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The Granville Historical Society Oral History Project 2001 - 2002
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31) National and International EventsImpact Granville
Home Births were Safer Than Hospitals (1900-1920)(Ed Deeds) I was born on the shore of Lake Erie. My father was the chief engineer and sales manager for the Lorraine Steam Shovel Company. They had a farm up there on Lake Erie just west of Lorraine and all of the children were born in that farmhouse. Actually, back in those days (1900s to 1920s) everybody was born at home. Very few went to the hospital. In fact, it turned out that the ones at the hospital generally had higher mortality because of childhood fever. It wasn’t until a guy named Semmelweis in Vienna realized that it was the doctor’s carrying this childhood fever around with them and not using clean cloths and knives and such. One of my siblings was born in a hospital, and when it came time to take her home the nurses brought in a child who was obviously not ours! So my mother wouldn’t have her last two children born in the hospital because she didn’t trust them. So we’ve always kidded my sister that she wasn’t really a member of the family, but we got her by mistake.
Pearl Harbor and Granville’s Ace Pilot(Jim Gordon) I had a newspaper route when I was fourteen. It was the New York Times, Sunday New York Times, we did not deliver the daily. So I was delivering the paper, Sunday December 7th, 1941. Now the papers normally didn’t come in until around 2:00 in the afternoon. And I had fifty or so people on the New York Times route then I also carried probably half a dozen other newspapers, just by special request for students at Denison, like the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Pittsburgh papers, Chicago Tribune, New York Herald Tribune too. So, I’d picked up the first batch of papers at the southwest corner of Pearl and Summit. And I had just gotten down and delivered the paper to Professor Utter’s house which is the southeast corner of Pearl and Elm and somebody told me about the Japanese having dropped the bombs on Pearl Harbor. What I remember so well is later on when I was up at Curtis Hall, which was a men’s dormitory then, their attitude was, "Why, we’ll wipe those guys out in thirty days, maybe it’ll take us two months." Nobody had any respect for the military power of Japan; we all thought of Japan as a producer of cheap toys. I hated to get a Japanese made toy because it was cheap and it would fall apart. But what a surprise the Zero [ a Japanese fighter plane ] was. Mitsubishi produced quite an airplane when they produced that Zero, but that was the reaction up on the hill. And that wasn’t unique to Granville or Denison, it was the attitude around the country; “We’ll clean ‘em up in a hurry.” Mac Burriss, who’s older than I am, lived up on Cedar Street. And Mac had been a lifeguard out at Spring Valley Pool. He was a good athlete. I remember seeing him play volleyball. He enlisted and ended up as a Marine pilot and we followed with interest his exploits because first he shot down one Zero then two, three and four and then the word came back he was an ace. I think Granville’s only ace probably ever. And but then a couple weeks after that it was reported he’d been shot down. Which was devastating news.
Sister Act Puzzles Servicemen(Ruth Sipe) During World War II, my sister was a cashier at the local movie theatre and I was the ticket taker. Now at that time we had three units stationed in Granville -- one they called V-12, and an army unit and we had some Marines here too. So I used to see a lot of the servicemen because the movie was the only recreation they had. They would come in by the droves. And some of the guys would say, “What do you do? Sell tickets then come around and take them?” Because I looked so much like my sister. Then another guy said, “Didn’t you just wait on me down in the drugstore?” That was another sister. They were quite puzzled by it all. They thought they saw me everywhere they went!
Impact of September 11, 2001 (Jeff Pound) I think 9/11 shattered this easy security and confidence that no one could really attack the United States. And I think for people to realize that hundreds of people could go off to work someday and then never come home has made people think about how real is our lives? How close are we to each other? It was interesting that some of the people who were on airplanes or in the World Trade Center who knew they were destined to die, they all wanted to call the people they loved and say, “I love you.” When 9/11 happened, it reminded people that no matter how big or fancy your house is; it’s the love and the closeness with people that really counts. |
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