For St. Patrick's Day, my dad and his siblings

I did not know I was Irish until I was in college and someone identified my last name. My father was proud of neither his family nor his heritage. Abandoned by their father; neither his mother or her family able to support five more children, he and his siblings had a hardscrabble existence. 

Aunt Laura, the oldest girl, remembered the Akron Children's Home as a nice place, with all the books she could read and her only taste of birthday cake. My dad and my Uncle Bill, the oldest, didn't do well in the Children's Home. My dad turned 17 on August 28th, and by the next weekend was in the army.

Uncle Bill was sent to Orient State School, a mental institution, where he remained until my parents sprung him and took him in in the sixties. He was presumed mentally retarded, a good catch-all for institutionalization. Over his many years at Orient he taught himself to read, and read "to all the boys." When he died his collection of books was enormous. He had every Zane Grey ever published.

The two youngest, Aunt Ruth and Aunt Helen Rita, were eventually taken in by relatives. Aunt Ruth by an aunt, Aunt Helen Rita by her grandmother.  Aunt Ruth was trained to and became a nun, Aunt Laura was trained be a secretary. She met her husband in the course of her job and married. Aunt Helen Rita just eloped one day. All the marriages were long and happy.

Here are pictures  of them I've put together from several sources.

Dad and his little brother, Uncle Bill.

About 1911.

Dad at his wedding, 1942.

Dad and his beret, in the sixties.

Dad in the mid seventies.

Uncle Bill in the fifties. So few pictures of him.

Aunt Laura, aged 16.

The oldest of the three girls.

Aunt Laura in her fifties.

Aunt Laura at 72. 

She was the snappy, fun loving aunt.

My Aunt Ruth, in the sixties.

When her order adopted the less formal habit Aunt Ruth went for it.

She even dyed her hair so her students would not know it was pure white under there.

Aunt Helen Rita, the youngest sister.

She was quiet, demure, meek.

Aunt Helen Rita in her seventies.

The three sisters in the twenties.

Aunt Ruth, left, Aunt Helen Rita center, Aunt Laura right.

Three of the siblings at my sister's wedding, late eighties.

Standing, me (the bridesmaid)

My cousin Pat, who actually is my dad's cousin and another abandoned child of his Irish clan.

Next Aunt Helen Rita, by her daughter Elaine.

Next, Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bill.

Seated, my cousin Marge, Aunt Helen Rita's other daughter,

and her husband Tom.  

Sherbondy Hill

My dad and his siblings were orphans, for all practical purposes.  For reasons I can’t know my grandmother married a man fifteen years older than herself, left home and lived with her in-laws while her husband travelled as a railroad man.  In every other year there was another baby, the oldest my father, until in 1915 my grandmother packed up her four children and came home to Ohio from Pennsylvania for the birth of the fifth.

My grandmother sued my grandfather, probably for desertion, and he posted bond in Pennsylvania guaranteeing his appearance in court to answer the charge.  Instead, he “jumped bond,” went west under an assumed name and died of consumption fifteen years later.  Letters from his daughters begging him to return were found in his wallet, revealing his original identity.

Were these not real people the story could be maudlin.   The family lived in the overcrowded childhood home of their mother, with her parents and those of her nine siblings still at home.  In her journal my Aunt Laura mentioned the terrible overcrowding that  sent them living in a succession of houses, moving when the rent came due.  Eventually four of the children were taken to the Children’s Home and from there our Uncle Bill was committed to Orient State School for the Insane.

My dad occasionally lamented the wasted potential of each of his siblings.  The absolute truth concerning my Uncle Bill, but the children, Bill included, played the hand dealt. 

   

Memories of the children’s’ lives during those years are scant.  My dad told one or two stories; Aunt Laura wrote about her brother Johnny as the director of the little band of children, feeding them bread soaked in coffee for their evening meal before bed, their mother absent. 

Aunt Laura set her hand to poetry, and I have a little self-published booklet of poems she dated from 1927 through 1964.  Most are love letters to her husband; she and Uncle Frank indeed were soul mates.

One of Aunt Laura’s poems, Their First Day Late, dated 1928, when she was seventeen, probably draws on a memory of her favorite brother and his favorite sister.

He with his wavy hair of brown,

She with her locks of gold;

They both stand at the schoolhouse door—

Each other’s hands they hold.

Her fresh white apron, her beauty displays,

But her face is bathed in tears.

The little fellow at her side

Cannot dispel her fears.

The big schoolbell had pealed its call,

The echo has died away.

The little maid and her brother

Are late, their first time, today.

They fear to enter the classroom

Where lessons have begun.

And they stand there on the threshold

Wishing the day were done.

Another poem Aunt Laura wrote in 1928 probably more accurately describes the schooling of her brother Johnny, and the uncles of the same age they grew up with.  “Pa” was her maternal grandfather, and a mean drunk from whom the women of the family hid the Four Roses bottle.

School Days

Johnny was a little boy

Who wouldn’t go to school.

He wouldn’t mind the teacher

Nor obey the Golden Rule.

He wanted to play hooky,

Like most the big boys did.

And got a spanking every night

When he was just a kid!

He used to go a-fishing,

Instead of going to school.

And when the days were long and hot,

He played in the swimming pool.

He’d come home late in the evening,

Scared and shivering, too!

Don’t you s’pose that you’d be scared

If “Pa” was up waiting for you?

Although he was spanked most every night,

And “Pa” warned him o’er and o’er,

Johnny scarcely set his feet

Inside a schoolhouse door!

John Lytle, my father, was born in Coalmont, Pennsylvania, in 1907. His mother brought the little family back to Akron, Ohio in 1915.  In 1924, days after his 17^th birthday, he left Akron a member of the United States Army. He spent nine childhood years in Akron, from the age of eight through sixteen.  They were rough and tumble years, deep in adventures with his uncles, his mother’s brothers his own age, and at the same time holding together the little family that was his brother and sisters.

Dad told of sled riding down Sherbondy Hill in the winters. The city was built on four hills, with many lesser hills joining the whole.  Sherbondy Hill, very near his grandparent’s home, leads up to a park today.  At the turn of the century it was paved in cobbles, the better for horses to navigate.  In the winter the snow covered road was impassible, except to sleds. The hill has a grade of almost thirty percent, with several turns.  In telling of their exciting rides down the hill Dad wondered that none of them were killed.  Of course they weren’t.   

Sherbondy Hill

A Two Day Trip

I’ve wanted to make a trip to my dad’s home town, Coalmont, Pennsylvania.  I had grandkids on spring break last week, so Beth and Caroline and I left on Friday and came home yesterday.   It’s a four plus hour drive, ending with some serious mountain road driving.  We went first to our overnight accommodation, a little bed and breakfast tucked up against a mountain, like most every building.

The redbuds are blooming.

We stopped first at the cemetery of my great-great grandparents, and some great uncles, brothers of my grandfather, George Marion.  George may be there too, he was brought back to Pennsylvania by his brother for burial.  I talked to the township secretary to get some understanding of what I would be looking for.  From memory he recited the grave locations to me.  All their records have been lost and he made a map of the cemetery by the remaining markers.  He recited all the standing Lytle markers and says he has not found George Marion Lytle, but believes he’s there.  Caroline spotted many small round markers flush in the ground, with one initial.  He could be one of them. 

John W. Lytle, my great-great grandfather, is next to his wife, Annie E. Crumm, the wisp of a grandmother remembered by my Aunt Laura. 

John W. has his Civil War rank and company on his stone, and the G.A.R. star by his stone, with slots for a flag.   He was wounded at Bull Run and wounded so severely at Antietam that he was discharged after months in hospital recovering, and never of sound health again, according to an account I read.  He lived many more years, however, a school teacher, and elected to a variety of county offices.

We went from the cemetery in Dudley along the ridge roads to Coalmont.  We pulled over several times to let the locals who knew every twist and turn of aptly names roads like 6 Mile Run go past.  It had rained heavily overnight and the river on one side ran high and water still flowed over the mountain rocks on the other. 

I had a map of Coalmont we intended to use when we arrived.  I had located the property on Evans Street my grandparents sold, I assume to buy the house Aunt Laura remembered, across from the school.  The map locates the school on the corner of Daugherty and Watson Streets.  We found a quintessential mountain town, squeezed between the river and the mountain as to north and south, uphill and downhill east and west.

Most fascinating, my late 19th century map was a city planner’s dream map.  All the vacant lots on that map remain vacant.  They don’t even exist.  I believe their existence would have involved excavating a mountain.  No matter.  A home is on the school’s lot.  The house where my dad and his brother Bill sat on a stoop may have been across the street, or anywhere.  It was interesting to circle the streets of a little bit of a town inserted on a mountain ridge.

I taught Caroline to play Roadside Cribbage.  Her very first score, even as I was explaining, was a white horse worth ten points, followed at once by a church doubling the score and another church, doubling again.  She wasn’t too sure of the outcome as we drove around little towns and churches that doubled her points doubled grandma’s points coming back down the street.  Loss of all my points to cemeteries poorly located on grandma’s side sealed her enthusiasm, and by the time we arrived home she was keeping score on a piece of paper and had beat me 38,702 to 20.  I believe that’s a family record.

“Mr. Lytle left the family in 1918”

Mary Emma Hogue Lytle, my grandmother, left her husband and returned to Akron and her family with her children.  Mary told one of her daughters the constant moving was the reason she left George Marion Lytle and took the children back to Akron. To what would be a childhood of neglect and poverty. 

Mary Emma was born in 1889, the oldest of 10 children.  Her last sibling, a brother, was born four short months before my father became George and Mary’s first child.

I believe Mary married George, fourteen years her senior, simply to escape home and the responsibility of tending to so many younger siblings.  There would have been endless loads of clothing to be scrubbed at the board, hung to dry, taken off the line, ironed. All those younger siblings to keep an eye on and keep diapered. The sheer drudgery is depressing to contemplate.

 She was seventeen when they married. Perhaps it was a love match.  I only say that because Mary Emma was from a staunchly Catholic family and upbringing, which shunned family members who strayed from the faith. George Marion’s religious affiliation is safely assumed in knowing he is buried along with his siblings and his parents in a Methodist cemetery.  But I think the most I can give Mary Emma is infatuation, and perhaps a bit of romance in leaving with a mining engineer to live in Pennsylvania.

My grandparents were married in 1906 and, like in the home she left, the babies arrived every other year.  When Mary returned to her parents’ home in 1915, after nine years of marriage, she was pregnant with her fifth and last child.

George Marion travelled because of his job.  But Aunt Laura, the daughter Mary told of leaving because of travel, also has memories of living with her paternal grandparents in Coalmont.  Parents may tell children whatever they wish, but Mary’s story of frequent moves isn’t that plausible.  I can’t see George moving from assignment to assignment trailing a wife and four children when he had a home base in Coalmont, where Aunt Laura said they lived until they moved to Akron. 

The record I was able to get from the Childrens’ Home contained the tantalizing line “Mr. Lytle left the family in 1918.  He did not appear in court in Pennsylvania.”  This is Mary Emma’s statement to the Childrens’ Home about 1921 when she placed her five children in the Childrens’ Home.  In the years after moving back in 1915, there was not enough food or clothing, or adult supervision, according to Aunt Laura.  She says her father did come one time, she thinks to attempt to reunite, but Mary refused.

I pursued ‘He did not appear in court in Pennsylvania.” Huntingdon County, where Coalmont is located, has a wonderful historical society that provided me with some information about that entry. A genealogical researcher located George Marion Lytle in the Plaintiffs Docket for 1921, where he posted a five hundred dollar bond guaranteeing he would be available for extradition to Ohio.  And when they went to pick him up in 1922, George Marion could not be found.

I looked for the entry on the other side of the ledger here in Summit County, where Akron is located, but the Clerk of Courts found nothing.  I assume Mary Emma filed some action against George, probably in domestic court, probably concerning support, that resulted in a judgment for George to be returned to the State of Ohio.  He jumped bail and disappeared.

The last bit of this puzzle also came from the Childrens’ Home.  In their records they had a letter from Peebles County, Colorado, informing them of the death of George M. Lytle.  He died of consumption, and known by a different name, but in his wallet they found letters from his daughters, pleading for his return.  The return address of the envelopes was the Akron Childrens’ Home.

George Marion died in 1930, a full fifteen years after the separation from Mary.  I have to assume he continued working; he was working when he died in Colorado.  Over that fifteen years his children grew up.  In extreme poverty.  Who left whom is not relevant.  I don’t know why Mary came home in 1915, but told the authorities in 1918 her husband deserted the family.  The order against him likely concerned support; the legal system was as eager in 1918 to see children supported by parents as they are today. My father didn't speak of the father who abandoned the children.  His three sisters, Aunt Laura, Aunt Ruth and Aunt Helen Rita, loved their father unconditionally to the end, and had no charity toward their mother.  AuntRuth, Sister Mary Pasqueline, said they were nobody’s children and they survived.

Another story from my family tree.

The three children who did marry and have children provided homes they surely wished for in their childhood.

My parents on their wedding day.  Grandma Lytle is beside my father; Grandpa and Grandma Rolf on either side of my mother.  The only pictures of Grandma Lytle are from that day.  She was the only member of my dad's family at the wedding.  My father had left the Catholic Church, my mother was not a Catholic.  Dad's many aunts, uncles and cousins did not attend because of this.

The sidewalk

We moved to 729 Moraine in 1945, just before my brother Walt was born.  I was 2 ½.  Dad told me a moraine was the end of an ice age glacier and all the stones and dirt and stuff the glacier pushed along were left right there when the ice melted. All the stones had been ground fine, and our moraine was sand.  We were the last street before the land went down a hill and there were no houses on the other side of Moraine.  It had been farm land, and an old harrow stood abandoned.  That very summer I played on it, fell off the seat and sliced my scalp open on a rusty point on the way down.  I ran home, all the neighborhood women looked at it; I got cleaned up with soap, water and iodine.  People who cut my hair have commented on the scar. Then a construction company began mining the field for sand, from our road down to the bottom of the hill.  Acres and acres of sand.  We called it The Pit and it figured mightily in our childhood adventures.

729 is the middle house, with two cars in the drive.  We never used that drive for cars.  Our official entrance was from the street behind, Gardendale.  My parents owned the land from Moraine to Gardendale, as well as the next property west up Gardendale.  The front porch was open in 1945, but was closed in within a year or two, giving we children ten more windows to wash twice a year.  Inside and out.

Next, my parents built the garage over a summer, with the help of Uncle Bill and neighbors who did carpentry.  A blacktop surface that filled the balance of the lot was poured in front of the three car garage and then dad graded the hill up to the west lot and planted trees and grass.  Thus leading to another phrase from childhood, “Keep off the hill!”  Or, “Get off the hill!”  The hill only took up part of the west lot, and the neighborhood played baseball on the rest of it.

There’s a long neat line from the back of the house to the garage, curving past the garden to meet the blacktop.  That very large tree in front of the garage is an acorn Walt brought home from Aunt Laura’s house and planted when he was two or three.  The long neat line is the sidewalk that got us from the back door to the garage.  Dad and crew built it in 1956.

He and Walt put up a grape arbor at the end of the blacktop, first.

Dad excavated the sand from across the street.  It was 1956, people were  resourceful.

Walt fell out of the neighbor’s tree and broke his leg, so he got sand washing duty.  The doctor told him he was not eating enough green beans.  He still doesn’t eat green beans.

Dad built a frame to form the blocks, which had to cure two days.  Then, it was a block a day. 

Anyone who could swing a shovel to clear the way did.

Block by block the sidewalk was laid. 

When it was finished, the celebratory picnic: 

 Uncle Hank, Barb, Mom, Uncle Bill, Aunt Flo, Joanne, Grandma Rolf, Walt, Mel, Janice and Ken. 

Uncle Hank swapped places with the chief engineer for the final shot. 

I am not pictured in any of the construction.  That’s pretty much how I remember it.

Few questions answered

The long anticipated transcript of records of the Lytle children arrived yesterday from Children’s Services.  There was not a lot of material, as the records officer had warned me several times in conversation.  Six very short paragraphs (three to six lines each) of information. But interspersing it with what I already know was interesting.

There are interesting tidbits.  Their records indicate that Mr. Lytle left the family in Coalmont, in 1918, and did not appear in court in Pennsylvania.  Interesting.  Children’s Services records indicate that some time after that he was located in Colorado Springs, Colorado and died there of tuberculosis in 1930.  Aunt Laura chronicled the children and their mother were back in Akron in 1915 and her father stopped at the home, probably in 1917 or 1918, asking his wife to be reunited and was turned down.  Perhaps some support action was filed in Pennsylvania, and George stopped in Akron and then kept going west.  Apparently Maime Lytle could keep her family together from 1915 to 1918.

Children’s Services records also show a letter from Peebles County Juvenile Court dated July 19, 1930 noted the passing of Mr. Lytle and indicated letters dated 1924 from his daughters Helen and Ruth were found in his possession.  So, all three daughters wrote to their father.  I cannot locate a Peebles County in Colorado (or even in the United States), so I will see if I can get a copy of that letter.  It would be interesting to know how a Juvenile Court would be involved in the death of a middle aged man.

The transcript says the family came to the attention of the Children’s Home in 1918, as Mrs. Lytle had difficulty in providing for her children alone.  She was not in good health and earned only nine dollars a week when she was able to do housework. She was a diabetic; the disease took her life at age fifty eight. The transcript says there was no documentation for the next several years, and does not say when the children were taken into the home.  Aunt Laura writes she was there at age ten, or 1921.  My newspaper account of Uncle Bill says he went from the Home to Orient at age 12, or 1921, so it seems he was already there, and probably my dad, too.  They could easily have been in and out, being cared for when their mother ran out of funds.   

Then, in March 1924, according to the transcript, the family was involved with Juvenile Court due to hardship and in August, 1924, my dad was placed in Charity Latch School and then readmitted to the Children’s Home several days later.  In September, 1924 he left the Home and joined the United States Army.  That supports the in and out theory, and since dad was 17 on the 28^th of August, 1924, I’m sure he was at the recruiting station shortly thereafter.  Charity Latch School!  I can only wonder.

In November, 1924, Laura and Ruth were returned to the care of their mother.  Aunt Laura was 13, then, and Aunt Ruth 11.  Aunt Laura writes that two weeks after her 14^th birthday, in January of 1925, she and Aunt Ruth were taken on a “picnic” and turned over to the convent school.  She lived there in Cleveland and graduated a two year vocational course while Aunt Ruth went to Cathedral Latin High School for a year before returning to another relative and then going on to a nursing degree.

From remarks of my mother during my childhood I understood my Grandfather Lytle had been in prison for non support of his family.  It does not seem to have been down to that, but it appears some action was afoot, as he did not “appear in Court in Pennsylvania”.  I do not know how long it takes a person to waste away from tuberculosis, but there was a span of fifteen years when he provided no support for his children.  There seems to have been plenty of blame to go around, Maime for leaving because she did not like moving and George not giving a damn when she left with four little children and one on the way, and she only twenty six years old. 

I’ve exhausted most resources I can imagine in unraveling my father’s childhood, and that of his siblings.  I’m still curious about Peebles County and Charity Latch School, both of which names could come right out of a Dicken’s novel.  If Maime did the best she could (and she probably did), Aunt Ruth was the most charitable in saying “Isn’t it tremendous what kids can live through.”  If George did the best he could, who knows.  He certainly kept the love of his daughters.

Aunt Helen Rita

Age 18

Things to follow up

I’ve finished re-typing Aunt Laura’s “Chronicles.”  Phew—13 pages.  It was good for me.  Back in college I studied for exams by typing my notes.  There seems to be a more direct link between my fingers and my brain than my eyes and my brain.  Some odds and ends that I will be researching more as a result of reading her chronicle:

The Lytle children, at least the girls, seem to have bounced from the Children’s Home to their mother and grandmother and back several times.  I’ve asked for the records of the children from Summit County and received a very positive call from a “records liaison.”    She said records of that age are on microfiche, stored in another state, but she has put in the request and they are being searched for.  She told me if the records can be found, I can expect to see the dates the children were in the home, school records, who visited them, that sort of stuff.  I expect to hear on this front in the next three to four weeks.

Aunt Laura makes a statement to the effect the three girls had to leave the Home because my Dad had to leave when he was sixteen and no longer age qualified.  I’d like to understand more of why his leaving caused their leaving.   I hope there's a hint in the Children's Home records.

Because I assumed the girls went to St. Joseph’s in Cleveland, which is run by Immaculate Heart of Mary, Aunt Ruth’s order, I wrote the Cleveland Catholic Diocese requesting available records.  But, have not heard one word.  Aunt Laura’s chronicle covers those school years very well, and she said she and Ruth were placed at the Good Shepherd Convent in Cleveland and finished school there.  So, that is settled.  As a footnote to Aunt Laura’s story of their high school years, I have a note from my cousin Marge, Aunt Helen Rita’s daughter, that says Aunt Gen took Aunt Ruth out of the Children’s Home in her teens to help Aunt Gen with her sons, so Aunt Gen could work.  Aunt Gen repaid Aunt Ruth by subsidizing nursing school for Aunt Ruth.  Aunt Gen is one of my father’s aunts with whom we were not close during my childhood; my dad accounted her one of the several relatives who steered Aunt Ruth firmly toward taking orders.  Dad always felt she deserved a better life; Aunt Ruth always felt she had a wonderful life.

The great-great grandparents of the five Lytle children were born in Ireland.  Aunt Laura places both husband and wife from Cork.  I have some genealogy work that shows John Maley from County Cork, but his wife, Elizabeth Mulholland from Kilrea Parish in Northern Ireland.  Given the geographical distance, the times (the potato famine in full sway) and the poverty of the country, I assumed they had met emigrating, or in this country.  Aunt Laura says Elizabeth Mulholland was an accomplished mid-wife and John Maley is believed to have been a doctor.  I hope to work this out in the favor of my dad, who was labeled a Shanty Irishman by my mother’s grandmother!  Perhaps instead of starving peasants they were young professionals of the age.  I am grateful that so many starving families were able to emigrate from Ireland and all of Europe as the stupidity of many governments caused death and destruction of millions.  But--wouldn't it be fun to know that superiority is as superiority does, grandma Troike!

Aunt Laura wrote over 8,000 words, and I decided not to edit any out.  I’ve always found a lovely Irish lilt to her phrasing.  We corresponded for years; both of us loved to write.  So, I will post her chronicle in several logical sections.  You won’t be disappointed. And no, none of her letters to me remain.  Too soon old, too late wise, as the proverb says.

Kilrea, County Londonderry, Ireland

From Wikipedia

Uncle Bill leaves Orient

I transcribed the following from the December 25, 1975 Akron Beacon Journal clipping in my daughter's big notebook.  There's plenty of beauracratic spin here from the Developmental Disabilities guys, but Mr. Allio is to be commended for his total honesty in saying Uncle Bill should not have been made a ward of the state and, by extrapolation, should have been released from that status.  My parents' repeated efforts were rebuffed by a system that knew better than they.

Akron Beacon Journal

Christmas, 1975
Best gift:  After 53 yrs. in institution, he’s free

By Charles Lally, Beacon Journal Staff Writer

Though he never committed any crime, William Lytle, 66, is a free man for the first time in 53 years.

In 1922 when he was 13, Lytle was committed to Orient State Institute for the mentally retarded.  He spent his life there until last May when he was returned to Akron for a “trial visit.”

Lytle was told recently that his formal release from the state hospital will come within the next several weeks.

“That’s the best Christmas present I’ve ever had,”  Lytle said.

William Lytle is not retarded and never was, according to Tom Allio, district representative for the Division of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities.

Allio was instrumental in gaining Lytle’s release from the state institution.

Allio said that from the Akron area there are at least 340 people in state mental institutions for the retarded who don’t belong there.

Like Lytle, he said those 340 persons could live a normal, meaningful and productive life, but their return to the community is delayed or prevented because there is nowhere for them to live while they make their readjustment.

Lytle was one of five children from a broken home.  With his brother and sisters, he was sent to the Summit County Children’s Home, but young Bill had troubles there.

Though the records are as bad as state hospital conditions, Bill was apparently viewed by Children’s Home officials as a slow learner.  He had injured his head in a fall from a second story window onto a brick sidewalk and county officials decided in 1922 he belonged in an institution for the retarded. 

Bill said he never went farther than the second grade in school, and his formal education didn’t advance very much at Orient State.

But it was there that Bill became an avid reader.  “Zane Grey is my favorite author,” he said.

“I used to read the books to the blind boys.  The words I didn’t understand I spelled out to them—some of them went as high as the fifth and sixth grades—and they would tell me what the words were. That’s how I got my education,” he said.

Bill doesn’t complain about his 53 years at Orient State.  But he does say that “you’d better believe” he is happier back in Akron, working a full-time job at Goodwill and living with his brother and sister-in-law Mr. and Mrs. John Lytle, 729 Moraine Ave.

Bill said conditions at Orient State improved drastically during the past few years, but the impersonal wards and empty days had nothing to match his lavish lifestyle now.

Living with his brother’s family, Bill has his own room, a new color television that he bought with his own earnings, a dresser, a closet, places to put his own belongings, a little privacy when he wants it.

“During the summer I sit out on the front porch.  It’s nice and comfortable out there.  In the winter, I can watch television or spend time with my family,” he said.

Lytle said the most difficult part of his readjustment to life outside the state institution was “getting used to my job.”

“Now I’m really used to it,” he said.  “I like working, meeting new friends.

“I like it fine.  I like the people I work under.  I ain’t going to retire as long as the Good Lord lets me,” he said.

William Lytle is lucky.  Despite more than five decades at Orient State Institute, his family did not forget him.

His older brother John and his wife frequently visited him, and more than 30 years ago they sought his release.  They were refused, they said, because authorities said William was a ward of the state and could not leave the institution.

A life sentence.

But when the Division of Mental Retardation opened a local office at 500 Grant Street two-and-one-half years ago, workers there began attempting to release those from state institutions who didn’t belong there and to keep out those who shouldn’t be sent to an institution.

Lenore Lytle credits the local office with gaining her brother-in-law’s release.  She had given up hope, she said.

Allio said there are hundreds more like William Lytle who should return to the community, but they have no families to take them in.

The need, he said, is for more homes in which to place these persons while they make their readjustment to the community and homes to which to send persons instead of state institutions.

Allio’s office is seeking Akron area families willing to open up their homes to people like William Lytle.

Through Social Security and state payments, persons operating these “foster homes” are paid for the expense of feeding and housing their roomers, though state staffers caution that it is not a way to make money.

The state examines the home for health and fire safety and licenses each foster home.

State workers said it is important that as many persons as possible are kept out of state institutions and that as many as possible are returned from the institutions to live a more sheltered life in the community.

"We have to avoid them being warehoused in the community as well as at the institution,” according to Nick Gambone, the coordinator for the local office of the Division of Mental Retardation.

Uncle Bill

My Uncle Bill was born September 6, 1909.  He was slow.  Family story says the neighborhood boys were playing at a construction site and Uncle Bill fell from the attic through to the basement of a home under construction.  Jan says she knows as a result of his injury he had a metal plate in his head. He wound up labeled as having the mental ability of a twelve year old.  That’s debatable—Uncle Bill was sharp as a tack, shrewd as they come. 

Uncle Bill on the left, in 1910

When his mother could no longer keep the family of five children together, Uncle Bill went to the Akron Children’s Home, together with my dad.  Family lore also says that because of his mental slowness Uncle Bill was not sent to school; his reading, writing and arithmetic was taught him by my dad and continued on his own when he and dad were separated.  Dad was always bitter that “the system” mishandled Uncle Bill, who he felt could have been as productive a person as any of his siblings.

It seems logical the children could have been wards of Summit County when they were in the Children’s Home.  Uncle Bill remained in guardianship for a long time; when my father left the Children’s Home Uncle Bill became a ward of the state and was sent to Orient State School in Orient, near Columbus.

From a description at assylumproject.org:  The Orient State Institute was established as a farm colony in 1898 and operated as a branch of the Columbus State School. The facility had 180 acres, of which 1,358 acres were under cultivation. The school had its own band, orchestra, and choir, weekly movies, religious services and recreation. On July 15, 1926, the Orient facility became an independent unit and in 1937 received patients from various counties in Ohio. This continued until May 15, 1950 when the organization was rejoined under the Columbus State School and became the central receiving area for all feeble minded persons, adult and youth. In 1984 it became the Pickaway Correctional Institution.  I’ve searched a lot of internet looking for a picture of Orient, as I remember it.  I’ve only found a picture of a farm crew at Orient.

Uncle Bill would have been around age 15 when he went to Orient in the early 1920’s.  The pamphlet shows teachers with classrooms so perhaps Uncle Bill had a little education.  More likely he was assigned to the farm fields.  We went there in summer and always met him with a field team or near his dormitory.  My parents always brought a quantity of fresh fruit to give to “the boys”.  Bananas were the especial favorite and they could be seen sticking out of the tops of coveralls as the men passed bananas around.  After I was grown and gone, Jan remembers still stopping often at Orient to visit Uncle Bill and be sure he had enough of everything, including money.

Mom and Dad spent years working on the red tape of getting custody of Uncle Bill and bringing him home to Akron.  The best they could do was “work release” each summer.  Better than nothing.  My parents bought our home in 1945 and set about renovating it.  Uncle Bill’s help was invaluable.  The front porch was closed in, a garage built, landscaping done. Dad and Uncle Bill laid a sidewalk from our house to the garage.  Several small blocks in colors made a large block.  Dad poured and colored them one night, they laid the block(s) the next.  They hand dug a fruit cellar under the front porch of our house.   And Uncle Bill spent a couple of months each year with his family, his brother, his sisters.

The garage Uncle Bill helped build

The sidewalk, 20years later. 

Back in Orient, Uncle Bill had a life.  He hired out at a handyman to a local family.  He walked or bicycled  the short distance, shoveled snow, mowed grass, made minor repairs for a couple named Dolly and her husband George.  He did handyman work for other people in town, as well.  After Uncle Bill was able to come to Akron my parents took him back to visit Dolly and George.

Most of all, Uncle Bill was an entrepreneur, the middle man in countless deals for bicycles and radios.  He apparently was a fine negotiator; everyone got what they wanted and Uncle Bill always traded his stock of goods up.  He collected and jealously guarded a complete set of the work of Zane Gray.

In the 1970’s Governor Rhodes, of Kent State shootings infamy, turned out state mental facilities. Just released people back to their point of origin.  It was a huge hit on the social services systems in the state.  Especially social workers dealing with people who had no support system at their “point of origin.”  Uncle Bill had my parents, still living at his point of origin, and especially my tenacious mother to guide him through the process of integrating into an open world.  Many, many were not so fortunate.  My uncle was in his 60’s and a wonderful man with minimal life skills.  He could make a peanut butter sandwich, cook himself a hot dog, fry bacon, but get a job?  What were they thinking.

So, mom took a crash course in the welfare system, guided him through SSI, Medicaid, Section 8 housing.  Some of his earlier apartments she considered appalling, and when an opportunity arose to house him in a Senior Citizens facility in downtown Akron, the renovated Mayflower Hotel, she snatched it.  It was a perfect fit and Uncle Bill lived there the rest of his life.

Uncle Bill in the '70's

Uncle Bill’s preferred mode of transportation in good weather was his bicycle.  He rode it to Richfield to see Aunt Laura.  He rode it to Marlboro to see Aunt Helen Rita.  And he rode it across the high level bridge to visit Sis and John, in North Hill.  My mother’s neighbor worked for the Akron Water Department, and often saw Uncle Bill on his red bike.  When he reported on Uncle Bill at the head of an endless line of traffic, going down Memorial Parkway into the valley, Mom sadly had to intervene and take his wheels away.  He could ride the bus around Akron and she would take him to Richfield and Marlboro.  She went as often as he did, he could just go on her schedule.  Uncle Bill was in his seventies by then.

Uncle Bill had a full head of beautiful white hair.  He was rather vain about it.  His secret to keeping it white, not yellow:  rinse with hydrogen peroxide, not tap water.

Uncle Bill and a girlfriend.  He was always taking care of a girlfriend.

When I was a child, card playing was a major entertainment in our house.  Mom thought card games in the summer an excellent way to keep kids up to snuff with math.  Uncle Bill was a sharp card player.  Canasta was his special favorite and be careful, he could take you down with a pair of corn hooks any day.

Uncle Bill’s other favorite social activity was attending AA meetings.  Uncle Bill only ever drank black coffee, but AA took him in anyway.  He loved the people and the comradeship. Jan asked Uncle Bill why he attended AA, knowing he never drank.  Uncle Bill said it made him realize other people had bigger problems than his.

Uncle Bill was also a member of Grace Baptist Church.   When Uncle Bill died in 1985 mom planned on a small service at the funeral home and no graveside service as there were no longer enough men in the family to be pall bearers.  On the day of the service we gathered in a small room.  Then the funeral director opened the back, to double the size of the room.  Eventually the hall was filled.  The funeral director had located Uncle Bill’s minister and asked him to do the eulogy.  The entire congregation showed up and filled the funeral home.  Many stood to talk about how Bill touched their lives.  The bus driver was going to miss him because Bill had turn by turn directions every Sunday to pick up other members.