintenance of his historical archives, which he had donated to the library to make them available to other researchers. His material filled a whole room of file cabinets.
Al helped me a lot with my blog. In recent years, the first email of the day that I received was usually from Al, contacting me about something that I had posted on the blog that day. He was always graciously thanking me for writing about Lorain’s history, and usually provided some reminisce or information that I would then add to the post to make it more complete. There are many posts that were enhanced with Al’s generous help.
Al always wanted to share information with me. A couple of years ago, he invited me to his house in Amherst so that he could provide me copies of things he had in his home files that he knew I was interested in. I enjoyed the hospitality of Al and his wife that wintery night. He would also, right out of the blue, send me a package in the mail containing copies of old articles that he thought I might find interesting.
At least Al made sure that all of his knowledge of Lorain’s history would not be lost when he passed on, by collaborating on a series of books with his friends and fellow historians. (I wrote about one of them here.) There was even a book entitled, The Life & Times of Al Doane – Memories of Lorain, which he wrote with his friends Matt Weisman and Paula Short.
Al was a nice guy and Lorain’s biggest champion of its history. He will be missed, and I offer my condolences to his wife and family.