James Thurber's UA Connection

James Thurber, left, with Ted Gardiner

By Fred Hadley

Throughout the decade of the 1930’s, my grandparents, Ted & Julia Gardiner, would often host their good friend James Thurber, the renowned humorist and cartoonist, at their home on Devon Road. It became customary that Ted and James (who had been Phi Psi fraternity brothers) and frequently other gentlemen joining them for the evening would adjourn to the Gardiners’ attic to share libations and trade stories of days gone by and other worldly tales long into the night. When the conversations turned to mundane chatter about social life in Columbus, Mr. Thurber would combat his boredom by drawing sketches on the attic wall of characters often depicted in many of his now legendary cartoons. One of the regular participants in this late night tradition was local real estate developer and UA neighbor, Don Casto, to whom Thurber referred as suffering from an “Edifice Complex”.

Many years later, the subsequent owners of the residence, the Robert Setterlin family, discovered the connection of the Gardiners to James Thurber and realized they had something of significance up in their attic. They had the attic wall preserved and donated it to The Ohio State University, which today maintains the world’s largest collection of original Thurber memorabilia and manuscripts (including the Gardiners’ attic wall). If only this wall could talk, many colorful stories of those nighttime gatherings in the attic could be told.