Admiral Ernest J. King: soon-to-be-forgotten by his own hometown

I'll have more to say about this in a future blog series, but it is a sad thing that the decision has already been made to quickly abandon the 'Admiral King' name when the Southview students are consolidated next school year at the current Admiral King High School location. Click here to read the story.

It's almost mind-boggling that Lorain would do this in a feel-good effort to make the two currently separated high school student populations get along at the new location.

Ernest J. King is Lorain's number-one son, arguably its most famous and accomplished citizen – a true hero. He was Commander in Chief of the United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations during World War II and a Five Star Admiral. And, as you will see in my blog series, he never forgot Lorain.

He deserves better than this.

A Look at "An Open Book" Part 4

An Open Book is mainly about Michael Dirda's love of reading played out against a backdrop of growing up in Lorain. As one regular reader of this blog noted in a post, Dirda spends much of the book telling us what he was reading at the time, and the reader watches him progress from Golden Books to the Hardy Boys to Crime and Punishment. Since I also loved to read while growing up, it was fun to see that Dirda enjoyed reading many of the same things that I did as a young boy.

He mentions several of my favorites including Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and a few that I only vaguely remember, such as the Miss Pickerell series (I only remember that she once went to Mars).

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Dirda specifically cites the Beverly Cleary books such as Henry Huggins, Ribsy and the rest.

He discusses them on pages 93-94.

He notes, "Even though I was sometimes picking up more "advanced" books, I retained a longstanding fondness for Cleary's numerous juveniles. But I only remember one with vividness: Henry Huggins. In this novel the series hero finds the stray dog he dubs Ribsy. Henry nurses the starving creature back to health, gives him a name, a home and his heart. Unexpectedly, Ribsy's original owner reappears. But Henry doesn't want to give him up. Who then, should take the dog?"

Dirda describes his feelings of 'moral complexity' when Ribsy chooses Henry over his original owner, who was also a good guy. I just remember being relieved. I also remember wanting a dog after reading that book! (But I had to settle for a hamster.)

I still had my copy of one of Cleary's follow-up books, Ribsy, up until a few years ago, when I either donated it to a young relative or a thrift shop; I can't remember. But who knows? I may be forced to infiltrate the kiddie section of the Lorain Public Library to reacquaint myself with Henry, Ribsy, Beezus, Ramona and the rest.

A Look at "An Open Book" Part 3

One of the things that I enjoyed about An Open Book was Michael Dirda's look at what the Lorain Journal was like while he was growing up. One of the features that he mentioned was "Tell Me Why!", which was one of my favorites.

He describes it like this on pages 50 -51 of his book: "Not least, though, the comics pages also offered A. Leokum's "Why, Daddy" column, later reslugged "Tell Me Why" at about the same time its author's first initial was revealed to stand for the clearly un-American name Arkady. Kids would mail in "scientific" questions such as, "Why does the earth go around the sun?" and Leokum would explain in the simplest possible English. My father, less an actual than a would-be autodidact, judged this feature inordinately fascinating and frequently shared its fascination aloud at the dinner table. "So that's what blue whales eat." As we grew older he urged his inquisitive brood to send in questions, partly for the glory of seeing our names in the paper (if our letters were lucky enough to be chosen), but also for the award of various educational prizes. In due course, the Dirdas received several collegiate dictionaries, an atlas and, eventually, when we'd already outgrown it, a Junior Encyclopedia Britannica."

Another feature that Dirda mentions on the same page of his book is "There Oughta Be a Law", which was another favorite of mine. He points out that it was more of an adult feature, and this example from 1969 proves him right. I wonder – is this strip is still around?

A Look at "An Open Book" Part 2

Much of my enjoyment of An Open Book stems from the fact that Michael Dirda grew up on W. 29th Street and my house was a street away on W. 30th. (That's a recent photo of the Dirda house in the photo above.)

Since we had almost identical geographic vantage points of 1950's/1960's Lorain, it was easy to relate to the first part of the book focusing on his childhood. Even though he is 11 years older than me, the Lorain of his youth was the same as mine.

Consequently, all of the iconic Lorain businesses and landmarks of the west side are represented in the early pages of the book: Yala's Pizza, Willow Hardware, Meyer Goldberg's, Rebman's, Whalen Drug, Lorain Plaza Shopping Center, etc. It's a nice snapshot of a Lorain that is beginning to slowly disappear.

Also enhancing my enjoyment of the book is the fact that Dirda and I had similar blue-collar upbringings. Many of his memories made me smile as they were the same as mine: stopping at Whalen's to check out the rack of comic books; playing in the fields that at that time were not yet developed into housing subdivisions; poking around construction sites; and most hilariously, dreading the wooden spoon that his mother would use to administer punishment.

I guess any Baby Boomer Lorainite, especially those who grew up on the west side, will see much of themselves in the early part of the book.

Next: memories of the Journal

A Look at "An Open Book" Part 1

Back here, I mentioned that for Christmas my wife had bought me a copy of An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland by Lorain native Michael Dirda. Well, I finally finished it this past weekend and I enjoyed it very much.

Although I had planned to review the book for this blog, I'm not going to. (The last book report I wrote was probably about one of the Happy Hollister books!) As a lowly blogger, I'm really not qualified to review a book written by a person who reviews books for The Washington Post for a living – and wins Pulitzer Prizes while doing it!

However, in my next few posts I'll make a few observations about the book from a Lorain nostalgia perspective (I think I can handle that!)

Old Lorain City Hall Demolition Edition of the Passing Scene

Since I was always a big fan of artist Gene Patrick's The Passing Scene comic feature in the Journal, I'm always happy to find an excuse to include one here in this blog. (You can find several old Passing Scene strips here, here and here.)

Here is Mr. Patrick's humorous look at the demolition of the old City Hall, that ran on Saturday, April 6, 1974. (Click on it for a larger view.) He always drew a great Woody Mathna!

Old Lorain City Hall & Police Station Part 7

To bring this blog series to an appropriate conclusion, I decided to pay a visit to Lorain City Hall last Sunday morning to see if the triangular plaque rescued from the old City Hall was still on display. Since the old City Hall had been demolished more than 35 years ago, I wondered if the plaque would still be there.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the plaque was still hanging prominently in the lobby. Below the sign was a terrific painting of the old City Hall in autumn, signed "Zurkan." (Shown at right.)

Together they make a nice tribute, making sure that Lorain's original City Hall will not be forgotten anytime soon.

(Incidentally, the "pirate's treasure chest" sitting on the floor beneath the sign and painting is a time capsule prepared by USS/Kobe Steel Co. to commemorate the 100th anniversary of steelmaking in Lorain in 1996. At least when 2095 rolls around, city officials won't have trouble remembering where the time capsule is.)

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UPDATE (October 9, 2023)

Here's a photo of Lorain artist Ambrose J. Zurkan posing with his painting of old Lorain City Hall along with Mayor Joseph Zahorec. It appeared in the Journal back on November 19, 1973.