TREASURES FROM SHARON SHREVE LORENZEN'S ATTIC

BY SHARON SHREVE LORENZEN

BJ Newsroom retiree

Here are a couple of old-school office gatherings I uncovered in some of my attic treasures.

 

One is of a party by the BJ Newsroom’s Tom Suchan.

 

The other is of Eleanor Johnston and Polly Paffilas with a kitten. I think someone had found this baby in the parking deck. FYI, I took that cat home -- Matchka -- had him for 18 years. 

 Suchan party was August 19, 1977, and the Polly/Eleanor/kitten photo was in October 1973.

I found a fair amount of stuff in the attic. I’ll post now and again. These two are a start.

 

Sharon Shreve Lorenzen
with Shirley Folo in BJ newsroom

JOHN OLESKY NOTE

 

Thanks, Sharon.

 

If anyone has old BJ photos you’d like to post on the BJ Alums blog, email me at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com and I’ll put them on the blog. Provide full identifications of everyone in them.

 

If you want to write an article and have it posted on this blog, email the article to me at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com and I’ll publish in on the blog verbatim. You can even write your own headline if you want.

 

Together, we can make this a BJ Alums reunion page. 

CAROL EUBANK'S OBITUARY

The obituary for Carol Eubank (BJ 1984-2001), who worked in Accounting, Retail Advertising and Research and Promotion, later renamed Marketing and Communication:

Carol Ann Eubank, age 81 of Coventry Township passed away on Saturday, February 13, 2021 at her home, with her family by her side. She was born in Akron on March 26, 1939, the daughter of the late John Tosill and Helen (Hank) {Dubovec} Meier.

In addition to her parents, Carol was preceded in death by her brother John Tosill.

Left to cherish Carol's memory are her children, Michele (Bob) Ellis and Jim Eubank; granddaughter Cortney Ellis; step-sister Carole Meier.

Carol retired from the Akron Beacon Journal in 2001, where she worked in the marketing and research departments. Her community involvement and event planning background led to her final career, working with Hower House, Akron Women's City Club, and others too numerous to mention.

Carol was a member of the Portage Lakes Historical Society, acting as its President since 2012. The Society purchased a scanner for Summit County Public Library, to aid in the preservation of vintage historical photos of the area. These photos were later used in the annual Historical Society Open House, which Carol organized. She also co-chaired the Portage Lakes Boat Parade and Luminary Project, creating a 16-page insert on the event for the newspaper. Through the efforts of Carol and the Portage Lakes Historical Society, the map of Portage Lakes was placed in the terazzo floor at the new Coventry High School.

Carol also served as President of the Akron Summit Council on Tourism, and received the Innovation Woman of the Year award in 2018 from the Summit County Historical Society.

Carol produced a post card book called "Greeting from Portage Lakes." Her final project was creating a historical marker for the East Reservoir Dam Project, which was completed earlier this year.

Per Carol's wishes, cremation has taken place, and a celebration of her life will be scheduled for a later date. Please check back for details. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Carol's name to The American Cancer Society.

An earlier BJ Alums tribute to Carol appears in an earlier article. Scroll down to check it out.

 

DAVE SCOTT RECOVERS FROM COVID

 

Great news from Dave Scott, BJ regional issues reporter and deputy Business editor before the April 2014 BJ buyouts exodus:

 

“My health has improved greatly. I’m over COVID and no longer infectious. Only a slight cough lingers.

“My foot continues to improve and I might return to HBO (hyperbaric oxygen) chamber treatment. My ear is not perfect but much better. I see an ENT Monday.

“No word on whether I’m excused from Jury Duty. Jane and Phillip are both doing well and we hope to have dinner together tonight. Thanks for the interest and good wishes.”

Jane Gaab Scott and Phillip also got COVID.

Dave and Jane, married 42 years, live in Copley and have 3 sons – John and Franklin and ???.

Jane managed the Fairlawn-Bath Library and was on the Copley Zoning Board for 11 years. Jane’s father, Robert Gaab, was a councilman in Independence during the 1960s.

She has a master's in Library Science from Kent State. She has been president of the Copley-Fairlawn Kiwanis and the Copley Historical Society.

Dave is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and publishes a blog. He shared his passion for baseball history and traveled to stadia around the country with the late BJ court reporter Dick McBane.

Dave once wrote:

“Many of you know that Dick and I shared an extreme love of baseball. It included vacations to visit minor-league teams for a couple of weeks in several summers.

In most cases, we’d spend a single day in each little town, scan the skyline of a town like Elmira, N. Y., for the stadium light towers before finding our next tiny, homey motel.

“The days were spent traveling or walking around town, often seeking out landmarks telling their part in local history. Dick often could provide lengthy details of how those places played roles in the Revolutionary War.

“The trips were a joy.”

Dave and I shared an experience, too. We spilled drinks on retired BJ super columnist Bob Dyer at a 2018 BJ reunion at the Silver Run Vineyard and Winery in Doylestown. Bob didn’t whine about the double dip of wine on his shirt. Laughed, in fact.

Failed surgery caused the foot problem. Doctors were trying to relieve pressure on the bone near his little toe which made it painful to walk.

The procedure, after the wound opened up,  exposed muscle, bone and tendons. It was infected.

 

The hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatment led to blood coming out of his right ear.

 

Dave and Jane’s son, Franklin and his wife Natasha Kunin Scott, who live in Oakland, California, made them grandparents for the first time in 2017.

 

The late Webb Shaw was married to Katie Gaab-Shaw, Jane’s sister.

 

Jane and Dave met on a blind date arranged by Webb and Kate Shaw and Rick and Diane Reiff. Dave met Rick was a reporter for the Norwalk Reflector when Dave was covering Huron and Erie counties for the Elyria Chronicle Telegram.

 

Northwestern University graduate Webb passed away in 2018.

 

Webb’s father, the late Ohio native and Fremont (Ohio) Ross High football star Bob Shaw, was an all-American end on Ohio State’s 1942 national championship team coached by the legendary Paul Brown, who eventually guided the Cleveland Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals in the NFL.

 

Later Bob Shaw was a tight end with the 1949 Los Angeles Rams and was receivers coach with the Baltimore Colts in 1958 when they beat the New York Giants to win the NFL championship in what has been called "The Greatest Game Ever Played."

 

Rick had the foresight to push for 401(k) in Guild negotiations in 1989. That helped me live a comfortable retirement since my 1996 departure from Ol’ Blue Walls.

 

Dave and Doug Livingston won the 2014 National Association of Black Journalists Award for their series on poor black children hit by cars.

WANT TO POST AN ARTICLE ON BJ ALUMS BLOG? IF YOU WORKED AT BJ, HERE'S HOW

 

Want to post an article on BJ Alums blog?

IF you worked at the BJ, here’s how

When you look at the bottom of articles in the BJ Alums blog you see

No Messages

That doesn’t mean you can NOT post. It means zero messages. It’s a body count. I can’t change the terminology. Blogspot company puts that terminology in every blog it controls in America.

I would prefer that it read

Click Here to Post Message

If anyone does get a message posted then it would change to

1 Message

Etc.

If anyone who worked at the BJ clicks on No Messages and posts a message I will approve it and it will show up on the blog. I set up the approval-required system to keep troublemaker non-BJ people from invading the blog with nasty posts.

Now, about YOU posting articles on the BJ Alums blog IF you have worked at the BJ:

Put your byline atop the article in this style:

BY JOHN OLESKY, Newsroom retiree (1969-96)

Once I verify that you did work at the BJ, with the help of Mike Williams and Ken Krause who have records that enable us to do that, then your article will be posted verbatim. The only changes I will make is to put the text in the Arial Black 18-point font style and color (Beacon blue) and correct spelling, punctuation and grammar (43 years as a newspaper editor won’t let me allow that to pass).

You can even write your own headline for the article. I will convert it into Arial Black 36 point in Beacon blue but the words will be as you wrote them.

Once you have written your article, with your byline and the BJ department where you worked at the top, email it to me at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com I’ll convert it to BJ Alums font and color style and post it for you after Mike, Ken and I have confirmed that you did work at the BJ.

Have at it! Sorry for the confusion.

My thanks to Roger Mezger for pointing out that BJ folks thought they couldn’t post on the BJ Alums blog. That was neither my desire nor my intention. We’re all in this together.

Happy typing to you!

JOHN OLESKY, BJ newsroom retiree (1969-96)

My 26 years at the BJ, with John Knight, Ben Maidenburg and Pat Englehart as my shepherds, were the most glorious years in my 43-year newspaper career after my graduation from West Virginia University School of Journalism. The newspapers I worked on were the Morgantown (WV) Dominion-Post (40-hour work week while taking 19 credit hours at WVU; didn’t sleep much, except in class); Williamson (WV) Daily News as sports editor; Glenville (Montana) Daily Ranger for 6 weeks when my wife and I eloped and headed West; Charleston (WV) Daily Mail as a sportswriter; Dayton (OH) Daily News as a sportswriter; St. Petersburg (Florida) Times as a sports department editor and makeup man. And then running to work because I enjoyed it so much for 26 years at the Beacon Journal!

 

 

 

BELATED TRIBUTE TO DOT MOORE ... BLAME COMPUTER GLITCH FOR THE DELAY

 

Dot Moore, widow of BJ retiree Tom Moore, passed away Friday, February 5.

Tom passed away June 10, 2020 at the age of 89. He retired from the BJ newsroom, mainly as Makeup Man, after issuing about a zillion goddamits. We knew what kind of day Tom was having by the number of goddamits that came out of his mouth.  

Dot and Tom were married for 69 years.

Tom was born Ernest Thomas Francesco and reared, but never formally adopted, by Spotwood Moore and Virginia Caroline Moore of Tazewell, Virginia, just across the border from John S. Knight’s birthplace of Bluefield, West Virginia, till 1999. He was born in Richmond, Virginia but didn’t find out till he was 21 that he was adopted. JSK was 3 months ago when his parents left Bluefield for Akron and the beginning of a newspaper empire.

After Tom got into journalism during his Air Force years, he worked on the BJ for 29 years after stops at the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Zanesville News, Lorain Journal and Columbus Citizen Journal. Doris Day once sang to Tom, Sr. and his Air Force buddies.

Dot is survived by three daughters, Caroline Krack, Katherine Moore and Amy Moore.

Tom and another BJ retiree, Mike Williams (who survived being Johnny Grimm’s sidekick in BJ Advertising), were close friends for decades.

Dot’s obituary:

Dorothy J Moore, 92 passed away peacefully at home surrounded by family February 5, 2021.

 

She is preceded in death by her son, Thomas A Moore (Sabrina) and her husband of 69 years, Thomas C. Moore. She is survived by her three daughters, Caroline (John) Krack, Katherine Moore and Amy Moore; her not by blood daughter, Anne Modzel and her only grandchild, Amanda Moore.

 

This is the third year in a row the Moores have experienced a great loss in our family. Dorothy was the kindest, cutest, and the funniest woman that you could ever meet. She’s weathered and experienced the Great Depression, World War II, the end of segregation, the first minimum wage... she watched 48 states become 50, raised four wonderful kids, and was married almost 70 years.

 

She also watched a world progress so much that when she was born - she never thought it would have been possible for her to have what would be her one and only biracial grandchild.

 

She loved flowers, rainbows, puzzles, her family, the wheel of fortune, Christmas lights, and of course birds. The love this woman gave was as radiant as the sun; She was able to cast light into the darkest depths of any human’s soul... she spent her time being anyone’s safe haven. She will truly be missed.

 

The family would like to recognize SouthernCare Hospice for their exceptional care of mom and our family. Special thanks to Dr. Mark Meyer and the Pioneer Medical Group. Because of their diligence, proactive medicine and love, we kept our parents around for years. 

 

A memorial visitation will be held Friday, February 12, 2021 at Adams Funeral Home, 791 E Market St., Akron, OH 44305. from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., with final farewell comments from family 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. To help protect the health of others, we are asking anyone visiting to wear a mask. Arrangements entrusted to Adams Mason Funeral Home. (330) 535-9186

CAROL EUBANK PASSES AWAY

 BY JOHN OLESKY (BJ 1969-96)

Carol Eubank (BJ 1984-2001) passed away.

She began in Accounting, then worked in Retail Advertising as Chuck Vella’s secretary and then in Research and Promotion, later renamed Marketing and Communications.

Carol spent decades writing for BJ employee publications, which had such names as Tower Topics and Sidebar.

Carol was active with the Portage Lakes Community Council, which her husband Jim Eubank co-founded. She was co-chair of the annual Portage Lakes Boat Parade. She received the Portage Lakes Community Council’s Meritorious Service Award.

Carol also organized many get-togethers of BJ retirees, for Advertising and Circulation.

Carol received the 2018 Women’s History Project’s Woman of the Year Award in the innovation category.

Carol was involved with the Green Historical Society. She was devastated when four Springfield Township young people and one from Akron destroyed the 1885 Lichtenwalter Schoolhouse by setting it on fire. Police sounds items from the hallowed landmark in the criminals’ homes.

I don’t know how she found time to do so many things for so many causes and for her friends.

The 1957 Coventry High grad, who lived in Portage Lakes, was a key player in the Portage Lakes Historical Society.

Carol also was active in the Portage Lakes Kiwanis Club.

Hell, Carol even was in the mix when BJ folks went Christmas caroling. Appropriate. Caroling with Carol.

She orchestrated the retirement party at Belgrade Gardens for her friend, Janet Hall, from the BJ Circulation Department. It was Janet who first tipped us off about Carol’s passing.

I once ran into Carol while attending a Greystone Theatre event put on my former BJ movie critic Mark Dawidziak in the Greystone Building in downtown Akron maybe a decade ago. She greeted me like a long-lost friend. Another Greystone was in Mahoning County. Carol has been to events there, too. Greystone was the name of  the magnificent Arts & Crafts style residence of Olive A. and Wilford P. Arms which is preserved a century later as The Arms Family Museum of Local History. 

Former BJ home writer Mary Beth Breckenridge and Carol have the same birthday, March 26.

In a 2014 BJ Alums blog article I wrote about Carol’s activities the headline was:

Carol Eubank: Busy, Busy, Busy

Most accurate headline ever written.

 

CATCHING UP WITH ... Danny Kay, BJ mailing room retiree

 

Danny Kay, BJ mailing room chairman before he retired to chase dinosaurs, is regaling his fellow residents as the Piano Man at Menorah Park nursing home in Beachwood, Ohio.

That’s word from his grandson, Matthew Blum.

Danny is following the advice of Billy Joel:

Sing us a song you're the Piano Man
Sing us a song tonight
Well we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us feelin' alright

And, as singer/actor Danny Kaye, born in New York City as Daniel David Kaminsky, once sang, “Everything Is Tickety-Boo” with BJs Danny Kay.

Danny came from Detroit to the BJ Mailroom – Packaging Department these days – in April 1970.

He once lived at 1759 Wiltshire Boulevard in Akron.

BJ’s Danny was named mailing room chairman in 1974.

He was listed in the 1981 BJ directory and he’s 94 years old so he probably retired in about 1991, give or take a year.

The email I got from grandson Matthew:

“Hello,

“I am writing to you after coming across your blog site in reference to the ABJ retirees and the ongoing story of what is currently happening to the retirement benefits of the employees (the BJ bankruptcy and David Black’s abandonment of death benefits, health care and prescriptions).  My grandfather Daniel Kay is alive and well at age 94 and your address on file is from his old home he used to live in while in Akron. 

“He has long moved out of that house and currently resides at Menorah Park in Beachwood, Ohio after our family (my mother, 1 of 2 remaining daughters of Mr. Kay and me) had moved him there after a recent fall. 

“He is doing well and in very good spirits.  We can’t, however, tell him of what is going on with the newspaper and his benefits changing as it will not be pleasant news for him.  So please respect our wishes that all communication will go to the family with the addresses provided below. 

“As a personal note, my grandfather is keeping everyone entertained in his wing of the nursing home playing piano from his room and the sounds of his music carry the halls where the other residents can enjoy his fine playing. 

“Once they can congregate after the pandemic, I am sure he will resume playing the larger piano outside in the main areas of his residence area.

“Mr. Kay’s current address is at:

“Daniel Kay

“27100 Cedar Road

“Beachwood, Ohio 44122              

“His daughter’s address for all communications:

“Barbara Blum

“7220 Cottesmore Lane

“Solon, Ohio 44139

“Thank you very much for posting this update and we are glad someone is looking out for my grandfather and all ABJ retirees going through this situation.

“Matthew Blum

“Grandson of Mr. Daniel Kay”

Matthew’s email address:

matt@matthewblum.com

So, if Danny’s friends and former BJ co-workers want to drop him a card, you know where to mail it, to Barbara Blum, his daughter.

She’s get it to the nursing home Piano Man.

That would be sounding the right note.

Take that, Billy Joel!