Cheryl Scott Sheinin and Neil Sheinin, both BJ retirees, are celebrating their 38^th anniversary.

Cheryl posted:

“Happy 38th anniversary to my wonderful husband. That was my best ever birthday present to marry you on that day. I love you more and more each year.”

Clever guy, Neil, a former BJ staffer. By marrying Cheryl on her birthday he only has to give her one gift for her wedding anniversary AND birthday.

Cheryl has a remarkable feat. She has had her dental work done forever by three Dr. Barstans: Father, dad’s son and then dad’s other son. They should just put an engraving with Cheryl’s name on it in the Barstan dental office.

Cheryl retired after 45 years in the BJ Finance Department. Husband Neil Sheinin is a former BJ staffer.

Cheryl is a friend till the end . . . literally.

When former BJ security guard Anna Nitz passed away in 2012, Cheryl went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for the ceremony of Ann’s ashes being spread into the Atlantic Ocean. That was Anna's favorite place to travel.

Cheryl’s travels include national parks and monuments in the American West and Portage Lakes when she and Neil are home.

Two people who knew Republican handler Ray Bliss well, Bill Hershey and John C. Green, have written a book about the amazing party organizer, “Mr. Chairman: The Life and Times of Ray C. Bliss.”

Bliss was a Grand Old Party man to the core. When Bliss’ choice, Ohio Sen. Robert A. Taft, failed to win the 1952 presidential nomination, Bliss threw his wiles and support behind Dwight D. Eisenhower. When the Ike that everybody Liked campaigned in Ohio, Bliss made sure that campaign events ran like a D-Day military operation.

So well that, in 1965, President Eisenhower suggested that Bliss become the Republican National Chairman. That warmed the cockles of even Barry Goldwater’s heart, the ultra-conservative who lost his Presidential bid by a landslide the year before to Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Bliss was a master of the nuts and bolts of practical politics and at the forefront of bringing polling and TV into campaigns. Everyone knows there are plenty of nuts in politics. Just check out today’s Senate and House.

Hershey and Green are a perfect team to tell the terrific tale of Bliss’ footprints and fingerprints on Republican history.

Hershey dealt with Bliss often while Bill spent four score covering Ohio politics, much of it as Ohio bureau chief for the BJ and the Dayton Daily News (he flipped back and forth between the two newspapers in his career, bringing dogged digging to benefit both).

Green is director of the University of Akron’s Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics. I saw him at the BJ so often that I thought he was on John S. Knight’s payroll, but Hershey disabused me of that mistaken belief.

Bliss was as good at “applied politics” as Corey Kluber is at baffling batters who oppose the Cleveland Indians or LeBron James is at applying muscle that won NBA titles in Cleveland and Miami.

Hershey also can think quickly with a gun to his head . . . literally. During his State Desk days under the incomparable Patrick T. Englehart, Mogadore’s magnificent master of managing reporters, Bill was covering union coal miners roaming around southeast Ohio trying to convince non-union mines to organize. Their tactics were their version of The Godfather’s horseless head scene.

While Bill was on the phone, talking to me about his coverage, he said: “I have to call you back.”

Later, Bill phoned me again and said, “There was a guy with a gun wanting to know what I was doing. I told him, ‘People are saying a lot of lies about you and I’m here to get the truth.’ “

The man with the gun replied: “Well, come on, then. Follow us.” So Bill got the story of tipples burning and union organizing. And lived to write about it.

I got this email from Bill, who apparently took time out from petting and dealing with his private home “kennel” of dogs to write it:

“Hi, John

“Glad you got out of the muck. (I was trapped for 30 minutes by Brandywine Country Club muck on the #9 hole that once was the bottom of the pond before the shoreline was shortened by 20 feet; 3 rescuers, an extended metal ladder and a 3 x 8 foot board rescued me with so little damage that I shot a 38 at Sycamore golf course two days later.)

“John Green, director of the Bliss Institute at Akron U, and I have written a biography of Ray Bliss, the Akron insurance man who was chairman of the Republican Party in Summit County, Ohio and the U.S.

“It is available although the official ‘release’ is at the State of the Parties political scientist conference at Akron U in November.

“As you probably know, Bliss and John Knight were long-time friends and their lives and careers often crossed. Some Beacon Journal retirees might be interested so I thought I'd let you know.

“The book follows Bliss' career from Akron to Columbus to Washington, D.C. but he was a die-hard Akron fan and came home to retire in 1969 after Nixon forced him out as chairman of the national Republican Party. Some people think Nixon could have avoided Watergate if he had listened to Bliss but Nixon wasn't much of a listener.

“Here is a link to a description of the book and also to how it can be ordered.

http://www.uakron.edu/uapress/browse-books/book-details/index.dot?id=1e1333b9-fd61-41ef-b916-4ce805f7da4b

“It's taken more than 25 years to put this thing together and I think there is some interesting stuff as well as ‘inside baseball.’ It's also available through Amazon and some other sites.

“Stay out of the mud!!

“  - - Bill H”

Green is the guy that newspapers and TV go to for insight on politics, particularly in Ohio.

Remember how we were always warned to avoid religion and politics in gatherings among friends to dodge turning them into enemies? Well, John is a “Distinguished Professor of Political Science” who is famous for his work in both areas.

Green is co-author of “The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant Clergy; Religion and the Culture Wars: Dispatches From the Front” and “The Diminishing Divide: Religion’s Changing Role in American Politics.” Plus co-editor of “The State of the Parties,” now in its 5th edition, “Multiparty Politics in America” and “Financing the 1996 Election.”

Not much political grass grows under his feet without his tootsies interpreting it.

He spent his student years at 2 C’s, universities of Colorado and Cornell.

John Green also qualifies for academia because he has a massive academic beard, great for pontificating.

Bill had a significant role in the 1987 Pulitzer that came flying to Ol’ Blue Walls over BJ coverage of Sir James Goldsmith’s greenmail takeover attempt of Goodyear and spent two years with the Peace Corps in Ethiopia.

 

His student years were spent at Michigan’s Albion College and New York’s Columbia University. The Flint native lives in Columbus with wife Marcia and the dogs (I’ve lost count; one dies and Bill replaces it with two more, or so it seems).

He retired from his second stint with the Dayton Daily News in 2012.

But not from writing, thus the Ray Bliss book. And no one put a gun to his head to make him write it, either. Thank God!

What a muck-up!

By John Olesky,

former Beacon Journal Television Editor

Well, it turns out The Back Nine From Hell at Brandywine in Peninsula has some competition from #9 on the front nine.

Tom Stone, brother of the woman I love and have lived with for 13 years, Paula Stone Tucker, and I were on #9 tee. In front of us is the pond that is far below the tee in altitude and between the tee and #9 green.

I hit my drive that didn’t quite clear the water on the fly. But my orange ball with “WVU” and “John Olesky” on it (I have about 800 of those) hit the water and plopped onto the far shore, about one foot beyond the water.

When Tom and I drove our golf cart between the green and the pond, I walked toward the orange ball … and sank into a black, mucky, suction/vacuum equivalent of the La Brea Tar Pits of Los Angeles that once trapped mastadons, relatives of the elephant, to death.

There I was, a modern mastodon, my legs sunk 17 inches deep into the black, sucking muck.

It took three Brandywine employees, a metal extension ladder placed flat on the ground and a 3 x 10 foot flat board and about 30 minutes of rescue work, directed by me, to extricate me from the trouble I got myself into.

The problem was that the black muck had trapped my feet in my golf shoes, so you couldn’t just pull me out without causing me a lot of pain and permanent damage.

The rescuers and I had to dig up around my two legs all the muck that was within a 2-foot diameter and 20-inch deep hole (to get under my feet).

As the rescuers dug close to my feet, following my directions, and I could feel how close their shovel/spade was to my body, then I would take the spade from their hands and finish extricating my leg by digging myself out.

When we got one foot and the left leg free, I put that foot on the rung of the metal ladder that was lying flat on the ground, so that it wouldn’t sink back into the black, mucky yuck. That was my left leg.

Then we extricated my right foot.

Part of the problem was that I was facing #9 tee and the water, and my back was to my rescuers. If they tried to yank me out they would twist my body and cause damage to it.

Once we got my second, right leg free, I plunked my butt on the board and scooted toward the green. Then the rescuers lifted me to a standing position.

I had the extra problem of having a store-bought right knee, so we didn’t want to dislocate or damage that. Plus my Pacemaker was working overtime to keep my calm.

My stoic Mountaineer and Polish background also helped me stay cool and direct my rescue.

By the time I got home and stripped naked in the garage (with the door shut so I didn’t frighten the neighbors or the squirrels), my right knee was swollen, my right calf, back, right arm and right shoulder had been tweaked and were uncomfortable.

After the naked Mountaineer climbed to the second floor and into the shower, removing what mucky debris was left, only the right knee remained a problem.

I called Tom’s wife, Lorraine, who is a nurse and told her that I had pain pills left over from my nose excavation two months ago to remove cancer. She indicated it was OK to take one pain pill, which I did, and to put cold packs on my right knee for 20 minutes, which I did.

So now I have something else for our family lore, including the time that I rode my wagon off the bumpity reddog road and down into the ravine about 100 feet deep. Tom Retton, our Jackson Street neighbor across the ravine in Monongah, West Virginia, saw me as he was driving by. He went down, carried my lifeless body to our Thomas Street house, knocked on the door and, when my mother answered, said, “Here’s your son.”

That was one of several times that my mother fainted over her wayward son’s adventures.

Monongah residents were used to me going into that holler, as we called the ravine, because I did it with four or five different types of riding conveyances. I was so clumsy that my mother refused to let me have a bike. So I borrowed one from a friend and drove it into a truck, which caused its owner to come screaming at me because I scratched paint from off the truck. It was the equivalent of a deserved “Get off my lawn” episode.

Somehow, I managed to survive my childhood, despite 8 black eyes, one at a time except for a double black eye once, and never because I was fighting. Only because I was a klutz who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. A guy coming out of my Uncle Renzy Fazio’s grocery store once found me hanging upsidedown, holding onto the top railing, and my nose bleeding from hitting the bottom railing.

Just to make it interesting, I was hanging 10 feet above a concrete walkway. If I had let go, that would have been a fatal brain blitz.

I kept the whole town business trying to keep me from killing myself.

As for The Back Nine From Hell, Brandywine’s famous 9 holes where you stay in the narrow fairway or lose the ball or confront snakes, Tom and I combined for FIFTEEN lost golf balls, most of them by me. That’s a record because my daughter, LaQuita, and I lost only 9 golf balls on the first 7 holes for the previous high.

While I was stuck in the equivalent of the LaBrea Tar Pits, I was thinking: “Hell, my coal mining father was covered TWICE in cave-ins and rescuers had to go through 4 or more feet of coal to get to any part of his body, and he lived till black lung killed him in his 70s, so this is a piece of cake by comparison.”

I am eternally grateful to the Brandywine trio that my golfing partner at Sunny Hill (Kent) and Brookledge (Cuyahoga Falls),  Tom Stone, summoned. They did an excellent job of getting a mastodon who will 85 years old on November 5 extricated from some nasty, foot-sucking muck.

Thanks, guys.

I think I’ll wait a while before I play Brandywine again.

And I think I’ll let my golf ball stay stuck atop the black muck, rather try to go for it again.

After all, I have dozens more with “WVU” and “John Olesky” emblazoned on them.

All in all, it was a fun and interesting day.

  Photos by Tom Stone

Retired BJ reporter and sub radio guy Jim Carney and BJ reporter Katie Byard celebrated their 30^th wedding anniversary today.

Katie got the best nice guy in this world. Jim got a woman who is worth being his bride, and then some.

John "J.H." Tidyman, who lives in Lakewood, Ohio, claims he introduced them to each other.

J.H. is publisher of DD 214 Chronicle, a bimonthly newspaper created in 2010 for Northeast Ohio veterans that delivers 11,000 papers free to veterans' organizations and healthcare facilities.

J.H.'s claim:

“So glad I introduced them. Had to tell Katy, ‘No, he can’t dance, but he can cook, read aloud, touch type, wash dishes, make a bed, clean garages and provide you with wonderful massages, tickle you with his beard, correct your grammar and make you laugh.”

He said Katie's response was: “I’ll take ‘em!”
Katie says J.H.'s claim is "fake news."

Anyway, she did. Jim did.

30 years later, still going stronger than a Mountaineer’s moonshine breath.

Katie recalls that wedding day in 1987:

 

“It was a beautiful fall day in Richfield. Jim and I decided it would be fun to dress up like a couple from the 50s (we were ahead of the curve when it came to themed events!), make Patrick, Will and Michael dress up like little maitre d’s, enjoy the evening with a bunch of friends in the upper room of the Richfield Tavern, share too many cocktail weenies with the group, cut a cake from the fab Budd's Bakery in Akron (decorated with Mickey and Minnie Mouse) and say ‘I do.’ Other stuff from Common Book of Prayer, thank u very much.

"Miss those who were there and are no longer with us. Blessed for those still supporting us and new friends we have made along the way. Blessed to share my life with Jimmy.”

Then they zipped off to their New Orleans honeymoon.

The first time that Katie and Jim looked goo-goo eyes on each other it was like the day in 2014 that the oak tree leveled a power line in their neighborhood. Wham! Only in the eyeballs spurting love signs at each other case, it was a brilliant light instead of instant darkness that came over them.

The only place better than New Orleans for romance – and it’s a close call for me – is Paris, where Paula and I spent one of our anniversaries. Oh la la, Cherie, it was magnificante!

Tim Smith and Keith McKnight, as Katie has relayed before, were responsible for hiring both of them in 1983. The BJ struck gold … twice!

Former BJ super investigative reporter Bill Hershey put their rental car on his credit card so that Jim and Katie could even get to their BJ interview. Classy people all around, huh?

But that’s normal at the BJ.

Patrick Carney, Will Carney and Michael Carney are Jim’s sons by former Cleveland Scene and BJ reporter Denise Grollmus. 

Patrick has a ton of Grammy Awards as part of the Black Keys band and lives in New York City with second wife Emily Ward;  Michael, Columbus College of Art and Design grad with a Grammy for his Black Keys album art, lives in Brooklyn with Joanna Grant; and Will supervises engineers for Amtrak out of St. Louis. 

Will moved from Peninsula where he was Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railway superintendent. Railroading has been his passion and life since he was a teenager. 

The Carney boys are all Firestone High graduates, as is Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach.

The Carney boys' paternal grandparents are Wheeling, West Virginia native William "Bill" James Carney, who died in 2010, and Madge Slate Carney, a former Army nurse who passed away in 1995.

When I type “West Virginia native,” I think of only one thing: Good people. Since I grew up in Monongah, a town of 900+ 20 miles south of Morgantown, I’m an expert on that evaluation. West Virginians are proof that you don’t have to be rich to be quality people.

Jim and Katie deserve the good people appellation that the wonder from Wheeling passed on to his son.

May their love be a non-stop tripping through the daffodils of life. Jim knows what I mean.

Kudos, kids!

Stuart Warner and Debbie Van Tassel Warner, who once made goo-goo eyes at each other at Ol’ Blue Walls after a whirlwind romance, are celebrating their 35^th wedding anniversary today.

Stuart works fast. Or maybe it was Debbie?

Anyway, they first met on Friday night, May 22, 1982 and moved in together the following Monday.

“What a weekend,” Stuart wrote, and I believe him although it sounds like a romantic movie plotline.

By September 25, 1982 they were married.

Stuart concluded: “Love you, Deb Van Tassel Warner.”

Stuart came to the Beacon Journal after 10 years with Knight-Ridder's Lexington newspaper. He was at the BJ from 1979 until 1999.

 

He left the BJ for the PD. By the time he took a PD buyout in 2008, he was writing coach and projects editor, similar to his role at the BJ.

 

Stuart, after four years with the Arizona Republic, became editor-in-chief of the weekly Phoenix New Times in Arizona, which has gone online with some impressive investigative reporting.

Stuart authored a book, "JOCK: The Quickest Thinking Coach in America," from memories of Stu’s Kentucky days.

Stuart and wife Debbie Van Tassel, the whip-cracking department chief during her BJ days, left Cleveland for Arizona in 2013.

New Jersey native and Seton Hall graduate Debbie, at the BJ till 1999, was assistant managing editor/features at the PD before going to the Arizona Republic, where she was laid off less than a month ago despite some spectacular success there.

Another case of a newspaper picking economics over talent in this era of struggling print media.

Debbie had a hand in three Pulitzers, including at the BJ with the Goodyear greenmail sorry saga and A Question of Color; and the Boeing 737 crash in Seattle while she was working for the paper in the rainy city.

Stuart and Debbie have three daughters and four grandchildren.

The daughters:

Denise Warner, who lives in Brooklyn, is editorial director of Billboard Digital, the Bible of the music entertainment business since 1894.

Emilie Warner Clemmens and Amanda Warner Poynter both live in Lexington, Kentucky, Stuart’s old haunt, and each provided Stuart and Debbie with half their grandchildren.  Emilie has a ph.d and works for the government. Mandy is an executive with a firm that does benefits.

Hitting the right note




Sandy Bee Lynn, John Olesky

Sandy Lynn Bee and John Olesky, both retired from the BJ, enjoyed the New Horizons Stark and Summit Counties Band concert Sunday at the Mums Festival in Barberton.

Another former BJ reporter, Paula Stone Tucker, played the flute in the New Horizons Band.

Sandy was in the BJ Reference Library and later worked at the Orrville and Wadsworth public libraries.

She lives in Doylestown with husband Glenn Lynn, who has been known to play the saxophone.

John was Television Editor and Channels' birth father after spending time as Newsroom Electronics Coordinator and State Desk Assistant Editor.

John and Paula share a home in Tallmadge, recently celebrated their 13^th anniversary and spend their winters (6 months for Paula, 4 for John because he attends every WVU football game in Mountaineer Field) in Paula’s home in The Villages, Florida, where 120,000 residents 55 and older make every day a playday for golf, dancing, free live music on town squares, 300 activities every day, 2,200 clubs for everything you can think of and tooling around in a golf cart on more than 500 miles of cart paths that parallel the auto traffic’s roads.

Sandy will perform on the viola with the New Horizons Strings Ensemble at 6 p.m. Monday in the Akron Public Library main branch on Main Street in Akron.

Sandy’s father, Henry Fuller, parachuted into France on D-Day. He was among 126 survivors of the 792 who jumped with the 502^nd on The Longest Day. There’s an exhibit about Henry, a letter carrier in the U.S. Postal Service for more than 30 years, in the MAPS (Military Aircraft Preservation Museum) just off Akron/Canton Airport.  

Am I the only one concerned that 3 far-right men control most of the media?

THREE men control the right-swing propaganda machine that is attacking the minds of voters in America.

Three men!

Rupert Murdoch, Steve Bannon continuing the alt-right crusade of founder Andrew Breitbart and Julian Sinclair Smith through his son, David Smith, and David’s three brothers.

Murdoch owns Fox News, which has almost 2 million viewers a day lapping up the right-wing propaganda.

Trump’s former campaign chairman Steve Bannon is the master manipulator at Breitbart, which draws 2 BILLION page views a year.

David Smith and his brothers run Sinclair Broadcast Group, which will own 233 local TV stations by the end of the year. Every station is handed right-wing segments EVERY DAY that they MUST run to attack anything to the left of Attilla the Hun, even if they have to manufacture fake news to do it.

Sinclair may be more dangerous than Fox News and Breitbart to democracy. Most intelligent people understand that Fox and Breitbart are propaganda machines for the far right. But most people trust their local TV newscasts more than national newscasts like Fox, CNN and MSNBC.

So this goosestepping order to use VERBATIM the daily far-right segments is way more effective than Fox and Breitbart. And its tenacles are in nearly every state.

In Ohio, for example, Dayton's WKEF and WRGT and Columbus' WSYX and WTTE and WWHO run IDENTICAL far-right “news” segments on orders from national headquarters on the same day.

Murdoch, Bannon and the Smith brothers dwarf such media icons as the New York Times and the Washington Post in their reach into the minds of everyday Americans. This is a frightening thought that 3 families have more control over what we think, and that they cater to the wishes of 500 wealthy Americans who have more money than 300 million other Americans combined.

Am I a voice crying in the wilderness? And what the hell can we do about it?

Debbie laid off in Arizona



Debbie wears the hat this time

Debbie Van Tassel Warner was laid off by the Arizona Republic today.

Her series on Home Owner Associations, which was completed the day before her exit, drew more than 100,000 page views.

Debbie had a hand in three Pulitzers, including at the BJ: Goodyear greenmail and Question of Color and the Boeing 737 crash in Seattle.

Best feature section in the country three times while at the PD.

And, most remarkable first of all, she bought husband Stuart Warner the first of his parade of hats that earned him the title of The Mad Hatter on this blog.

The New Jersey native and Seton Hall graduate was a PD assistant managing editor and a BJ whip-cracking department chief.

Maybe she can get hired by the Phoenix New Times even if it means sleeping with the editor.

That, of course, is Stuart.

Sharon Downing, widow of the late BJ printer Hugh Downing, had a harrowing experience in her home in The Villages, Florida.

Sharon and friend Kathie Silva, also a widow, hunkered down as the eye of Hurricane Irma passed over Sharon’s house on 87^th Bourne Avenue in the Village of Piedmont (The Villages is an amalgamation of about two dozen villages, and is not an incorporated city even though it has 120,000 residents, with every owner 55 or older).

32 people died in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Sharon and Kathie did not.

1970s BJ State Desk reporter turned clinical psychologist Paula Stone Tucker and I played golf with Sharon and Kathie last winter during our annual stay (4 months for me, 6 months for homeowner Paula Tucker, who shares a Tallmadge condo with BJ retiree John Olesky).

The two were close before their husbands died. They are even tighter as widows.

Sharon and Hugh moved to The Villages in 2000 from Medina. Both are from Galion, Ohio. They were married for 56 years.

Hugh and Sharon were a big help to Paula and John since they first showed up in 2013 in The Villages, Florida, where every day is playday for the residents with free golf, live outdoor music and dancing, card games, every sport imaginable geared down for senior citizens. They showed us the ropes, where to find this, where to do that.

Hugh arranged our weekly Thursday golf tee times with former BJ State Desk reporter Bob Page, who is an associate pastor at the Live Oaks Community Church in The Villages.

Bob’s first wife, Linda, was with him on Sackett Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls and their Barberton home before he left the BJ (1968-73) to study for the ministry.

Bob met his current wife, Vicky, through his congregation.

Hugh and Sharon’s children are Mark Downing, who lives in Erie, Pennsylvania; Chris, who lives in Hudson; Ben and Jonathan, who live in Toledo and Vienna, Virginia.

My late wife, Monnie Turkette Olesky of Cinderella, West Virginia, and I got together with Hugh and Sharon at the turn of the century on Siesta Key, adjacent to Sarasota, Florida, when Hugh and Sharon were staying in the late printer Bill Gorrell’s former Poor Bill’s rentals just across the street from the beach and the Gulf of Mexico.

Before that, of course, Hugh and I exchanged pleasantries at Ol’ Blue Walls, including when he was working in the APS-4 computer room in Composing.

Hugh was among the 45 retired printers who won the 2012 health care lawsuit against the Beacon Journal that restored their prescription co-pay benefits.

Five Guild retirees, including John Olesky who filed the lawsuit on their behalf, also piggybacked on the lawsuit that the late Composing foreman Dave White started in 2009.