A LITTLE ROHR FAMILY HISTORY TO BE PROUD OF. THE BARN'S STILL THERE.

The 1888 Jacob Rohr barn raising was a major event for the Rohr family and more than 200 neighbors and friends. They assembled on the Ohio Route 241 site in Jackson Township where Shady Hollow Country Club is today. While the men worked on the structure, the women, according to the late Albert Hise, former Massillon Museum curator, provided 110 beef roasts, five hams, 100 loaves of bread, and 100 pies. 

Photographer Theodore C. Teeple, who operated The Trio Galleries in Massillon, Wooster, and Ashland, is believed to have photographed the event, creating an image that would be seen internationally eighty years later. He recorded the event on a glass plate negative measuring 8.5 by 6.5 inches. (It is possible that Massillon photographer Louis Volkmor, who did much of Teeple’s work outside Wooster, actually photographed the barn raising.) 

Glass plate negatives, sometimes called the wet plate negatives, were created by the collodion process. They were prevalent from 1851 until about 1900. It was the first widely employed photographic process using a negative image on a transparent photographic medium. The previously popular daguerreotype produced a one-of-a-kind positive image on metal that could not be replicated easily. Employing the collodion process, a photographer could create an unlimited number of prints, typically on albumen-coated paper, from each negative.

The barn raising plate was stored with many significant glass negatives in the Yost Building at 46 Erie Street South in downtown Massillon. In 1957, as the third floor of that building burned, firefighter Walt Shafrath recognized their historic value and rescued the plates that have become part of the Massillon Museum’s permanent collection. 

The photograph first appeared publicly in the 1968 American Heritage coffee table book, American Album, as a double-page spread. Seven years later the publisher used it in another large format volume, Hometown U.S.A. The Museum immediately received requests from around the world to reproduce the barn raising photograph. It has appeared in history, business, sociology, psychology, geography, and architecture texts. The national United Way organization printed the image on the cover of its 1981 annual report. When the Ohio Historical Society used it the same year on a fund-raising booklet, they provided the Museum with a copy negative, which eliminated most of the disfiguring blemishes and allowed the original glass plate to remain safely in storage. 

Murals of the photograph have hung in the headquarters of the U.S. Postal Service and in Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., as well as in a number of U.S. embassies. The American Film Institute used the image for a 1973 government-funded film, The Far West. President Reagan’s special task force on volunteerism used it—and asked the Museum to volunteer the print free of charge for their cause. America the Beautiful, a non-profit corporation assisting communities with environmental improvement, published a large Rediscover America poster featuring the barn raising. Reader’s Digest featured the photograph in their advertising campaign for a set of 

presentation pages to accompany the volunteerism commemorative postage stamp. 

One of the most innovative applications of the image was the brainchild of Sunkist Orange Growers, who used the scene as the pattern for their 1982 Rose Bowl Parade float. Men waved carpentry tools and a hat from the top beam while Miss Arizona and Miss California rode below. 

The Massillon Museum introduced the barn raising locally on the cover of its 1980 membership brochure. Whatever the use of the Rohr barn raising photograph, it always illustrates the spirit of sharing, helping, working together, or volunteering.

MY NANNY

On this day, May 3, in 1910, my maternal grandmother "Nanny" was born. When I was born 46 years later, she was living in East Los Angeles and my grandfather had since passed. 

My parents lived with her the first few years of my life (the first pic). Later, after my parents moved to their own home, a trip to "Nanny's house was always magical...especially at Christmastime when her house was filled with the smell of tamales. 

As the second eldest of many grandchildren, I got to know Nanny like few of the other grandchildren did. I was especially close to her. Not that I was her favorite. She was just that kind of a person. It was easy to feel close to her. 

Other than sitting at her table gorging myself at Christmastime with tamales, one of my other best memories of her was when she came to visit us at our house. She would park herself at the kitchen table, smoke cigarettes and sip her Hamm's beer. She didn't read the paper, watch TV, or do anything. 

She was just there and always available to anyone who wanted to sit with her and visit. She never talked about herself and never gave advice. She just listened and empathized and made you feel loved. 

She died in 1986 without a complaint and without notice. 

Requiem Aeternam Nanny.

IN MEMORARIUM. CLETUS ROHR. APRIL 27, 2022

My Father, Martin Henry Rohr, was the 11th of 14 children borne to Elmer and Helen Rohr. 

Two of my Father’s elder sisters died at childbirth, and his next eldest brother, Albert, and for whom my own bother +Albert (1989) was named, died in a childhood accident in 1934. 

Of the 11 children who survived to adulthood, there were born sixty children, of which, I am grateful to be one. 

As of yesterday, there were only two surviving children of Elmer and Helen Rohr. 

Today there is one.

Unexpectedly, on this day, April 26, my Father’s next youngest brother, named “Cletus” and whom we 60 grandchildren called “Uncle Cletie,” (except for, of course his three children who called him “Dad”), passed from this world to the next. 

For Catholics, in case the name “Cletus” sounds familiar (and it should) Cletus was the third pope after St. Peter and he is named in the Roman Canon which is required to be said at all Sunday Masses (though this rarely happens):

“In union with the whole Church, we honor Mary, the ever-virgin mother of Jesus Christ our Lord and God. We honor Joseph, her husband, the apostles and martyrs, Peter and Paul, Andrew, [James, John, Thomas, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon and Jude; we honor Linus, Cletus, Clement and Sixtus…”

I never really knew “Uncle Cletie” until the mid-70’s. My dad had met a Mexican beauty in Southern California while stationed in San Diego during the Korean War and thus SoCal is where I grew up. 

But, as the picture demonstrates, my dad, always made special efforts, and at great expense in those days, to travel from SoCal to Ohio so that we might know our Ohio family.

In the mid 70’s, and even while still in high school, I saved my money from mowing lawns and other kid jobs so I could fly back to Ohio where I would spend my summers for the next decade (and some winters) with my many uncles, aunts, and cousins.

The Ohio Rohr’s were a hard bunch, having been raised by the tough WW1 veteran, +Elmer P. Rohr who carved a living out of the hard Ohio ground for 11 children.

And suffice it to say I learned to cuss and drink at Uncle Elmer’s milk house after a hard day of bailing hay during those long, hot, hard, summer days. (+Uncle Elmer was named after my grandfather.)

But those are stories for another post (including the story about my wife and I being the only other Rohr’s to raise 11 children). During those visits I came to know Uncle Cletie and his family. 

I must say that Uncle Cletie was the only Rohr uncle I never heard a curse word from - an oddity in my family. He was the cleanest, most innocent, caring, loving person I ever knew, in our family or out.

In fact, for years after I last saw him, he continued to call me almost every other week. His calls were always short. He just wanted to tell me that he loved me. 

Amazing. 

About two weeks ago, I was at my mother’s home in California, preparing to go back to Guam. Uncle Cletie called. I was in the middle of some stressful stuff. But I thought (or the Holy Spirit told me) “you never know when it is going to be the last time.”

It was the last time.

I had no idea then that it was going to be the last time. His voice sounded strong and loving as usual. 

I despise the modern trend to place our relatives immediately in heaven upon their death. I won’t get into the theology of that. 

But if there ever was a relative who, immediately upon hearing of his or her death who I knew went straight to heaven, it was Uncle Cletie. 

And as if to confirm that - after hearing of his death - I was thumbing through FB stuff and came across a post that today, the day Uncle Cletie died, April 26, is the Feast of St. Cletus, the third pope after Peter, and the only other person in the whole world I ever knew who bore the same name. 

Pray from me St. Cletus II.

NANNY AND ME IN 1981. WISHING HER HAPPY BIRTHDAY IN 2022

 

TIMMY. 1986. W UNCLE RONNIE. MY FATHER'S YOUNGEST BROTHER. ARIZONA.