Ive Been to the House Again Wooster
WOOSTER — Ann Gasbarre's long-running Bits and Pieces cavalcade stitches together a thread of anecdotes, memories and fast facts reaching back and recording people, places and events in Wooster'south past.
Her final Dec. 17 column featured a flurry of Wooster remembrances and culminated Gasbarre'due south career at The Daily Record.
She has contributed to the history of Wooster as a 5-decade employee of the newspaper, commencement with an internship when she was a senior at Wooster Loftier School.
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"With the exception of the 12 or 13 years I stayed at home until all iv of our children were in school, I've been employed by the paper since 1958, a total of 50 or more years," Gasbarre said.
Her primeval memories include working on a teletype motorcar, and progress from her original stint as a typist and proofreader through her roles as a feature writer, assistant family page editor and lifestyle editor.
During the course of her career, she received awards from the Ohio Newspaper Women'south Association and Ohio Press Women.
'Names sell papers' and so do memories
Her Bits and Pieces column initially focused on community events, but evolved to cover readers' memories and Wooster history, Gasbarre said.
Former publisher Ray Dix had told her, "Names sell papers," she recalled. "That's why I always included as many names every bit possible in the column."
As information technology turns out, memories are equally popular.
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Over the years, Gasbarre has been inundated with recollections from readers besides every bit newspaper clippings, restaurant placemats and menus, and other memorabilia.
"We all remember happy times," Gasbarre said, adding, "In this day and historic period, it'due south a way of coping with the everyday. It's fun to look back."
Ninety- and 100-year-old people are particularly fun to talk to, she said, marveling at what they could think.
"People really responded," she said. They "wanted to share their adept memories."
She recounts her own special memories every bit well — the former White Hut Drive-in across from the Wayne County Fairgrounds, where her late hubby, Dominic Gasbarre, proposed to her; the aroma of called-for leaves in the fall when information technology was legal to incinerate them in boondocks; and the museum to a higher place the onetime Carnegie Library.
Gasbarre especially credits Wooster historian Harry McClarran for fueling her columns with "a tote this big," she said, gesturing expansively. It holds manila envelopes packed with information about the past.
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Beyond McClarran's "innate interest in history," she said, he has besides been able to pinpoint addresses from long ago and to piece of work his mode into iconic Wooster establishments, from the Wooster theater with its costly seats to Freedlander's, as those institutions packed up and dismantled, moving into the archives of local history.
She is also grateful to other "history buffs" who shared their knowledge.
Like them, Gasbarre got to know her adopted city over her tenure at The Daily Record.
Wooster has 'a lot to be proud of'
A one-time board fellow member of Principal Street Wooster and the Wayne County Historical Society, she enjoyed learning about the history of Wooster and Wayne County and discovered, "Nosotros have a lot to be proud of."
Amidst its illustrious citizens are a United States Treasurer, John Sloane; a Nobel Prize winner, Arthur Compton; and the outset documented Black professional person football player in the Us, Charles Follis.
At 1 fourth dimension, she said, Wooster was home to the "largest independent department store due west of New York Urban center" — Freedlander's.
A Wayne Canton native, William Knight, was "i of the first 15 men to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for extraordinary heroism during the Ceremonious War," Gasbarre said.
Unfortunately, "There are negative milestones, too," she pointed out, citing a march in the 1920s through downtown by 1,000 white-robed KKK members and "several occasions" of burning crosses.
Overall, the history of Wooster is positive. "It is very unique," she said.
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Gasbarre has had a special connection to the Italian American community through her husband and Woosterians whose progenitors emigrated to Wooster from Collepietro, Italia.
"I was kind of adopted by the Italian community," she said, considering of a trip she took to Italian republic with a group in 2000.
1 of the members told and then publisher Vic Dix she needed to go on to chronicle the journeying of the 42 descendants "in search of their roots. Every twenty-four hour period the paper published stories of (their) adventures as we traveled to the small ancestral colina towns."
She was invited into a home where Dominic Gasbarre's father and uncle were born.
"Fifty-fifty though I'yard Irish/English, I e'er felt a connection to the Italian community," she said.
'Thinking back to the practiced ol' days'
Although Gasbarre retired from her full-time position at the newspaper in 2006, she was asked to proceed writing her column.
"I've met a lot of wonderful people through (it)," she said. "The readers made information technology so piece of cake."
Gasbarre has kept readers' comments thanking her for "the wonderful manner y'all write about the way things were years agone;" for reviving memories of old Wooster; for "bring(ing) back so many memories of growing upwards in Wooster;" and for "thinking back to the adept ol' days."
Many refer to specific columns, such as the "President, Circus and Subcontract Dairies."
One reader'due south mother remembered President Harry Truman coming to Wooster and visiting the church side by side to the former Beeson Infirmary.
"Wooster is a special identify with special memories for many," said another reader.
What is most special to Gasbarre is "the people," she said.
Her former colleague Paul Locher said local newspapers "have traditionally had the role of not only recording local history on a variety of fronts on a mean solar day-in-day-out basis, but also of presenting stories that remind the readership of the area'south by, including its growth, its successes, its failures and triumphs, and the people who were influential in all of those arenas.
"If we are not from fourth dimension to time reminded of our history, the stories tin simply become lost from one generation to the next," Locher said. "Ann has managed admirably for many years to continue those memories live," he said, hoping "someone else will soon be able to choice upwards the torch she is laying down."
In the concurrently, Gasbarre, whose career she said truly began with a poem she wrote called "My Guardian Affections," which won get-go place in a poetry contest nearly 70 years ago while she was in elementary schoolhouse in Cleveland, is "not finished writing."
She is working on a book for her grandchildren through StoryWorth, which "has immune me to tell the story of my life in affiliate form."
"I will add together a affiliate almost Wooster history," she said. "I desire people to appreciate why Wooster is a great community."
As Gasbarre signed off at the stop of every cavalcade, "Thought you should know."
Source: https://www.the-daily-record.com/story/news/local/2021/12/19/ann-gasbarre-retires-popular-wooster-history-column-bits-and-pieces/8901417002/
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