By John Olesky
(BJ 1969-96)
When Cal Deshong was born, Woodrow Wilson was in his second term as President of the United States and another Cal (Coolidge) was five years away from taking the same office, succeeding Warren G. Harding.
Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama would follow. That's 17 presidents.
Calvin E. Dishong was born Nov. 24, 1918 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to Nan Galbreath Dishong and Daniel Calvin Dishong, an Americanized form of the French “of or from the field.” Cal adds that he lived “in a little suburb that everyone called Pole Cat Holler at the bottom of Dishong Mountain. I guess that would be a little bit of Appalachia.” For those non-mountain people who don't know, a pole cat is a skunk.
As for the discrepancy in his last name, Cal explains: “When my mother and father ‘split,’ she changed the spelling when we came to Ohio” by substituting an “e” for the “i” in the family name to make it Deshong.
“My first job,” Cal says, “was selling papers on the street the morning that President Hoover was elected. I sold Extras at 5 a.m. I was only 9 years old, but was 10 years old 20 days later. That was for the Warren Tribune in Warren, Ohio.”
In 1939, Cal joined the Naval Reserve where he served till 1941. “I was a radio operator,” Cal says. “I had a Ham Station (W8QLA).
“I was called to active duty in June 1941 and took a physical at the Naval Reserve Armory in Indianapolis, Indiana. Doctors “found a slight rupture (hernia), discharged me and sent me home and told me to register with the local Draft Board.” Cal didn't get the hernia fixed till the 1960's at Akron City Hospital.
Then came Dec. 7, 1941, and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. declared war on the Axis powers, primarily Japan, Germany and Italy.
“A year later,” Cal says, “I hadn't heard anything. I stopped in at the Draft Board and asked for my status. They couldn't find papers (on me) until they pulled out the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. They said, 'We thought you were in the Navy.' ”
”Soon I received a letter to go to Cleveland for another exam. I passed. They asked what I wanted. I said, ‘Give me the Marines.' They said ‘No, your eyes aren't good enough.’ I said, ‘OK, give me the Army.’ The papers came back Navy.
”I was sent to boot camp at Sampson, New York, on the Finger Lakes. That's a cold place in February. From there I was sent to Norfolk, Virginia. I was interviewed for placement and was sent to the Radio Transmitter Station at NOB (Naval Operating Base) where I installed new equipment and repaired transmitters.”
Does Cal have any war stories?
“The only hazardous part of my service,” Cal says, “was climbing the 150-foot radio towers to replace the (red warning) lights so that the planes landing at the nearby air station wouldn't run into them.
“I didn't have any sea duty, but was ready to be shipped out for sea duty when (President) Truman dropped the ‘two Big Ones,’ “ -- the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
When Cal, at my request, provided me with photos from his life, one was with Chief Bruce Richardson at NOB Norfolk in 1945. “Bruce,” Cal says, “escaped from Corregidor when the Japanese took over” the Phillipines. The 1942 Bataan Death March followed. Richardson “and 40 men in a small boat island-hopped all the way to Australia and almost starved to death,” Cal recalls. Richardson passed away recently.
Cal was discharged from the Navy in 1946.
He says he “went back to Warren, Ohio, in February 1946 and went to work for the Warren Tribune. We had labor problems. Finally in 1952 I quit and went to the BJ. The Tribune made me a better counter-offer, but I refused.”
Cal says: “Before coming to the BJ, I worked as a printer in the composing room at the Warren Tribune. And I worked nights, 6-12, for Radio Station WRRN. I had a (radio) engineer's license.”
Cal worked at the BJ for 31½ years (May 1952-Sept. 1983). His favorite moment? “When Mr. Church hired me. I worked two weeks at night before I was hired. If you couldn't set enough type on the linotype machine in a shift, it was 'Sayonara.’ “
At the BJ, Cal says, “I was a linotype operator, then a linotype monitor when punched tape was used to run the machines. Later, I helped run the copy desk when the BJ first used IBM computers and (punched) tape to run the linotype machines.
“Then I ran the APS/4 Room, plus marking up copy for the tape punchers. Later, the tape was replaced and each puncher had his own computer keyboard and dumped directly to the APS/4 machines.”
“It's been 26 years (since his retirement from the BJ!) and it's hard to remember everything.” You did an excellent job of recalling, Cal.
Cal was married for decades to Mary Louise, who died in February 2001. They have a daughter, Mary Pat Deshong-Kinkelaar, who lives in Akron and is married to David Kinkelaar. “I was 45 when my daughter, Mary Pat, was born,” Cal says. “Everyone thought she was my grandchild. I was almost 90 before I was a grandfather.”
After her Kent State graduation, Cal and Mary Louise’s daughter worked in Cleveland for a Chicago real estate company; transferred to Washington, D.C. to run the building that housed National Public Radio; was Human Relations VP for a computer outfit that was sold to a Belgian company; and moved to Chicago to continue in real estate, starting her own company as the founding principal of Kinkelaar & Associates.
Mary is a Certified Financial Planner in the state of Illinois and is working on her CPA for Ohio. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Behavioral Sciences.
“She still has clients in Chicago,” Cal says, “and flies back and forth every few months.”
Mary and David adopted Claire Louise Elizabeth Garcia Kinkelaar from Guatemala when she was six months old – Cal’s only grandchild. Claire will be three years old on March 26. When Cal sent me a photo of Claire at a computer, he commented: “Could you use a ‘mouse’ at 2½ years old? Claire can. I couldn't use a pencil” at that age.
As for his longevity, Cal says “My grandfather died on his 90th birthday. My great-grandfather died in Andersonville Prison (in Georgia) after he was captured in the Civil War. My mother died at 93.”
In an understatement, Cal says, “I come from a line of long livers.” Indeed!
Cal provided a great ending thought to this tale: “I'm convinced there are guardian angels. Everything worked out very well for me.” It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
= = = = = = =
If you want to mail Cal a congratulatory card or note, his address is:
Calvin Deshong
3682 Vira Rd.
Stow, OH 44224
If you want to email Cal, his email address is:
cedeshong@webtv.net
To see photos of Cal, from 1918 through the Navy years to today, click on the headline.
