Tag: Reminisce

On a hot summer day in a world without widespread air conditioning, Lima’s new bus company stepped up with an offer of inexpensive access to an oasis of evening cool.

Members of the 24th graduating class of Lima High School posed for a class photo as they prepared to enter a world already much changed during their school years and made nearly unrecognizable in the 135 years since.

Two and a half weeks before marching bands, a stunt pilot and “Diablo the Human Torch” entertained some 50,000 people at the dedication of Schoonover Park, the man most responsible for making it all possible quietly tried out the park’s recently completed swimming pool.

Barbara Birkmeier was born in Delphos to Carl and Mary Birkmeier on Feb. 17, 1937. She grew up in the city’s comfortable confines; the notable events of her childhood — birthday parties attended, Brownie troops joined, academic awards won — regularly chronicled in the Delphos Courant and Delphos Daily Herald. As a teenager at St. John’s High School, she sang with the glee club, landed a role in the senior class play, received merit medals for her classroom work, served on the yearbook staff and graduated in 1955.

Dan’s Candyland was leveled a long time ago to make room for Lima’s Central Fire Station, but the confectionary and its owner, Dan Pellegrini, who served up ice cream and life lessons from behind its marble counter for nearly half a century, are alive in the memories of many.

Lima reached the middle of the 20th century feeling pretty good about itself.

WAPAKONETA — It was the product of 17 months of construction, a roughly 60-foot by 120-foot project bordered by Mechanic, Willipie, Pearl and Perry Streets. In the nearly 129 years since then, however, that Berea sandstone structure known as the Auglaize County Courthouse has become a staple of downtown Wapakoneta and a treasured symbol of Auglaize County, which is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year.

When Common Pleas Judge Benjamin F. Metcalf, a Democrat who sat on the bench during the divisive days of the Civil War, died at his West Market Street home in the last days of the war, the Democratic newspapers were quick with praise.

On April 17, 1861, five days after the start of the Civil War, the call to arms to put down the rebellion reached Lima in the form of a notice in the city’s Weekly Gazette newspaper.

In the final hours of the final day of his life, Washington Clark wrote a last letter to his wife in Ohio.