And so it
began... A short biography of Leo Smith
Faith and Cards The legacy of
Leo and Rosa Smith
E-mail/web pages list of family members (added
by request only)
Photo Gallery
Index Family Stories
Where we live
Eduction
and Military Service
Remembering those who have passed before us
Leo, Rosa,
Joseph, Rosemary, Genevieve, Teresa, Coletta
Beatrice, Donald, and Gilbert
(1941)
Leo Nicholas Smith was born August 2, 1889. He was the forth of ten children
born to Peter Smith and Margaret Kramer Smith of
After leaving school as a pre-teen, he worked at home on the family farm and learned to trim grapes. He then boarded at Lawrence Hassell’s and later managed the farm of Frank Krebs who worked as a section hand on the rail road.
The youngest of 6 children, Rosa Elisabeth Schneider, was born April 5, 1892
to Fred and Catherine Comes Schneider of Center Road, Avon, Ohio. She attended
school on
Leo was introduced to Rosa by his brother Seaf who was married to
On May 19, 1914, Leo and Rosa were married by Father F.A. Hassler at St.
Mary's Church in
Rosa and Leo were both active members of
The original parish school was demolished by a tornado on June 28, 1924. The storm also blew the chimney off of the family’s house, roofing off of the barn and destroyed the smoke house and a few trees. As a result of the tornado, the children attended public school until the new school on Negal Road was completed in 1928. Leo worked for two winters clearing fallen trees.
Using three teams of horses to pull a scraper, Leo was first employed by Avon Village to clear roads. In 1933 he moved his family to a 30 acre farm on Williams Court where they grew grapes, berries and other fruit. Thomas and Raymond were born there. In 1944, With Joe, Gil and Don all in the service, he gave up farming and moved the family to Stoney Ridge Road and began working full time as Street Commissioner.
Leo spent his leisure time playing pinochle, euchre, cribbage, and checkers. He smoked a pipe and enjoyed listening to his favorite newscaster, Lowell Thomas.
Leo retired in 1957 after surgery for cancer of the prostate. He was operated on again in April of 1959 and was in the Cleveland Clinic for three months before he was moved to Holy Family Home in Parma where he died on July 28th, five days before his 70th birthday.
After Leo’s death, Rosa lived with Genny in an apartment Rosemary and her husband Joseph added on to their home. When Rosa became ill, her children took turns staying with her while Genny was at work.
Rosa died November 16, 1970 and is buried with Leo in St. Mary’s Cemetary in Avon. They were parents of 10, grandparents of 33, and great grandparents of 38.
Faith and Cards The Legacy of Leo and Rosa Smith
Once each year, on the third Sunday in July, we come together to play games, eat heartily and catch up on what is new with our aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, grandparents and grandkids. It is a celebration of one growing thriving family, the Leo Smith family. This reunion tradition was a family idea that began at the Forster farm after Leo's death as a way to keep this family in touch with each other and with our roots. The reunion was moved to Wysocki’s on Kinzel Road when Rosa's health began to fail. For some of us Leo and Rosa Smith are remembered as loving parents or in-laws. Others know them as grandparents or great grandparents and beyond.
We celebrate a legacy but not all of us have first hand memories. We have seen the pictures and some of the historical accounts but who were Leo and Rosa really. What was it about them that is worthy of our celebration today. We recently asked that question of those who are best able to answer it, the children and a few of the grandchildren of Leo and Rosa Smith. While we have a lot of memories to share with you, two central themes kept coming up over and over again. These two themes may seem to be opposed to one another – going to church and playing cards.
Fun Times
In the 1920s and 30s the growing Leo Smith family looked for activities to keep life fun and the family closely knit. Playing cards and games were favorite activities to pass the time. Parcheesi, Chinese Checkers and “I Doubt It” were but a few of the games. Card playing was serious business in the Smith house. Leo taught Bea to play 66 before she went to school. This was mostly to keep her out of Rosa’s hair.
Card playing within the family or amongst neighbors was a wonderful way to socialize for the young, old and young at heart. Santa never forgot to bring a couple new decks of cards. The family also enjoyed board games but they were few in the early years.
Whether it was cards or board games, they were enjoyed with a snack of apples, pop corn or whatever was available at the time. These were times of fun for all and they hated to quit when it was time for bed.
Kids invented games while picking berries on Schwartz Road, while feeding the animals or anytime their imaginations wandered. A stick for a fishing pole, a string for line and a cucumber for bait made for a game of “fishing” while feeding the pigs. Rolling a tire down the dirt road was fun for the kids, but how did Rosa ever get the clothes clean? They had to be washed by hand in those days.
Extended Family
After picking berries at Grandpa Peter Smith’s, all would pile into Leo’s Model T for a ride home. His Model T always found its way to the grocery store where a nickel would buy a large ice cream cone. Leo frequently asked: “Who wants seconds?” That was really because he wanted another one.
Sundays were a time to visit with family and friends. After a long week of hard work, Leo would often have preferred to stay home to rest but, without complaint, he would drive the family to Grandpa Smith’s, Grandma Schneider’s, Aunt Annie’s or to see Aunt Christine and Uncle Casper, or off to the Hassel’s.
For the trips to Grandpa’s, Rosa would pack a picnic lunch. Pork shoulders in a crock covered with hot lard would provide the fixings for great pork sandwiches along with a homemade cake.
Food
There was much more to Rosa’s cooking than pork sandwiches in a picnic basket. When it came to dinner Leo liked Rosa’s pork fat. The kids all enjoyed her raisin bread and kuchen whether it was cinnamon, grape or any other flavor. Other favorites included graham bread, plenty of canned goods, fresh fried potatoes, chicken or beef vegetable soup. Many Sundays included a big Sunday afternoon dinner. Don remembers butchering 2 or 3 chickens with Gil for use over the course of a weekend. During the Depression Sunday dinner might only be soup but it was a time enjoyed by all. Sunday night suppers were a bit simpler. The main course might be wieners.
Rosa made the best fresh-squeezed lemonade. Two generations of Smith women (Rosemary and Sandy) have tried unsuccessfully to duplicate the taste. Rosemary tried it once, thinking it was time for some of her mom’s lemonade. She laughed as she recounted that it wasn’t “time”.
Following midnight Mass on Christmas the family would all come back home to cook a big breakfast. It was a real high point in their memories.
Leo, Particular About His Work
Leo took pride in a job well done. With a horse he would plow, disk, and rake the field. Then with a 5-row corn marker, which consisted of a horizontal piece of wood with 5 sticks of wood attached to it, he would drag the field in one direction and then perpendicular to that, creating a checkerboard pattern. Seeds were planted at the intersecting rows. It wasn’t the easiest way to do the job but the work was always of high quality.
Genny helped her dad plant potatoes. He would take one end of a line and she the other. They would stretch out the line across the field as a guide to plant the potatoes in straight rows. Even when Genny was sure that she was lined up with Leo, he would invariably have her move a foot to the left or two feet to the right. He was very particular about his rows.
During thrashing time, neighbors always helped neighbors as a lot of hard work was involved. It took quite a few men to make up a thrashing crew, a total of 10 to 12.
Stacking the straw was the most difficult job of all. Straw stacked properly would keep all winter, so it was important that the job be done right. A few farmers had their straw blown onto a pile but that resulted in a lot of waste. Leo had quite a reputation for building straw stacks. He was known as the best stack builder in the area. Everyone would ask Leo to build their stacks.
Duty
People knew Leo as one who you could always count on. When Leo was street commissioner for the city of Avon he was responsible to be sure that the streets were cindered and plowed when it snowed. Rosemary remembers that he would set his alarm every hour during the night when a storm was expected so that he could get up and look out the window to check the road conditions.
Joe Wysocki recalls one particularly severe snowstorm where he and Leo were out plowing together. They could not even see where they were going. At one point Joe asked Leo if he could see where the road was. Leo told him to stop and get out to scope it out. Joe opened the door and stepped out of the truck right into the ditch. After that they just went home. The plowing would have to wait until the morning.
Bob Forster recalls helping to change a traffic light bulb on a Sunday when Leo found out that it was burned out. While some might have waited for Monday morning, Leo took care of it right away.
Tornado
In 1924 a very serious tornado hit East Avon where the family lived. As the family prayed during the storm, they watched bricks fall from the chimney past the living room windows. When the winds died down Leo went out to survey the damage. They had lost the chimney and sustained damage to the roof. A 200-acre dense wood just across the road had been thinned to the point that you could see right through it. The outhouse and smokehouse were gone. With tears streaming down his face, Leo tried to salvage what he could of the ham and bacon that once hung in the smokehouse.
Grandma Smith, living in Avon Lake, heard that East Avon had been devastated. She sent Uncle Leonard to check on the family. He drove as far as he could until trees blocked the roads. Walking the rest of the way he did not reach Leo and Rosa’s home until 11:00 at night. He was happy to see that they were safe but he could not get word back to Grandma Smith until the next morning.
Holy Trinity church was hard hit as well. Old oak trees were uprooted. All but two stained glass windows were blown out. The steeple was gone. The school was but a pile of bricks. It was just two weeks after First Communion. Mass had to be held in the priest’s sacristy.
After the tornado, the parish held 2 chicken dinners per year to raise the money needed to rebuild. Mrs. Hassel chaired the effort for many years. She always liked to have Rosa on her crew because Rosa was such a good worker and knew what had to be done. Leo helped to collect and butcher the chickens
Chores
With a large family to care for and a farm to work, Leo and Rosa did a pretty good job of delegating chores as well. There was a perception of inequity between the chores given to the girls vs. the boys in the Smith house. The girls did not like emptying the “pots” from the house into the outhouse. The boys would counter that they had to clean the barn stalls, which more than made up for whatever the girls were complaining about.
Rosa’s children recall that she would help with the hoeing, a lot of hoeing, especially in the grape vineyard. She tied the grapes and helped with crating them after harvest. She drove the horse and wagon back and forth from the field to the barn at harvest time. If for some reason the boys were not around to do their chores the task fell to the girls to pick up the slack. While the girls may have complained that the boys usually got the easier chores, there was one chore that they were happy to leave to the boys; milking the cow. Rosemary could not get milk out of the cow no matter how hard she tried. On one occasion the cow got so upset with the way that Rosemary was trying to milk it that she never tried again. Theresa received lessons in milking from both her mom and dad but could not seem to master the technique.
Their children remember Leo and Rosa as proud, hard working people who almost never complained. They were serious most of the time but with humor thrown in just often enough to keep the family going.
Growing up
Times were tough and money was scarce. Leo and Rosa worked long hard hours with little free time. Sacrifices were made without complaint. Late one Saturday night Leo went out to patch the inner tubes on the Model T. They had been patched many times before and he was trying to put patches on top of patches. With a couple more patches in place he pumped the tires back up to be ready for the trip to church in the morning. When he came out the next morning the tires were flat.
We take for granted many of the conveniences that families did not have 60 or 70 years ago. The family did not have electricity until 1944 in their home at French Creek. The wind up clocks were not always the most accurate way of telling time. If you really wanted to know the right time you called “Central” and the operator would tell you the time. One morning when Don was to serve 7:00 Mass he relied on the wind up clock and found himself at Mass at 6:30 in the morning. He says that he should have called Central.
There was no Television in those days but Joe did have a battery radio before the family had electricity. They used it mostly to listen to the news and Amos and Andy.
Clothing and many other items that the family needed were ordered from the Sears or Montgomery Ward catalogs. School clothes were ordered yearly on August 15th. When the orders had been placed, the catalog went to the outhouse to be used as toilet paper.
Shopping trips for clothing were reserved for very special occasions such as First Communion.
Theresa remembers Leo sitting on the kitchen counter with a basket of small apples and a knife. He would peel the apples and cut out the bad spots. He would pass them out to a crowd of waiting kids as fast as he could finish them.
Faith
Any conversation with anyone who knew Leo and Rosa eventually makes its way around to the single most important aspect of their life – faith. Their strong faith in God was constantly manifested in their actions and in the way that they prioritized their activities. A wintry Sunday morning may find Leo and Joe Wysocki out in fowl weather spreading cinders and plowing the roads of Avon to try to make them passable. Even in that bad weather, with Leo gone and no one to drive the family, Rosa would gather everyone up and they would walk through the snow to church. Every other Saturday night the family would go to confession. When Leo was not around to drive them, they walked then as well. In spring when the dirt roads turned to mud making them impassible for the car, the horse and buggy could be found making its way to church with the family piled in.
If you did not feel well enough to go to church on Sunday morning then you were considered too sick to go anywhere else for the rest of the day as well, even if you felt better later on.
When Genny was in the third grade, recurring ear infections caused her to drop out of school for the rest of the year. She may not have been going to school all day but she almost never missed her preparation classes for First Holy Communion. When it came time for religion class Leo would stop what he was doing to drive her so that she would not have to miss them. The sacrifice of his time during the day and the money for gas was no small matter in those days.
Saturday nights were spent shining shoes and ironing clothes to get ready for church the next morning. Wash tub baths were taken in the kitchen in front of the open oven door to keep warm or carrying the basin to their rooms for a sponge bath. When the younger children were small, Coletta would help Rosa to get them all into bed. Then the two of them would do some of the prep work for dinner the next day.
Support for the church was high on the family’s priority list as well. Many times the only donation that the family had was its labor. The family worked to get ready for the annual church bazaar, for instance. Leo helped the men kill chickens while Rosa mashed potatoes. Leo also served on Parish Council. They helped out wherever they could.
The months of May and October, as well as the Lenten season, would find the whole family kneeling to say the nightly rosary. If a very bad storm would hit the family home in the middle of the night they would all be awakened from bed to come together for the rosary. They would also burned palms during a storm as well. The family was faithful to attend Sorrowful Mother Novena devotions on Wednesdays during Lent.
Memories from the Grandkids
Playing Bunco with Rosa
Being given a nickel by Rosa to go for a Popsicle at Jean and John’s
Going to Grandma’s from St. Mary’s school for lunch
Going with Leo at 6:00 on Sunday night in the red city pick up truck to take down the flag from the city hall at Stoney Ridge and Detroit Road.
Sandy remembers that Leo had a big bucket of nails that he had removed from boards so that they could be burned in the stove. He would take her out to the garage with a magnet to let her play with the magnet and the nails so that she could learn that some nails were magnetic and some were not.
Sandy also remembers that the garage was very full.
Sandy remembers Leo teaching her German words. (He did not really speak German a lot but would throw in a word or two here and there).
Sandy helped Rosa wrap Christmas presents before the annual Christmas get together. She says that she learned who her cousins were that way but she also knew what everyone was getting before they did.
Rosa always had a special Halloween treat saved aside for Sandy. Sandy would think that she was fooling Rosa into thinking that she was one of the neighborhood kids but Rosa always knew who she was, except for one year. A girl came to the door and Rosa mistook her for Sandy, giving Sandy’s special treat to her. Boy was Sandy upset when she finally showed up at Rosa’s house.
Roman remembers sitting on Leo’s lap and asking for "whiskers". All of the boys used to do it. He would rub his unshaven face against theirs. He also remembers spending a few days with Leo and Rosa on Stony Ridge. Many of the grandkids had this opportunity during summers. He went down one morning with Leo to raise the flag downtown. When Rosa was sick, he spent some time with her playing 2 handed pinochle. When she was no longer able to shuffle the cards, Genny went out and bought her an automatic card shuffler.
Both Dennis and Tim recall that Rosa gave them their first beers during these summer visits. They were not sure if she wanted them to enjoy the beer or if she thought she could get a nap because it would make them sleepy.
Rosa's Snapdragons on Stoney Ridge were watered with the used dishwater...she seemed to like to water them when there were grandkids around to carry it out.
Conclusion
What started with two very special people has grown to a family that numbers over 135. The legacy of Leo and Rosa is etched in the hearts and minds of all of us.
Please feel free to e-mail Roman or Marv with any additional memories that you may have.
Just a quick little ditty that my mom shared with me about our Grampa Smith (Leo)
He always did little nice things for people, I am sure it was because he was so special and sometimes people would want to pay him. My mom said he always said back to them, "I'll put the bill on ice and when the sun comes out it will take care of it."
* * * * * * * * * *
Family E-Mail list: (E-mail Roman if you wish to have your address included.)
Anna Smith: Anna.M.Tutino-Smith.1@nd.edu
Marv Smith: carolandmarv@aol.com / http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/ITC/
Roman Smith: Roman.J.Smith.13@nd.edu / http://www.nd.edu/~rsmith1/
Sue Wells: auntsoupy@juno.com
Mary Lee: twk@eurekanet.com
Norma Brundage: bambam@dellepro.com
Janet Smith: janmarsmith@juno.com
Cynthia Forster: singlewb@yahoo.com
Audra Balltzell: baltzel1@msu.edu
Last update: 10/13/99
Built with:
Microsoft Office Word 97 ... and
HomeSite HTML Editor for Windows
95 version 1.2 Copyright
1996 by Nick Bradbury http://www.dexnet.com/homesite.html
Additional editing done with
Microsoft FrontPage Editor
Web Page by Roman Smith.
E-Mail me at roman.j.smith.13@nd.edu with news, or suggestions for this page.