I REMEMBER – There are many events in a life that every person can recall, but unless they happened in Ironton where the public read about it at the time it happened, readers aren’t much interested in reading about it, so please pardon the first person pronoun “I.” Perhaps it would sound better and not so self-conceited to write, “do you remember?”
I remember traveling the streets of this town in all possible modes of transportation from a billy goat to a skiff…My first ride on the horse streetcar was to Coal Grove the day the Yellow Poplar Co. big sawmill, lumber yards, and 30 homes were destroyed by fire…
Bob Mahaffey was the driver of the two-horse street car…The date was April 7, 1893…You can guess how old I was, but I was old enough to count up to 30 and there were more folks in the car than that… I stood with my dad on the front platform of the car…The fire started shortly before noon…I’ll be Charley Sheppard of 400 Pike St. remembers that exciting day.
I rode a bicycle following the first automobile to travel on Ironton streets, June 8, 1901…I rode a bicycle following the first two galloping horse fire trucks on the street June 7, 1902…I stood on Railroad St. with my father’s camera on June 2, 1902, when the first passenger train left this city on the D.T. & I. For Springfield, Ohio.
I remember walking across the stage in the second-floor auditorium at the old Memorial Hall before the fire of December 7, 1905, dressed in red flannel underwear and wearing a red hood with horns to look like the devil…The amusement that night was a “tableau vivant” advertising local business firms…My red costume at age 6 was made by my mother to represent the “printer’s devil” at the newspaper office…A very attractive lady, Miss Birdie Arnold, dressed in a flowing robe with a notepad and quill, represented the society editor…
The “angel,” whom the little devil was following, represented the morning newspaper, the Irontonian…Not long after that, I danced on the same stage in a class of students learning to keep step to music…The teachers were Ida Delaney and Maude Songer McKnight, two very prominent wives of bank clerks at Citizens National during the final years of the last century…
Perhaps a few senior citizens recall their names but this paragraph is not about those ladies and me…It is to mention the stage and auditorium where President William McKinley, as governor of Ohio, spoke as did other senators and governors during the era known as the Gay 90s.
I remember flying into town on the first airplane to land in that section of the city today known as Green Valley…The date was June 1929…The plane was a Ford tri-motor and the visit of the flying machine to Ironton was sponsored by Harry Sloan of the Ford Motor Car agency…
Fifteen Irontonians were invited to drive to Portsmouth to ride back home in the plane…Among city and county officials were Harry H. Jones, mayor…Ellis D. Markin, president of the city council…Judge Helen P. Clarke…
Sheriff John White, C. B. Egerton, president Earle E. Stewart, manager of the Chamber of Commerce, and C. J. McCarthy editor of The Tribune; Homer Edwards and Brook Capper, bank directors who were lending folks money to buy Model “T” Fords…Finally – if I get any applause on this column, I may write another “I remember.”
THIS DATE LONG AGO – Beautiful St. Lawrence Church was dedicated on this date in 1892…The city’s finest singers from all the church choirs in town took part in the chorus in the choir loft…The late Monsignor James H. Cotter was the new pastor at the church at that time…On this date in 1945, the Carlyle Tile Co. at Coal Grove was awarded the Maritime Eagle flag award for exceptional war production…Charles Kingsbury, for whom the school at Sixth and Vernon, was named was the guest speaker.
Written by Charles Collett
Huntington Newspaper – no date given
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