Grandma Rolf

My Grandma was born in 1894.  She was of sturdy Western Pennsylvania farming stock.  She was born and lived her first years Austinburg, Ohio.  Her name was Ethel Cox.  Her father, Melvin Cox was an older child and his siblings stretched down to Uncle Pearl, who was twenty years younger than her father.

There is another cigar box of pictures somewhere in this house and one picture is my Grandma and her brother Elmore.  It was taken by a travelling photographer; they would work their way through a neighborhood taking pictures of children, often using props.  In this picture Uncle Elmore is on a huge tricycle, Grandma standing beside him, clutching a huge doll with a cracked face.  Both children were less than five.  Grandma told me once “When Mother opened the parlor door and I saw that baby hanging on the tree, I KNEW she was for me.  I was on air all the way to the tree, and Mother put her in my arms.”  Uncle Elmore hit the doll and cracked her face, but Grandma didn’t care.  The baby was hers.

I don’t know much about my grandma’s childhood until she was fifteen and graduated 8^th grade from Dennison.  There she is in the second row, third from the right. 

 In some class in school she made this cunning little vase.  And sturdy; it’s quite thick.  There’s her name on the bottom and the D is probably for Dennison.  No idea what the marks on either side represent.

Eighth grade was her last year of education.  She was required at home, on Selzer Avenue in the West 25^th street area of Cleveland.  Her father, my great grandpa Cox, was a painter and wall paper man.  Her mother took in borders, and needed Grandma’s help with cleaning, cooking and laundry.  My mother said so much responsibility fell on Grandma she had a nervous breakdown at age 16.

Here’s grandma in 1912, on her 18^th birthday.  Blouses were called shirtwaists, and as long as I knew her she wore shirtwaists.  She also wore corsets, and I’ve heard her say “Pull up your corset strings, ladies, we have work to do.”  She was some worker.

Here’s her mother, Lenore Smith Cox.   And a 1918 picture of four generations, her Grandma, her mother, herself and her baby daughter, my mother.

Grandma had two siblings, Elmore, who she adored, and Louise, who she thought was silly. Here’s my grandma and her sister Louise.  And, her brother Elmore.  No idea who the other fellow is.  These are probably both 1919 snapshots.

 In the 1920’s Elmore was married and had two young sons.  He ran motion picture cameras in movie houses.  He was electrocuted and died when the equipment short circuited.  Mom remembered the tragedy, how terribly it affected her mother, and especially her two little cousins.

Grandma was married in 1917.  Between then and leaving Dennison in 1909, she worked hard taking care of boarders.  Times were not the best.  Money was not plentiful and sometimes nonexistent.  She said their dinner meal was bread with flour gravy too often.

Her brother had a motorcycle and rode with a great gang of friends.  What a different connotation the word had almost a hundred years ago.  Like most men of the time, this gang wore white shirts, jackets and ties to leave the house.  This is probably a 1918 photograph.  I can’t make out which is Uncle Elmore, but the third from the left is Walter Rolf, the man she married.  But first she had to meet him.

At their house the third floor attic was used to hang laundry in the winter or on rainy days.  Grandma was up there one day, hanging laundry and heard Elmore leave the house.  She was jealous he could go on a motorcycle jaunt and she had to work.  She leaned out the window and called his name.  He looked up.  She spit.  Hit him square in the face.  Served him right!

Doing laundry and hanging it in the back yard one day she heard Elmore in the side yard.  He had been teasing her and grandma was fed up, so she waded up the soaking wet shirt she was scrubbing and threw it into his face when he came around the corner.  The person who peeled off the wet shirt was Walter Rolf, who she did not know.  

 Here’s Walter Rolf in 1918, when my mother was born.  And a picture of my grandmother on that motorcycle, but I doubt she ever drove it.  I could be wrong; she sure could handle a car.

Grandma’s mother, Lenore Smith Cox, died in 1923. Great grandpa Cox married a widow, Marcia Zerbe Enos.  She was the Great grandma Cox I knew.  My Grandma called her Marcia.  I was a long time figuring that out.  Especially since she wasn’t terribly fond of Marcia.  Great Grandpa Cox died when I was about eight or nine years old.  Great Grandma Cox died when I was 26.  Beth was four years old and remembers her legs dangling over the edge of the chair at the funeral.  My first semester in college I boarded at Great Grandma Cox’s house and rode the bus to Flora Stone Mather College.

Here are Melvin and Marcia  with my Great Aunt Louise in the kitchen of the house on Selzer Ave.  Hidden behind my great grandmother’s shoulder is a set of canisters made in Czechoslovakia.  The usual flour, salt, rice.  One is labeled Farina.  They are on top of Ann’s cupboards in Wisconsin, now.

I remember dinners at Grandma Cox’s house.  All the women were fine cooks.  Grandma Cox made city chicken and clover leaf rolls.  Around the table counterclockwise, my brother Walt, my Grandma Rolf, Grandpa Cox (her father), Grandma Cox, my Dad, my Mom, my little brother, Melvin, and my cousin, Ken.  No idea who is out of sight, or where I was.

My Grandma Rolf was the only grandmother I had.  I only remember her as a widow and my pervasive childhood memory of her is as a strong, independent woman.  In looking back, she raised a strong independent daughter who raised a strong independent daughter, and so on.

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.

MDS Fact Checker

I spent Monday at Linda's and yesterday at my real job.  I didn't feel like more organizing of the family stories, so I leafed through a huge book of family genealogy assembled by my youngest daughter twenty years ago.  I still can't wrap my brain around charts of people (collateral stroke damage?), so I sorted through her odds and ends and came up with so many family facts!  I need to resort and verify with cousins and make a few corrections (Aunt Laura, Aunt Ruth and Aunt Helen Rita all went to the convent orphanage!).  It should be sorted and presented chronologically, so I'll get on that.

And, Linda has given me an MDS degree:  Master Denim Sewer.

This actually is step three.  I will never be an MDSt or an MDC.  Master Denim Stripper or Master Denim Cutter.  Those degrees belong to Linda's mother Alberta, who sits in the swing and strips jeans down to flat pieces with no seams, then sits at at the cutter and turns them into tiny strips.  You've met Alberta, on Linda's web site.  I sew them end to end, according to Linda's exacting specifications:  No Dog Ears!

Here ya go.  Aren't they beautiful.  Denim rugs and wool rugs will outlast you.  Those wild and crazy things she weaves will, too, but what happens when you repaint the kitchen!  Denim and wool--way to go.

Jan's Dad

Here is the beginning of Jan's story of her dad.

My dad was different than Joanne’s dad.  Her dad got sick when she was young and managed to keep going.  My dad was always a fragile kind of person physically and when I was 9 he went away.  My friends all thought my dad had died and didn’t mention his absence so I wouldn’t be sad.  I knew my dad was in a hospital in Columbus, but because I was only 9 and they thought he had tuberculosis, I was not allowed in the hospital to see him on my mothers bi-weekly visits.  I was in the 4^th grade.  I remember having to go to the Morley Health Center to get a tuberculosis test.  It was a round quarter sized mark on my arm.  I did not have it.

 Janice about 9 years old

I was 11 when he returned.  He was not a broken man, but he looked broken.  His health issues had taken quite a toll on his body.  His tuberculosis turned out to be histoplasmosis, but it took the doctors 9 months to figure that out and start a different treatment.  I believe he said there were 9 men in the ward with him with the same disease, but he was the only one who survived.  His theory for his survival was that he took his treatment drips as drips were meant to be, done slowly; his compadres took it as quickly as they could get it dripped into them.  My theory for his survival is that I could not be allowed to grow up without a dad.

One of his treatments was to collapse his lung because it had lesions on it.  That didn’t work for long, his lung partially reinflated and the surgery had to be redone.  His ribs had been cut away for the first surgery and had pretty much regrown, but the second time the ribs did not grow back.  So without the ribs on the right side of his body, his spine became crooked and he suffered from pinched nerves and migraines for the rest of his life.

Those years when he was gone were very hard.  Mom worked to put Joanne through college.  Walter was in the Air Force and Melvin was a troublesome teenager with wild friends.  I was just an innocent child with a few friends, growing up in complete ignorance of the troubled times I was living through.  We made it through.   I grew up.  My dad was around until I was 25.

All those years were borrowed time.  He spit in a bottle, stuff he coughed up from his lung, every six months and it got sent to a lab some where for analyzing.  He said for every 6 months that he lived he made medical history for the survival rate of histoplasmosis.  It was a disease not much was known about in 1963, only that it was an air born disease probably caused by bird droppings.  It can lie dormant for years and one day can get you.  More is known about it these days and the treatment is still a couple of years long and people recover from it.  Lots of people are exposed to it with nothing more than flu like symptoms; they never even know they had it.

Another bit will be forthcoming as time permits.  Here's a wonderful childhood picture of Jan and neighborhood friends.  She thinks she was six or seven and it must be about back to school time because it's her back to school haircut.  When I scanned it larger than the original I pointed out dad's dirty feet and her dirty hands were in close competition.  We laughed.  Dirt on kids was a big part of growing up at our house.

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.