Reminisce: Lima’s McClain was a man who thought for himself

Elmer McClain was born in 1883 at the family farm and died there nearly eight decades later in 1963.

In between, he became a lawyer, was a founding member of the Progressive party in Ohio, fought in World War I, married four times, served a contentious stint as Lima public services director, observed the weather, argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and, along with his last wife, was among the first Americans to visit the Soviet Union during a 1957 thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations.

“Elmer McClain was a student of economics and history,” Lima Citizen columnist P. Read Marshall wrote after McClain’s death. “He stood for a square deal for the common man and some of his pronouncements cause eyebrows to rise in certain sectors of Lima’s business world. …Elmer might have been ahead of the times, but he stood firm for his convictions…”

The Allen County Bar Association, a group he helped found and later left, paid tribute to McClain, who “made all possible effort to be accurate in everything he undertook,” including a list he compiled of all the men from Allen County who served in World War I.

The bar association resolution also recalled some of his eccentricities, particularly a “distinctive beaver cap” he wore during cold weather as well as his unique signature. “He signed his name in such a way that no living human being could possibly decipher it, but it has been said and should be noted here, that the multitudinous loops in the signature were not always identical; however, he insisted this was his signature, and challenged the whole world to prove that it was not.”

McClain was born October 26, 1883, on the family farm on the Greenlawn Road, one of three sons of Lonzo and Ida Belle Zurmehly McClain. “The McClain farm, located a mile south of Lima on the Greenlawn road (McClain Road), was started by Lonzo McClain, 600 South Main street, who became one of the leading importers of Percheron and Belgian horses in the early 20th century,” the Lima Morning Star and Republican-Gazette wrote in March 1930. “He is now retired and two sons, Harry and Howard, are continuing the horse business, while a third son, Elmer McClain … still owns half the old homestead.”

The sprawling McClain farm stood west of what is today McClain Road where it is intersected by Interstate 75. Today, much of the site is occupied by a Federal Express distribution facility, although as recently as 1986 a Lima businessman operated a horse farm and riding stable called Bukiet Roz (Polish for “bouquet of roses”) on part of the farm.

Elmer McClain, though he lived on his family’s old homestead and called his home Runnymede farm, chose a path which differed from his father and brothers. William Rusler in his 1921 history of Allen County wrote that McClain “attended country schools, the Lima High School, the Ohio Northern University, Adelbert College, Oberlin College and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1909.

“While pursuing studies in the above named institutions he was, as his finances demanded, farm laborer, carpenter, janitor, solicitor and teacher,” Rusler continued. “During the four years of college work preceding graduation from the University of Chicago he remained at home one year in the absence of a brother at college and was for two years principal of a high school in Indiana which was commissioned by the state as a first-class high school upon his scholarship.”

McClain completed his law studies at Western Reserve Law School and was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1912, the year he began practicing law in Lima. In May 1917, he volunteered for service in World War I and would be away for nearly two years working in the Army Transport Service as a quartermaster on ships carrying freight to France.

While on duty on a ship sailing for Europe in December 1918, shortly after the end of the war, his first wife, the former Rebecca Lonsford, died during the Spanish flu epidemic. In 1920, he married the former Mildred Jacobs but they separated by 1929 and he married the former Netta Viola Runyan, who died in 1950. In 1952, he was married to the former Hazel Smith, a commercial artist, who was prominent in the Lima Art Association.

“He was director of public service of Lima during 1920 and 1921, until the commission form of city government went into effect, during which time he was the despair of old guard politicians, long favored public utilities and business and politically controlled newspapers,” Rusler wrote.

McClain, as the Allen County Bar Association had noted on his death, was “a man who thought for himself.” In 1912, the year he was graduated from law school and began practicing in Lima, he quit the Republican Party to form the Progressive party in Ohio. Former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt ran as a Progressive against his one-time protégé William Howard Taft in the 1912 election, splitting the Republican vote and leading to the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

During the Great Depression, McClain served as an attorney for the national Farm Moratorium program, which sought to protect farmers from bankruptcy. The first test of the Frazier-Lemke farm moratorium was heard in federal court in Columbus, and McClain was involved. “Brief defending the constitutionality of the bill was written by Elmer McClain, of Lima, counsel for the Ohio Farmers’ Union,” the News reported in December 1935. McClain would eventually argue 11 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Closer to home, McClain served in a different capacity. “Beginning from the last of May 1933 and continuing until March 1941, the official observer (for the weather service) was Elmer McClain at Runnymede Farm,” the Lima Citizen noted in a November 1958 story.

In the late 1940s, in the wake of post-World War II labor disputes, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, whose supporters claimed it would assure a balance between labor and managements. McClain did not agree. Speaking on Lima radio station WLOK in 1947, McClain, according to a 1976 county history, said the law struck a balance “in about the same way a Belgian soup maker defended his advertisement that his soup was half rabbit and half horse meat by proving that he put into it one rabbit and one horse.”

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, McClain often served as attorney for labor unions and their members hauled into court for strike actions.

In July 1957, during a thaw in relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, McClain and his wife joined a group of 24 other Americans on a trip through the Soviet Union. In eight weeks, the Lima Citizen wrote in an October 1957 story, the group traveled 16,000 miles through the country. The couple shared their trip, which included a meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, in a series of articles in the Citizen.

“People are people everywhere,” McClain told the Citizen. “The Russian people are basically no different. They’re just as curious about us as we are about them. Hazel and I would start talking to a couple of persons and soon there would be a crowd gathered around us, sometimes as many as 50.”

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SOURCE

This feature is a cooperative effort between the newspaper and the Allen County Museum and Historical Society.

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See past Reminisce stories at limaohio.com/tag/reminisce

Reach Greg Hoersten at [email protected].