Colt Foutz is an ex-newspaper-journalist, ex-teacher, ex-adman, and very current father of three. He currently leads the Digital Marketing Group at TransPerfect, the world's largest translations and global business services company. In his previous lives, Colt won numerous state and national awards as a reporter in Ohio and the Chicago suburbs, published a nonfiction book about the twenty-time world-champion Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps, served as director of creative services and search operations for Publicis Groupe's Performics and VivaKi agencies, and prepared for all of this by majoring in music composition at Carnegie Mellon University. (Right.) He holds a BFA in Creative Writing from CMU, and an MFA in Writing and MA in Teaching Writing from Columbia College Chicago. Colt's happiest happy place is on a wide-open beach in southern North Carolina, but you can usually find him happy all the same with his wife and kids in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Addie May and John Fisher family, New Philadelphia, Ohio, before 1910. Behind their parents: Byron, Zula, Clyde, Verna, Oscar. Image colorized by Ancestry.com using Photomyne.
BONUS: AI Brings New Life to Fisher-Ley Portraits
This blog has always been more about stories than the nuts and bolts of genealogy process. What would you share about your ancestor, sitting around a campfire? What would bring that person to life?
But when I outlined my process, highlighting my Six Holy Grails of Genealogy, all of the exacting steps lead to making connections: with descendants who can shed light on places, the shape of a life, and bring you face to face with your history.
Toward the beginning of this blog in 2010, new connection Noreen Moser shared a view of my great-grandmother, Zula Fisher Ley, I never dreamed of: a family portrait with she and her sister, Alverna, as young girls. This lent another, poignant dimension to Zula’s tragic story of dying of the flu when my grandfather was not yet two, losing the baby girl she was carrying as well. Here she was years before, bright-eyed, innocent, whole life ahead of her.
As I shared in yesterday’s post featuring great-grandfather Vance Foutz’s family, generative artificial intelligence has given us another tool to enhance our views of ancestors long gone. With just a few mouse clicks, Photomyne, an AI service used by Ancestry.com, colorizes and restores family snapshots through layers of automatic filters.
Today, I turned the tool on snapshots from the Fishers and Leys.
Five generations caught in 1896. Clockwise, from left: Telitha (Meredith) English; her nephew, my great-great-great grandfather, John W. Smith; his daughter, my great-great grandmother, Addie May (Smith) Fisher; her son, Clyde V. Fisher, brother of Zula (Fisher) Ley; and my fifth great-grandmother, Martha Jones Meredith. Photo colorized by Ancestry.com.
Seven Generations in Living Color
We can trace Zula’s ancestry through her mother, Addie Mae Smith, to the Merediths and Joneses, from Wales. I originally scanned the above photo from the Combination Atlas Map of Tuscarawas County Ohio, which features an entry tracing the route of my fifth-great-grandparents Martha Jones Meredith and husband John William Meredith from their home in the mountains of Nantyglo, Wales to their settling near Goshen, Ohio in the early 1830s. As to the photo above:
In the accompanying picture of Five Generations taken in 1896, this most worthy old gentlewoman is shown with her daughter, Telitha, with her grandson, John W. Smith and his daughter and her great granddaughter, May, who married William Fisher (my great-great grandparents — Colt), and with their son, Clyde V (Zula’s brother, my great-great uncle).
Combination Atlas Map of Tuscarawas County
John William Fisher’s father’s family originally came from Nordhein-Westphalia in Germany, whereas his mother, Sarah Walters’ family came from Bavaria. (Though her mother, Marty Mathilda Wallace’s parents came from Ireland and England.) The below photo, shared by Noreen Moser, shows my great-great-grandfather John Fisher with his mother, Sarah, at a gathering of his siblings.
back row: Emma, Ellsworth, Della, Barclay, Lily, George, Clara Alice, James front row: Sarah M, John William, Sarah Ann (Walters), Mary J, Henry. Pretty sure J.W. Fisher didn’t have pink hair.
John and Addie Fisher lived their entire lives in Goshen Twp., in a house my mom would point out to me whenever we drove out that way to and from the mall or elsewhere around the home county. A family portrait a little later in the 1910s captured Zula, Verna and their three brothers and parents, also provided by Noreen Moser.
After Zula’s tragic death in 1920, my grandpa Bob went to live with his Fisher grandparents for a time, before coming home to live with his father, Robert Ley Sr. and stepmother in Dover. Before connecting with Noreen and others on Ancestry, the only pictures I’d seen of my great-grandfather and great-grandmother Ley were these touching portraits with my grandpa as a child. I actually wondered what AI could do to “enhance” these, since the original, slightly washed-out colors lend them an appropriate air of mystery and sadness.
Zula Fisher Ley and an infant Robert Earl Ley, Jr.
Robert Earl Ley Jr. and Sr.
My great-grandfather Ley was one of the most prominent dentists in the county, as well as being active in clubs, organizations and politics, a path set by his own Ley ancestors after they emigrated from Germany, and an example his own son followed. Grandpa also joined his father in a joint dental practice in Dover and was working alongside his father when R.E. Ley Sr. succumbed to a sudden heart attack at age 65.
Robert Earl Ley, Sr., in his Dover dental office he shared with son Robert Earl Ley, Jr.
Robert Earl Ley, Sr., and dog.
Lending Color to Family Scenes
Some of my favorite pictures to colorize so far have been everyday scenes of family members — gathering to enjoy a meal, lounging around the yard or house. Here are a few more of Robert Ley, the Fishers, and the young children of Robert Earl Ley, Jr., in the 1950s, including my mother, Janet Ley Foutz.
I hope you enjoy seeing these loved ones in a new light as much as I do!
Robert Earl Ley, Sr., and grandchildren Robert III, Jeanne, Sally and Betsy at his son, Robert Jr.’s, Dover, Ohio home in the 1950s.
A young Janet Ley, left, with brother Bobby and sister Betsy.
Robert Earl Ley, Jr.’s daughters Janet, Sally, Jeanne and Betsy post in front of their car in the 1950s in Dover, Ohio.
An older great-great-grandfather John William Fisher
An older great-great-grandmother Addie May Smith Fisher
Verna Fisher, great-grandmother Zula Fisher Ley’s younger sister, and her husband, Ollin Abbuhl, about 1960. Courtesy Amazon.com user abbuhl4401.
Erma Johnson rides a bicycle in Dover, Ohio in a series of snapshots near Don Foutz’s home in 1941. The black and white photo, left, is the original. The photo on the right has been colorized by AI.
Photo Colorization Brings New Look to Family History
I probably talk about generative artificial intelligence a dozen times a day at my job. From churning out articles, to tagging content, to even understanding a creative brief and crafting a virtual photo shoot, AI is constantly evolving the toolkit I deploy for my global digital marketing clients.
Being the seismic disrupter it is, AI has now found a way to shake my family tree, too.
In this case, while assembling an entirely different story for this blog, scrolling through snapshots I’d saved on Ancestry.com, I noticed a hint nudging me to “restore your old photo” and try Ancestry’s new filters. What the heck, I thought, and did some clicking.
In the very next moment: WOAH. Like, double WOAH.
Erma Foutz with in-laws Roy and Louise Foutz, Thanksgiving 1949.
Thanksgiving 1949, Revisited
The first photo I tried colorizing was from a series taken at a Foutz family gathering at Thanksgiving, 1949. One of my goals when starting this blog was to share stories of my family’s history in a way that we can relate to, as if we were talking about our aunts and grandpas and cousins, instead of ancestors from hundreds of years ago.
The goal of genealogy, for me, was not plugging in names and dates, but coming face to face with family. I didn’t know what my great-grandfather Vance Foutz looked like. I didn’t know about my grandpa Don Foutz’s brothers, Roy and Carl. I had only met my great aunt Doris later in her life. These were family who walked the same streets and attended the same schools I did in Dover, Ohio.
As I made those connections, I gained access to records, and documents, and photos. Sometimes from distant relatives we didn’t know existed. Sometimes, as in the case of this trove of Thanksgiving pictures, buried in a box we happened to have at home – but whose names and faces and significance could not have been deciphered without first putting in the research.
When I first shared these pictures in this space, my cousin Whitney remarked that it was almost like we could step into the frame, say hello, pull up a chair, join the family. Well I re-experienced that revelation as I used Ancestry.com’s colorization tool on more and more of these shots.
Don Foutz and oldest brother Roy Foutz, Thanksgiving, 1949.
Great candid of Great-Grandma Laura…
Erma Foutz, Thanksgiving Day, 1949
Erma Foutz comes in from the dining room to join mother-in-law Laura Foutz, brother-in-law Roy, and second son Bob, 1949
Erma Foutz with in-laws Roy and Louise
Grandparents Don and Erma Foutz in colorized, sharpened images from Ancestry.com.
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?
Another series I couldn’t wait to try were photos taken of my grandpa, Don Foutz, with his then-girlfriend, soon-to-be my grandma, Erma Miller, as they biked and posed at his home in Dover in 1941.
Ancestry uses AI technology provided by Photomyne to colorize photos and offer a series of filters you can use to adjust the result, preset filers like Restore, Cool, Warm, Contrast, etc. The effect isn’t perfect: sometimes the spectrum skews too often to red, or the color washes out like the edges of soap bubbles, or people behind the main subject or scenery in the background don’t get the color treatment. You can also auto-adjust the sharpness, but that ended up giving me oddly-focused faces in an otherwise watercolor-washed composition, giving the effect of AI baring its unnatural teeth.
Yes, there could be value in being able to really hand-tune the results, like we’re able to do on even basic social media. But I confess the initial results left me just tickled. Like our relatives stepping out of time and waving hello.
Erma Foutz bikes near Race Street, Dover, 1941
Don Foutz pedals a bike near his family’s home in Dover, circa 1941.
Don Foutz, 1941
Erma Foutz outside the Race Street, Dover, Ohio childhood home of her husband, Don
Don Foutz with mother Laura Zeigler Foutz, 1941.
Vance Foutz Family – in Color
Like any old yearbook or photo album revisited, experiencing these classic portraits in a different light helps bring out details that might have been overlooked, like the shades of an expression, or texture in clothes or buildings or objects they used.
But the main effect is almost of meeting these beloved ancestors for the first time, as if they might just have passed by on the street, or posed for an iPhone snapshot at a backyard barbecue.
Maybe since so many of our photos today are filtered, and edited, and glossed to perfection, seeing these classic images with a different treatment, especially if it isn’t foolproof, bring out the life in them all the more.
From the Massillon, Ohio, Evening Independent, Sept. 15, 1955
Herbert Foutz Arrested, Not Convicted in Car Theft Ring
Piecing life stories together through genealogy can seem like standing on the outside, staring through one grimy, cobwebbed window, trying to describe, in detail, rooms throughout the whole house.
Until the lights come on, the other windows are unboarded, the door opens and a welcome mat beckons you inside, you’re left with fragments, glimpses.
And so you come back again, and again, to the house, checking to see if something’s changed. If you’ve gained new access.
In the case of my great-great grandfather Jonathan Foutz‘s family, I’ve been creeping in corners and poking at clues for going on 15 years. We’ve gotten to know my great-grandfather Vance Foutz‘s branch of the tree well, and solved some other mysteries along the way. But there are some stories, no matter how you nudge and dig, that stubbornly refuse to yield the whole picture.
In these cases, even the passage of (more) time doesn’t loosen the grip of the unknown:
the major players are deceased, or unaware of the answers, or far, far away in the world
published newspaper stories cease following up on the case
scanned records sit behind a paywall
other records may be tangled up in impossibly bad transcriptions, waiting for a perfectly worded search
still other sources have yet to be released, such as the 1960 census as the clock ticks, too slowly, through the 72-year waiting period
For the family and descendants of Vance’s closest brother, Charles Ross Foutz, all of these factors persist, in the midst of tantalizing clues: my grandfather Don Foutz’s memories recording “red-headed cousins from Canton visiting;” and descendants commenting on this blog, and contacting me through email to share what they know, and attempt to find out still more.
Today’s story is incomplete, but another fascinating one, concerning Charles’s son Herbert Ross Foutz.
September 15, 1955: headlines in nearly two dozen newspapers across Ohio trumpet “Auto Theft Ring Broken in Canton.” As followed up the next day by the Massillon, Ohio Evening Independent:
FBI agents arrested three men here Thursday night during a probe of an interstate car theft gang which specializes in big automobiles.
The investigation was focused mainly on Canton and Erie, Pa.
Arrested were Louis J. Christian, 35, who quit recently as credit manager of a jewelry store here; Herbert R. Foutz, 43, an auto dealer; and Paul Keatley, 28, a jobless truck driver.
They were charged with conspiracy to transport a stolen 1954 Cadillac coupe from Canton to Erie.
In Pittsburgh, an assistant U.S. Attorney, W.W. Stanton, told a reporter that the FBI had to act quickly “because we had information that one of the suspects, Christian, was about to leave the country.”
The three were taken to Cleveland where U.S. Commissioner H. A. Horn set the following bonds: Christian, $10,000; Keatley, $5,000; and Foutz, $10,000. Foutz posted his bail but Christian and Keatley still were held last night in the Cuyahoga county jail at Cleveland.
Prosecution of the charges probably will take place in Pennsylvania.
Friday, Sept. 16, 1955, page 10
Marriage, Seven Kids in Canton
Herbert was third of five children born to Charles Foutz and Rosie Belle White in New Philadelphia before Charles’s early death, at 32, of pneumonia in 1918.
When Rosie remarried a year later, to Thomas Clifford Colvin, the family gained two step-brothers, Clarence and Carl, and moved to Canton by 1922, where two half-sisters, Norma Jessie, and Betty Jane (known as Rose), were born.
By the 1930 census, only the youngest Foutz brother and sister, James and Margaret, live at home with their two young sisters and parents. By the mid-1930s through the 1940s, Canton city directories pick up Charles Foutz’s sons, John, Herbert and James, living with and working with each other: in 1936 at the same residence at 708 3rd St., NE, and for a time at Berger Manufacturing, where Herbert was a cabinet inspector.
By 1945, James is a driver for Mack Beverage Company, and Herbert is a salesman for Superior Dairy. And by the 1950s, after the deaths of their mother, Rosie, in 1948, and oldest brother, John Charles Foutz, in 1950, Herbert is a car salesman.
Early hits in the newspaper record show Herbert as potentially rounded up in 1932 with a Clifford Colvin (could it be his stepfather) for violating Prohibition. But another article in 1950 seems closer to his role in the auto industry in the 1950s and prior to his death — he is reportedly fired by the Ford Motor Company after a four-day union strike in Canton. In the census that year he is listed as a combustion analyst for an auto manufacturing company but “unable to work.”
In 1952, Herbert Foutz appears as a salesman for Shaffer Motors in Massillon in more than a dozen ads running in the Massillon Independent.
Strangely, the newspaper record doesn’t yield up any other ads featuring Herbert Foutz before or after. And then there’s the news of the day for Sept. 15 and 16, when the FBI brings him in.
FBI agents arrested three men in Canton Thursday as they continued their investigation of an interstate car theft gang specializing in big automobiles.
Taken into custody were Louis J. Christan, 35, who just quit his job as credit manager of a jewelry firm in canton; Herbert R. Foutz, 43, an auto dealer, and Paul Keatley, 28, a jobless truck driver. All three are from Canton.
The trio has been charged with conspiracy to transport a stolen 1954 Cadillac coupe from Canton to Erie, Pa.
Stark County sheriff’s deputies also have been working on the case which reportedly involved an unnamed used car lot in Akron. Deputies said the gang’s operations may involve the disappeaance of 34 blank auto title forms from the Stark County courthouse last Summer.
One of the blank forms, filled out to match a car, turned up in Akron. The man who brought the car in to sell fled when he became frightened. He forgot the title and car.
H. O. Hawkins, FBI chief in Cleveland, said the Cadillac coupe was stolen in Canton Feb. 16 and found two days later on a used car lot in Erie.
…
Foutz posted his bond but Christian and Keatley were still held in Cuyahoga County Jail.
In Cleveland Loren E. Van Brocklin, assistant U.S. attorney, indicated the three men probably would be prosecuted in Pennsylvania where the warrants for their arrest were issued. Foutz, father of six, already has agreed to face charged in that state.
Sept. 16, 1955; page 23
Ringleaders sentenced, Foutz goes free?
From then on, there is seemingly no mention of Herbert Foutz in the newspaper record — no ads, no further updates on the FBI case — until his death in January 1963 at age 51. The obituary in the Mansfield, Ohio News Herald reports “ill health had forced him to retire from his job of auto salesman,” but when? I haven’t found city directory records of his occupation after the 1955 arrest, and there is no 1960 census released yet to check.
But about a month after the FBI brought Christian, Foutz and Keatley in, the story picks up in The Pittsburgh Press, where on Oct. 7 two new conspirators are indicted, and no mention is made of Foutz:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it is investigating the gang on the possibility it may have stolen 450 autos throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York.
Working with efficiency, the thieves took nothing but the finest model cars, changed the motor numbers and allegedly used an Erie auto dealer as the “fence.”
Those Indicted
Indictments were returned today against:
James Timpe, 30, an Erie auto dealer.
Louis J. Christian, 35, former credit manager of a Canton, Ohio, jewelry company and alleged ring leader of the gang.
Earl S. Carrington, 29, of Canton, described as a fugitive from the charges leveled today.
Henry P. Keatley, 28, of Canton.
The grand jury said Christian apparently hired both Carrington and Keatley to steal the autos in the Cleveland area between last November and February.
Still Investigating
The four men are specifically charged in the theft of five cars, but the case is still under investigation and it appeared other arrests might be forthcoming.
Officers described the gang as specialists who preferred to steal the latest Cadillacs and Oldsmobile 98s, with emphasis on the “hard top” models.
Christian offered his ring members from $100 to $500 for stealing the cars, investigators said.
Changed Numbers
These were taken to an undisclosed Ohio garage where motor numbers were changed and new title certificates were drawn up, according to testimony.
The probers said the autos then were taken to Timpe, who sold them in the Erie area for ab out $3500 for the Cadillacs and around $2500 for the Oldsmobiles.
Conducting the grand jury probe into the auto ring was Assistant U.S. Attorney W. Wendell Stanton.
Mr. Stanton said Christian was arrested in Cleveland last week, on a complaint growing out of his activities and now is lodged in County Jail there.
Friday, Oct. 7, 1955, page 1
The twists and turns are recorded by Pittsburgh and other area newspapers throughout the Fall and following Winter, with highlights including:
Timpe pleading guilty, and choosing to stay in jail rather than have his father-in-law, Wilbert W. Boyd, bail him out
Keatley was found to already be serving time in the Ohio State Pentitentiary “on similar charges”
Christian was first to be sentenced, on Dec. 1, for one year in prison. By then the charge involved transporting 5 stolen cars to Erie, Pa. (Quite a few less than 450)
Timpe was next to be sentenced, on Dec. 16, to 19 months, again with the report that the ring handled five stolen cars before the FBI shut them down
Finally, the law caught up with the fugitive Carrington, who was sentenced on Jan. 27, 1956 to three months in County Jail for his part in transporting two of the stolen cars, with the term in addition to two and half months already served.
Keatley’s sentencing was left for later, after he finished his term in the Ohio pen, but I found no hits in my search.
So, it seems, the caper is concluded, with no further mention of Herbert Foutz. Did he end up sharing evidence with the Feds? Was he mistakenly taken in? Did he ever return to selling cars, or was his “ill health” more a case of ill association with the likes of Christian and Timpe and Carrington and Keatley?
He was buried in Willoughby Village Cemetery, far from his twice-remarried wife, Eleanor, who is buried with third husband Howard Dennis at North Lawn Cemetery in Canton. (Interestingly, her second husband, Ralph Buxton‘s headstone, at still another cemetery, Forest Hill, in Canton, bears her name and birth year, but no death year.) There are no other Foutzes reported as being buried in Willoughby Village Cemetery.
Site of the former Hotel Morgan in Carnegie, Pa., in September 2023; model of the Hotel Morgan in its later incarnation as the Zug building in the historical museum across the street.
Exploring Site of the Hotel Morgan in Carnegie, Pa.
Well, howdy there, family history buffs. It’s a been a little while. Let’s dive right back in.
#3 on my list of “holy grails” of genealogy — as shared almost four years ago in this space (!) — was putting a place to a name. Key, of course, being that you’d already combed through enough records and matched enough milestones to the finely-pruned boughs of your family tree that you knew of the location and its significance, well, in the first place.
In September last year, the research and our madcap itinerary aligned enough that my oldest son, Jonah, and I were able to spend a few hours at the end of a visit to Pittsburgh to pass through Carnegie, Pa., home in the late 1800s to early 1900s of my great-great grandparents, Thomas and Janet Morgan.
We’d spent a few days back in the burgh so I could run The Great Race 10K for the first time in college, then show Jonah around both the University of Pittsburgh and my alma mater, Carnegie Mellon. In between we took in a couple favorite eateries (Primanti Bros.; Pino’s); rode to the top of Mt. Washington from Station Square on the Monongahela Incline, and pored over the excellent Heinz History Center right across from our hotel.
Credit Jonah for being a game enough explorer to squeeze in one last stop before turning in our rental Tacoma. I punched in coordinates for Chartiers Cemetery in Carnegie, where Thomas and Janet were laid to rest.
At Rest in the Green Hills
When I’d researched my great-great-grandparents’ lives and deaths, I’d relied on the photos of others, posted on FindAGrave.com, to appreciate their burial place. So it wasn’t absolutely necessary to take a detour off the main road into Carnegie into the tree-shaded lanes of Chartiers Cemetery to snap my own photos.
But there’s always been something mystical about visiting our ancestors’ places of rest and remembrance. I just didn’t know how much time we’d have, with a couple hours until our flight home later that afternoon. And I didn’t have precise coordinates.
Still, there may have been some familial magic guiding us as we took a single lap around the cemetery, peering through the passing rain showers up into the pines. We were turning back toward the entrance again when I spotted their monument and the two familiar gravestones.
We got out of the car and stood quietly for a moment, contemplating how long it had been since they were laid there — nearly 110 years now, for Janet, and close to 130 for Thomas — and wondering at the pilgrimages my great-grandmother and her brother and sisters, or my grandmother had made there before.
I dutifully recorded images of their headstones and some related names around them, including their son, Thomas, a war veteran. And we turned back onto the pike to head into Carnegie.
Corner of Chartiers and Main
In my research years ago, I’d marveled at discovering a map of Carnegie from 1897 that recorded the town in high-resolution detail, including my great-great-grandfather’s namesake hotel.
In keeping with my early tradition of employing my journalistic skills to gather all the genealogical sources I needed online, I was also tickled to find at least two different views of the Hotel Morgan in newspapers from the period, recounted here and here.
But from years winding in and around Pittsburgh during college, and whizzing by that Carnegie exit in a blink on my way in and out of town, and even contemplating that map from a bygone century, I just couldn’t imagine making an easy stopover. And so, I’d resisted on previous occasions.
Well, our incredible luck this trip held. Or, maybe it was divine ancestral invention? We managed to drive right up to the former site of the hotel, now a PNC Bank at Chartiers and Main streets, and even grabbed change from a teller inside for the meter.
After scoping out the views on the bridge over the river, and from either corner, we were drawn to the old building across the street, home of the Carnegie Historical Society and the actual building from that map I’d pored over years ago. What the heck, I thought, let’s take a look inside. Maybe they knew even more than Honus Wagner, famed baseball star from the early Pirates (and well known as owner of the most pricey oldtime tobacco card).
Well, not only did our incredible streak hold, but we were treated to an actual scale model of oldtime Carnegie, complete with little Hotel Morgan — in its later guise as the Zug building — set the way the neighborhood looked from the 1890s through the 1950s.
I snapped a few shots from all angles — next best thing to being there, I guess — and Jonah had a chance to heft one of The Flying Dutchman’s bats.
Inspired, I punched in the address of Jannett Morgan’s house at the time of her obituary into Google Maps and we drove across the tracks and wound uphill to her old neighborhood. But this is where our deadline-drive luck finally ran out. The addresses, it seemed, had changed since 1915, and though we were still tingling with a sense of history, we knew it was time to get back to the present and head for home.
Still, it was a fine interlude in an honored family place. And I hold to the notion we would not have been able to find our way there and back without something deeper in the blood and spirit guiding us through. Till next time, then.
The Morgans appear on their first U.S. Census in 1880, in Appollo, PA. By the time the family appears again, in 1900, they live in Carnegie, and Jannett Morgan is widowed. An entry in an 1896 book provides a clue as to what Colt’s great-great grandfather Thomas Morgan was doing in the years before his death.
Another view of the Hotel Morgan, shown about 1890 in Carnegie, Pennsylvania. This was the hotel managed by my great-great grandfather, Thomas W. Morgan, until his death in 1897.
Erma Foutz holds her youngest son, Fred, about 1952.
Happy 100th Birthday, Erma Maxine Johnson Foutz
I first learned about loss — and renewal — from my grandmother Erma Foutz.
I was very young, barely 4, when my grandpa Foutz died of lung cancer in 1980. My memories of him were mere brushstrokes, though his legend loomed ever after.
My lessons took place in the years following his passing. In visits to her home on Cross Street in Dover. First it was only Grandma there, and not that grayer, grizzlier shadow of my own father moving around in the basement, or outside, or upstairs.
Later, after Grandma remarried and spent much of her time in Arizona with second husband Max Miller, the house was a place my dad looked after, mowing the lawn, or picking up the sour, mushy crab apples. I’d climb the tree out back, or lie on the rug in the pantry, coloring, or putting together puzzles from the old tin.
It was odd, for a few years, driving around in Grandma’s green Pontiac Sunfire, scooting “over the hump” in the backseat on our way to church, or Pre-K, instead of her pulling up outside our house, coming in for Christmas Day, or a picnic.
In the years immediately after Grandpa’s passing, there were odd, magical moments, fueled by a gradeschooler’s imagination, where I thought I’d discover him someplace else. Selling popcorn in our neighborhood, stopping at the house a few doors around the corner — wasn’t that? Couldn’t that be him? Or a gruff laugh in the back of a school gym.
The renewal happened not long after. Grandma married a longtime friend and former boss, Max Miller, on New Year’s Day, 1982, in Phoenix.
“Uncle Max” as we called him early on, and later, just Max, was a jolly, joking, face-pulling sort to the many grandchildren in his and Grandma’s brood. He brought books, and exotic souvenirs — fisherman’s caps from Scotland, and carved elephant door handles — and multiple carousels of slides from his world travels, which Grandma gleefully, gratefully joined him on.
I wasn’t too young to see how Grandma flourished in that friendship, that love, in her later years. She’d been born as poor as they come, I guess. Sharing a bed with her two sisters, and a house with nine siblings, moving every few years throughout her childhood in New Philadelphia. She was a literal coal miner’s daughter. But a lively sort — so the stories, heard later on from her sister Nellie, said — with a partner or two at every dance, and a yearbook full of admiring inscriptions.
She talked, later, of wanting badly to attend college. She did not, but trained as a secretary, and joined a local sorority, when that was possible, among the young working gals in Tuscarawas County.
She met my grandfather, Don, from crosstown rival Dover, when he’d already set a toehold into his working years. Six years her senior, he was already enough of a shadow of the football legend — almost a decade removed from his famous exploits in the 1931 season, and three straight rivalry games with her New Philadelphia Quakers, and some five years removed from a brief second-gasp shot with Ohio State, cut short. He was already punching the clock at Potschner Ford, while she was typing away in the offices at Greer Steel, his eventual destination as he wound out the decades.
I had no notion of them as a couple, but there must have been great love and devotion there. And music. One of grandma’s prize possessions was an organ that sat, for years, in her living room on Cross Street, then made the move through a succession of Dover and New Phila apartments, with Max, before a deluxe version settled in a corner of the family room — across from Max and Erma’s bar — in their Country Club Drive dream home.
But that was later.
Music: Grandpa was a fan of jazz and swing bands. And it’s said they used to dance. There was nobody who danced like they did. The floor cleared, and the crowd clapped and watched. Music.
Grandma made her own sweet music with Max through 18 years of marriage. And no matter their world travels took them — to Europe, to Africa, to Antarctica; their home away from home in sunny Sun Valley, Arizona — their path inexorably wound back through Tuscarawas County.
We continued the tradition of family Christmas Eves — first at the house on Cross Street, then in their apartments and that lovely home atop the hill in New Phila. We slapped down cards in Skip-Bo, and flipped through the countless photo albums. Slides gave way to VHS tapes, DVDs. But the best moments — the best moments — were lunches with just the two of them, 2-on-1, cold cut sandwiches and cold cans of pop, something mellow on the in-wall speakers. Talking about school, and girlfriends, and my own affair with music. My own prized possession is the honey-brown Yamaha console piano Grandma and Max bought me (well, my family) during a trip up to Canton one school night my sophomore year. It’s followed me to a succession of houses in Illinois and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
And grandma’s memory follows me still. She was second of my grandparents to pass away, 20 years after grandpa, in 2000. I was just out of college, winding out my time in Pittsburgh, unsure of the next step, the first job. In the last conversation I remember with her, late that June or July, when she was noticeably less, her constant whirl of motion dulled by the cancer she was fighting, the phone rang in my little attic apartment and it was her. She was a prolific letter writer — in beautiful, flowing script — and spontaneous caller throughout my college years. At the end of our conversation, she had a message just for me, that has touched me all these years. She said: of all her grandchildren, that I’d pursued music and writing, and that my cousin, Whitney, had pursued architecture, these were closest to the arts she herself had wished she’d studied. That was the last time we spoke.
One of the lasting gifts Grandma and Max gave, too outsized and profound for the young man I was to really grasp back then, were the trusts they’d established for each of their grandchildren, making it possible for all of us to pursue our educations, and graduate school and continuing education in many cases, and extend to the down payments to our first homes, our transportation to and from those first jobs. Their generosity, and their great love for family is their legacy.
Today would have been Grandma’s 100th birthday. As I’d done before, first with Grandpa Don Foutz, and in 2018 with Grandma Sue Ley and Grandpa Bob Ley, I’m sharing the collection of images I’ve kept on my computer to trace their remarkable lives, in memory of all they’ve given us, and in how we remember them still.
Erma Foutz: 79 Years in Photographs
(Scroll to view the gallery below, or click any photo for a closeup slideshow.)
Baby Erma Johnson
Baby Erma Johnson, front, with siblings Leonard, Virginia and Nellie, 1920s.
Virginia Johnson holds baby brother while sister Erma looks on.
Erma Johnson and brothers, 1920s.
A preteen Erma Johnson, early 1930s.
Erma Johnson as a young girl, 1933.
Erma Johnson, second from left, 1938 yearbook photo, New Phila, Oh.
Erma Johnson, far right, cavorts with sorority sisters, 1940s.
Erma Johnson, far left, jokes with sorority sisters, 1940s.
Erma Johnson, second from right, in a more formal photo with her sorority sisters.
Erma Foutz outside the Race Street, Dover, Ohio childhood home of her husband, Don
Erma Foutz bikes near Race Street, Dover, 1941
Don and Erma Foutz on their wedding day, 1942
Erma Foutz, 1940s
Erma Foutz, Thanksgiving Day, 1949
Erma Foutz comes in from the dining room to join mother-in-law Laura Foutz, brother-in-law Roy, and second son Bob, 1949
Erma Foutz with in-laws Roy and Louise
Erma Foutz holds her youngest son, Fred, about 1952.
Erma Foutz, 1953
Erma Foutz, second shot
Erma Foutz, Christmastime, 1950s
Don Foutz with sons Fred and Bob and wife Erma, c. 1960
Erma Foutz at work, Miller Studio, 1970s
Erma Foutz with her sisters and sisters-in-law, 1970s
Erma and Don Foutz, 1970s
Erma Foutz and Johnson siblings and in-laws, 1970s
Erma and Don Foutz, right, at the marriage of son Fred to Janet Ley, 1975, with Bob and Sue Ley
Erma and Don Foutz at son Fred’s wedding, 1975
Erma Foutz holds grandson Colt, 1977
Erma and Don Foutz with family and grandchildren Justin, Ketter, Colt and baby Dan, 1977
Johnson siblings, 1979
Don and Erma Foutz at a backyard picnic, Dover, Ohio, 1980
Picnicking with Colt, Sue Ley, Don Foutz, and Erma Foutz
Erma and Don Foutz, Carmel, Calif., 1979
At the Johnson Family reunion, Dover, Ohio, 1987
Erma and Johnson siblings
Johnson siblings in Arizona, 1989
Erma Foutz with granddaughters Lauren, left, and Whitney
Erma with granddaughters Whitney and Lauren, Arizona, 1984
Erma Foutz during one of her travels, 1980s
Erma Foutz with grandsons Colt, Dan and Sam, and son Fred, 1991
Erma Foutz and family, 1993
Erma Foutz and second husband Max Miller, 1993
Erma and sister Nellie, 1994
Erma Foutz Miller and grandson, Colt, at his graduation party, 1994
Whispering Across the Campfire 
