Put-in-Bay August 1964 – "The More Things Change..."

Put-in-Bay has long been a favorite summer destination for the Brady family. My parents took my siblings and me there for the day when we were kids; as adults, my siblings and I have made regular excursions there over the years. Both my older brother and his family, as well as my sister – all of them out-of-staters now – made it a priority to come home this summer and pay a visit to Put-in-Bay.

In recent years (from what I have heard on the news), it has become more rowdy than ever. It didn't seem that way when we were going up there in the 1970s as a family. It seemed more quaint, sort of like Mackinac Island, Michigan.

While it might be easy to assume that the problem has only come up in recent years, the article on the Journal page below from August 1, 1964 caught my eye.

The article notes, "This island resort town in Lake Erie launched today a full-scale war against several thousand exuberant college students.

"The occasion was Regatta Weekend, more commonly referred to as "Riot Weekend."

"Today and tomorrow, the Inter Lakes Yachting Association holds its annual regatta, and that's all the excuse the collegians need for an annual, old-fashioned brawl.

"Year after year, sweatshirt-clad students, both male and coed variety, gather here with their blankets, their bottles, their toothbrushes and a few dollars and turn the town into an authentic "Fort Lauderdale of the North."

The focus of the article was that Put-in-Bay had a new police chief who wasn't going to put up with the usual shenanigans. "It's either the college kids or us," he is quoted as saying in the article, adding, "and it's going to be us."

A twenty-man army of law enforcement officials was created to handle any college hijinks. The force included two policemen, two plainclothesmen from Detroit, four Ohio Highway Patrol officers, three policemen on loan from Fostoria and one from Tiffin, two Ottawa County sheriff's deputies and 15 deputies from Civil Defense headquarters at Castalia.

Another 42 men were to be on hand to be deputized in the case of an emergency.

It sounds like there were plenty of lawmen to go around, almost enough for each one to have his own personal college hooligan to clobber!