Lou Kepler Interview – October 1969

Mention the name “Lou Kepler" to any longtime Lorain Journal reader over the age of sixty and I’m sure they would remember the well-known Women’s Editor of that paper. I certainly remember seeing her name and photo in the Journal for many years.

LuElla “Lou" Kepler started at the Journal back in the early 1950s and contributed many fine articles, reports and columns over the years. I’ve transcribed and posted several of her articles on this blog.

Anyway, back in October 1969, someone at the Journal realized that making Lou Kepler the topic of an extensive interview was long overdue. Here, then is a great article written by Staff Writer Dick Diluciano in which we get to know Lou better, including her interesting background growing up in Wellington on a farm. The article was published on October 18, 1969.

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President of Ohio Newspaperwomen

Lou Kepler: The Farmer’s Daughter

By DICK DILUCIANO, Staff Writer

“WOMEN USUALLY expect to be wives and mothers, but they also are concerned with making the world a better place for their children. This is one way of doing it.”

Speaking is LuElla Kepler, farmer’s daughter, grandmother and Women’s Editor of The Journal.

“Lou” has done a lot and has seen a lot and she plans to keep right on doing and seeing.

An undertaker’s wife has to take the credit for launching Lou on her journalism career.

“Shortly after my oldest son left home for the Navy I bumped into the undertaker’s wife in downtown Wellington. She suggested I use some of my free time and serve as The Journal’s correspondent for the area,” Lou explained.

“My first reaction was that a correspondent was someone turning up in a divorce case, and I didn’t want that.”

Finally, Lou made up her mind to take the job and began calling in obituaries and writing news for the paper. She laughingly recalls that her newspaper career was “a dead issue from the start.”

THAT WAS 16 YEARS ago and at a time when correspondents were paid by the inch for each story that got into print.

“The more I wrote, the more money I got,” Lou smiled. “That’s how I became so wordy.”

“When I finished high school I was hell-bent on becoming an actress but I discovered I had a speech impediment – a lisp – so that idea died.

A lifelong resident of the Wellington area, Lou at one time could name just about every resident. She had a deal with the police department which had to pass her home to get victims to Oberlin hospital.

“One blast on the siren meant it was a routine call. Two blasts was something worth a story. Three blasts was something serious.”

Lou’s family, which includes three boys and a girl, gave her a lot of encouragement during her early days. “Harold (her husband who died seven years ago) read everything I wrote and said, 'This is a damn good story,’ even if it stunk.

HER CHILDHOOD in Wellington provided her with many of her most - cherished memories.

“I learned to drive a car when I was 10 years old,” she explained. “Later on when my dad had an automobile my services went along with the deal I taught the customers’ wives to drive. That was when I was in high school.”

She remembers starting school in a one-room little red schoolhouse. Then either riding the street car or on horseback to school in Wellington. On the farm she helped with the “chores” including feeding 50 purebred Holstein cattle. She can milk and even churn butter.

For a short time the family lived in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. and her dad built houses between the city and Las Olas Beach. Then she went to a girls college in Virginia until the depression came. Her father’s business folded and she had to come home.

It was while she had her first job, a soda jerk in a drug store, that the boy (who later became her husband) she’d known for years got up enough courage to ask her for a date. “He bought three banana splits at 25 cents each before he got nerve enough to ask to see me home,” Lou beamed. “That was quite a bit of money to spend in those days.”

When World War II broke out, Lou worked with her husband in a creamery and now knew not only how to milk a cow but how to process the milk for the retail market.

LOU CREDITS her varied background with her success in the newspaper field.

“Because I had such a variety of jobs, I’m able to understand people.”

Lou joined the regular staff of The Journal about 14 years ago. She moved to Lorain shortly after her husband’s death because “my family decided I was not going to drive in from Wellington every day.”

Having come from a small town, Lou said her first few years in Lorain were a source of amazement.

“I couldn’t get over seeing 200 persons at a bridal shower and the names,” she recalled.

The friendliness of the town and its international cuisine quickly put Lou at ease, however.

One of her more pleasant memories concerns the cuisine.

“A group of Serbian ladies once came into the office to deliver a CARE package to me. I tried to tell them I didn’t have anything to do with CARE, but they quickly explained they had been baking all morning, because they ‘cared’ about me.”

The package was filled with pastries and other baked goods.

HER PROUDEST moment came when she interviewed the young wife of a North Ridgeville man charged with killing an 83-year-old widow.

“I went to the woman’s home and told her who I was and asked if I could talk to her about her husband,” Lou remembered. “She said her attorney had told her not to talk to anyone about the case, but I finally convinced her to talk.

“I told her everyone was taking about what her husband had been accused of and I ‘wanted to write something good about him.’ She agreed to talk to me.”

The “scoop” was even more gratifying for Lou when opposition news sources reported the wife would not talk to newsmen the same day her interview ran on page one.

Her angriest moment came one morning when a woman called the society desk for advice on a celebration for her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary.

It seems the woman’s mother had died suddenly and she wanted to know if it would be proper to have the celebration anyway since they had the hall and invitations out.

“I suggested that if the woman was Irish, they could turn the celebration into a wake.”

Lou’s saddest moment came when she discovered a double drowning in Wellington and the victims were her two young cousins.

Another period of grief came when she toured the Pittsfield area after the Palm Sunday tornado.

“It seemed as if all my early childhood was destroyed,” she remembered. Her grandfather had once operated a post office - general store there and two aunts had homes in the township years ago. All were destroyed.

Because Lou’s business is people, her job is not without humor.

ONE WOMAN ASKED us not to refer to her as the ‘new Mrs. so-and-so in her wedding writeup because her husband had been married before.

Other girls, who understandably are on “cloud nine” when they fill out their wedding forms have the bride carrying “a bouquet of nuns,” or “orchards.”

“We sometimes think we’re running an information bureau,” Lou added. “We get calls from readers asking advice on everything from table settings, to cooking to raising children.

“One woman once called to ask why her bread didn’t rise. It turned out she had used hot water which killed the yeast action, but she still wanted to know what she could do with the dough. I asked her if she was interested in ceramics... that’s about all the dough was good for.”

Lou’s writing has won her many awards and forms of recognition. She was chosen Lorain Woman of Service in 1963.

Currently, she is completing a two-year term as president of the Ohio Newspaper Women’s Association and is looking forward to the group’s Oct. 25 convention in Mansfield where Col. John Glenn will be a guest speaker.

LOU’S TERM as president ends Jan. 1 but she’ll continue to serve as a director of the women’s group.

A down-to-earth type of person, Lou vividly recalls one of her more humbling experiences. A young Lorain boy had called her at home asking for an autographed picture of the woman who’s listed in Who’s Who Among American Women. He explained his mother told him he wouldn’t be able to get one so he decided to call and state his case. He got the picture from a blushing Lou.

Being a society editor, Lou is conscious of her manner of dress.

“I’d rather be underdressed than overdressed.” is Lou’s fashion rule.

She admits to being “excited” about fashion and makes at least one trip a year to New York City to report on what’s new in women’s wear. She also traveled to Europe on an assignment and to Hawaii on pleasure.

Having grown up in the days of crank telephones, the Graf Zeppelin and the startling news reported in ‘Successful Farm’ that a way had been found to freeze vegetable, Lou says she’ll never get over the progress she has witnessed.

But, she feels “we (as a nation) should be a lot more happier than what we are. The lady who could once tell you who lived in every house in Wellington, admits she doesn’t know the people who live on either side of her East Erie Avenue home.

“We seem to travel at such a fast pace today that people aren’t interested in their neighbors,” she said.

Lou, who has four grandsons and four granddaughters has firm ideas about them.

“I leave raising them up to their parents and I won’t ever be a rocking chair grandmother,” Lou added. “There is absolutely no reason in the world why a woman should be bored.”

LOU IS SHORT with people who criticize newspapers for printing only “riots or rapes.” She quickly asks “when was the last time you read about a riot or a rape on my pages. People read only what they want to read.”

“I have to work of course, because I am a widow. But, I’m forever grateful for the opportunity to influence people through the written word. To point out the good things and the bad. To give some deserving person or cause recognition which might not otherwise be given.”

“I think I have lived in one of the most marvelous ages of anyone but by the same token I envy the young people of today because they have so many opportunities.”

Summing up her philosophy Lou said:

“I cannot help what happened yesterday. And I haven’t the faintest idea of what’s in store for tomorrow. I have today and I’m going to live it up.”

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Here’s a photo of Lou Kepler and John Glenn that appeared in the Journal about a week after the above article, on October 27, 1969, covering the Ohio Newspaper Women’s Convention in Mansfield.