USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume III > Part 31
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Mr. and Mrs. Rogers and their son live at 16320 Nela View Road, East Cleveland. Winifred Rogers is an outstanding member of O. N. W. A. and of the Cleveland Women's Press Club.
CARLOTTA PRICE SHEA
CARLOTTA PRICE SHEA, society editor of the Daily Examiner, Belle- fontaine has enjoyed an uninterrupted career on this newspaper since 1902. This consecutive service of more than 37 years entitles her to the honor of being one of the oldest newspaper women in the state from the view point of service.
Mrs. Shea also conducts a life insurance agency, which has proven very successful, judged commensurately with the time she could spare for it.
Carlotta was born at Bellefontaine, the daughter of the late Judge John A. Price and Caroline McClure Price. She attended the Bellefontaine public schools and the preparatory school at Evanston, Illinois for two years, before entering Northwestern University for a four-year course.
On October 11, 1894, Carlotta Knox Price was united in marriage with Thomas M. Shea, an attorney of Bellefontaine, Ohio and they made their home in Bellefontaine, where their daughter Mary Allison was born. This daugh- ter is now the wife of Elwin M. Hentze. Their home is in Cincinnati and Mrs. Shea's grandchildren, Thomas, John and Carlotta Anne, bring her full and complete happiness.
It was necessary for Mrs. Shea to exercise great resourcefulness after the death of her husband in 1925. This loss came after her return from a Euro- pean tour with her family and shortly after her father had died. She found that hard work helped most.
Mrs. Shea is a descendant of forbearers who have given honorable service to the country and to Logan County, Ohio.
She was one of five children born to her parents. A sister, Annie A. Price, served as principal of the Bellefontaine High School from 1900 to 1915 and was known as "Queen Anne" by thousands of schools boys and girls. She died in 1933. Mrs. Thomas S. Gladding, of Easton, Maryland, the only surviving sister of Mrs. Shea, has given a notable and outstanding service to the Young Women's Christian Association of the United States. As student secretary she visited institutions of learning throughout the country and spoke
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before numerous bodies of students interested in Christian work and in Chris- tian living. She later became General Secretary of the American Committee's Staff.
Mrs. Gladding was also chairman of the foreign department of the board for a number of years. At the same time she was also a member of the World's Young Women's Christian Association, with headquarters in London, England. Mrs. Shea's brother-in-law, Thomas S. Gladding of Easton, Mary- land has long been internationally known because of his discoveries in chemis- try.
Judge John A. Price, father of Mrs. Shea was an attorney of outstanding ability. He began the study of law at the age of 19 in the office of Stanton and Allison, Bellefontaine, Ohio. In 1861 he enlisted as a private in the 13th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, the first company organized in Logan County, Ohio, for service in the war of the rebellion. He was subsequently commis- sioned First Lieutenant.
His ancestors on both sides were Virginians and his paternal grandfather was Samuel Price, a captain of the Virginia Line on Continental Establish- ment in the Revolutionary War. In 1881 John A. Price was elected Common Pleas Judge, comprising Logan and Union Counties, being re-elected in 1886 and again in 1891, holding the office continuously for 15 years, a record without parallel in the history of the judiciary of the district.
Carlotta Price Shea, who won tennis honors at Northwestern University and who was early trained in other strenuous sports, believes that youthful physical exercise is helpful toward a successful business life. Although Mrs. Shea has been very much occupied in business, she has found time for mem- bership in important clubs and organizations and is an ardent member of a leading church in her home city.
Mrs. Shea is a past vice-president of the Ohio Newspaper Women's As- sociation, having been elected shortly after it was organized.
KATE BROWNLEE SHERWOOD
Members of the Ohio Newspaper Women's Association have good reason for paying tribute to the memory of KATE BROWNLEE SHERWOOD. She was one of the organizers, at Toledo, O. in 1902, of the association and was elected its first president.
She was one of the few newspaper women of any state to work her way up to an executive position. For ten years Kate Brownlee Sherwood was editor of the Toledo Journal. She was a poet. Her "Flag That Makes Men Free" is said to have had a circulation of 100,000 copies.
She organized and was vice president of the Women's Auxiliary of the Grand Army of the Republic, merged in 1883 with the Woman's Relief Corps. She was a leader in the women's suffrage movement, in movements for parks
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and children's playgrounds, in the Ohio Federation of Women's Clubs. She edited, while in Washington, D. C., the woman's department of the National Tribune, official organ of the G. A. R. and she served various newspaper syndicates at the same time.
Mrs. Sherwood was born at Poland, O., the daughter of Judge and Mrs. James Brownlee. She was married in 1859 to Isaac R. Sherwood, who was made a general in the Civil War. He was secretary of state two terms, 1869- 1873; member 43rd U. S. Congress, 1873-1875, declined renomination; editor Toledo Journal; editor Canton, O., News-Democrat, 1888-1898; member of six successive Congresses March 4, 1907 to March 3, 1921; served again in 68th Congress, 1923 to 1925; retired to private life in Toledo. He died Oct. 15, 1925.
Although she shared responsibilities as well as honors of her husband's career, this did not prevent Kate Sherwood from making a fine career of her own. She was a constant contributor to magazines and other periodicals, had published two volumes of verse and helped to bring into the world what has become the best statewide Newspaper Women's Organization of the country-the O. N. W. A. She died in 1916.
ESTHER SMITH
ESTHER SMITH (Mrs. Walter Ellsberg), was born in Wyandot County in 1901, the daughter of John Randolph and Mary Elizabeth Mclaughlin Smith who moved to Bucyrus the same year. She was graduated from Bucyrus High School and began newspaper work by writing society for the Daily Forum. Soon afterward the paper consolidated with The Evening Tele- graph and since 1923 Esther Smith has been woman's page editor, general news and feature writer.
Since 1931 she has been Bucyrus correspondent for The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Columbus Citizen and Toledo Times.
She has served the Ohio Newspaper Women's Association as recording secretary ; is a member of the Bucyrus Business and Professional Women's Club and for the past two years as publicity chairman of this organization. Esther is a member of the Women's Participation Committee of the New York World's Fair; has worked on the Woman's Hospital Board, the Cen- tral Welfare Council Board, as organizer of the Bucyrus Community and as a trustee for four years.
Actively interested in music, dancing and dramatics, she was pianist with a Bucyrus dance orchestra for two years and had her own ballroom dancing studio two years.
Miss Smith was married in 1937 to Walter Ellsberg, theatrical producer formerly associated with the late Richard Boleslavski. motion picture director.
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NINA PUGH SMITH
On the occasion of the first Cincinnati convention of the Ohio Newspaper Women's Association, about 15 years ago, the then city editor of a leading paper made an impromptu talk on good English. He said he could unhesitat- ingly name, out of all the newspaper women he had ever known the one with the best command of clear cultured and yet concise newspaper English.
The writer of this biography flushed with pleased expectancy. She knew good English when she read it, did she not? And when she wrote it. Her stuff had been making page one, every now and then, here lately had it not? As a matter of fact
She listened eagerly. "And so," the speaker was saying, "because her words are the simplest, her style the clearest, her fitting of sound to sense the closest of any woman writer I know, I do not hesitate to name, as tops in this connection, NINA PUGH SMITH, music critic of the Cincinnati Times- Star."
Partly, doubtless, to conceal her sudden and secret deflation, the present biographer joined heartily in the applause.
Partly for this reason, but by no means altogether, for, as a matter of fact-and this was a matter of fact-the man was right. Only one did not think of music or dramatic columns, did one, in "spotting" the day's best stories ? One had not hitherto but one surely would in the future. And so another O. N. W. A. shop talk helped a writer to better understanding of her craft.
Nina Pugh Smith was born in Cincinnati, the daughter of George E. and Theresa Chalfont Pugh. The Pughs came from South Carolina in 1819 and were all stout Democrats. But when George Ellis Pugh, Nina's father, who was born in Cincinnati in 1822, served in the Mexican War, was made at- torney-general of Ohio in 1851 and U. S. senator from 1855 to 1861, attended the National Democratic Convention at Charleston, S. C. in 1860, he de- nounced scathingly the demands made by pro-slavery partisans on northern Democrats.
"You would humiliate us to the verge of degredation, with our hands to our mouths and our mouths in the dust" he said.
Nina Pugh's early childhood was passed in the beautiful old home (then at 3rd and Lawrence Sts.) given by her maternal grandfather to her mother as a wedding present. Her mother is said to have been one of the most beautiful women of her day. People stopped in the street, turned around to verify their dazzled glimpse of her radiant loveliness.
Nina was educated at Sacred Heart Convent, then sent to Boston to pursue her music studies. She had a fine contralto voice and an innate under- standing of music technique as well. Both gifts were developed still further by two years of intensive study in Paris, France-part of the time under Rosine LaBorde.
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This was after her marriage to the late Evans Smith and lead to ex- cellent offers to the already well known contralto to take up a professional career.
This she later did but not as a singer. Orchestra music had long in- terested her, she had become familiar with all that was best in this field of music-had learned much of the special technique of ensemble playing, hardly realizing that she had done so when, several years later, opportunity was presented of joining the staff of the Times-Star as music critic, she was well prepared.
The late Mrs. Charles P. Taft was at the time one of the most deeply interested sponsors and supporters of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and as wife of the Time-Star owner and publisher, helped to obtain good space for news that dealt with worth-while music, wherever it it was being pro- duced.
Prestige of Mrs. Smith's work was enhanced by the position she soon acquired throughout the country as an authority in her special field of orches- tral music. But no opportunity offered elsewhere has detached her from her first and fortuitous newspaper job. Fortuitous to other newspaper workers as well, if only through discovery that all good writing is not found on page one.
PAULINE SMITH
All round ability of PAULINE SMITH, reporter, columnist and feature writer of the Columbus Citizen, has won her a distinctive place among Ohio newspaper women.
She was born in 1893 at Coshocton, Ohio, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Barkdell Smith. Her mother has long been a leader in civic, club and welfare work, interests which early extended to her daughters, Pauline and Florence (Mrs. Joseph Horchow).
Pauline attended Columbus elementary schools and graduated from Center- burg High School in 1911.
She entered Western College for Women in 1912 and started working on The Coshocton Tribune in the summer of 1913; then on The Coshocton Times- Age and on the merged papers when The Tribune bought The Times-Age.
A special wartime service with the Emergency Fleet Corporation at Phila- delphia interrupted her newspaper career, which she took up again as reporter on The Columbus Citizen in 1920. Pauline Smith has belonged to the Ohio Newspaper Women's Association since 1918; was secretary of the O. N. W. A., 1922-23, and president, 1926-27. She is an associate member of Theta Sigma Phi.
EMMA SPENCER
EMMA SPENCER, columnist of the Newark (Ohio) Advocate, has won wide recognition for her skill in photography. She has exhibited her photographs
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in this country and abroad and has won medals in various competitions. Miss Spencer was born at Brownsville, Ohio, the daughter of Benjamin and Susan Spencer. Her home is at 159 North Fourth Street, Newark.
VIRGINIA DADSWELL STURM
VIRGINIA DADSWELL STURM, born in Lafayette, Ind., majored in music and dramatic art and became an editorial staff member of the Dayton Daily News as writer on music, art and drama in 1932.
Mrs. Sturm's special ability in the field of music and of the theater was developed by study at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and by special training in New York and in Detroit. She mastered the technique of voice, piano, violin, pipe organ, harp, ensemble, choral work and accompanying.
Specializing in vocal work, Mrs. Sturm has appeared in numerous radio programs and recitals. She was a pupil of Dr. Fery Lulek, of Minnie Tracey and of Milan Petrovic at the Cincinnati Conservatory, of Rudolph Szekely in Detroit, of Anna Ziegler in New York and of Edward Molitmore in Cincinnati and Dayton.
Mme. Calva, considered by many the world's finest Carmen, offered a four- year scholarship to Virginia when the latter was barely sixteen.
The marriage of Virginia Dadswell to Julius Sturm, cello soloist and per- sonnel manager of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, provided unusual oppor- tunity for familiarity with great orchestral compositions as well as for acquaintanceship with the world's greatest musicians.
Dramatic connections included the Bonstelle Company at Detroit and the George Sharp Company. Mrs. Sturm founded the Dayton Playhouse Group, later reorganized as the Dayton Civic Theater. She was president of this group, also of the Allied Arts Society of Dayton.
Virginia Sturm has contributed to numerous magazines and has made many lectures on music, theater, motion pictures and leisure time occupations. She is editor for motion pictures, music, drama, art and of the woman's page of the Dayton Daily News.
Organizations in which Mrs. Sturm is active include the Ohio Newspaper Women's Association, D. A. R., American Penwomen, Sigma Alpha Iota and the Dayton Women's Press Club.
ALLENE SUMNER
Ohio newspaper women who read Silas Bent's "Ballyhoo" when this keen survey of the modern newspaper appeared, in 1927, were startled to find there set down, in detail, a discussion of the "pattern story" which marked a spirited O. N. W. A. "shop talk" program at a convention a year or two previous.
At this shop talk a woman reporter and feature writer, whose ability had already lifted her out of the rank and file, spoke her mind on editors who
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insisted on stories written in accordance with moth eaten dramatics. She was sick and tired, said the feature writer of depicting the murderess as the "tragic pawn of fate" and of harlotry as "defeated womanhood."
The O. N. W. A. member to whose protest Silas Bent devoted an entire and highly approving chapter was the late ALLENE SUMNER, formerly of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Cleveland News and the Cleveland Press and later star woman feature writer for the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
Virtually all newsmen and newswomen who had opportunity of judging the work of Allene Sumner gave her place of honor in her profession. The writer of this biography goes even further in regarding Allene Sumner as the best all round newspaper woman she has ever known.
Take for instance, Allene Sumner's story on "Old Lady Remus." Reporters and human interest writers, this biographer among them, had, it was thought, exhausted every angle of the famous "Remus Case"-said to have been the first big victory of the United States Government in its war on bootlegging- before Miss Sumner was sent to Cincinnati to dig up something new.
She did. She discovered that Remus not only had a living mother but that she had been living right there in his now shattered home, hidden away by her own wish, lest her broken speech and homely ways injure the social aspirations of her seemingly successful son.
Allene was born in Mt. Eaton, O., Dec. 26, 1895. In 1928 she received, with honors, her B.A. degree from Baldwin-Wallace College. She had trained for library work but presently joined the staff of the Cleveland News as a feature writer. She later went to the Cleveland Press, then to the N. E. A. and at the time of her death, in 1930, was a columnist on the staff of the Plain Dealer.
Miss Sumner was the first president of the Cleveland Women's Press Club and was later president of the Ohio Newspaper Women's Association. Her memory is honored by her local and state colleagues by whom her keenness of observation, depth of human understanding and gift of expression will long be remembered.
STELLA WEILER TAYLOR
STELLA WEILER TAYLOR, newspaper and magazine writer and for more than a third of a century a well known educator of Hamilton, in which city she was born and still resides, is a daughter of Eugene and Josephine (Straub) Weiler. Her father was a hotel man and was also publicity man of the John Robinson circus for a number of years. To him and his wife were born two children.
The daughter, Stella, was reared in Hamilton, where she has always lived with the exception of one year, and at the age of seventeen she began working on the Hamilton News, since which time she has been more or less closely con-
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nected with journalistic activities. The year after her marriage to Robert Taylor, son of Congressman Taylor, was spent in Canton, Ohio. Her husband had served in the Spanish-American War and was on active duty in the Philip- pines. After the years spent in Canton, Mrs. Taylor again became a resident of Hamilton and resumed her connection with the News. In a short time, too, she began teaching and for thirty-six years was thus connected with the Hamilton schools, never losing a day from her classes during that entire period. In addi- tion to teaching she continued her newspaper work and her writing for other publications, and while she has now retired from the educational field she still writes a Saturday column for the Daily News under the name of "Rosemary." She has also been a contributor of articles to numerous magazines and for years has been a writer of verse. Her name is familiar to the readers of Good House- keeping, Little Folks and Smart Set, in which her articles have appeared at various times and her early work was sponsored by James Whitcomb Riley. She is also the author of plays and pageants, which have been widely used.
Mrs. Taylor is an honorary member of the Musical Arts Club, is treasurer of the Literary Society of Hamilton, belongs to the Altrusia Club, also the Unity Club and for twenty-five years has had membership in the Modern Drama Circle. Her political endorsement is given the principles of the Republican Party. She is active in the work of the Episcopal Church to which she belongs, and she is a woman who is greatly beloved by all because of her kindly spirit and sympathetic understanding. Among her true friends she numbers many whose names are widely known in theatrical, art and literary circles throughout the country.
HELEN DEKAY TOWNSEND
When Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, was still a residential district traversed by rakish "dogcarts" and "Victorias," HELEN DEKAY TOWNSEND was issuing her earliest "bluebook." For 30 years she has gotten out this authori- tative register of Cleveland society and approximately for the same period she was editor of Cleveland Town Topics.
What Helen Townsend does not know about the socially elect who constitute her copy is negligible. Genealogists refer to her in identifying branches of old family trees, hostesses refer to her nice questions of social usage, dowagers and debutantes prefer her approval of their plans to that of any other social leader.
It is said that on one occasion Helen Townsend "covered" nine weddings in a single day. In other cities when doubt is raised on any question of social usage, "ask Emily Post" is the customary comeback. But not in Cleveland, at least not in the inner social circle of today as well as yesterday. "Ask Helen Townsend" is the answer, almost every time.
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ALICE VAN SICKLE
We are beginning at the end of the life of ALICE VAN SICKLE, Carding- ton (Ohio) newspaper woman, who died in harness at the age of 86.
There is a reason for this writing in reverse. Alice Van Sickle herself would have chuckled grimly at the story. It concerns a pilgrimage made a year or more after the death of the veteran newspaper woman, in 1932, to her last-and perhaps her first-resting place.
Nothing could have seemed more peaceful or more pleasant than the little cemetery at Cardington as five O. N. W. A. members, all personal friends of the dead newspaper woman, drove in and sought the lot which was now her home. But the live newspaper women were not so peaceful. A dreadful misgiving had suddenly assailed them.
The monument man-had he, perchance, lost patience and taken away the marker ? He would have been fully justified. Half the cost of the little stone installed by the O. N. W. A. to mark the grave of their old comrade was still unpaid. The only reason the whole cost was not in default was that the other half had been generously contributed by the women's journalistic sorority of Columbus.
Poverty, while no disgrace, can get the best of organizations down. Because of the depression, more than half of the O. N. W. A. membership owed dues for a year or more. Many had lost their jobs, how could they pay ?
But how, then, could the O. N. W. A. pay, even for so primary and pressing an obligation as a gravestone ?
It couldn't and it hadn't but it certainly intended to. So the obvious answer had been-so what? Until the sudden fear that the marker had been reclaimed paled the cheeks of the pilgrims. So overcome was the car driver that she parked immediately, although the spot was soft and soggy from recent rains.
But the marker was there. Rah, rah, the marker was still there-and duly inscribed with Alice Van Sickle's name and the fact of her O. N. W. A. membership.
How that would have pleased her-and how and now, somehow, the mag- nanimous marker maker must and should be paid. These were engrossing matters until the newspaper women got back to where they had left their car.
But where was the car? Or rather where was the rest of the car. Or do you see what I see and can such things be ?
Bogged to the midriff, sinking deeper every minute, the car was obviously going down for the last time.
Awful hours sped fantastically by. Night fell numbly. An important board meeting was incredibly delayed, the hospitable hostess outrageously incon-
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venienced, before the neurotic newspaper women could even start on the res of their journey.
Even so, all strained backward for a last well satisfied glimpse of the darl mound and its white marker. "Wouldn't Old Alice have laughed ?" they said
Alice Van Sickle was born in Richmond, Va., in 1846. She began writing stories for newspapers and small magazines when she was 14 years old. She wa: contributing to five newspapers at the time of her death. For one of them, the Morrow County Independent, she had written for more than 30 years.
Her homely philosophy and kindly interpretation of the news of the day went out over the air as she broadcast her "radio column" once each week. Ir addition to the recognition in her home state, she had a taste of national fame as the "86 year old reporter."
When Alice Van Sickle began writing, slavery was an issue. It was not long after Stephen Douglas visited her home town to take part in one of his famous debates. The active part her father took in the political situations that occasioned the great differences of his time endangered his life. News columns in those days were not filled with news, but with the expression of vehement opinions and bitter prejudices. There was little chance for writers impressed with the reactions of ordinary people to their daily life.
Yet so deep was the journalistic urge that Mrs. Van Sickle kept on writing. After she married other duties claimed her time and strength. Life was never easy. Often it was much too hard. Often she came near to giving up her work, but she never quite did.
Always she had been a helper. She helped her father, a reformer in advance of his day. She helped her husband, an invalid. She managed a home for him and her daily work as well. Later she helped men cut off from life by peniten- tiary bars. She pioneered. She was the first woman in the country to join the typographical union.
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