The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 147

ti Enquirer ELS ER Sunday, April 12, I Ml and EDITORIAL PAGE COMMENT ON THE NEWS AMUSEMENTS EWH I I 1 The Day Dolbey Councilwoman Heard Cheers, Boos A Moment She'll Never Pitched At Crosley Field Forget Vitz Of The Library His Thoughts On Planning And Modern Design Have Been Molded Info Many Buildings A picture story on the Cincinnati Public Library appears today oh Page SS of the Enquirer Pictorial. i 1 ts -f 2 i I I TM Carl Vitz, Library Builder "my mind had been conditioned" if- A remodeled a warehouse and even a bank into a public library tackled the problem of replacing the ancient downtown library building, a structure originally meant to be an opera house. "My mind had been- conditioned and all the evidence pointed to the need for a contemporary structure," Mr. Vitz recalled. "In looking for prototypes the department-store type of construction seemed to be closest to what we needed.

We wanted to put the maximum number of goods on display and allow for minimum effort to produce effective service. Money appeared to stretch farther and it was felt we could utilize more of our al-loted space with a contemporary structure," he said. ON FEBRUARY 13, 1955, the finished product, one of the most modern and attractive libraries in the country, opened its doors to the public. Its total cost was $4,670,000 and it stocked over a million-and-a-half books. Mr.

Vitz retired in 1955, ending a 56-year span of active library work. He had received many honors along the way. In 1952 he was given the Lippincott Award of the American Library Association, the highest award a librarian can receive in his field in the U. S. He served as president of the association in 1944-45 and was also a president of the Ohio Library Association.

Mr. Vitz lives at 323 Wa-verly Wyoming, with his wife, who is head of the education and religion department of the library, and their family. He still spends a great deal of his time at the library using the facilities he helped plan to do research for various papers he writes for the Literary Club and for addresses he delivers from time" to time. One of the reasons he gives for his continuing vigor is his constant interest in progress which has kept him in positions of responsibility most of his life. The other reason he gives is that he has constantly been surrounded by youth.

bert a Phi Beta Kappa, he enrolled in the first graduate course of library science to be given at Western Reserve University in 1904. The next year he moved on to the New York State Library School at Albany and upon graduation in 1907 he became assistant librarian of the Washington D. C. Public Library. His first taste of library construction came in 1909 when he represented the New York State Library in watching the construction of the S3 million New York State Education Building at Albany.

nt. VITZ recalls that first experience with relish. "The new building was to have a 500-foot frontage," he recalled. "And the library was to have the second and third floors of the building." He tacked up the blueprints of the building on the wall behind his desk and pored over them. Here he began to develop his concepts of library construction.

For a time he served in libraries in the Midwest and whenever he transferred he left at least one new or remodeled building behind him. He was Assistant Clerk of the Works in Cleveland and helped construct two branch libraries and plan the reconstruction of the Cleveland Central Library. He went to Toledo as director and planned five branch libraries. He was consultant for the Baltimore Public Library and for libraries in Tacoma, Lexington, Ashland, Seattle, Boston, Denver and Minneapolis. In January, 1946, at 63, when many men are considering retirement, Mr.

Vitz accepted the position of director of the Cincinnati Public Library. The position had been vacated by Dr. Chalmers Had-ley. Then the man who had once hi The Public Library The public library is an example of the American habit of developing an institution to implement an idea. Gerald W.

Johnson, in his introduction to "Public Library Service" identifies the basic purpose of the public library as "an open door a way of escape from the narrow area or our individual lives into the field of wisdom and experience of all mankind." The test of whether a library is giving good service to its community is a simple one. It is Can a reader get the information he wants when he wants it? Two factors influence the quality of library service the personality and dedication of the library staff, and the interest and support of the library by the community. The best libraries provide their users with books, i to be sure, but also with all sources of information: films, recordings, pamphlets, magazines and newspapers. They not only provide these materials, but also set up learning situations to encourage the use of them, for example through discussion groups, film forums, and story hours. To reach the potential of which it is capable, the public library needs an awareness on the part of its users that they must keep abreast of the world's events to be truly capable citizens, and their continued I demands that the public library supply the materials to enable them to do so.

It also needs, from the mem- bers of the community it serves, the support com-' mensurate with the responsibilities its role entails, sup-' port in finance and in sympathetic understanding. Dorothy Dolbey, now serving her thud term in City Council, miH fust elected in ') and was immediately named Vice Mayor her colleagues. A mttire Cincinnatkm and UC graduate, Mrs. Dolbey has gained prominence for her civic and religious uxtrk both locally and nationally. She was recently named to "Who's Who In American Women." By Dorothy Dolbey (As Told To Howard AT.

Grcrnwald) THE MOST terrifying moment of my life and one of the most wonderful came on opening day at Crosley Field five seasons ago. By long tradition in Cincinnati, the Mayor throws the first ball from the mound to homeplate. That' year, the honor belonged to Ed Waldvogel. It meant a great deal to Eddie he had waited for the chance all hia life. But.

In mid March the Mayor became accutcly ill. As he grow progressively worse, it became apparent that he would be unable to throw the first hall when the Rcdlcs met Milwaukee on April 13. I remember that Eddie wrote Gabe Paul something like: "You live in a land of hope and realization for 50 years, and then when it comes true at last, the doctors say they won't let you go out to the ball park-on opening day." BECAUSE I was Vice Mayor at the time, already subbing for Eddie as Acting Mayor, rumor had it that, I would be asked to do the honors. When the rumors grow more persistent, I decided to talk to Eddie alwut it at the hospital. "What shall I do if the invitation comes?" I asked him.

"When you accepted the Vice Mayor's job," he told me, "you also accepted its responsibilities. This is one of them. Throw out that first ball." Two days later, a letter from Gabe Paul officially extended me the invitation. I debated with myself for days. I was excited about it, but worried too.

I realized I was in the masculine game of politics, but I did want to maintain my femininity and never before had a woman thrown the first ball at a major league game. Yet there was my dad a long-time, vocal rooter. of the Reds who had a box every season, lie was very mucn pleased that I had this chance. My husband and children were thrilled. As for myself, I had been a fan from childhood.

I understood the game and loved it. When I finally decided to do it, the newspapers began joking about it and never let up. I enjoyed their comments and the laughs they provoked. I was tagged "Fireball" Dolbey. Columnists speculated on whether I would reach the pliite and how I would throw.

My husband and son, however, didn't leave that to chance. They insisted that I would whip that ball into the For The Killers, Sympathy Shifts In The Tanyard Murder As Citizens Begin To Argue That Herman Schilling Sculptured His Own Fate By Roger Swardson Enquirer Reporter TOMORROW, the first day of National Library Week, a new branch of the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library will be opened in Wyoming at Springfield Pike and Wyoming Avenue. The building cannot help but echo the concepts of a man long associated with the construction of library buildings Carl Vitz. Now director emeritus of the Cincinnati library, Mr. Vitz can recall having seen his thoughts on library planning molded into buildings across the nation, his masterpiece the modern structure at Eighth and Vine Streets.

The son of the Rev. Martin Vitz and his wife, Mary, the librarian was born in St. Paul, but grew up in the small Western Ohio town of New Bremen. His favorite toys in those days were building blocks. MB.

VITZ, now 75 years old, traces his beginnings in the library field from his first day at the Cleveland Central Library. He was sitting next to the check-out desk, he recalls, and a newsboy ran in with a paper headlined "The Maine Sunk In Havana Harbor." But at the time he wasn't thinking of library work as a career. His mind was made up later as he sat in the office of a college administrator of Adelbert College trying to decide the future course of hi studies. His problem was that he had too many interests but did not desire to follow any one of them to the ultimate. He had studied German and was avidly interested in history and had thoughts of teaching.

Suddenly the administrator said, "Mr. Vitz, why don't you go into library?" It was as simple as that After graduating from Adel- A coroner's jury has held that tanyard worker Herman Schilling met death at the liands of Andreas Egner and George Rufer, on the basis of testimony by Egner's son, held to the grand jury, as former Enquirer Reporter Lee Allen continues his account of Cincinnati's tanyard murder in 1871, and its cov-erage by Lafcadio Hearn, an Enquirer writer. In this chapiter, Hearn finds public sentiment in the tanyard quarter changing. By Lee Allen Chapter MEANWHILE, Hearn stumbled over information concerning the past of George Rufer. He found that Rufer had been sentenced to the Ohio State Penitentiary from Bata-via, Clermont County, in October, 1869, for horse stealing, having made off with a gelding belonging to one Mary Noyes.

He had been born in Germany, and at the time of sentencing, he had a wife, Josephine, and a child living at Batavia. He had been released from prison June 14, 1872, but instead of returning to his wife and child, tie had made his way to Cincinnati. Rufer met his current wife, Fredericka, when she worked as a servant for the family of Fred Beicrlein on 12th Street between Vine and Race Sts. She was a wild, passionate girl but apparently an honest and faithful domestic. At least Beierlein thought enough of her to try to prevent the marriage.

"DON'T YOU know that George Rufer is a convict?" Beierlein asked her. "Yes, I know," she admitted. "But I don't care; I love him." "But do you know that he already has a perfectly good wife and child?" Beierlein persisted. "Yes," she replied. "George was honest enough to tell me that, and I love him for it.

Besides, our furniture is already paid for." "Rufer is evidently little of coward, though much of a villain," Hearn observed after talking to Beierlein. "He is simply a brazen desperado. He. certainly possesses tremendous self-control, never having once betrayed the least emotion or change of color during the testimony of Fred Egner. The most peculiar feature about Rufer is the expression of his eyes such Sentiment 5 1Vu Dolbey the game Lausche's box, I don't recall the short ceremony, but I do remember that suddenly I was alone out there.

When lie Governor flipped the ball to nie, 1 caught it, turned toward the plate and almost died! Waiting for me on the mound were droves of photographersI had never seen so many. I wished myself anywhere else, but somehow I hold onto my courage and walked toward them. When I finally faced the plate, I was surprised at how close it seemed. "Is this all the farther it is?" I asked. Suddenly it dawned on me that this would be a breeze.

All I had to do was throw the ball to City Manager Harrell behind the plate. I GLANCED at my son taking movies nearby, my husband in the box with the Governor, and then let go. It sailed between all the cameras and right down the groove to Mr. Harrell, just I little to the right of the plate. Poor C.

A. he had just come to town and had practiced with me only once. lie muf.red it. When I joined my husband and the Governor in the box a few minutes later, I learned why the distance from mound to home plate had seemed so short. My family, bless them, had purposely paced off 70 feet instead of 60 in our back yard to make sure I had steam enough to reach the plate.

Opening day every year since has been grand, but never, Ih'mk you, quite like the day they pitched Dolbey in '54. Never Sent A Bill Still Practices cinnati Medical College, paid little attention to his own affairs. He never married. Friends, parents of his patients, and former patients who grew up under his care recognized this trait, and created in 1948 a unique trust fund for Dr. Stewart, which would always assure him an income when some day he might be no longer able to handle the work he loved.

When he died, his affection for his "children" was further revealed by the nature of his will regarding the trust fund: Its balance was to be divided evenly between the Jewish and Children's Hospitals, and use in a manner to help children. THOSE WHO knew him, recall that Dr. Stewart particularly loved the tiny premature infants, devoting special time and skill to assisting them in their Erasp for life. It was for this reason that the money in the Trust Fund was spent on the four Isolette incubators, which provide for premature babies every essential factor In addition to human skill and care, that it Is possible to give. The equipment also fulfills the generous purpose expressed by Dr.

Stewart's friends in establishing' the fund originally. The littlest ones in the nursery, whose lives may depend on the help of these incubators, can't read the inscription on their modern medical cradles. But the love of a real physician embraces them, symbolizing all that makes a doctor great. Dorothy started plate overhand no sidearm or underarm sissy stuff for me. In the back of our house they paced off a distance they explained was from the mound to home plate, anil every night before dinner I practiced throwing.

Photographers streamed by steadily. I was exhausted by it all, but the excitement kept me at it. April 13 finally came. I went to the Findaly Street market area for the annual parade to the ball park and rode in the lead until we reached the park entrance. Inside the right-field gate I stopped and knelt down to change from heels to wedgies.

I'll never forget what happened next. As I rose and took a few steps, I was terrified to see thousands of people in the stands looking, it seemed, directly at me. I had never been so frightened before. If I could have run out, you can bet I would have. But I knew I couldn't.

The parade was behind me and I had to keep moving forward. You know how you sometimes dream you're on a moving sidewalk and you can't get off? I felt exactly that way. Every step I took was leading me to the inevitable moment when I would have to throw that ball. I felt as if I were going to my doom. I walked for an eternity and you can't convince me otherwise even now.

There were cheers and boos. The band plaved "Four Leaf Clover" and "Take Me Out To The Ball Game," both very appropriate tunes at the moment. Finally I reached Governor 1H1 Zw Doctor Stewart avoided offices sick in bed, the doctor literally moved in bag and baggage. Rearrangement of furniture or lack of space on these occasions was not his problemthat was up to the parents. These mothers and fathers were, by turns, baffled, chagrined or reassured by his bru.sk directness, but children were always devoted to the man who cared little what adults thought, but deeply loved and ministered to the young.

Dr Stewart, who also was a member of the medical staff of Jewish and Children's Hospital, and taught clinical pediatrics at the University of Cin The Doc Moved In When A Child Was Sick And He In Memory, Horace Stewart fate. And Hearn considered such an attitude to be an outrage; Yet, when he wrote about this in The Enquirer, he was disciplined and moderate: "There is a widespread feeling among people in the tallow district that Herman Schilling's conduct subsequent to the misfortunes and death of Julia Egner was of rashness," he began. "The first symptoms of sympathy for the murderers are taking shape in the assertion that Schilling not only seduced the girl, but deserted her wholly in the hour when the least return the poor creature might have expected from her lover was temporary protection. "As we have already remarked, Julia's lovers were many; and she had the reputation of being a very loose young woman, with whom no man desired to hold open relations. The deceased never believed himself to be her seducer, or in honor bound to marry her.

As for providing for her in her trouble, it is only necessary to remind Schilling's accusers that he was not present at the time when her brutal father abused her, or in any way able to render assistance. He could not have otherwise aided her. "SUB WENT to the hospital to receive treatment for an incurable disease, which would in any case have ultimately carried her to the grave. But after her death after the Eg-ners had made a deadly assault upon him after the vicious and violent old man had made open threats against his life, he continued to live under the windows of the family who regarded him as the murderer of their daughter, and slept nightly alone, within a few yards of the room in which he had visited Julia Egner surreptitiously. "He knew that his presence was hateful to the old man, to the son, and to the whole family.

He may not have been to blame in the matter of the girl's death; but, under all the circumstances, it was exceedingly rash, not to use a stronger term, to have continued to provoke a deeper hate on the part of the Pgners by his constant presence. "The young man was honest, sober, industrious; he had money, and the best of records, and having become entangled in a very unfortunate and unpleasant affair, his most prudential and proper course would have been to leave Cincinnati; at least for If restless, keen, quick, glittering eyes that they rather resemble fire-flashing globules of steel than aught else. In his physiognomy he strongly -e-sembles the famous murderer, Probst." After the coroner's jury returned its verdict, Hearn and Johnson called once again at Rufer's cell. After a long conversation in German, Johnson managed to obtain a full confession from Rufer, who substantiated everything Fred had charged. Rufer's only excuse was that he had been drunk and an unwilling participant influenced by the elder Egner.

And just as Fred had done before him, Rufer now confessed a second time in the presence of Andreas. The latter listened stolidly to the whole story, then shook his head and said, "Lies, all lies. I had no hand in it." "NO," RUFER told him. "But you had a fork in it." Hearn then set out to learn what he could about Fred Egner. He found a man named William Steinheim, a foreman at Pane Bros.

a picture frame factory where Fred had once worked. "Fred was so stupid when he first came to work for us that he couldn't even tell time by the clock," Steinheim recalled. "But I felt sorry for him. Ever so often he'd report to work covered with bruises that took weeks to heal. When I'd ask him where he got them, he'd hang his head and say that his father had beaten him for some trivial offense." For Hearn the circumstances surrounding the murder were now perfectly clear.

It was simply a case of a dominating father with a stupid son to do his bidding, no matter how evil, and the coincidental existence of a third party with a separate motive. Yet it was the third party, Rufer, who had actually triggered the crime. And what a miserable crime it was: Brutal, ill-planned, stupidly executed, and as completely unnecessary as such offenses against society usually are! But Hearn was more interested in the environment that produced the crime than in the murder itself. He prowled the alleys of the area for days and after immersing himself in the sights, sounds and stenches of the neighborhood, produced a Sunday feature for The Enquirer that Colonel Cockerill played on Page 1 under the headline, "The Quarter Of Shambles." "BUT NOT until you have visited th nevgfobjrhood of By Dee Stuerenberg Enquirer Reporter THE MEMORY of a remarkable doctor, who didn't keep an office because "I don't want those children exchanging germs," and whose patients finally resorted to setting up a trust fund for him because he wouldn't send out bills, lives on today it Jewish Hospital to help prematurely born infants successfully cross the threshold of life. Four special incubators have been installed in the nursery, containing plaques which read: "Through the generosity, and in the memory of Dr.

Horace G. Stewart, 1938." Cincinnatians in general and Clifton residents in particular well remember this man. They tell many stories about him, some with affectionate humor. They recall that he, a lover of the symphony, was often seen at Music Hall, many times wearing an old tattered shirt under a well-worn jacket. (Not given to outer garb, the doctor often wore no coal, at all.) BIT, BEHIND his eccentricities is the story of a truly selfless physician, who.

was passionately devoted to the care of children. For 30 years prior to his death in 1957, Dr. Stewart practiced as a pediatrician. When a youngster was Mr The Tanyard darksome Freiberg's tannery about the same hour when the ghastliest of crimes was committed but seven days ago, will you fully comprehend the real hideous-ness of the quarter," Hearn wrote. "It is wholly deserted, darksome, desolate, and the stench which pervades its narrow streets suggests only the decay of death.

You may walk upon the broken and filthy pavements for squares and squares without seeing any light but that of the street lamps that gleam like yellow goblin eyes, or hearing the footsteps of a human being. The ghoulish grunting of jogs Neighborhood and the stench" waiting slaughter, the deep barking of ferocious tannery dogs, the snakish hissings of steam in the rendering establishments, and the gurgling, like a continuous death-rattle, of the black and poisonously foul gutter streams alone break the deathly silence." As Hearn trudged daily through the foul streets, he whs surprised to observe a shift in public sympathy. The first reaction of horror, brought on principally by the brutality of the murder, seemed to be softening into a feeling that Schilling had, after aU, sculptured his own a time. Nt Hndny in9 Court..