USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume IV > Part 13
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Mildred Rees was educated in the public schools of Cleveland and the Hathaway-Brown School for Girls. She lived on Lake Shore Boule- vard until her marriage to John Jaster, Jr., the secretary and treasurer of the Uhl-Jaster Company of Cleveland and later divisional engineer of Cuyahoga County in the State Highway Department, while subsequently he became director of highways for Ohio. Mr. and Mrs. Jaster have two children: William Rees, twenty years of age; and Gail, aged ten years.
After their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Jaster removed to 3024 Wood- bury Road, Shaker Heights, where they lived until 1934, and then came to Columbus, their present residence being 1394 Lincoln Road. Mrs. Jaster was a charter member of the junior board of the Cleveland Wom- en's Hospital and was very active in promoting this splendid service until her removal to Columbus, where she is identified with various out- standing civic and welfare organizations. Deeply interested in women's work in politics, she has been active in the Democratic executive com- mittee of Cuyahoga County, serving as president of the public affairs committee and as a director of the reporter plan. She was director of the women's division at Democratic state headquarters for four years, became vice chairman of the Democratic state committee and is now serving for the fourth year as national committeewoman. Mrs. Jaster was manager of the women's Democratic state campaign in 1934 and directed the participation of women in the Democratic state and national campaign of 1936. Her interest in vital political problems is an effective force in advancing the growth and welfare of the party in Ohio.
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JOSEPHINE E. POWERS
Comparatively few women have entered the field of architecture, JOSEPHINE E. POWERS of Columbus being one of the three li- censed women architects of Ohio. She is now with the State Highway Department bridge bureau, for many years being the sole female mem- ber of a bureau where half a hundred men are employed.
Miss Powers is a native of Delaware County, Ohio, which was established by two men, one of whom was her great-grandfather, Avery Powers, showing the long connection of the family with this state. It was in the fall of 1801 that Avery Powers removed from Chenango County, New York, to what is now Delaware County, Ohio. His son, Benjamin, grandfather of Miss Powers, was one of the three founders of the First National Bank of Delaware, becoming its first president on its organization in 1845. Since then three generations of the Powers family have conducted the bank, Henry Powers, father of Josephine Powers, becoming its cashier. He married Rose Buffington, daughter of Joshua Buffington, of Quaker faith, whose ancestors came to this country with William Penn and founded the Quaker settlement in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Joshua Buffington brought his wife and children, together with their possessions, over the mountains with ox teams and wagon and settled in Champaign County, in Mad River Valley, where he became well known as a stockman, being one of the first importers of Merino sheep into that county.
Miss Powers supplemented her elementary education by study in Ohio Wesleyan University and later she attended Ohio State University and Columbia University, where she received thorough and comprehen-
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sive training fitting her for her chosen life work. She first opened an office in 1931 in association with Miss Marion Hindman, a close student associate of Ohio State University. When Miss Hindman mar- ried, her father, W. S. Hindman, an engineer, took over his daughter's office and later he also, like Miss Powers, became connected with the bridge bureau of the State Highway Department. In her present posi- tion Miss Powers is rendering a valuable service to the state and she measures up in her qualifications to the leading male representatives of the profession. Since her childhood she has had an absorbing desire to build things. Photography is her hobby and she maintains her own dark room, where she finishes her camera pictures. She makes her home in Columbus at 164 Brighton road, and when she desires relaxation from business goes to her log cabin in Hocking County, where she cultivates vegetables and enjoys the close contact with nature.
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BERNICE SECREST PYKE
BERNICE SECREST PYKE, residing in Brecksville, has the dis- tinction of being the first woman appointed United States collector for the port of Cleveland, which includes Erie, Pennsylvania, as well as all of Ohio, and is now serving for the second term in this position. She is recognized as one of the leaders of the Democratic party in the state and in fact has a much wider acquaintance in party circles than is cov- ered by the boundaries of Ohio.
Born in Frankfort, Ohio, March 22, 1880, Mrs. Pike is a daughter of Samuel Frederick and Mary (Miller) Secrest, the father a native of Guernsey County, Ohio, and the mother of Frankfort, while both were representatives of old families of the state, founded here in pioneer times. They removed from Frankfort to Chillicothe, Ohio, during the early girlhood of Mrs. Pyke, who attended the elementary and high schools there. From 1899 to 1901 she was a student in Ohio Wesleyan University and the following year was at Smith College, where the Bachelor of Arts degree was conferred on her in 1902. Following her graduation at Northampton, Massachusetts, she began teaching mathe- matics and spent the time between 1902 and 1905 as mathematics teacher in the high schools of Tuscola, Illinois, and Chillicothe, Ohio.
In the latter years, in Chillicothe, was celebrated the marriage of Bernice Secrest and Arthur Bovard Pyke, and they became parents of one son, John Secrest Pyke, who is now an attorney and who married Elma Bishop of Detroit, Michigan, while their family now includes a son, John Secrest Pyke, Jr.
Mrs. Pyke is a member of the Woman's City Club and the Business and Professional Woman's Club. She also belongs to the Methodist
BERNICE S. PYKE
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Church of Brecksville and is identified with the League of Women Voters, giving active and loyal support to the Democratic party. Her early activity in Cleveland was in connection with the woman's suffrage movement and from that time forward she has been an earnest worker in behalf of the Democratic organization. She was vice chairman of the executive committee for Cuyahoga County until appointed United States customs collector at the port of Cleveland, and in this position she has jurisdiction over fourteen offices, having been reappointed June 24, 1939, by President Roosevelt for a second term of four years. Her public activities have also included fourteen years' service as a member of the board of education of Lakewood, Ohio, which office she resigned to accept appointment as a member of the board of elections of Cuyahoga County, rendering four years' service to the latter position. Again she resigned to take a place in Mayor Miller's cabinet, being the first woman to serve on any mayoralty cabinet in Cleveland. She was also the first Democratic national committeewoman for Ohio, filling that office for sixteen years, and she was the first woman in the United States to be elected to a national political convention. She has thus pioneered in various fields and her qualities of leadership are marked. She is also well known as a public speaker who makes direct appeal to her audiences, her logical and straightforward statements carrying con- viction to the minds of many of her hearers.
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ANNE GERTRUDE MCCARTHY
ANNE GERTRUDE MCCARTHY, director of personnel of the Cleveland Public Schools, to which position she was appointed on Octo- ber 6, 1938, climbed the ladder of success by the hard route, working her way up from the bottom rung. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, educated in West High School, Cleveland, and received her Bachelor and Master's degrees from Western Reserve University, Cleveland. She started out as an elementary teacher, had class room experience in the three divisions, elementary, junior and senior high, graduated from the classroom into the position of assistant principal, then as acting principal and from the assistant principalship walked into the position of director of personnel, one never before held by a woman in the Cleve- land system.
In addition to her practical experience for the position she now holds, Anne McCarthy has the faculty of liking people and the ability to get along with them, it matters not their temperament or disposition.
When not busy with personnel problems, Mrs. McCarthy devotes her leisure time to her hobbies of music, reading, the movies, the radio, and automobile touring on week ends and for vacations.
She is a member of the Mathematics Club, the National Education Association, and the College Club, Art Museum Association, the Wom- en's City Club, League of Women Voters and a life member of the National Council of Catholic Women, all of Cleveland.
ANNE G. MCCARTHY
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RUTH HANNA MCCORMICK SIMMS
RUTH HANNA McCORMICK SIMMS, of Cleveland, Ohio, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, former member of Congress, newspaper pub- lisher and social leader, was born in Cleveland, a daughter of the late Senator Marcus A. and Charlotte Hanna. She was educated in private schools, at Dobbs Ferry, New York, and at Farmington, Connecticut, and on the 10th of June, 1903, she married Medill McCormick of Chi- cago, who died February 25, 1925, after serving as a member of Con- gress, as United States Senator and otherwise participating actively and influentially in public affairs and matters of national concern.
The deep and constant interest of Ruth Hanna in civic, industrial and political problems began when she was scarcely out of her teens and has continued throughout the intervening years to the present. She has worked zealously with the Women's Trade Union League and the Girl Scouts Association, the Consumers League and as a member of the American Association for Labor Legislation. She has membership in the Business and Professional Women's Club and in Republican women's organizations. She joined the Progressive party in 1912 and took active part at headquarters in the national campaign. She served in the sev- enty-first Congress and she was the Republican nominee in Illinois for the United States Senate in 1930.
In 1932 Ruth McCormick was married to Albert G. Simms, Con- gressman from New Mexico, and for the past seven years their home has been at the Los Poblanos ranch near Albuquerque. She is the active publisher of the Rockford (Illinois) Consolidated Newspapers, publish- ing a morning and evening newspaper and operating a small radio sta- tion. She represented the Illinois Consumers League as a member of
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the state board before the Illinois Legislature in 1915, working for a child labor bill, and she was a member of the Woman's Club for Civic Improvement in Chicago. She was also Republican national committee- woman from Illinois from 1924 to 1928 and she has been a member of various women's clubs in the states in which she has lived.
Educational interests have also won her cooperation and she is a trustee of the Fountain Valley School, a boys' school at Colorado Springs, Colorado, and was the founder of the Sandia School, for girls, at Albuquerque, New Mexico. Another interest of her life, which might be termed a hobby, has been her active support of the development of purebred Holsteins. She owned and operated a certified milk plant at Byron, Illinois, and served as a member of the National Certified Milk Association. In relation to Holstein cattle she bred her own herd up to one of the leading herds in America and brought a part of the herd to New Mexico. She has membership in the Holstein-Friesian Association and in the Certified Milk Producers Association. Mr. and Mrs. Simms have exchanged the Illinois farms for the famous two hundred eighty- four thousand acres of the Trinchera ranch in Colorado, where they conduct cattle and sheep raising, which takes Mrs. Simms into the field of beef cattle and sheep. Her activities are indeed wide in scope and varied in purpose, but at all times have a constructive underlying basis, upon which rests some phase of public welfare for individuals or for the community, commonwealth or country at large.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Women In Journalism, In Publicity And In Radio (Continued from Page 1232)
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BERNICE WILLIAMS FOLEY
BERNICE WILLIAMS FOLEY (Mrs. W. Massey Foley) educa- tional director of WKRC, Cincinnati Times Star Radio Station, has done more than build outstanding radio programs. She has met real educational and cultural needs so definitely that listening to her talks, reviews and interviews has become part of the daily life of thousands seeking authentic information as well as clever entertainment.
Still in her twenties, Bernice Foley has had unusual experiences and opportunities for acquiring personal knowledge of far off people and places. Immediately following her marriage to Mr. Foley, who was connected with the Standard Oil Company in China, she left with her husband for the Orient. They lived in China for three years, during which period Mrs. Foley devoted herself to intensive study of Chinese art and literature and to the philosophy which is keynote to the char- acter of this great people.
Lecturers on these and related topics have now become an important part of her work. One of her most popular radio programs deals with famous women of history, whose lives, character and personality are outlined by Mrs. Foley with rare deftness and depth of understanding.
Bernice Williams was born at Wigginsville, Ohio, the daughter of Karl H. and B. Y. Williams. Her father is a prominent business man and her mother has won national fame as a poet of talent and distinction. Bernice was educated in the Cincinnati public schools, at National Park Seminary, Maryland, at the University of Cincinnati and at Columbia University. She is a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma Sorority, of University of Cincinnati Alumnae, and is treasurer of Cincinnati Branch, League of American Penwomen. Residence of the Foleys is at 4037 Victory Parkway, Cincinnati. They have two children, Billy and Karlanne.
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ETHELYN CHESBROUGH LEWIS
ETHELYN CHESBROUGH LEWIS (Mrs. Frank Stuart Lewis) refutes many of our cherished beliefs. Known as a great beauty, she possesses a brilliant mind and wit. "To be thought dumb just because you are passably good looking, is the fate of any woman," wails Mrs. Lewis, "who is born into the so-called society set. Without the right clothes I was never any better looking than anybody and I have had to live to see what looks I had fade before anybody even suspected that I had an ounce of gray matter."
However that may be, Mrs. Lewis when nearing her eighteenth birthday was chosen because of her beauty to be Queen of Wamba, a magnificent pageant linking the new Toledo in the Western Hemisphere with Old Toledo, Spain. The Spanish king sent the Marquis de Villa- lobar to represent his country at the celebration and money was spent like water in Toledo, Ohio, to make the event outstanding. That was thirty years ago and no pageant has since excelled Wamba save the Mardi Gras at New Orleans. The writer of this article caught his first glimpse of Ethel Chesbrough as she sat atop the Queen's float in that now historic Wamba procession. So exquisite was she-this raven haired daughter of Abram Chesbrough-with her hauntingly beautfiul eyes and her ivory skin that the picture has remained ineffacable. This was in August of 1909. That same October Ethel Chesbrough became the bride of Frank Lewis, son of C. T. Lewis, member of the famous law firm of Doyle & Lewis, corporation lawyers. In a year her first child, Nancy Jane, was born and a year later, a second daughter, whom, in disappointment that the baby had not been a son, they named Ches- brough.
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Young as she was, Ethel Chesbrough early took things into her own hands. She had rechristened her husband before marriage, giving him as a middle name a family patronymic, Stuart, not handed out at the baptismal font. Her wedding invitations and announcements had gone proudly forth, Frank Stuart Lewis, name destined to become famous in the life of Toledo, and not a little because of the glamor of his wife.
Born of the valiant Chesbrough stock, her mother the beautiful Belle Brown, daughter of a pioneer Toledo family, Ethel early showed that independence of character and behavior which had led her grandfather, Alonzo Chesebrough (note the original spelling) to come to Toledo on his way to the great north woods of Michigan. Lumber people they had always been, and the ways of the woods were an open book to A. Chese- brough. Arriving at nightfall at Toledo's then swank hotel, the Oliver House, this plain woodsman in hip boots and woolen shirt asked the room clerk for bed and lodging. He carried little or no baggage and, as is the way with room clerks, the rough and ready Chesebrough did not look any too welcome a visitor to the young custodian of the inkwell. "You'll have to pay for your room in advance, Mr. Cheesebrough," he murmured with insulting emphasis on the first syllable of the name. Taking a roll of bills from his pocket so large that it fairly frightened the foolish clerk, Mr. Chesebrough peeled off the top one and proffered it. "Take it out of that," he said succinctly. It was in present parlance a grand note-$1,000-the first probably ever to reach the desk of the Oliver House. From that time on the name Chesebrough, later changed to its present form of Chesbrough, became synonomous in Toledo for money. Abram Chesbrough, son of the before mentioned Alonzo and father of Ethel, paced off his new holdings in the virgin forests of northern Michigan on foot and there they are today, thousands of acres, the property of Mrs. Lewis and her only sister, Mrs. Paul Kirchmaier, also of Toledo.
Ethel Lewis likes to say she was brought up in a lumber mill town and this is partly true, for each summer the family went to the town of Emerson, Michigan, founded and owned by her father, and lived there. Servants went along, of course, but the food at the camp table
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eaten with the hungry lumbermen intrigued small Ethel far more. Per- haps it was from early contacts with these rough but honest and forth- right men, that Ethel Chesbrough first acquired the democratic ten- dencies, which in after life were to lead her far afield from the narrow social set into which she was born.
The Chesbrough family lived at what was known as "The Inn", where the priests trying to convert the lumber workers, the patient nuns, millionaire lumbermen from the East and every type of traveler was made welcome and comfortable for the night, and there was no charge. Emerson is fifteen miles from the railroad, so Mr. Chesbrough early had turned his summer home into an inn where all might find lodging for the night. In this environment little Ethel was perfectly at home-she was the pet of the Inn and grew to love the gentle priests and nuns most of all.
All her married life she has maintained friendships in every strata of society-among newspaper folk, the musical set to which she has pronounced leanings, herself studying voice, piano and harp, and among business and professional people of every type. This same democratic tendency led her early to want to do something herself in the work-a-day world. Possessing a real flair for writing, she met some little success with poems and articles for the less known magazines and at one time she acted as society editor of the Toledo Blade, incognito, doing a re- markable job of it and delighting in her contacts with members of her set who quite high-hatted the poor society reporter! All this time she was interested, too, in amateur dramatic attractions, taking part in many, in musical productions, singing valiantly in the choruses, but most of all in charitable movements, for hers is a heart full of sympathy for the underdog, wherever found. Mrs. Lewis was chairman of the committee which raised the money to establish the Women's and Chil- dren's Hospital on Summit Street.
During those affluent days before the 1929 crash Mrs. Lewis financed a talented Toledo singer seven years in Italy, only to reap disappoint- ments when the girl's voice or temperament failed to achieve the bril- liant success which Mrs. Lewis felt within its reach. Yet she had no
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regrets for the thousands of dollars thus invested in a vicarious career on the operatic stage and still considers the money well spent.
When the dark October day of 1929 laid her fortune low, Mrs. Lewis set her face to pay every financial liability, legal or moral. Build- ing after building in the downtown business sector, inherited from her father, went under the hammer. Her beautiful new home, designed as a perfect replica of a Versailles chateau, she sold and poured the money into the slowly decreasing sand pit of, to her, honorable debt. Her friends marvel when she appears as a guest in the house she built for a lifetime home and which fitted her personality like a gem, but she de- clares she is happy to see someone own the estate who can do for it what she had planned to do.
Outside of New York and Paris Mrs. Lewis was one of the first so- called society women to go into business. She owned and operated a dress shop, known as the Lorel Shop, on Jefferson Avenue for several years. In Toledo at that time it was difficult to overcome a feeling against a wealthy woman-for that she still was-taking business or work away from the more needy. So she sold out her shop and turned her attention to newspaper work. For more than a year she furnished a weekly feature to the Toledo Sunday Times, which because of her social connections and her entre into the finest homes in the city, proved of tremendous worth to the paper. During this time, when she began to understand the problems of the newspaper photographer, with whom she had many dealings in securing art for her feature stories, she her- self became greatly interested in photography-a hobby which she has pursued diligently up to the present time. In her travels, which have been extensive, and here at home she has aimed her camera at the most interesting and fascinating angles and her work has been gladly ac- cepted for reproduction in the newspapers and magazines. Nor has she restricted her efforts to the camera end of the game. She has a well equipped dark room in her studio on downtown Erie Street and herself does all her own developing and enlarging. Always skillful with her hands and never afraid to soil their beauty, she dabbles contentedly in the chemical solutions used in developing, emerging often with stained fingers.
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Ethel Lewis should have been a man, and what a success in life she would have made! Too much energy and too much initiative have set the gossip going time after time in her colorful and gay life, but with all her daring and originality the tongue of slander has never been able to reach any of her activities. Devoted wife and mother, the best house- keeper and cook in town, her perfectly managed menage is the wonder of friend and foe alike. For such strong personalities as Ethel Lewis meet with unkindness as well as acclaim. To be better looking than one's associates is in itself a definite hazard. Those days are now gone by and no one recognizes the fact more than Mrs. Lewis. Still handsome and smart to the nth degree in line and figure, nearing fifty and proud of it, a grandmother at forty and delighted to be, Ethel Chesbrough, Toledo's most talked about daughter, enters a period in her life when she has the admiration and respect of every man and woman in the city that gave her birth. Charitable in her judgments, true friend and wise coun- sellor, she enters upon her later life with happiness and assurance.
A devout Episcopalian, Mrs. Lewis rejoices that her husband, life- time staunch Baptist, has joined her in membership in the little Epis- copal church in Maumee, near their present home in Perrysburg-a century old house which Mrs. Lewis with her innate flair for decorating and her impeccable taste has restored and transformed into a real home. Her Sunday afternoon teas and her simple dinner parties draw the smartest groups to gather anywhere in this section and her ready wit makes her and her equally brilliant husband the most eagerly sought after guests in the social register. Living in Europe while her children were in school and a linguist of no small attainment, she has a wide acquaintance in the most select circles in New York, where she spends much of her time. Her first love, however, is and always has been Toledo.
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RUTH REEVES LYONS
RUTH REEVES LYONS, one of the ablest and best known radio women of the Middle West, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, October 4, 1908, the daughter of Samuel and Margaret Reeves. She attended High- lands Public School, Withrow High School and Liberal Arts College of the University of Cincinnati. While at the University Ruth was an active member of Delta Delta Delta Sorority, Zeta Chapter, and won a prize for music awarded by U. C. Both music and drama were keen interests during her high school and college days. She wrote and di- rected production of several successful musical shows.
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