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.

Roots Run Deep in Upper Arlington Home

      

              Libby's "Naked Ladies" bloom and brighten the Berwyn Road garden year after year.

By Debra Dendahl Hadley

My grandparents, Libby and Jim Flanigan, grew up in Newark, Ohio and moved to Upper Arlington early in their marriage. They built one of the first homes on Berwyn Road where they raised my mother and my uncle. My mother moved to Santa Fe, NM early in her marriage, which is where I spent the majority of my childhood. As a result, we didn’t get to see my grandparents more than once or twice a year.

When I was 15, I had the opportunity to get to know my grandparents very well when two of my sisters and I came for a summer visit and ended up staying for the entire school year. I attended UAHS as a sophomore, and my two sisters attended St. Agatha. It was fun for us to “try on” different schools for a year, making new friends, trying new activities and getting to know the wonderful community we have here in UA.  I’ll never forget the day my biology lab partners found out I was from New Mexico - they all commented on how well I spoke English. (Yes, sometimes UA really is a “bubble”.)

That year with my grandparents was unforgettable, and I grew extremely close to my grandmother. Libby kept us busy with activities and it was a very enriching experience. One funny memory I have is when we drove through neighborhoods in UA, she would point out other houses she particularly liked. Nearly always, their exteriors were covered in brick. Her home had brick trim on the front of the house, but was primarily wood siding. She hated that siding because every 8 years or so she’d have to hire someone to repaint it. She had pushed to have the exterior of their home be all brick at the time it was built, but it would have cost my grandfather an extra $300, and he refused!. A big mistake on his part as she always reminded him of his short-sightedness when the painters submitted their invoices for payment.

Little did I know that when I finished college and graduate school, I would return to Columbus to start my career. My happiest and saddest day came about 5 years later when Libby was too ill from breast cancer to attend my wedding. She died less than a month later. My husband, Fred, and I lived in a new home in Gahanna after we were married. Several years later, following the death of my grandfather, my mother asked if we wouldn’t want to purchase my grandparents’ UA home, which we initially declined. Some months later, I had a change of heart, much to Fred’s chagrin (he was an “East-sider”). We hired an architect and got busy redesigning parts of the home to better suit our lifestyle. What a great decision. We have so enjoyed raising our two children in the home my grandparents built. While we’ve made many changes to the home and landscaping, much remains the same – including the phone number! And every August I smile when I see that despite all of the changes, the “Naked Ladies” (official name:Resurrection Lily) planted by Libby so many years ago grace us with their return.

Riding Bess in Miller Park

Esther Miller on her horse with from left, her father, Henry, and brothers Harry and Johnny.

By Esther A. Miller

My father gave me a new horse in 1924 when I was seven years old.

This was no little horse. It was a full size Pinto.  I was used to our family’s Shetland ponies, Jack and Jill, and would ride Jack using just a saddle pad.  We named the new, brown-and-white spotted horse Bess.  

My family and I lived on Cambridge Boulevard on the triangle just south of Miller Park.  The park was donated by and is named after my grandfather, James T. Miller.  My grandfather had a big red barn on what is now Roxbury Road, but that had recently burned down. So we kept Bess in the smaller barn at my grandfather’s farm. (This is where First Community Village is now, and the barn was near the ice house which still stands).

My father was a horse enthusiast and shared that loved with me.  He was eager for me to ride Bess but I was scared for two reasons: one, her size---she was so big!  Secondly, she had a Western saddle which was too heavy for me to lift and properly secure.

One spring morning my father and I got Bess out of the barn and he lifted me up into the saddle and we walked toward Miller Park.  Vic Thompson was in the park exercising his polo pony. 

My father called out to him, “Hey Vic!  Take Esther and Bess down to the circle.”  (“The circle” is how we referred to the junction of Tremont and Stanford Roads, and Arlington Avenue.  The Upper Arlington Company built an office there in 1920, and at the time of this story it housed the village headquarters for police, etc.  It later became Miller Park Library, which is still in the same location today.)

Vic thundered by us and headed toward the library at a full canter.  To my dismay Bess took off after him like a shot and I held on for dear life.

When Vic reached the building he pulled on the reins and his horse slowed.  Bess followed suit and stopped when they stopped.

Out of breath and with my heart thumping I turned around and yelled back at my father across the park, “Why did you do that?!”

“Now you can ride a horse!”  he exclaimed, very proud of himself, and me.

Tremont Center circa 1958

Check out what Tremont Center looked like around 1958.  Does this look familiar to anyone?  If so, share a memory with us!

Images courtesy of Victor Scott Thompson and the UA Archives - www.uaarchives.org

Through the Generations: the Chef-O-Nette

Chef-O-Nette Restaurant
 2090 Tremont Center
Upper Arlington, Ohio  43221 

by Suebeth Dustheimer Zartman

When we first moved to Upper Arlington, my father often traveled. When he was away my mother, brother and I would often go to the Chef-O-Nette for lunch. I almost always had the Hangover platter, their signature sandwich, which is still on the menu. It’s basically a deluxe hamburger with a slice of ham. My mother usually had a BLT or the Chef Salad. My brother, John O, was the deviant and never ordered the same thing. My recollection is that in the fifties the Chef-O-Nette was the only restaurant in Upper Arlington other than the lunch counters at Tremont , Colley’s and Culter’s Drug Stores.  That may be because UA was dry at the time.

My next experience at the Chef-O-Nette was summer lunches with friends before going swimming at Tremont Pool. We almost always had burgers and fries. This was a special treat, and at 12 and 13 I felt so grown up. Paying for lunch with my babysitting money and knowing to leave a tip made me feel independent and self-sufficient. Several of my friends rode their bikes, but I was usually dropped off by my mother.  At that age my parents did not want me crossing Fishinger Road…so much for feeling grown up.

For many years I left the Chef behind. Once we all got driver’s licenses, we were off to Frisch’s on Northwest Boulevard or the Dairy Queen on Fifth Avenue or late night runs to White Castle at the corner of Fifth and Northwest.

After high school, college, marriage and parenthood, I returned to Chef-O-Nette with my son when he was about four. We lived nearby and my husband traveled some. Nearly every Thursday night Andrew and I would walk to Tremont Library for family film night. Afterwards we would cross the street and go to the Chef-o-Nette. Andrew loved to sit at the counter and twirl on the stools. Probably every child in UA has done that at one time or another.  Sometimes we would share a slice of pie, sometimes a thick, old-fashioned chocolate milkshake. Chef-O-Nette still had the original milk shake whizzer. We always had to hurry because the Chef closed at 8:00.

Again there is a long gap in my Chef-O-Nette experiences. When my children were growing up, so many other choices existed: MCL, pizza, Umberto’s and Lou Holtz’s deli at Kingsdale, and of course fast food.  I was a working single parent so we went out to dinner or picked up food often, but for some reason Chef-O-Nette wasn’t on our radar screen.

Now we are up to the 4th generation of my family going to the Chef. Many Saturday mornings I join my son and two grandchildren at Tremont Library. We then walk to Northam Park playground and follow that with lunch at the Chef-O-Nette. Sometimes we are joined by my daughter Carrie and her husband and children.

There you have it - my whole family from 1956 until the present has been customers of the Chef.  It’s like being transported in a time machine and stepping out into the 1950s. Little has changed - the Naugahyde booths and décor, and even the bar stools my son spun around on look exactly the same today.