The message forum is an ongoing dialogue between classmates. There are no items, topics, subtopics, etc.

Forums work when people participate - so don't be bashful! Click the "Post Message" button to add your entry to the forum.

David Mitchell

Mike,

Not retired. And not by choice. It will be a long way off for me. Lots of wrong choices in life - including NOT pursuing a career in aviation, which I absolutley loved. Funny thing is, I never got into my dream job - Real Estate Developer - with a 4 year degree in Real Estate Development no less.

I'd love to be able to just sit back and write the book that's been in my head for 45 years. 

-----------------

Donna,

I forgot David Crites in that same group from basketball. And BTW, your brother and (Mike?) Morris could also turn one of the smoothest double plays at "second & short" that I have ever seen. Almost an art form -  like ballerinas! 

----------------

And those ravines - growing up with the Overbrook ravine right behind my house was like a paradise. A short cliff with vines to swing out over the entire ravine, the creek itself to gather bugs and frogs and salamanders and stuff out of, and to skip rocks across, then damn it up to form ponds that froze over for "hockey rinks" in the winter. And dead limbs and small trees to cut down and build forts with. It doesn't get much better than that!

But it did!  They cut open Wynding Drive to connect us with Glenmont and started the construction of those new houses on the block. All of us guys on my street thought we had died and gone to heaven!  Is there any greater joy in life than to have "dirt clod" fights with teams on each side of the foundation excavation?  

Daniel Cody

Does semi retired count? I work 30 hours per week but not on Friday!

Beth Broadhurst (Murray)

Donna and Mike

Thanks for evoking sweet memories of the ravines of Clintonville. I grew up on the south side of Walhalla right behind the houses that sat on the top edge of the hill. We spent many a snowy day on our sleds careening through trees across the road and over the stream on other side. It became even more exciting on our new saucers, no control, no helmets! Donna was it your street Clinton Heights that was the road we also shedded down onto Wahalla road?There were also huge vines to swing across parts of the ravine and creek. We never gave it a thought those large vines might snap. Many exhilarating days of sweet unstructured adventures. 

Beth Broadhurst (Murray)

Whoops hate errors! Sledded

Deborah Alexander (Rogers)

Mike,

I'm still working too.  I love my job managing a law firm, love the people and the work!  My office is 10 minutes from home, and I have the freedom to come and go as I please.  30 days of paid vacation isn't bad either!  I'm in my 28th year here, after my earlier career teaching elementary school.  I'm sort of the resident Mom to everyone here, as well as the firm historian.  As long as I'm having fun, why quit?! 

Donna Kelley (Velazquez)

Beth, I think we used to take our sleds to Lakeview, the street behind us to go down the slope to Walhalla. Those are fun memories.   Not to worry about the typo...I only correct Mike's.  

David Mitchell

Dan,

Really!  That must be the 3rd or 4th time in two years that you've butted in with your long-winded diatribes. Hogging the forum like it was yours.  Do you mind?

(you're getting to be almost a bad as Nina)

Michael McLeod

Yes, now it's obvious to everybody, Donna targeted me. At least she admits it.

Donna Kelley (Velazquez)

Just some IC kidding around!

Lawrence Foster

Retirement Thoughts --  While I retired from going to a worksite and earning a paycheck I did not retire in the sense of retreating from the world.  I see some people do that and it saddens me.  With enough money saved and invested in a pension I just moved on to a new activity instead of working as a librarian even though that had been very satisfying.   

As most of you are aware my retired lifestyle has included art.  I also enjoy furniture refinishing and two years ago I joined a creative writing group and am learning about that.  I have also taken up swimming (3x a week) and other exercising (2x a week) to keep me physically active.  

What I like most about all these things is the process of learning to learn.  Whatever environment I am in if I can continue to learn and grow then that seems to bring me happiness. 

Earlier this month Peggy and I went to California for our grandson Samson's first birthday.  We got to do childcare and it was wonderful!  One day he took an extra long nap and I managed to do this sketch that I copied out of an art book.  When I finished it a good 2 1/2 hours had past.  I loved being lost for that time period.  On this sketch all I used was a mechanical pencil, an eraser, and a q-tip for blending.

James Hamilton, M. D.

David Mitchell

Jim,

I may be repeating myself but I seem to recall my dad explaining that a couple of the large older houses on North Broadway were part of the Underground Railway - includig two that had tunnels linking their basements at an angle across (and completely under)  N. Broadway. And I also seem to recall that one of those two houses was the one Mark Cantlon grew up in. Can anybody verify this for me?

Larry,

I'm in envy of your talents (and your sweet life)

Michael McLeod

wow.

I am starting to get a bit charged up about this walhalla story.

I might pitch a story to Columbus Magazine.

When I was up there teaching at osu for a stretch I got to know the editor, not sure if he is still around.

Beth Broadhurst (Murray)

Jim.

You are right about the ravines being part of the Underground Railroad. The old Southwick Funeral home on North High street (on the Walhalla Ravine) was a refuge. There is controversy about what will  happen now that the funeral home is closing.

Always enjoy the beautiful photos you post.

 Larry lovely sketch!

James Hamilton, M. D.

Fred Clem

Mike,

Ownership of Columbus Monthly magazine has changed hands at least twice.  Max Brown sold the Suburban News weeklys and CM to Dispatch Printing Co.  The Wolfe family then sold all print publications to Gate House Media.  There has been considerable change in management as well.

Fred Clem

Excerpt from a story on the sale of Southwick Good Fortkamp Funeral Home, Columbus Dispatch (04-06-2017).

The funeral home building contains the Clinton Chapel, which dates to 1838. According to the Ohio History Connection, the chapel was a stop on the Underground Railroad, where church members helped escaped slaves to freedom. Slaves often hid in the church’s basement.

The chapel became a private residence, then housed a speakeasy during Prohibition in the 1920s. In 1938, R.L. Southwick bought the building and opened a funeral home.

Lawrence Foster

My thanks to you folks for the compliments about the sketch.  I do appreciate the feedback.

Stories about Walhalla.  I am a bit unsure about this but here goes anyway. 

I have written a story that has a brief Walhalla scene in it.  I wrote this for my writer's group in April of last year.  So the fact that this topic is coming up here in the last few posts is like, weird (Cue the music from The Twilight Zone.)  I just posted the story on the User Forums and it is titled "Third and Michigan Gang."

On this forum there have been comments about stories from our teen years and stories of the Walhalla adventures that people had there growing up.  

I was rarely in that area during 7th and 8th grade at IC.  I had to use Google Maps to get things straight in my story.  I also searched for images on the web and found some too.  Beth, when I was looking at those maps I remembered that you lived near where I imagined my scene to take place.

There are two people who I need to thank for their unwitting contributions to this story.  First is Mike Del Bianco and his M.A.F.I.A. from high school.   To honor him I used his last name in the story.  The other person is one of our IC classmates who went to Aquinas and told the Italian all-weather tires joke that I used.  I will not mention his name as the joke may have some offensive words in it and I am the one responsible for putting it here.

Jim I do appreciate your specific encouragement about my writing attempts. Thank you.   

My intent in this story is to give a laugh in parts of it but also to reflect some of the times and possible experiences of growing up that I and maybe others might have experienced.  There is a lot of fiction in this story so don't take it as complete truth. 

Everyone feel free to give me feedback about the story.  Be it positive or negative I need to hear it if I want to get better at writing.  If you don't want to post it here just send me comments in an email.

Thanks.

Oh, one last thing.  The prompt for writing this story was to take a line from a movie and use it as your opening line.  I ended up having 7 quotes from various movies and they are listed at the end of the story.  See how many you can find as you read through it!

Michael McLeod

Thanks for the intel, Fred.

There was some good journalism in that mag a few years back. Don't know what it's like these days. The trend is toward fluff.

Fred Clem

Mike,

I suscribed to Columbus Monthly for years.  I dropped it about three years into the Wolfe's ownership.  It seemed to me that the quality of articles had diminished.  Can't tell you if it has improved under Gate House Media. 

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

For anyone interested in checking out all of the ways our Alma Mater has grown over 50+ years:

https://www.bishopwatterson.com/fill-truck-fridays/

P.S.  Hoping the Buckeyes can redeem themselves from their 2 regular season losses to Penn State!  Go Bucks

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

It is with great sadness that I write this post.  My son is a very close friend of Tommy Litzinger's daughter, Mia and he sent me this text which was sent out to all of her friends last night: 

Hi all - wanted to share some news with you. Mia lost her Dad earlier this evening.  As many of you know he had Lewy-Body Dementia and was in frail health, but overall pretty stable in assisted living. 

Yesterday AM he went into the ER after a few days of decreasing appetite, increasing weakness, abdominal pains and vomiting. They found out he had pneumonia, a mild bowel obstruction and a hernia. 

He was admitted and was improving on antibiotics and feeling better, but this evening he took a turn and it appears his body had done all of the earthly work it could do. 

Mia said he had a great day, and generally seemed more relaxed and peaceful than recent days. This was not a total surprise, but unexpected today. It was not his wishes to have a funeral, so it's not likely there will be any type of public service. 

Mia asked me to let you all know 🖤

David Mitchell

Thank You Mary Margaret,

WOW! I am almost speechless at this news!  I have just lost my first best buddy in life. I guess I should thank God we had each other in those younger days. Oh, the fun times we had together from about age 5 on up. Baseball, Basketball, Alter boys, double dates, raking leaves, telling jokes, and just sittin' around sharing our deepest thoughts. I am so glad Keith and I went to see him after the reunion a few years ago. It was a lucid, enjoyable, sweet hour or so together - just the 3 of us. And he still had his sense of humor - at one point in the conversation he looked at Keith and called me "big mouth". I loved him!  This is hard.

Tom Bomb Litz Spitz,

   the Duke of Earl. 

He deserved a better life.

May he be lifted up and glorified!

David Mitchell

Tom was in the Air Force. He had wanted so badly to be in the engineers section but a recruiting Seargent misled him into beleiving he was gauranteed that training. Tom wanted to be in construction when we all got out. But instead, they sent him to cook school, which he did for his 4(or 6?) years on active duty, but he really did not like it very much. If I recall correctly, when he returned he was stationed somewhere at an AFB in Montana and he would cook up multiple meals and be on a group that distrubuted them to those teams that manned the remote missile silos in out-of-the-way locations. I think he was proud of his time in the Air Force but never really got to do what he had hoped for. 

While he was in Vietnam, Tom was stationed up at Da Nang, one of our lagest bases in Vietnam and home to a large Air Force base, and a very large Naval Hospital. On my dad's second volunteer civilian medical tour (only 6 weeks at a time - at their own expensse), Dad and Tom got to meet on a few ocassions. Tom was part of our family - and I was part of his.  

For many who don't recall, Tom took over his mother's Real Estate Business in the Beechwold-Clintonville area. She was an agressive woman, who for a time employed one Dick Walker, until she was forced to let him go due to his repeated "indiscretions". Curiously, Tom's hopes as a future QB on the football team came to a screatching halt right after that. That always left a bad taste in my mouth regarding our "great coach". Some here will not appreciate this story, but I think I owe this explanation on behalf of my good friend.

And this is taking nothing away from Joe M., who turned out to be an excellent QB.

Michael McLeod

So sorry for his pain and the heartaches of those who love him.