Ohio University Archives

November 4, 2013

Down by the Riverside

When I went to school back in Ohio, we had the Hocking River flowing through the campus (REALLY through it when it flooded every couple of years). I used to say, though, that to somebody who grew up on the Mississippi, the Hocking was barely a creek.

It was fun taking Ohio Curator Jessica down to the Mississippi at night. We happened to run into a couple of crewmen from the buoy tender Pathfinder who told us what it was like putting out the markers that keep the huge tows in the channel.

We heard music

We could hear music drifting over the floodwall. Jessica identified one of the sounds as coming from a trombone. She knew it was a trombone, she said, because she used to honk one.

I confessed that I could identify a drum or a cymbal on a good day; otherwise my knowledge of musical instruments was limited. “Is a trombone that horn with a slidey thing?” I asked.

I could hear her eyes rolling, even in the darkness.

The Crystal and Anna Serenade

When we got up on Water Street, we ran into Crystal Lander of Jackson and Anna Nice of Cape doing some pickin’ and singing.

Showing my newly-acquired musical sophistication, I observed that a trombone was not involved in their impromptu performance.

October 26, 2013October 27, 2013

Halloween Comes to Me

When you turn into your motel and see something like this in the parking space next to you, you have to wonder if maybe you made a bad turn somewhere.

The young folks (I hope they are folks, since they are in rooms around and above me) were headed to the 39th annual Halloween party sponsored by the city of Athens and Ohio University.

I had just come from covering my first OU football game since since 1970. It wasn’t the 57 degrees and sunny promised. It was in the 40s, cloudy and with a brisk wind. I warned the gal in the blue costume that her skin would match her clothes if she stayed out very long.

It’s a wild party

The Halloween (and many other block party events) have the reputation for degenerating into public displays of drunken debauchery, sometimes ending up with cars being overturned and fires being started.

I was looking forward to covering my first Athens riot since the university closed in 1970 two weeks after four students were gunned down by the National Guard at Kent State.

The only problem was that it was cold, I was tired and parking spaces were non-existent.

So, when one of the kids asked if I would take their photo with one of their cameras. I honored the request, then decided I’d rather have Halloween come to me instead of me chasing it.

I’m officially old.

October 23, 2013August 14, 2015

O.U. Is Not Your Mother

A friend and I are going to do a presentation to the Ohio University History Association Thursday evening on the birth of the student rights movement in the 1960s.

Ohio University was a little more progressive than SEMO (where wasn’t?), but my friend Carol Towarnicky had to take a bus from Toledo to Athens during summer break to appear before a hearing board that could have expelled her for breaking curfew too many times. Fortunately, the editor of The OU Post, where she was a reporter, backed up her story that she was covering news events.

Quick video overview

Here is a quick overview of some of the material we will cover.

October 7, 2013

Twirp and Student Rights

Friend and former Ohio University Post colleague Carol Towarnicky and I are going to do a presentation on the early days of the student rights movement to the OU History Association on October 24. It seems that stuff we covered as news has now become history. Or, as I like to say, “History is news with whiskers.”

The deal was brokered by Jessica Cyders, curator of the Athens County Historical Society and Museum. She’s heard so much about Southeast Missouri that she’s doing a road trip back with me. So, y’all be on your best behavior while she’s in town.

TWIRP (The Woman Is Requested to Pay)

It was appropriate (and somewhat amusing) to run across these photos from Central’s 1967 TWIRP Dance while working on the OU show. This was the era of Sadie Hawkins Day dances (where the girl asks the boy for a date) and The Woman Is Requested to Pay (TWIRP) affairs.

Notice how the girl is holding open the door for the boy?

For some reason, The Missourian didn’t run a photo with school reporter Margaret Randol’s story that on the March 11, 1967, Youth Page.

Littleton & Hirsch are Mr. and Miss CHS

The story said Gary Littleton and Miss Mary Hirsch were crowned Mr. and Miss CHS at the Twirp Dance Friday night in the Central High School gymnasium.

Mary is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Hirsch, 1855 Thilenius, and Gary is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Wesley Littleton, 2540 Marvin.

Candidates

The candidates included Miss Jane Dunklin, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Dunklin, 839 Alta Vista; Miss Mary Hale, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lemro Hale, 2209 Brookwood; Miss Georganne Penzel, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. George Penzel, 1844 Woodlawn; Charles McGinty, son of Dr. and Mrs. Charles McGinty, 2435 Brookwood; Larry Johnson, son of Dr. and Mrs. Earl Johnson, 1044 Henderson, and Mark Kirkpartrick, son of Mrs. Wilma Kirkpatrick, 903 Bellvue.