The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 52

CALDWELL D-8 DEATHS D-4 POUTICS BEAT D-4 WEIKEL D-9 EDITOR: JAMES P. DELANEY, 369-1003 THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1983 7 ip im uf j. r- it in S. Enquirer Photos BY GORDON MORIOKA RURAL, OHIO: about as quiet a town as there is. Above, RuraKs main road winds south toward the Ohio River.

At right, Ken Broadwell, who with his family is RuraKs only resident. J' Researcher Finds Ohio Ghost Towns WW "I love the spell that lendeth to each familiar stream, The dimness and incoherence of some mysterious dream. That linketh supernatural things to native hill and glen, And blendeth with the present view a glim pse of wha thas been. John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Days Gone By" BY RANDY AAcNUTT Batavia Bureau Chief Some hamlets and villages lie In the heart and mind, If not on the map. We call them ghost towns, abandoned towns, or "paper" towns built of surveyors' dreams.

Some people even call them their yesterdays. "Most Ohloans probably don't think about the state's ghost towns at all, though. They leave the search for such communities a search that is gaining Interest-to genealogists, treasure hunters and history enthusiasts. Whatever their definition, the little communities have slipped into nothingness. People have moved out, or died, or just walked away in disinterest from these long-forgotten places.

Memories remain vivid for a time, only to be forgotten in a rush of decades. YET IN THE country, a curious notion remains: A town was in those woods. Some people say a certain spiritual presence seems to linger there, long after the physical presence has rotted. Some towns have even stayed on maps, decades after the people have left, waiting to be "discovered" Blowville, Turkey, Pinhook, Saltair, Waggoners Ripple. This is particularly true in Southern Ohio, a part of the state endowed with more than the average share of ghost towns.

"Southern Ohio has so many ghost towns because the Ohio River area was the first in the state to be settled," said researcher Richard Helwig. "Eventually, people moved north as Gen. Anthony Wayne cleared out the Indians. Then people cleared out and left their old towns behind. "Those people who stayed behind left later, when the local resources were depleted and factories moved on to other towns.

If that was the only business in town, the town died." HELWIG TEACHES a course called Ghost Towns at a technical college In Archbold, in Northwest Ohio. He also operates the Ohio Center for Ghost Town Research. Helwig defines a ghost town as one that no longer exists. A semi-ghost town, he added, is one reduced to 10 of its original business and population. A paper town, he said, is one that never did exist: a speculator's town, laid out and registered, but never inhabited.

As times get more complicated, he said people are becoming fascinated with such places. So far, he said, he has located more than 500 such towns in the state, and he is looking for more. That fascination has led to a career for August Tiger, a newsletter publisher from New York City. Tiger has recently published a booklet, Guide To Ohio Ghost Towns, and has maps of each county, complete with STEPHEN KELLEY wrote Mineral Springs of Adams County, about the supposedly curative waters that brought throngs to Mineral Sprinas in summers a century ago. At right, the Mineral Springs Community Church, long abandoned, sags under the weight of time and neglect.

THE LOCATION is certainly appealing. The sun falls gently to the tops of the Kentucky hills, turning the river into a golden waterway. From this perspective, Ken Broadwell watches time drift by. He doesn't worry about crowds, or nosey neighbors. That's because he owns Rural now.

He didn't plan on taking over the town, of course, but nobody else wanted to live there. So all that remains of Rural is his farm and his old house. (See TOWNS, Page D6) turbed by census takers. No wonder. Rural is a ghost town inhabited only by Ken Broadwell and his family.

Broadwell's pioneer ancestors cut through the forests and made the place their home. Later, about 1845, a town was built at the mouth of Bullskln Creek, where it meets the Ohio River. More people moved in. But the river was not a friendly neighbor. And when the townsfolk left gradually in the early 1900s, the Broad wells stayed right in their farm house near US 52 in eastern Clermont County.

ghost towns. He said he has found the state rich in abandoned towns, ghost towns, and tiny towns and hamlets that ctfuld easily slip away at any time. "THERE ARE nearly 2,000 towns in Ohio that are attracting more attention now that they have dropped from sight than they ever did when they were alive," he said. "They range up to 27 ghost towns per county." Some people might find his work amusing. After all, they live in ghost towns, abandoned towns, or places that exist in the twilight of the two.

RURAL Welcome to Rural, Ohio, a town undis Child-Stealing Is Often Act Of Vengeance, Official Says involving Juveniles, everything from truancy to neglect and sexual abuse. But I tell you in a lot of respects these custody things are the most distasteful for us." IN A case of abuse "you can tell who is right and wrong," he said. "There is a clearly recognized crime and punishment. In custody fights you may get conflicting court opinions and people change their minds." Repeat offenders are common. "Oh yeah, we see the same people over and over again.

You think people are grown up and have a little sense and then the first thing you know they are tearing at each other again and each one wants to pull a piece off the kid. "We look at the kid and say to ourselves, 'Man you don't even have a chance. (See CUSTODY, Page 6) Hall, chief Investigator for the department's Youth Aid Section. "THAT IS just 100 that have gone as far as having warrants taken out," he said. "I'd say there are probably at least that many that were resolved by the beat officers on the street without charges.

And if there are that many that we know about there probably are a lot more out there that we don't hear of." Child-stealing occurs in all of the city's neighborhoods and victimizes all of its economic classes, he said. "We see it happening all over the city. We've had them from Hyde Park to Over-the-Rhine." Child-stealing certainly is not a victimless crime, but neither is it a crime with who are easily identified. Nor is it a crime the police relish trying to solve, Hall said. "In this section we handle all types of offenses BY DAVID WELLS Enquirer Reporter A sleeping child awakes with a start when a shadowy figure bursts through his bedroom door.

He is grabbed from his bed covers and bundled out of the house. Another child running on the playground at school sees a familiar person beckoning him over to the fence. Suddenly he is pulled into a car and whisked away from the life he has known. A child's weekend visit with his grandparents doesn't end when Sunday night arrives. Eventually he learns he is never going home again.

These are hypothetical cases of child-stealing a crime committed hundreds of thousands of times each year in the United States, according to law enforcement and child welfare authorities. The crimes are most often committed by the divorced parents of the children, who claim to be motivated by love and concern. SOME POINT to other motives. More often than not, child-stealing is an act of vengence against a former mate, said Janette De-menkoff, co-ordinator of location and recovery for Child Find, a national non-profit organization dedicated to finding missing children. "Very often child-stealing is done as a vendetta," she said.

"It's a way to hurt the other person involved in the divorce." Based on its own cases, reports to law enforcement agencies, and studies by the American Bar Association, Child Find estimates at least 400,000 cases of child-stealing by parents or other relatives occur in the United States every year, Demenkoff said. A recent Harris poll performed for the National Council on Family Relations put the figure at cases per year. In Cincinnati, police have recorded more than 100 cases of child-stealing this year, said Sgt. Joe" Profile Became A Story To Be Lived George Blake Editor if I CP5 i t'f I investigation last July. The history of Over-the-Rhine needed to be developed first and he spent days in the Cincinnati Historical Society library and poring through files at City Hall, chasing down statistics.

He quickly discovered a whole layer of middle-class people living and working with Over-the-Rhine's poor. "They were Invaluable introductions to others who lived there out of necessity, not choice," Shroder says. "They also were expert observers who had spent much of the last decade coming to grips with their own understanding of poverty, and could talk about It with great force." Perhaps even more interesting than the evolution of Shroder's story, however, is the revolution of his thinking about this historic area. He talks about driving down Vine Street with some visiting friends, passing the sidewalks teeming with nightlife, yet being unwilling to show the tourists what life was like on the side streets. "I realized that I was afraid to do it.

And at the same time I realized that I knew nothing about who these people were that I was afraid of. "From that moment on, I wanted to find out. And as I found (See BLAKE, Page 6) Over-the-Rhine. To Cincinnatians, the name alone is enough to send an image to the mind's eye and bring almost a perceptible taste. Yet it's not the kind of taste that rolls smoothly across the tongue and is savored, not the image of beauty, not the image of joy.

The image is one of poverty side-by-slde with the bustle of Flndlay Market, of joblessness adjacent to fast-paced downtown growth. It is a picture of gloom, a taste of bitterness. But what Is the reality? Is there music in the shadow of Music Hall's grandeur? Is there hope in this area below the hilltops? The Enquirer determined that these questions needed to be answered, these perceptions needed to be explored. Reporter Tom Shroder and Photographer Annalisa Kraft were given the assignment. For both, it would become a story that not only would be written and photographed, it would be lived.

SHRODER BEGAN his ANNALISA KRAFT photographer felt welcome TOM SHRODER writer tound openness.