Skate World 40th Anniversary Celebration

Skate World recently refreshed its look with a new sign and colorful  building graphics

Skate World recently celebrated its 40th Anniversary, having first opened its doors back on August 27, 1975.

Here’s how the Lorain Journal covered it the next day (below).

The rink then celebrated its formal Grand Opening on Wednesday, October 1, 1975. Here’s the ad that appeared in the paper that same day (below).

As you can see from the ad, Johnny Sharp was at the Hammond X66 Organ for the festivities. Well, Johnny Sharp will be back at the organ for the 40th Anniversary and Reunion Celebration. It all takes place on Sunday, September 20th from 7 to 10 PM. Admission for this special event is $5.00 for all.

Click here to visit the Skate World website and here to visit its Facebook page (which features some great footage from the August 29th, 2015 Celebration).

Scott Welko 1960 - 2015

Writing tributes about old high school friends who have passed away is getting to be all too common on this blog. I guess it’s all part of getting older, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

It was especially sad to hear of the unexpected death of my old Admiral King High School Marching Band pal Scott Welko. Here’s the link to his obituary.

It’s funny how I became friends with Scott; it was almost an arranged friendship. My older brother Ken and Scott's older brother Jeff were good friends, and they both played trumpet in the marching band. So it was a foregone conclusion for Scott and me – both trombone players in the band – to be friends as well. It was that easy.

A yellowing Polaroid from the early days;
(Left to right: John Shaw, me, and Scott)

Scott was unassuming and naturally funny, so I really enjoyed hanging out with him – and a lot of other guys felt the same way. I ended up meeting many other good friends through him, and he basically prevented me from becoming a hermit.

He also saved me from being a wuss. When he first started coming over to my house, all he wanted to do was wrestle. For me (a guy who liked to sit around and read books), this was something very different.

I used to wonder – as I lay gasping for breath on my front lawn, caught in the vise-like grip of his scissors hold – is this guy really my friend? Fortunately, we soon moved on to more peaceful pasttimes.

So I had a lot of fun with Scott back then. Together with our other friends, we played basketball, rode our bikes to Mill Hollow, shot pool in the Welko basement, listened to old Spike Jones and Stan Freberg novelty records and held sleepovers in pup tents in our backyards. We had a lot of good, clean fun.

But Scott had a good sense of mischief too. Several times during those sleepovers, Scott would convince us all to go for a bike ride around Lorain at three in the morning – just for the excitement of breaking curfew and evading police. 

Another time, we were sleeping over at his house, which was next door to Masson Elementary School. Somehow, he talked me into climbing up onto Masson’s roof with him. Unfortunately, his father spotted us running around on the rooftop from his yard and ordered us down, and sent me home.

So as you can see, Scott made my high school years fun, and with an element of mild danger.

Like my other friends, Scott had great parents that were fun to visit with and talk to. His father – Dan Henry – was a little intimidating, but was pretty funny. So was Scott's younger brother, Danny Lee.

College interrupted my friendship with Scott. I hung out with him a little after I returned to Lorain, but we eventually lost contact.

Strangely enough, in the late 1980s, I happened to walk into the employee lunchroom one day where I worked in Cleveland – and there sat Scott! It turned out he was working as a contract employee at the company that rented the lower level of our building. So our friendship was rekindled for a little while. He was still the same guy: friendly, funny and uninhibited with that goofy sense of humor.

Although I hadn’t seen him for many years since then, I’m sad that he’s gone. I feel lucky to have had him for a friend, as my life would have been a lot different if I'd never met him.

And a lot less fun.

I can only offer my heartfelt sympathy to his family.

Pete Franklin Interview – September 1975 Part 2

Here’s Part 2 of the Bob Cotleur article about Pete Franklin that ran in the Journal on Sunday, September 28, 1975.

****

PETE FRANKLIN REFUSES to divulge the meaning of his second name’s initial “J” and his real age. He’s “39... a point where I feel all men should stop counting.”

He was born in the “little hick town of East Longmeadow, Mass., a suburb of Springfield... noted for the home of the National Armory, the Basketball Hall of Fame, Vic Rashi and Leo Durocher, if we want to throw in another obnoxious name...”

He spent high school playing baseball and chasing girls, “chasing, but not catching them,” he grins.

After high school he finally caught up with a War II John Wayne movie, got enthusiastic and patriotic in the same moment and wound up in the Marines. He began in ’44, saw Okinawa live in the third wave, caught a flesh wound and ultimately spent most of ’47 and ’48 chasing down pockets of Japanese soldiers on mainland China.

During the era he noted a fact of military life: ball players and armed services broadcasters got out of the “---- detail,” and since I wanted to be a broadcaster, I played ball until I got the chance on radio.”

He did both. But when he returned to the states, he played ball for a season for the Marines air station in El Toro, California “and managed to win 18 while losing 3 as a pitcher. So the Boston Red Sox sent me this letter...”

Franklin is no dummy. He also knew about the G.I. Bill, the scholarship it contained and the fact that Columbia University had a broadcast course two nights a week. So, to get the broadcast studies, he ignored the Red Sox and enrolled full time as a broadcast journalist, got his two nights a week plus his five days a week and bachelor degree – all by 1953.

A few days later he quit selling BVD underwear in New York (while a student) and joined a radio station in the Louisiana swamps.

“I did everything, broadcast, sell, write and sweep the floor. It was an interesting station and the most important piece of equipment was a broom. You see, the washroom was next to the transmitter. The transmitter was hot and the moccasins and rattlers liked to siesta there. So when you went to the toilet, you hoped it never was an emergency.”

Pete Franklin, that fearless marine, thus had a post-war course in combat. Him and a broom against swamp snakes. Naturally he won or you wouldn’t be reading this.

Fortunately a year earlier in 1952 Pete had met a girl at a church function (“can’t for the life of me remember what I was doing at a church function”) and the only initial contact was the fact she was born in Franklin Square, N.Y.C. and he was Franklin.

She was an American - born colleen, Patricia Jane Loughnane, “named after Lake Loughnane (loch - nane) in Ireland, and as Irish as paddy’s Pig,” said Franklin. “All the in-laws and out-laws are from the “olde sod” although she was born here.”

She gave him two children, “son John, 18, about to be paroled from Rocky River High School which is a break for all concerned, and a daughter, Susan, 13 at St. Christopher Catholic School and doing fine. We also have a mutt, Butch. He isn’t much but doesn’t take up much room, either...”

He points out that marrying Patricia Jane was “probably the wisest move I ever made. She’s the one stabilizing force in my life. She knows nothing about sports and has never asked me a question about it in our 23 years. Years and years ago she did listen to me, for a moment or two, but got nervous and emotional when I began telling people to ‘jump in the lake.’ She is the very opposite of me... civilized, warm, outgoing, congenial...”

And she is today why Franklin never says “after I left Louisiana, I worked a lot of stations south, west and east coast.” Instead, he subconsciously says “we came to Cleveland in 1967 to begin our broadcasting at WERE.”

His wife wasn’t at the station with him. But she was there in his mind, and there when the show got loud, boisterous and even obnoxious and he knew it was time to switch from the dueling trumpets, horns and base viols to violin and harpsichord.

* * *

PETE FRANKLIN DRINKS BEER, smokes a little and reads a lot. “I read a book a day, but I can’t retain what I read unless I have additional motivation for reading it.”

He liked Roger Kahn’s “Boys of Summer” and devours John O’Hara for his characterizations. He likes Irwin Shaw novels and even the writings of “that obnoxious ego-maniac Norman Mailer. I like Tennessee Williams at times, Thomas B. Costain, Carl Sandburg and that great storyteller Winston Churchill.

“I read and read and read and hope to until the day I die. But I guess in all this I’m taken by Disraeli’s statement that when a man realizes how ignorant he is, he’s taken his first step toward knowledge.

“And I find the more I learn about a subject, the less I know...”

This is the side of Pete Franklin that isn’t found on the air. He differentiates his public and private life as much as a minister differentiates his garb for a sermon in the pulpit and a shower in the stall.

Franklin continued, “I’m forever privately flabbergasted when people tell me I’m a walking encyclopedia. I may have more knowledge than most people, I won’t deny that, but what I don’t know frightens me.”

Franklin, of course, handled talk shows for years on subjects far beyond mere sports which, even now, he calls “light pastry” in the face of life. He worked for a time with America’s number 1 controversial talk show host, Joe Pyne, and they began their show in New Jersey on the note “Why are you a communist... why are you for, or against, abortion... who do you go to see a stripper.”

Despite the overtones of all three categories, they learned answers and researched questions until they both, today, could talk endlessly for hours on a vast variety of topics. Franklin likes, digs, loves sports... but it isn’t his first love, not by a long shot.

“My first love is and always has been music.

“People who have written beautiful music have done far more than trite politicians. I’m talking variety, some classical, good pop concert stuff... I may have one of the world’s largest jazz libraries. What turns me on is a lyric by Cole Porter, some of Duke Ellington’s great sounds.”

“In the mornings, after I get up and walk a couple of miles, I come home to my apartment here in Rocky River and listen to music for an hour every day.”

What turns him off? You can guess.

“Alice Cooper... a guy getting $200,000 for getting on stage with a snake and wailing away in discordancy. Why he’s got a name like a broad and that turns me off to begin with...”

He loves professionalism and will match his own, in his field, with nearly anyone else in any field. His basic philosophy is to be true to himself and in his professional life it is stiffer than the goal posts at a football game. Furthermore, his goal posts have never come down.

“Look, Vincent Price played monsters, bloodsuckers, and yet in real life he’s a fine man, an art collector, a gentle man. Yet he, like Frank Sinatra, is professional. You can hire Sinatra but you don’t tell him what to sing or make his arrangements for him...

“So when I work I say, “look, I’m going to do it my way and if you like it, fine. If you don’t, get somebody else. I never argue.

“A lot of guys have listened to management’s suggestions and where are they today – out of the business or somewhere else. I’m still here.

“As I see it, the audience is there for me to use, essentially, for my purposes. If one caller is kookie, it’s not because they’re kookie but because we (meaning “I”) allow them to be kookie and set the tone, the pace of the show. And we can change it any time.

“The host controls the tempo, the mood. He has the ability to change it any time and in a split second. When I tune in, I want a few laughs, I want to be entertained.

“What I strive for essentially is what a good major league pitcher wants when he pitches a game, a curve, fastball, change of pace, spot the ball... and that’s what I’m doing, essentially, with my audience... a variety of things.”

Pete Franklin is a host of things and yet always and inevitably the same six-foot-one, overweight at 215 pounder. He doesn’t raise his voice off radio, seldom tones it down while on.

He is, of course, something radically different to everybody.

Because everybody sees this Pete Franklin in the context they invented in their mind.

Pete Franklin Interview – September 1975 Part 1

Yesterday I mentioned how TV used to be a largely shared viewing experience. That is, everyone was watching the same programs on network TV and would talk about them the next day at work.

Well, here’s an example of the days when radio was a shared listening experience. Back when WTAM in Cleveland was known as WWWE, Pete Franklin ruled the airwaves with his nightly “Sportsline" radio show. Although I’ve never been a big sports fan, I tuned in to the show every so often and was always entertained (although I often cringed at how he treated little kids that called in).

Here’s a great article about Pete Franklin that ran in the Lorain Journal on Sunday, September 28, 1975. It was written by Staff Writer Bob Cotleur, whose work I seem to post a lot on this blog.

It’s a long article, so I’ll bust it into two parts.

****

WWWE Host Once Rescued by George Foreman
Radio’s Pete Franklin: The Fearless Critic of Sports
By BOB COTLEUR
Staff Writer

PETE FRANKLIN flicked a switch and cut another “dummy with a Mickey Mouse question” off the air.

Franklin, of course, is the reason many area car and home radios are tuned in to WWWE-Radio nightly before and after Indian ball games. He’s the host of the talk show “Sportsline” and with 50,000 watts of clear channel power sending his New England accent to 39 states and half of Canada, somebody’s listening.

He has five lighted buttons before him in the broadcast booth. One is long distance and calls are stacked up. As soon as he flicks one off it relights, but he goes on the next in symmetrical rotation. As least twice a night the long distance button glows and he hears from listeners in Dallas, Oklahoma City (“however far that is”) and many from New England.

He talks of the Indians, Browns, Crusaders and Cavaliers in depth, mostly in season, answers questions or statements in a range from “you’re right,” to “get off the air, you dummy.”

HE’S A FEARLESS CRITIC of management and managers, of players and fans and sportswriters. He’s been in a zillion verbal arguments with all of them but only Duke Sims, one time Indian catcher, wanted to do it with dukes.

What saved Franklin that lovely day was that he brought a friend to the Indians dressing room, Pro Boxer George Foreman, former heavyweight champion, and when Foreman stepped in front of a charging Sims to raise the palm of his hand and say, “now hold on, Brother, don’t go after my friend...” Sims changed his mind.

What had Sims up tight to begin with was that it happened a day or two after he tossed a cocktail glass at a girl in a tavern. The glass hit the table first, broke and a piece bounced up to cut her.

“I had her on the air in an interview,” Franklin said, “and Sims didn’t like that. He said so. I only said that I was proving what I said all along, he couldn’t throw straight even in a cocktail lounge.

“He threatened to change my face. I said I wasn’t worried, all he ever fought were girls.

“So he charged... and George Foreman, a guest of mine, stepped in between us...”

Franklin’s show is a symphonic blend of angry – pleasant – incensed – elated voices. Make no mistake.  According to Pete, he creates, directs and produces it. He wants the one-in-four caller who is a “kook” but he doesn’t want him “for a solid hour straight. That’s as bad as a dissertation on the intricacies and psychologies of trap blocking, which I could talk on but wouldn’t. I don’t want to bore my listeners either way.”

If the show begins to slow or grow boring – sometimes several callers in a row offer the same question (“dummies”) and the question is less than important (“Mickey Mouse”) – Pete will get angry and appear to blow up.

But it ain’t true.

He considers himself extremely professional and, by Old Vic, he is. “I am detached and in control. I can tell people that over and over and 100 times out of 100 they won’t believe me unless they actually watch me do a show...”

Pete Franklin is the John Barrymore - Richard Burton of Cleveland radio. He’s had years of experience and now is the longest - lasting talk show host in America. In fact, his record in Cleveland began in 1967 on WERE, switched to WWWE in 1972 and is still going on.

Meanwhile Cleveland’s “number one” a few months ago, Gary Dee, is back to playing records and things between talking calls from listeners and Count John Manolesco is likely interviewing mediums in Port - au - Prince, Haiti or somewhere.

Franklin sticks to sports. He’s considered an expert by those who like him and those who don’t.

He seems to know everyone personally from Pele, the soccer star, to Rod Carew of the Twins and boy wonder Rick Manning of the Indians. For a change of pace you can throw in Milt Morin, Jack Nicklaus, Olga Corbett... and Vincent Price. Price is only “in” when it comes to the psychology of acting.

Although the baseball season is about to hibernate, it’s a good time to ask some of the Cleveland Indians what they think of the guy who says “there’s nothing humble about me professionally,” and chews them out from the batboy to Frank Robinson and Phil Seghi.

Here’s what some of them think.

JACK BROHAMER: “He’s one of the most knowledgable people on sports past and present. That means all sports. He amazes me. He’s got the freedom to do what he wants on his show, like cutting off dumb people who call in. I think he buried us prematurely this season... and he says he hates the Yankees, but that may be a put-on. Oh yes, he must be the worst dresser I’ve ever seen...”

JOHN LOWENSTEIN: “He may be a substitute for other bad programming they (WWWE) might put on the air. I think he entertains himself more than the people who listen to him...”

BUDDY BELL: “He’s good for the people, enjoyable to listen to. He’s very knowledgable...”

FRITZ PETERSEN: “Before I came to Cleveland (from the Yankees) I was warned by the Yankees not to talk to him. I didn’t know he was a Yankee-hater then. He’s a real Indians fan, though. If he nips at us at least he’s objective. He buried us this season, but resurrected us too. I enjoy listening to him. I like him when he buries the Yankees...”

FRED BEENE: “I didn’t like it when he got on us and buried us. He told the fan to come to the stadium to see us. He doesn’t have any right to say that...”

(Note: Beene must have meant it in the sense of attending a solemn requiem mass for the dead.)

One area fan is Jerry Doyle of 5055 Oberlin Rd., Amherst, who calls Franklin from time to time to make a point “but not to argue, at least not on the telephone. It’s too expensive.

“But he is sharp, knows a lot about sports and is popular. Sometimes he gets so arrogant... like if he’s got somebody over a barrel, he’ll pour it on. He’s brassy. I consider myself knowledgable, too, and I’d like to argue with him someday, one on one...”

But not for the profit of Lorain Telephone and/or Ohio Bell.

Tomorrow: Part Two

The Weekend in Television – September 23, 1961

Remember when the Lorain Journal's TV section was always found on the last full spread of the newspaper? I'm sure other local Baby Boomers recall this from the 1960s and 70s.

Besides a grid showing what was on Channels 3, 5 and 8 (and later, 11, 13, 43, etc.) there were the capsule summaries of the network programs. The listings also identified if the program was the premiere of a brand new show, a season premiere of an old favorite, or an (ugh) repeat.

There were also features and columns about upcoming programs of interest, as well as a publicity photo of a TV star or special.

Since the Journal was an evening newspaper back then, the listings for the next day's early shows were included. Similarly, since the Journal didn't publish on Sundays until later in the 1960s, the listings for the Sabbath were included with Saturday's.

And that's what we have here (above), the Weekend in Television section (minus the grids) of the TV page that appeared in the paper on Saturday, September 23, 1961 – 54 years ago this month.

There's all kinds of goodies for TV fans to read, including articles and blurbs about some of my favorite shows.

Of course, the season premiere of what was to be the final year of Maverick caught my eye. James Garner (Bret Maverick) had already quit the series, so Jack Kelly (Bart Maverick) was now the star and the only Maverick brother in town. (I posted the TV page from when Maverick debuted in September 1957 here.)

Several animated cartoons were making their nighttime premiere on network TV at that time, including The Alvin Show, The Bullwinkle Show and Top Cat.

The Alvin Show featuring the animated trio of singing chipmunks is treated with scorn by Vernon Scott in his TV column. He refers to Alvin, Simon and Theodore as "those dratted chipmunks" and "the noisy triumvirate," and is of the opinion that millions of Americans "lost their mind" when they bought their popular record "The Chipmunk Song."

Elsewhere on that same page, the locally well-known Kos Family Band is mentioned as appearing on Channel 5’s Polka Varieties program.

It’s strange thinking back to the days when TV watching was a shared viewing experience, thanks to the limited number of stations. With such few selections, specific programs were watched by millions and are still remembered today by Baby Boomers.

Over the decades, today's TV audiences have been split into countless separate sub-groups, thanks to cable, VCRs, satellite dishes, and more recently, DVRs, the internet and all those hand-held devices. Now, it’s rare to go to work and talk about a television program that everyone has watched, unless it was a football game.

He Knew Woody Earnhart

Remember my ongoing interest in the life and career of Woody Earnhart?

I’d first heard of him when I posted a 1963 newspaper ad for Ben Hart’s Show Bar in Lorain. Woody was performing there as a comedian and impressionist, and at the time of my post I wondered if he ever made the big time.

After that 2013 post, I did some research and discovered that his entertainment career had started at Ohio State when he and his partner won a series of victories competing on the old Ted Mack Amateur Hour TV program.

I eventually discovered that Woody had enjoyed a brand new career in the late 1970s as publisher of Ohio Fisherman and Great Lakes Fisherman. I found enough information to do an extensive post on his life and career (which I posted here).

I had hoped to locate Woody and interview him. Unfortunately, he passed away in October 1989 in Columbus, and his death was simply reported in the newspaper with no information about his personal life or next of kin. And so, I figured that my quest to learn more about Woody had come to an end.

But I had one last lead to follow.

An Outdoors column written by Wyndle Watson in the Pittsburgh Press published on July 31, 1983 mentioned Woody. The columnist had driven 200 miles to do some walleye fishing at the invitation of Woody, who by that time had added the Great Lakes Fisherman magazine to his publishing portfolio. They left on their fishing excursion from the Catawba Island docks.

Watson wrote, “We were in a good-sized boat, but we kept one eye peeled on the weather and a weather radio tuned as we headed for the nearby fishing grounds. It was nearly an hour before we caught the first fish, but two hours later we were headed for port, a legal limit of 24 walleyes – all in excess of 15 inches – in the cooler.

“It was an auspicious start for a three-day visit with Woody and his young friend, Phil Witt, a whiz of a fisherman who operates a Catawba Island motel complex which caters to fisherman.”

According to an online report, Wyndle Watson had retired from the newspaper, so I didn’t try to locate him. But was Woody’s friend Phil Witt still around?

Indeed he was. Witt has been the owner and operator of Beach Cliff Lodge near Port Clinton since 1977.

He replied to my out-of-the-blue email inquiry about Woody. “Woody and I were great friends,” he noted. “We did a lot of fishing and hunting together. I miss him.”

Mr. Witt also returned my phone call, and chatted with me for a few minutes about his friend. He knew about Woody’s former entertainment career, and that he had won the Ted Mack show.

Did Woody have any family? Witt revealed that Woody’s wife was still alive and living in Florida. But he wasn’t aware of any children or siblings.

How did Woody and Phil meet?

“I met Woody back in the summer of 1978 right after he started the magazine,” Witt noted. Woody had stayed at the Beach Cliff Lodge for a week around Memorial Day weekend.

“He always liked the outdoors,” said Witt.

Witt also talked a little bit about the magazines. At the time, a magazine devoted exclusively to fishing in Ohio was quite unusual. “He was definitely ahead of his time,” noted Witt.

He explained that Woody had owned 49% of the magazine, and that other partners were involved.

Witt also mentioned an interesting story about the Ohio Fisherman magazine. Actor Gordon Jump, who played Arthur Carlson on the WKRP in Cincinnati TV program was a guest of the magazine on a three-day fishing trip near Port Clinton with Woody, Phil and some other magazine personnel. According to a June 23, 1980 article in the Bryan Times, Jump “caught his limit each day, including a 7-pound, 25-inch walleye, a catch that qualifies him for a state certificate.”

Witt pointed out to me that copies of Ohio Fisherman were often used as a prop on Arthur Carlson’s desk on WKRP, since the character loved to fish.

Special thanks to Phil Witt for sharing his reminisces with me about his friend Woody Earnhart.

****

Michael Hoffman, who was the associate editor of Ohio Fisherman, was also on that Lake Erie fishing trip with Gordon Jump in the summer of 1980. He posted a few reminisces online about the trip and noted that “Gordon, a Dayton native, flew in to do some promos for the Ohio Division of Wildlife and for our magazine.”

Orrin Gillmore Passes – Sept. 13, 1939

With the passing of Peggy Gillmore about a year and a half ago, Lorain lost a sixth generation member of the pioneering Gillmore family that left Massachusetts to settle in Lorain in the early 1800s, and presumably its last direct link to the city’s early history.

There was a time in Lorain (as in all cities, sooner or later) when the passing of the venerable pioneers was front page news. That’s because everyone in the community knew them, or had heard of them; they were well-respected, and their deaths were an accepted part of the city’s historic tapestry.

Courtesy findagrave.com

I run across these reports of pioneer deaths while scrolling through vintage microfilm, and recently I found the obituary for Orrin Gillmore, Peggy’s grandfather. It ran in the Lorain Journal and the Lorain Times-Herald on September 13, 1939.

It’s a short, interesting read and reveals a few things that I didn’t know about the family, its farm and Lorain’s original fraternal organizations.