Virginia Frances Beck Etheredge, outspoken advocate of the union, was a positive force in helping to establish better relations between industry and labor.
Born in Lasca, Ala., and being one of nine children, Etheredge understood the importance of working together for the good of the whole. It was this thinking that enabled her to stand up for the rights of coworkers at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company during the labor strikes of the 1930s.
Having moved to Akron with her husband, Wiley J. when they were first married, Etheredge received the endorsement of Labor’s Non-Partisan League to serve as a council representative for factory workers. She won the election and became the first woman in that office.
Etheredge was known in her neighborhood as a champion for causes involving the underdog. Her membership in Goodyear’s Local No. 2 of the United Rubber Workers (U.R.W.) was no different. She also served as the first recording secretary for the union. A skilled spokesperson, she used this ability to insist that Akron City Council find a way to work out problems between labor and industry.
When she was not involved in disputes between labor and industry, Etheredge worked on the Akron Recreation Commission. She and her husband were parents of one son, William J., and she was keenly interested in the parks and playgrounds of Summit County.
Etheredge was killed in a car accident in 1964, even as her name was on the ballot for a third term re-election. Always true to her long-held beliefs, in the November 3, 1937 issue of the Akron Beacon Journal, Etheredge is quoted as saying, “I want to have a part in bringing about the rehabilitation of Akron-the city without labor strife, instead of one of the leading cities with it.”
Photo courtesy Woman’s History Project of the Akron Area
Cheryl Crawford, probably one of the most influential female producers on Broadway ever, got her start directing plays in her family’s Merriman Road home in Akron.
Crawford, who successfully brought “Brigadoon,” “Porgy and Bess,” “One Touch of Venus,” “Paint Your Wagon” and others to Broadway, was the daughter of Robert Kingsley and Luella Elizabeth Crawford. Her father was the owner of a successful real estate firm (Crawford Real Estate); her mother cared for the four Crawford children.
The eldest of the children and the only girl, Crawford went to grade school and high school in Akron. She then went on to the exclusive Smith College, where she majored in drama. Because she was so tall, she played many of the male roles in the Smith-College productions. But Crawford never wanted to be an actor. She always wanted to be a producer.
After her graduation from Smith College (she was briefly expelled for smoking off campus during her senior year but her grades were so good that the administration relented and let her graduate), Crawford headed for New York City. Using her inheritance, Crawford enrolled in the acting school of the Theatre Guild, even though she had no acting aspirations and admitted as much to the school director and company producer Theresa Helburn. Crawford was allowed to stay because she had the money for the tuition.
After graduation, she went on to be an assistant to a director for the Theatre Guild’s stock company in upper New York and worked part-time, played poker and bottled bathtub gin to pay the bills. In the process, she was getting the experience and contacts she needed to produce. As assistant stage manager on “Pygmalion,” she worked with actor Lynn Fontanne. She worked with famed French director Jacques Copeau on a production of “The Brothers Karamazov” that featured Alfred Lund, Edward G. Robinson, Fontanne and Clare Eames. By 1929, she was experienced enough to take charge of a company heading off for London.
By 1931, Crawford — tired of the Theatre Guild’s lack of focus — made plans to move on, by creating her own company (with Lee Strasberg), The Group Theatre. Building on a group of 28 actors, among them Clifford Odets, Stella Adler, Robert Lewis and Franchot Tone, the group wanted to become a true company so the actors, directors, producers, writers and crew went off to Connecticut to bond and rehearse. Crawford’s primary responsibility in all this was arranging the needed finances, no mean task during these Depression years.
The early Group always seemed to be short of money. Most of the early productions – many of them critical successes – failed to have a long run in New York. Finally in 1933, the Group had its first commercial success, a production that Crawford had pushed for, “Men in White,” a medical drama that won the Pulitzer Price and played in New York for 311 performances.
That didn’t set the pattern, however. Subsequent productions were often critical successes but commercial failures. In 1936 Crawford resigned from the company. As she recalled in her autobiography One Naked Individual: My Fifty Years in the Theatre (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1977), “I felt exhilarated, even cocky, to be on my own. I was going to do great things, bring to audiences distinguished plays, quality entertainment” (p. 103).
Crawford became enormously successful as an independent producer. She started the Maplewood Theatre and brought such actors as Helen Hayes, Bojangles Robinson, Ethel Barrymore, Ingrid Bergman, Tallulah Bankhead, Paul Robeson and others to the stage. Broadway theatre owner Lee Shubert was so impressed with the Maplewood’s production of a revival of Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” that he arranged to bring it to Broadway. It became a critical as well as commercial success.
After “Porgy and Bess,” Crawford decided to concentrate on musicals. She then brought “One Touch of Venus” to the stage, signing Marlene Dietrich to the production. Dietrich withdrew, however, when she saw the final script that she said was “too sexy and profane.” So Crawford turned to Mary Martin. Directed by Elia Kazan and choreographed by the legendary Agnes deMille, “One Touch of Venus” was a critical and commercial success, with the production taking most of the top prizes at the first Donaldson Awards. Soon she had other musical successes on Broadway, “Brigadoon” (1947) and “Paint Your Wagon” (1951).
In 1946, she set up yet another company, the American Repertory, with friends Eva LeGallience and Margaret Webster. That company included an impressive array of actors, including Eli Wallach, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., William Windom and Julie Harris, and investors, including William Paley of CBS, Mrs. Samuel Goldwyn and others.
In 1947, she resigned because she was going to start one of the most important acting schools (with an associated theatre) in the nation. She, Elia Kazan and Bobby Lewis created the Actors Studio (Lee Strasberg, the individual most closely identified with the Studio, did not come aboard until 1951). The Actors Studio is credited with training some of the most important actors of the 20th century: Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, James Dean, Sidney Poitier, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Steve McQueen, Joanne Woodward, Jane Fonda, Geraldine Paige, Shelley Winters, Ann Bancroft and many more. In 1976, Crawford reported that Actors Studio graduates had received 98 Academy Award nominations and 21 Oscars. Since then, the number has probably doubled.
Crawford was given the hardest job at the school. “My major task was to keep us solvent,” Crawford recalled in her autobiography. The theatre failed but the school (now under actor Al Pacino’s guidance) continues today. As Crawford explained, “Lee (Strasberg)’s great gifts are teaching and inspirational guidance, not administration and management” (One Naked Individual, p. 227).
Crawford experienced her greatest Broadway successes before 1954. The years 1954 to 1974, she wrote, were lean ones financially and emotionally. Although she had successes with “Sweet Bird of Youth,” “Brecht on Brecht” and “Period of Adjustment,” she also had 15 productions that failed during those two decades.
Her emotional trials were worsened by her wrangling with Sen. Joe McCarthy and his committee on Un-American Activities and the destruction of her home in Connecticut by fire. Her financial situation was worsened when a trusted assistant embezzled a good deal of money from her. Through it all, however, she continued to produce plays.
Crawford died in New York City on October 7, 1986. During her life, Crawford produced more than 100 plays and helped create one of the most successful acting schools in the nation. She was well regarded by other producers, directors and actors.
In September 2002, the New York Public Library celebrated her contributions to the theatre with the Crawford Centennial. Her papers are located in the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the University of Houston Library.
All photos are reprinted from Cheryl Crawford, One Naked Individual: My Fifty Years in the Theatre (Indianapolis & New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1977). Middle photo shows the Group Theatre directors, from left, Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford in 1931 (photo from the Blackman Photo Service). Bottom photo shows rehearsals for “Strange Interlude.” From left, Cheryl Crawford, Pat Hingle, Ben Gazzara, Jane Fonda, Franchot Tone and Geraldine Page (photo by Joseph Abeles).
Ruth Boleman Conner is a familiar name in the Akron education. She taught school, served as an administrator and then served on the board of education. But there was more to Ruth Boleman Conner.
Born Ruth Boleman in 1897, Conner received her BA from Smith College in Boston. She began her teaching career at a high school in Nashua and earned a Master’s at Columbia University.
Conner moved to Akron in 1928, where she became a history teacher at Old Trail School, an exclusive private school in the Akron area. In 1931, Conner took over as acting principal.
Two years later, the same year she became principal of Old Trail, she married Chester F. Conner, a former Beacon Journal reporter who was the general manager of sales at BFG Industrial Products. Conner stayed on as principal long enough for Old Trail to find her replacement.
Once Conner married, she moved into a new stage of life. While living in Boston, Conner studied the violin and followed the Boston Symphony Orchestra closely. In Akron, she helped begin the Akron Symphony Orchestra by co-chairing the committee that got the orchestra started. In 1939, she was a member of the Akron Chapter of the National Committee for Music Appreciation.
Conner’s contributions were not just with the arts. She spent 11 years as a volunteer on the committee for the Family Services Board. Conner was a member of the League of Women Voters, the Akron branch of the United World Federalists (a group seeking global solutions to problems), and the Women’s Auxiliary of Summit County Children’s Home. She also served as president of the Smith College Club of Akron from 1934 – 1938.
After World War II, she re-entered education, teaching part-time as an English instructor at the Akron Art Institute. She was elected to the Akron Board of Education in 1947.
Conner had three children, Evelyn, Grace and George. She died in Lake Worth, Fla., in 1989 at the age of 92.
Photo courtesy of The University of Akron Archives.
Frankie Renner, Akron’s first woman licensed pilot, tried to set the women’s world altitude record. She failed because of equipment problems, she argued. But flying was only one part of her life. She went into radio and produced one of the first programs for women on WADC, Akron.
Renner was born in Sugar Creek, Ohio, in 1897; but she lived most of her life in Akron.
Renner was 30 years old when she earned her pilot’s license (#7410). She had paid for her lessons at the Hugh Robbins Flying Service at the Stow Air Field (now the Kent State University Airport) with the small inheritance from her father, a real estate dealer. Renner said she was absolutely “fascinated” by flying and nothing was going to keep her from it — not even the antics of her flying instructor who did everything he could to frighten her.
In 1927, she finally won her license. In 1930, she earned another license (#314), this one signed by aviation pioneer Orville Wright. That same year Renner was a member of the 99s, the International Organization of Women Pilots organized by aviatrix Amelia Earhart and attended its first convention in Chicago.
In 1931, she was ready to set a record – the women’s world altitude record. Renner was positioned for the move. She had connections with the Waco Plane Company, a manufacturer of biplanes. At the time she was the manager of the air field in Stow and salesperson for the Robbins agency, the local distributor of Waco planes.
Waco outfitted a special biplane for her. (Planes at the time had no cockpit; goggles were the only windshield.) Renner gave up her parachute to lighten the load. On March 13, 1931, Renner, dressed in electrically heated flying clothes, boarded her plane and took off. Her plane climbed for 3-1/2 hours. She soared about 6 miles above the earth. Her altimeter froze and stopped registering at 28,000 feet, she remembered. Then her plane “shuddered and behaved queerly,” when the temperature dropped to 30, 40 even 50 degrees below zero, she told the Plain Dealer. Her goggles were frosted over and she couldn’t get them clear. Her lips started bleeding from the extreme cold and low pressure. “I really was frightened, it was so cold, so deathlike, so unreal,” she said. Renner started down, sure that she had broken the record. She landed “breathless and blue.” But the government said she was 3,700 feet short of the record. Renner always argued that she had broken the record but the government-certified equipment had frozen during the flight. Although she promised to try again, Renner never did.
Instead in 1932 she earned her commercial license, becoming Akron’s first female transport pilot, and started taking passengers and cargo across the Midwest. In 1933, her flying career ended when a fire at the Stow airfield destroyed a hangar and the uninsured planes inside.
After that, she looked for another career and she found it in radio. She took a job as an administrative assistant to aviation enthusiast Allen T. Simmons, owner of radio station WADC (now WSLR). Early on, she produced one of the first programs for women in Akron, a 15-minute segment on fashion and homemaking. She stayed with WADC until her retirement.
Renner died in a nursing home in Millersburg, Ohio, in 1985. She was 87.
Ruth Emma Alderfer Oenslager’s contributions to the Akron area can be seen on many different levels. She helped found and became the first president of Junior League in the city; she’s been generally credited with saving Akron’s Loew’s Theater (now the Civic) from destruction; and she donated her 102-acre family farm to the Medina County Park District (now the Alderfer-Oenslager Park). Notwithstanding all those contributions, she preferred her occupational affiliation best – painter.
Born in Katytown, Medina County, on Nov. 12, 1892, she was the daughter of John Melvin and Estella Santee Alderfer. Her father ran a mill in Medina County. Well educated for the day, she attended Oberlin College. She then went on to study still life at the Cleveland School of Fine Arts. She continued to paint throughout her life.
Alderfer never fit neatly into social expectations for women of the day. She went to Columbia to be trained in occupational therapy. When World War I broke out, she went to France as an occupational therapist.
After the war, she returned to Akron. In 1923, she along with Mrs. George Crouse Jr. and Mrs. R.G. Shirk started the Junior League of Akron. The early Junior League appeared to have some sort of association with Blanche Seiberling’s Babies Aid Society which assisted the Mary Day Nursery/Children’s Hospital Women’s Board. Many of the women of the Babies Aid Society along with Alderfer, Crouse and Shirk became the core of the Junior League.
The influence of the Babies Aid Society can be seen in the initial work of the Junior League. The organization was committed to three types of work — with the sick and unfortunate in the hospitals, with the working and foreign girls in the city and with children. By 1930, the Junior League had taken over responsibility of running the Mary Day Nursery, which was a part of the Children’s Hospital organization. All members had to volunteer 75 hours of work each year. Alderfer became the first president.
During the 1920s and 1930s, when Alderfer was especially involved, the Junior League was involved in many activities. In the 1920s, members worked in City Hospital, establishing a patient’s library and making surgical dressings. In the 1930s, the group provided occupational therapy at Goodrich School.
Alderfer also served as one of the founders and an early president of the Women’s Overseas Service League in Akron (Mary Gladwin Unit) and a board member of Goodwill Industries.
In 1939, Alderfer, 47, married 66-year-old George Oenslager, a prominent chemist with Goodrich Tire and Rubber.
Throughout her life, Alderfer Oenslager traveled the world and painted. After her husband died in 1956, she split her time between Akron and the family farm in Sharon Township.
In 1965, she was generally credited with saving the beautiful Loew’s Theater in Akron from the wrecking ball. When campaigners couldn’t raise the money needed to save the theater, she stepped in to make up the difference. Bill Vielhaver, an accountant who participated in the fund drive, remembered that the group needed $22,000 to buy the building and set up the foundation. Oenslager stepped in, held the mortgage and eventually forgave the debt.
In 1975, she donated her 102-acre family farm in Sharon Township to the Medina County Park District. Alderfer-Oenslager Park remains a testament to her generosity.
When Oenslager died in 1992, the Beacon Journalremembered her many contribution to the Akron area.
Mary Elizabeth McGowan was characterized as the “Susan B. Anthony of Summit County politics” by the local Akron newspaper. McGowan shouldn’t be compared with any figure from history. She was her own woman, who made her way in the rough-and-tumble politics of the local courthouse and in the statehouse.
Born in Ohio in 1896, she moved to Akron when she was 14. A Catholic, she was educated at St. Vincent’s schools and went on to the Actual Business College.
For 20 years, she served as a probate court reporter in Summit County. But her heart was in politics – Democratic Party politics.
McGowan won the right to vote along with all the other women in the U.S. in 1920. She was 35 at the time and already a committed Democrat. She soon became a force behind many local and state campaigns.
In 1960, at an age when most people are thinking of retiring, McGowan decided it was her turn to run and she won a seat in the Ohio House for the 42nd District. She was re-elected in 1962. When she was at the statehouse, she served on the welfare committee.
McGowan also drew power from her role as district Democratic committeewoman (from 1938 until her death in 1980). She also was elected Democratic National Committeewoman in 1952.
Although prominent Summit County Democratic politicians referred to her as the “first lady” of the party, her sometimes unpredictable behavior caused problems. In 1972 (at the age of 86), she made a run for a third term in the Ohio House. She won the primary but was handily defeated in the general election.
McGowan kept strong ties to the Irish Catholic community. She served as president of the Ancient Order of Hibernians Ladies Auxiliary and remained active in St. Sebastian Catholic Church.
When Mary A. Upperman came to Akron, Ohio, in 1916, she was a minister’s wife. But, with the untimely death of her husband, Upperman assumed a new identity, as an entrepreneur. She became perhaps the most successful African-American businesswoman in the city during the Progressive period.
Little is known about Upperman’s early days. She was born in Raleigh, N.C., and was orphaned by the age of 2. She attended the prestigious Scotia Seminary, the rigorous girl’s boarding school in North Carolina that educated the likes of such African-American women leaders as Mary McLeod Bethune, Gertrude Brown and Mary Church Terrell. After graduating at the age of 19, Upperman taught school at Keystone, W.Va.
She and her husband, the Rev. Louis M. Upperman, came to Akron where he became pastor of the Wesley Temple A.M.E. Zion Church. He died in 1917. She stayed in the city and began a new life.
According to the city’s Negro Year Book of 1927, Upperman had the one qualification needed for success, “belief in herself.” She started initially running an employment agency out of her home. By 1920, however, Upperman had diversified. She continued running the employment agency but also ran a thriving grocery and laundry. By 1927, she was the sole owner of the only African American-owned drug store in the city (Globe Drug Store, 103 N. Main St.), even as she continued to run her grocery.
The Depression had some effect on Upperman. In 1931, she ran a confectionary (North End Cut Rate Store, 187 Bluff) and a grocery (189 Bluff) but she had apparently given up her drug store. By 1932, she was concentrating on the grocery business.
Mary A. Upperman died of pneumonia in Akron, on Dec. 7, 1937. She was only 59 years old.
Although she carried on lucrative businesses, Upperman always retained ties to the church that her husband once ministered. She supervised the Sunday school for many years. In 1936, she was a delegate to the general conference of the A.M.E. Zion Church.
She was a member of the board of directors of the Association for Colored Community Work which affiliated with the National Urban League. For the last four years of her life, she also gave domestic science classes for girls.
No known picture exists of Mary Upperman. This advertisment from her drug store courtesy of The University of Akron Archives.
Marion Voris came from a family whose name was often associated with the history of Akron. Marion Voris carried on many of the family traditions. She attended Buchtel College (now The University of Akron), just like her mother, Elizabeth Voris. She was a member of the Pan Hellenic Association, like her mother. She became a teacher, like her mother.
Marion Voris was born in Akron in 1893. When Voris graduated from Buchtel College in 1914, she sought employment. The following year, she became a teacher at Central High School and taught there for the next 40 years, retiring in 1955.
She also got involved in the College Club of Akron, an organization of college-educated women in the city. In 1919, she served on the organization’s membership committee. Besides being a place where college-educated women could get together and socialize, the College Club also brought well-known speakers such as poet Alfred Noyes and novelist Baroness Von Suttner to Akron. In addition, Voris served as a charter member of Akron’s Women’s City Club.
Voris was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church. She died in 1974 at the age of 81.
Louise Voris converted her long career as a volunteer community activist into a job as the superintendent of the Summit County Children’s Home. When she was offered the position in 1936, she had never worked outside the home for pay. Nonetheless, she said, “I feel that I have spent my entire life preparing for the task I know have” (Beacon Journal, 1946).
She was correct. She was well equipped for the task. Born in Cleveland, Voris had graduated from the exclusive Vassar women’s college in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She moved to Akron shortly after graduating and married William S. Voris, a salesman during the 1930s.
She came to Akron at a time when the women’s community was brimming with energy and she quickly got involved. She was a charter member of both the College Club of Akron, an organization that her mother in law helped found, and the Woman’s City Club. Voris served as president of each organization. She was also the president of the Art and History Club. She also served on the board of the Florence Crittenton Rescue League, a home for unwed mothers. Her longest affiliation, however, was with the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) of Akron. She served on its board for 22 years, as its president from 1927-1930 and as the chair of its camp committee that administered Camp YaWaCa on Lake Erie.
In 1936 when Mary E. Boteler suddenly resigned as superintendent of the Summit County Children’s Home, Voris applied. Given Voris’ connections within the women’s community and her family connections, she seemed the natural selection, even though she had no previous professional experience in administration.
Voris came to the job with no real plans. She admitted, “I don’t know in the least what I am going to do there except to follow in Miss Boteler’s capable footsteps” (Beacon Journal, 1936). Voris had no real crises to deal with. The home was well run, clean and well staffed.
The appointment, however, came to pose a problem for the children’s home. In order to keep the job, Voris needed to pass the state Civil Service exam. In 1937, she took that exam and passed.
Voris remained the superintendent until March 1946 when she died of a heart attack.
Gertrude Ferguson Penfield Seiberling, benevolent supporter of the arts, gave unselfishly of her time, talents and resources to better the people of her community, Ohio and the nation.
Born on January 23, 1866, Seiberling-then Penfield-grew up in Willoughby, Ohio, where her father owned a leading manufacturing company. When she was 21, she graduated from Lasell Seminary for Young Women in Auburndale, Mass. Later that year, she was introduced to Franklin Augustus Seiberling and the couple married.
After her marriage, Seiberling came to Akron with her husband. Never one to miss an opportunity, Seiberling helped supplement the family income by giving singing lessons to young girls.
Because of her love of music, Seiberling became a charter member of the Tuesday Afternoon Club, which was later renamed the Tuesday Musical Club (T.M.C.). F.A. Seiberling was once quoted as jokingly saying the T.M.C. meant “Trouble Must Come.” Because of the group’s dedication and skill, performance requests came from all over the city.
Seiberling played an important part in bringing renowned performers and orchestras to Akron by helping to organize and finance these activities. Also active in theater, Seiberling performed at the Akron Opera House and demonstrated her golden contralto voice at the White House for President William Howard Taft. She founded the St. Cecelia Choral Society and was a frequently featured vocalist for the Christmas services at Trinity Lutheran Church in Akron, where she was a member.
It was during this time that her husband co-founded the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company with his brother, C. W. Seiberling. As her husband’s business prospered at the turn of the century, Seiberling enrolled at Buchtel College to study architecture, gardening and interior design so she would be able to assist in building the new family home. After extensive travel abroad to gather design ideas and materials, the Seiberlings returned to Akron to build Stan Hywet, a beautiful 100-room, 1,400-acre estate patterned after an English Tudor-style mansion.
Even with the daunting task of raising her large family, Seiberling’s interest in the arts continued. She became honorary president of the Tuesday Musical Club, served on the board of directors for the Cleveland Institute of Music and was an honorary member of the Philadelphia Music Club and the Westminster Choir of Dayton, Ohio. She held honorary memberships in the National Federation of Music Clubs and the Music Arts Association in Cleveland.
Seiberling was a gifted and talented artist as well and exhibited paintings in New York and Ohio. She held memberships in the Women’s Art League of Akron, the Akron Art Institute, now known as the Akron Art Museum, and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.
Seiberling founded and served as the first president of the Akron Garden Club in 1924, and held board positions on state and national garden clubs as well. She was active in the Peace Society and the Ohio Women’s Suffrage Association.
Seiberling died on Jan. 8, 1946. Because of her unfailing support of the arts and tremendous cultural contribution to Summit County, the Women’s History Project elected her “Woman of the Year” posthumously in 1993. At her death, the Beacon Journal reported that she was “a gracious matron and an outstanding musical enthusiast…[who] inspired in every way to make the world about her a better place.”
Photo courtesy Women’s History Project of the Arkon Area
