Now, let me get this straight.
The Ohio Department of Transportation first announced it was going to rebuild the Interstate 76/77 bridges over Johnston and Spicer streets in Akron in 2012.
In other words, four years ago.
Finally, the start date was set. We were told the resulting chaos would begin at precisely 8 p.m. on Tuesday of this week.
The date received massive publicity. Everyone was looking at maps of the closings and maps of the detours and bracing for what Beacon Journal reporter Rick Armon dubbed “Car-mageddon.”
And then ... um, never mind. We didn’t get around to putting the signs up in time.
How on God’s green median strip can the signs not have been ready with four years’ advance notice?
Let’s hope this isn’t a foreshadowing of the project itself.
TO-DO LIST
Speaking of signs ...
After I ridiculed Akron for failing to take down signs directing drivers to the National Inventors Hall of Fame — it hasn’t been here for eight years — readers offered up some other offenses.
Kate Broderick Murray: “There are still signs for Geauga Lake on Route 14 in Streetsboro. That closed in 2007.”
Roger Marble: “Westbound Route 224 before the Kelly Avenue exit, there’s a sign for Carousel Dinner Theater [which closed in January 2009].”
Tom Bryant: “Canton still has a couple of signs for Meyers Lake. Although the lake itself is still there, the amusement park closed in 1974. It’s all condos now.”
DIRECTOR OF WHAT?
Still speaking of signs...
Kurt Leibensperger of Green has never won a national spelling bee, but he knows how to spell “athletics.”
Lots of people do. And he thinks it would be nice if the sign makers at our local university knew how to spell it, too.
Leibensperger spotted the accompanying sign in the parking lot just east of Rhodes Arena on the University of Akron campus.
SEIBERLING PAL
Downtown Akron’s mystery man isn’t a total mystery to some folks, including Ros Mather, the wife of his grandson.
She called to tell me about her husband James Manton Mather’s connection to Irv Robinson Manton, the man for whom a memorial fountain was erected outside the Ohio Building in the middle of downtown Akron — a fountain nobody notices today, named for a guy nobody remembers.
Irv is nearly invisible in the Beacon Journal’s archives, on Google and in an 800-page local history book.
We did discover a tiny Beacon article about the fountain that seemed to indicate Irv’s main claim to fame was having a lot of friends.
The 1933 story said Manton, superintendent of Robinson Clay Products and owner of Brookdale Dairy Farm in Bath, “was said to have had as many friends as any individual in the city. Besides his former associates at the Akron City Club, men and women in all walks of life contributed to the memorial.”
Ros Mather reports that among Manton’s pals was F.A. Seiberling. Yes, the co-founder of Goodyear, the fellow who built that cozy little West Akron crib known as Stan Hywet Hall.
She directed us to a 1936 story — four years after Manton died — in a Beacon Journal “Around the Town” gossip column. It consisted of several tales about Manton and Seiberling traveling around the country together, with Manton consistently teasing Seiberling.
The column said Manton “had a keen sense of humor, and he could get a laugh out of most any sort of situation.”
He was a lover of horses who owned trotters and thoroughbred Belgian draft horses, and was constantly at the races.
“I don’t think he worked too hard,” Ros Mather said with a laugh.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com. He also is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bob.dyer.31