Saying goodbye: Gasbarre’s column becomes part of the Wooster history it has commemorated – Wooster Daily Record

Linda Hall| Special to Wooster Daily Record

WOOSTER Ann Gasbarre'slong-runningBits and Pieces column stitches together a thread of anecdotes, memories andfast facts reaching back and recording people, places and events in Wooster's past.

Her final Dec. 17 column featured a flurry of Wooster remembrances and culminated Gasbarre'scareer at The Daily Record.

Shehas contributed to the history of Wooster as a five-decadeemployeeof the newspaper,beginning with an internship when she was a senior at Wooster High School.

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"With the exception of the 12 or 13 years I stayed at home until all four of our children were in school, I've been employed by the paper since 1958, a total of 50 or more years,"Gasbarresaid.

Her earliest memories includeworking on a teletype machine, and progress from her original stint as a typist and proofreader through her roles as a feature writer, assistant family page editor and lifestyle editor.

During the course of her career, she received awards from the Ohio Newspaper Women's Association and Ohio Press Women.

Her Bits and Pieces column initially focused on community events, but evolved to encompass readers' memories and Wooster history,Gasbarresaid.

Former publisher Ray Dix had told her, "Names sell papers," she recalled. "That's why I always included as many names as possible in the column."

As it turns out, memories are equally popular.

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Over the years,Gasbarrehas been inundated with recollections fromreaders as well as newspaper clippings, restaurant placemats and menus, and other memorabilia.

"We all remember happy times," Gasbarresaid, adding,"In this day and age, it's a way of coping with the everyday. It's fun to look back."

Ninety- and 100-year-old people areespecially fun to talk to, she said, marveling at what they could recall.

"People really responded," she said. They "wanted to share their good memories."

She recounts her own special memories as well the former White Hut Drive-in across from the Wayne County Fairgrounds, where her late husband, Dominic Gasbarre, proposed to her; the smell of burning leaves in the fall when it was legal to incinerate them in town; and the museum above the old Carnegie Library.

Gasbarre especially credits Wooster historian HarryMcClarranfor fueling her columns with "a tote this big," she said, gesturing expansively. It holds manila envelopes packed with information about the past.

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Beyond McClarran's"innate interest in history," she said, he has also been able to pinpoint addresses from long ago and to work his way into iconic Wooster establishments, from the Wooster theater with its plush seats toFreedlander's, as those institutions packed up and dismantled, moving into the archives of local history.

She is also grateful to other "history buffs" who shared their knowledge.

Like them, Gasbarregot to know heradopted city over her tenure at The Daily Record.

A former board member of Main Street Wooster and the Wayne County Historical Society, she enjoyed learning about the history of Wooster and Wayne County and discovered, "We have a lot to be proud of."

Among its illustrious citizens are a United States Treasurer, John Sloane; a Nobel Prize winner, Arthur Compton; and the first documented Black professional football player in the United States, Charles Follis.

At one time, she said, Wooster was home to the "largest independent department store west of New York City" Freedlander's.

A Wayne County native, William Knight, was "one of the first 15 men to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for extraordinary heroism during the Civil War," Gasbarresaid.

Unfortunately, "There are negative milestones, too," she pointed out, citing a march in the 1920s through downtown by 1,000 white-robedKKK members and "several occasions" of burning crosses.

Overall, the history of Wooster is positive. "It is very unique," she said.

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Gasbarre has had a special connection to the Italian American community through her husband andWoosterianswhose progenitors emigrated to Wooster fromCollepietro, Italy.

"I was kind of adopted by the Italian community," she said, because of a trip she took to Italy with a group in 2000.

One of the members told then publisher Vic Dix she needed to go along to chronicle the journey of the 42 descendants "in search of their roots. Every day the paper published stories of (their) adventures as we traveled to the small ancestral hill towns."

She was invited into a home where Dominic Gasbarre'sfather and uncle were born.

"Even though I'm Irish/English, I always felt a connection to the Italian community," she said.

Although Gasbarreretired from her full-time position at the newspaper in 2006, she was asked to continue writing her column.

"I've met a lot of wonderful people through (it)," she said. "The readers made it so easy."

Gasbarre has kept readers' comments thanking her for "the wonderful way you write about the way things were years ago;" for revivingmemories of oldWooster; for "bring(ing) back so many memories of growing up in Wooster;" and for "thinking back to thegoodol'days."

Many refer to specific columns, such as the "President, Circus and Farm Dairies."

One reader's mother remembered President Harry Truman coming to Wooster and visiting the church next to the former BeesonHospital.

"Wooster is a special place with special memories for many," said another reader.

What is most special to Gasbarreis "the people," she said.

Her former colleague Paul Lochersaid local newspapers "have traditionally had the role of not only recording local history on a variety of fronts on aday-in-day-outbasis, but also of presenting stories that remind the readership of the areas past, including its growth, its successes, its failures and triumphs, and the people who were influential in all of those arenas.

"If we are not from time to time reminded of our history, the stories can simply become lost from one generation to the next," Lochersaid. "Ann has managed admirably for many years to keep those memories alive," he said, hoping "someone else will soon be able to pick up the torch she is laying down."

In the meantime, Gasbarre, whose career she said truly began with a poem she wrote called "My Guardian Angel," which won first place in a poetry contest almost 70 years ago while she was in elementary school in Cleveland, is "not finished writing."

She is working on a book for her grandchildren through StoryWorth, which "has allowed me to tell the story of my life in chapter form."

"I will add a chapter about Wooster history," she said. "I want people to appreciate why Wooster is a great community."

As Gasbarresigned off at the end of every column, "Thought you should know."

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Saying goodbye: Gasbarre's column becomes part of the Wooster history it has commemorated - Wooster Daily Record