Anniversary interrupted for Char and Art
Retired BJ reporter Charlene Nevada and retired BJ chief artist Art
Krummel were going to celebrate their 49th wedding anniversary. But
Art wound up with emergency Pacemaker surgery. He’s home now so all went well,
Char reports.
Their daughter, Beth Krummel Meese, posted:
“49 years and still
smiles all around! Happy anniversary mom and dad. You make it look easy!!!!”
Derf’s mom passes away
Mary Anne Hamilton Backderf, mother of former BJ artist John Derf
Backderf, passed away Monday, October 26.
She was another victim of COVID-19 pandemic.
Derf posted:
“She'd been in hospice
for a few days, and in the ICU for a week, so it was only a matter of time.
“This is my favorite
photo of her. She hated to have her picture taken, but this one captures her
personality perfectly. She was extroverted and chatty, she enjoyed life. She
was an Akron girl through and through. I'm going to miss her.
“Stay safe everyone.
Don't get careless.”
Almost a
quarter-million Americans have died in the pandemic . . . so far.
There’s a lot of memories crammed into this old BJ reunion photo with
identifications provided by newsroom retiree Roger Mezger.
Photographer Don Roese and wife Maryann Roese are in the photo. They
visited former BJ State Desk reporter Cathy Strong, a journalism legend in New
Zealand, and Paula and I met Don at the airport when they were leaving and we
were arriving for our visit with Cathy.
Another photographer, Tom Marvin, who lives on a farm in southeast Ohio with wife Kaye.
Photographer Ron Kuner, famous for his apples in Stark County, I believe.
Photographer Ott Gangl, famous for his sinday photo shoot in the BJ
photography studio on Sundays and skiing around the world with his late wife,
Anne.
Photographer Denny Gordon, who has pedaled his bicycle a zillions miles,
often 20 miles at a time.
Chief photographer Bill Hunter, responsible for the eccentric but talented
crew.
Photographer Lew Stamp.
Betty Lammerding, in the Features Department when I was Television Editor
and the late Joan Rice was at the next desk to mine.
Russ Musarra, with the famous temper and talented investigative reporting.
Ken Krause, who moved to Medford, Massachusetts with wife Maura McEnaney.
Kathy Fraze, who proved me right when I told BJ management that this State
Desk reporter would make a great editor.
Bill Hershey, who was the best digging reporter at the BJ during my time
there, and quick-thinking when a union organizer put a gun to his head while
Bill was talking to me. He told the guy, “They are saying a lot of lies about
what you guys are doing and I’m here to prove that they aren’t true.” So the
guy said, “Come along with us” as they burned tipples of non-union mines.
Chuck Ayers, whose remarkable political cartoons and “Crankshaft” comic
series flashback in my mind when I look at the autographed food container that
he signed for me. It’s still in my den, a shrine to my memories.
Former librarian Sandy Bee Lynn, who Paula and I run into regularly
because he husband and Paula often play in the same bands or go to the same
concerts.
Reporter Jim Carney, perhaps the nicest person I encountered during my 26
years at the BJ, who probably still has the scare from jumping his head into a
street sign after crossing is hurriedly to escape traffic.
Pam McCarthy, who had a reunion with Cathy Strong in Ohio that included me.
The erascible Charles S. Montague, aka Chasm, who has even more memories
than I do about Ol’ Blue Walls.
Susan Reynolds, newsroom secretary who could match whirling devish Pat
Englehart is any discussion.
Roger Mezger, who has become a better chronicle of the old days at the BJ
than me even though I publish the BJ Alums blog. Maybe he can take over the
blog when I join Harry Liggett in that Great Newsroom in the Sky.
Charlene Nevada, who kept her nose to the ground to get the news and to
help us keep track of what was going on at the BJ. As BJ Editor Paul Poorman
once famously answered a question with: “I don’t know. Charlene hasn’t told me
yet.”
If you’re old enough I’m sure you can conjure up even more memories of
your own.
You know what they say: No one ever dies as long as someone has them in
their memories.
Thanks, Roger.
Click on the montage to enlarge it.Former BJ reporter Jeff Sallot and Rosemarie Boyle celebrated their 45th
wedding anniversary today.
Jeff posted:
“Today is our 45th
wedding anniversary. So much joy and happiness over the years. Jeff and
Rosemarie.”
Previously, Kent
State graduate Jeff, who had a major role in the BJ’s Pulitzer-winning coverage
of the 1970 National Guard shooting of 4 Kent State students and wounding of 9
others as a BJ summer intern and campus
stringer for the Beacon, told me:
“My marriage with
Rosemarie is the most important thing that has happened to me. We live in
Ottawa, Rosemarie's hometown, and have two wonderful grown children. Mike, our
eldest, is two hours away in Montreal. Kate lives here in Ottawa.
“My son from my first marriage, Ken, is happily married to a wonderful woman.
They live in Gainesville, Florida.
“I joined the reporting staff at The Toronto Star after leaving the Beacon
Journal in June 1971. I was transferred to their Parliamentary bureau in Ottawa
in 1972.
“I met Rosemarie at the Star. She's a journalist, too.
“By 1974 Rosemarie and I were both back in Toronto, working for The Globe and
Mail, a remarkable national newspaper. I stayed at the Globe for 32 years.
“Most of those years were in foreign or national bureaus. At various times I
was the bureau chief in Moscow, Ottawa and Edmonton. I figured once that I have
covered stories in more than 30 countries and every province and territory in
Canada.
“There were a couple of timeouts from daily journalism to do fellowships at the
Canadian Centre for Arms Control and, in China and Japan, with the Asia Pacific
Foundation.
“I retired from the
Globe to join the faculty at the Carleton University School of Journalism and
Communication. I teach multimedia reporting.” Carleton is in Ottawa.
It was Jeff who
confirmed that only students were shot, and not National Guardsmen as other
media incorrectly reported. The BJ went with Jeff’s version. Eventually, so did
all of the media in America.
Former BJ columnist has a 6th book published, “Football, Fast Friends, and Small Towns.”
One of Steve’s other five books is “The Holden Arboretum,” which I
visit every year when the rhododendrons, the state flower of West Virginia, are
in bloom in the spring.
Steve
also wrote “Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens” (University of Akron Press) and
co-authored with former BJ columnist David Giffels “Wheels of Fortune: The
Story of Rubber in Akron” (University of Akron Press) and with former Akron U. and
Notre Dame football coach Jerry Faust “The Golden Dream” (Sagamore).
Steve’s
other book is “Don Plusquellic,” about the irascible and
always-in-the-spotlight former Akron mayor.
He
also had a hand in two BJ Pulitizers, for James Goldsmith’s greenmailing of
Goodyear that cost the company millions and cost many workers their jobs, and
for A Question of Color, about race relations in Northeast Ohio.
Steve got his college degree from California State University at
Chico.
This is the email I got from Steve about his latest published work:
“John.
“Hope you can use
what you think is useful and add to it as you will.
“I consider your
website an important conduit for ABJ information.
“Steve”
Here is the
information that Steve emailed me:
In an effort to
prove that while he may be gone and forgotten but is not yet qualified for the
Wall of the Dead, former Beacon Journal columnist Steve Love has written a
sixth book. (One of the previous five was written with the more famous David
Giffels and another was written for the even more famous Gerry
Faust; the writing rasps like Gerry.)
Steve’s new book is
“sort of” a memoir. Sort of, because he set out to write a collection of linked
essays about quarterbacks whose play and lives he admired but ended up writing
not only about football but also friendship, small towns, like the one in which
he (mostly) grew up, a journey in journalism and the really good and bad things
in life. It got so bad at one point he thought he had been consigned to the Death
Beat.
His previous five
books were published by the University of Akron Press, with the exception
of The Golden Dream, which Sagamore Publishing put out before
turning into Sports Publishing and then . . . it has had a few other
incarnations but lives on. That might be a good definition of Steve’s career if
you believe the late Dale Allen. He hired Steve to write a metro notes column,
lived to regret it and gave Stuart Warner the job.
In his spirit of
good humor—or maybe laughing from the grave—Dale presented Steve with the
portion of his unpublished memoir and it is now published in Steve’s Football,
Fast Friends, and Small Towns: A Memoir Straight from a Broken Oklahoma Heart.
Dale’s contribution—lamentation—explains how he came to bring Steve to Akron.
Steve explains the
hostility, not entirely unwarranted, with which he was welcomed.
It is all good fun,
even if it hurt at the time, Steve said. Since the book did not fit the
University of Akron Press, though there is a concluding chapter devoted to
Steve’s Akron adventure, and the University of Oklahoma Press declined the
pleasure of publishing the book, Steve did it himself with the help of 1106
Design, a Phoenix company. They provided editing, proofreading, cover design
(ain’t it beautiful?), interior design, and a lot of hand-holding for which
Steve says he is grateful. Hardly anyone wants to hold his hand since he got
old and forgotten and deep into cranky land.
In the publishing
process—Steve’s publishing company is called Hawk Bookworks because Hawkins was
his mother’s maiden name, his nickname growing up, and made for a damned fine
logo—he also launched a website that includes a mostly football blog. It can be
found at stevelovewriter.com and Steve welcomes visitors who play nice. (Seriously,
how does a person write about this kind of thing without poking fun?)
Since the BJ Alums
site is where Steve goes to learn important things, like who died, he thought
he should submit this to John Olesky, to whom all of us should be grateful for
taking the torch from the late founder Harry Liggett, who hated me before
reconsidering. Thankfully, any number of Steve’s former colleagues—not all, of
course—eventually came to accept him if not actually like him, and that is what
he will always remember.
(The book is
available from your favorite bookstore, Amazon.com, my website or other online
book sites. ISBNs: Trade Paperback $16.99—978-1-7351227-0-0; Hardcover
$29.99—978-1-7351222-2; eBook $7.99—978-1-7351227-1-7)
If you want to contact Steve, you can go to steve@stevelovewriter.com His Hawk
Bookworks, so named in honor of his mother, is:
Hawk Bookworks
P.O. Box 400
Uniontown, OH 44685
A Uniontown mailing address, as the late State Editor Pat Englehart
often told his editors and reports, means someone who lives in Stark, Summit or
Portage counties. So look it up! (That’s Pat’s voice in my head.)
Click on photo montage to enlarge itFormer BJ and PD TV critic Mark Dawidziak and Sara Showman
Dawidziak are celebrating their 39th wedding anniversary today.
Mark and Sara met when they were both in the cast of Neil Simon’s “The
Good Doctor” in Tennessee. A year later, there was a Mark-Sara wedding in
Johnston City, Tennessee, where Mark was working on the Kingsport Times-News.
To cement the courtship Mark showed “Psycho” during a film
series he ran while they were dating. By comparison with Norman Bates it made
Mark look so good that Sara took the bait.
Mark and Sara have been performing together, on stage and
in private, ever since including with their Largely Literary theater company
that takes on Edgar Alan Poe, Mark Twain, etc.
They have a photographer extraordinaire daughter, Becky.
The BJ plucked Mark in 1983 as irascible David Bianculli’s replacement for TV critic. Mark
was best TV writer I had during my 16 years as TV editor and I had 3 good ones!
Before the BJ & the PD, Mark's career took him to the Kingsport
Times-News in Tennessee,
the Bristol Herald Courier in Virginia, the Associated Press’ Washington bureau
and Knight-Ridder Newspapers’ Washington
bureau.
Mark is justifiably in the Cleveland Press Club’s Journalism Hall of Fame
and writes books more often than he changes underwear, which is NOT a comment
on his hygiene.
Mark was born in
Huntington, New York (think Long Island),
on September 7, 1956, a son of World War II
Army Air Corps captain/navigator Joseph Walter Dawidziak, buried in Calverton National
Cemetery on Long Island, and Claire Dawidziak. Later, Joe married Bernie
Dawidziak.
Click on photo montage to enlarge itFormer BJ and PD TV critic Mark Dawidziak and Sara Showman
Dawidziak are celebrating their 39th wedding anniversary today.
Mark and Sara met when they were both in the cast of Neil Simon’s “The
Good Doctor” in Tennessee. A year later, there was a Mark-Sara wedding in
Johnston City, Tennessee, where Mark was working on the Kingsport Times-News.
To cement the courtship Mark showed “Psycho” during a film
series he ran while they were dating. By comparison with Norman Bates it made
Mark look so good that Sara took the bait.
Mark and Sara have been performing together, on stage and
in private, ever since including with their Largely Literary theater company
that takes on Edgar Alan Poe, Mark Twain, etc.
They have a photographer extraordinaire daughter, Becky.
The BJ plucked Mark in 1983 as irascible David Bianculli’s replacement for TV critic. Mark
was best TV writer I had during my 16 years as TV editor and I had 3 good ones!
Before the BJ & the PD, Mark's career took him to the Kingsport
Times-News in Tennessee,
the Bristol Herald Courier in Virginia, the Associated Press’ Washington bureau
and Knight-Ridder Newspapers’ Washington
bureau.
Mark is justifiably in the Cleveland Press Club’s Journalism Hall of Fame
and writes books more often than he changes underwear, which is NOT a comment
on his hygiene.
Mark was born in
Huntington, New York (think Long Island),
on September 7, 1956, a son of World War II
Army Air Corps captain/navigator Joseph Walter Dawidziak, buried in Calverton National
Cemetery on Long Island, and Claire Dawidziak. Later, Joe married Bernie
Dawidziak.
Barb Albrecht passes away
Barb Albrecht, who was a BJ Stark Country bureau clerk before
switching to the BJ message center at 44 E. Exchange Street, passed away
Friday, October 2.
She was rehabbing at Laurels Nursing Home in Massillon with a
broken foot.
Barb and husband Donald Albrecht both graduated from Perry High School
and raised their family in Perry Township in Stark County.
Survivors include her husband, daughter Dana Albrecht Hire, twins
Daniel Albrecht and Abby Albrecht, 1 grandson and 3 granddaughters.
Barb was a prize-winning cross-stitch artist.
George Bing Davis, who has worked at the BJ and the Stark County
bureau, posted:
“Merleen and I were notified by her son that Barb Albrecht, a
secretary-receptionist for several years in our Stark Bureau and then in the BJ
newsroom passed away during the night at the Laurels nursing home.
“Barb was our neighbor and friend for 45 years.”
Barb’s obituary:
Barbara A. (Ball) Albrecht
On Friday, October 2, 2020, Barbara A. Albrecht of Massillon, loving and
devoted wife, mother, and grandmother, passed away at the age of 72.
Barbara was born on February 24, 1948 in Canton, Ohio to Willard and Margaret
(Merritt) Ball. She graduated from Perry High School in 1966. After graduation,
Barbara moved to Washington D.C. to work at the Pentagon. She moved back home,
and on October 28, 1972, married her husband of 47 years, Donald.
Barbara was employed by the Timken Company, Perry Local Schools, and Trinity
United Methodist Church. She retired from the Akron Beacon Journal where she
was a Message Center specialist at both the former Stark Bureau and the Akron
newsroom.
Barbara was an award - winning cross-stitch artist and enjoyed crocheting
blankets. She was named “Mother of the Year” from the Mother of Twins Club. She
enjoyed growing flowers, watching Westerns, and spoiling her grandchildren.
Barbara was preceded in death by her parents, Willard and Margaret (Merritt)
Ball.
She is survived by her husband, Donald, her three children, Dana (Andrew) Hire,
Daniel (Amy) Albrecht, and Abby Albrecht (Santos Garcia); grandchildren Ethan
& Meredith Hire and Isabel & Alisera Garcia; her brother, David
(Bonnie) Ball and many nieces and nephews.
Visitation will be held on Thursday, October 8 from 6-8 p.m. at Paquelet
Funeral Home and 10 – 11 a.m. on Friday. A Celebration of Barb’s life will be
held on Friday, October 9 at 11:00 a.m. Interment to follow at Rose Hill
Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Michael J. Fox
Foundation for Parkinson’s Research: www.michaeljfox.org
Paquelet Funeral Home & Crematory
(330) 833-3222
Click on the photo to enlarge it.
Joe Rice, who was a BJ politics writer before switching to the PD, passed away on Wednesday, September 30. He was 78.
Joe left the BJ in 1973..
He lived in Richmond Heights, a Cleveland suburb, with wife Janet
Barragate Rice. Their children are Peter and Chris.
Joe Rice was a PD police reporter 1964-68 and a PD
politics writer 1973-91. He left the PD to become a consultant
for politics, business and other areas.
Joe interviewed President Reagan on Air Force One in 1981.
He recalled:
“I will
always remember my exclusive with President Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1981.
A friend of mine who worked for Reagan arranged it. I was told that if I came to
Cincinnati, I could fly to Washington on Air Force One. A few minutes after I
boarded the plane, I was taken to the President’s cabinet and did a 30-minute
interview.
“I
reported that Reagan would not object to bringing striking air traffic
controllers back to work. My story made national news.
“During
the interview, Reagan said he had heard my wife was a good cook from
then-governor Jim Rhodes. He called my home and spoke to my wife, who was very
excited. I was the envy of a lot of reporters.”
Reagan’s
assault on the controllers union was the beginning of the erosion of American
strength and middle-class financial stability in America.
Joe’s
obituary:
JOSEPH D. RICE, age 78 of Richmond Heights passed away suddenly
Wednesday September 30, 2020. Beloved husband of Janet (nee Barragate); loving
father of Peter (Karin) and Chris (Nicole); dearest grandfather of Krista;
brother of Pam Maranto (Savvy), Walter (Myra), Thomas and the late Roberta;
dear uncle and friend of many. Joe was the political writer for the Cleveland
Plain Dealer for most of his career and retired as a political consultant. In
lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in his memory to St. Jude Children’s
Research Hospital 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis TN 38105, www.stjude.org . Private family service. A celebration of Joe’s life will be
announced at a later date.
