Looking back on a long, memorable career

Writers Note: Back in November of last year, I sat down with my long-time boss at the Reflector, Joe Centers, and explained to him that I would write columns through January of 2023 and then do two more on my life and career as a writer and public servant and then close the laptop for good. That would end a 68-year journalism career that started in the fall of 1955, interrupted only by a short stint after high school graduation and then six months in 1960 when I reported for my 6-month Army-National Guard active duty stint at Ft. Dix, N.J. My first laptop is a story in itself. Over the years, I have worn out three of them. The first one was truly historical. The date was Aug. 25, 1981. I was at Firestone Country Club in Akron, the site of the World Series of Golf. The long-time sponsor of the event, the Japanese electronics firm, NEC had made the announcement several weeks prior to the 1981 event that it was going to announce a new innovation in writing and that the original 25 writers (I came in late in joining the originals) who covered Firestone CC would have their names put in a fish bowl and the one drawn out would be presented this new innovation. My name was drawn, I might add on my birthday. That innovation was the first laptop introduced to the world. It was said to be worth $6,000. It also came with a printer. At that time, it was the only way to get copy from the system. Big city writers would have killed for it. It was January of 2004 when I sent this laptop back to NEC's regional headquarters. I had purchased any number of batteries for it but I could find no more because the company just plain quit making them. I continued to use it on house current but that was not practical so I decided to send it back, thanking them for 23 years of service. They could not thank me enough, assuring it would go in their trophy case. I just know it earned retirement status. Since then I have purchased two other lap tops, neither of which measured up to the standards of the original. And, yes, it is true, I have trouble reciting the ABC's … forward that is. No problem spelling them backwards. That's how I learned them thanks to my older brother, Jim. He thought it would be cute if he took the staple out of the ABC book I was using to learn them and turn the pages around. So, for me, it was Z Y X W V U T S R Q, etc. One other glitch as far as my writing and any number of people has noticed this. I write using the hunt and peck system, not the conventional way. I took typing while at St. Paul and passed the class using this system. I am certain I could hit 50 words a minute using this system and with NO MISTAKES — or at least very few. I guess the Notre Dame nun who taught the class saw no reason to fail me when I maintained the minimum standards for passage. My twin brother David and I followed Jim by eight years to little St. Alphonsus Grade School in Peru. We walked from our home to the corner of Ridge and Hasbrock roads every morning. One of the nicest men I ever knew, Daryl Smith, a student at Monroeville High School 10 years my senior, always saved me a seat on the bus. I saw him quite often over the years so it was my honor to attend his burial at the Ridge Road cemetery late last year just a mile south of where I saw him every school day morning. At St. Alphonsus, we were taught by Franciscan nuns. Just two rooms were used, one for grades 1 through 4 and the other grades 5 through 8. The rooms were heated with pot-bellied stoves. No cafeteria. Everyone carried. I remember one young man, Jimmy Maxfield by name, was always quite sickly. His mother brought him his lunch every day. It included goat's milk. I tried it once. Since then, I can count on both hands how many times I drank milk with the exception of it in coffee and on cereal. The No. 1 subject discussed before school every morning's was the previous day's success as far as fur trapping. Very few boys in the school did not have a trap line. This was rural America. No kid had a paper route. Boys and even some girls trapped for spending money. My trap line took as long as three hours to walk. Were we good at it? You bet we were. I personally ran a 40-trap line. When I got older, I also ran hounds at night with my father and brother. One year we took 97 raccoon pelts alone to the auction where we averaged $29.75 per pelt. Who needed a paper route? My parents found the tuition money to send Dave and myself to St. Paul High School. As a freshman, we rode bikes to Norwalk. Occasionally, we walked. When I became of age, I drove, first in a 1929 Plymouth coupe and then in a 1939 Ford. As fate would have it, that decision to go to St. Paul would jump-start me on a career that lasted until this day. As a junior in journalism class, a Notre Dame nun by the name of Sr. Mary Rose Rita asked me if I would like to follow the St. Paul boys' football and basketball teams during those seasons and write stories for the Norwalk paper. The publisher had called the school and asked for help. I jumped at the chance and in the fall of 1955 I covered my first football game, one in Toledo at a long-since closed private high school. Only recently, as I was going through microfilm at the Norwalk library, I found that story. It was pretty "rough" but it was the first and history proved I did get better. Shortly after graduation, I received a call from Dudley White, Sr., then the owner and publisher of the Reflector-Herald, asking if I would come in for an interview for the position of wire editor. That sounded like a pretty important position but not the case. It meant that I would learn to read the dots and dashes from the yellow ribbon-sized tape that spit out with the hard copy from the UPI wire service news machine. I jumped at the chance. I worked under the very watchful eye of a gentleman by the name of Jay Greulich, the city editor. We became close friends and eventual rabbit hunting partners with long-time Norwalk High football and basketball coach Grant Walls Sr. Jay taught me a lot, including writing skills and page layouts. In just two years, I became the paper's first sports editor. I took two leaves of absence during my 10-year tenure as a full-time writer at the paper. The first is when I met my six-month military obligation at Ft. Dix, N.J., and the second was in October, 1961 when I married my St. Paul classmate, Marjean Weisenberger. While working my way up to sergeant in the National Guard, I had several duties, some of them taking advantage of my occupation as a writer. Although I trained with my unit in the field, many times I left early for the orderly room where I assisted officers in writing lesson plans. But, it was at the two-week summer camp in Grayling, Mich., where I really put my journalism talents to work. The regimental command prioritized having units stay in touch with home-town news outlets and my Company Commander Capt. Albert Caprara made it known to fellow CO's that he had one in his unit who had the expertise to get stories back home. I wrote many articles over the years and shipped them back to the Reflector-Herald. So when it came time to have work judged by the regimental command, Co. A in Norwalk had a hands-down winner, Specialist Donald T. Hohler. It was a big deal because the Grayling, Mich., Chamber of Commerce also saw it as a way of putting their community on the map. And Grayling was the home town of the Bear Archery Company, the firm that made the best bows in the world (and the most expensive) owned by renowned archer Fred Bear. And the winner of the Public Relation Award would get one of those bows, this one laminated with supporting arrows. The Chamber even invited Norwalk Mayor Louis Frey for the luncheon and awards ceremony. He was flown in on a plane owned by his former boss, A.J. Baltes. Naturally, Capt. Caprara was at the head table. I was allowed to invite one other guest. I asked the Executive Officer of the Brigade, Col. Kermit A. Patchen, to join us. Although, Mr. Patchen was of high rank, we always hit it off. He was a just plain down-to-earth person and from a family who had three other brothers serving in the military. I know he appreciated the invitation. That award was displayed in the Norwalk Armory until I resigned from the Guard. Shortly after I left, Capt. Caprara, in a company formation, presented me the award for my safe keeping I probably would have never left the military had it not been for my having the chance to take the civil service exam to join the Norwalk Police Department. I had a falling-out with a new city editor by the name of Pete Mohn. We never hit it off and he wanted me out of there for sure when he told me I was going to be the new society editor. That sent me to looking for other employment and the Norwalk Police Department looked like a fit. I took the test, finished No. 1 in the civil service exam and the rest is history. I stayed there five years but when an opening came up on the Norwalk Fire Department, I saw it as a chance to stay in writing as a freelancer and with the way a fireman worked, 24 hours on and 48 hours off in many instances, I could really look for papers to write for. I was scheduled to transfer early in 1969 but when the flood hit Norwalk and the reservoir broke out, the powers at be decided to keep me at the PD for three more weeks. It was in that first week after the flood that I was assigned by Chief Larry Hilson to drive Gov. Jim Rhodes to places of interest including the reservoir which was being repaired by the local construction firm of A.J. Baltes, a close personal friend of the governor. To this day, I'll never forget what Gov. Rhodes asked me to do when he got in the cruiser. He said, Officer Hohler, first and foremost, "I want you to take me where there are the most people." Tell me that's not a politician. Anyway, I transferred a couple weeks later and after two weeks of fire school at the academy in Reynoldsburg, I came back ready to put out fires. Not so fast. My new chief, Fire Chief Kenneth Link, had other plans. "Hohler, you are going to start an inspection department. We are having a lot of fires in public buildings that could have been prevented. You are going to be the one who tells building owners to clean up or face the judge because we are going to back you with the Ohio Fire Code." And so I started through every building "the public could frequent" — a two-year inspection/re-inspection plan that reduced fires in public buildings by 80 percent over those two years and eventually reduced the city's ISO rating, not once but twice. The only "ugly" over those 20 years was a series of church fires. A perverted individual who was later traced to Lorain decided Norwalk would be his place of operation to set fires in churches. He burned one down, a large building near the oldest cemetery in the city, the one next to the Episcopal Church on West Main Street. He also burned out the Salvation Army Church on the north-east corner of Milan Avenue and Main Street. Later, he torched churches on the south side and on the corner of State and Main. His dastardly work had parishioners sitting in churches around the clock. As firemen fought the blazes, City Engineer Jim Widman secretly or maybe not-so-secretly filmed all who were present. Whether or not, the arsonist felt the heat of the filming was never known. What is known was that in a dying declaration two years later, he admitted to the fires. I worked countless hours on the investigation. It was work that did not go unnoticed as the Ashland Fire Department heard of my investigation through the State Fire Marshal's Office and they came calling, in this case to a new chief, Elmer McGuckin. They asked if I would be allowed to become a board member and member of a curriculum committee for what was believed to be the largest arson seminar in the country, one jointly sponsored by the Ashland Fire Department and Ashland University. I was given the green light to attend meetings as well as the two-day, weekend seminar and did so for 17 years. Ten of those years, I chaired the Sunday morning session, one that included a short Sunday morning prayer service. The Board honored me in 2003 with the title of Dean of Schools. Over those 17 years, I introduced many great speakers in the field of arson investigation. One of them was John Barracato, the lead investigator for Etna Insurance. He was formerly the Fire Marshal of New York City and also a professor in the field of fire science at John Jay University of that city. I was on the arson seminar board with many fine men. One of them stands out, however. He was David Schroeder, an FBI Agent out of the Cleveland office. He, along with many from Ashland, honored me and my retirement partners, Chief David Caprara and fire-fighter Eugene Reineck, with their presence at our retirement party. Don Hohler is a longtime reporter and correspondent for the Norwalk Reflector. The final chapter of his life story will appear next week.