Although old newspaper and magazine stories are generally great sources of historical information, they can contain not only factual errors but shortcomings in comprehensiveness and perception.
The late Washington Post publisher Philip L. Graham is generally credited with the memorable assessment that journalism provides “the first rough draft of history.”
In this case, a second draft left out some good stuff, too.
Before life as we know it was suspended for the holidays, I wrote about the huge statue that was moved from its home of 35 years — Acme No. 1 in West Akron — to the new Acme Fresh Market in Green.
The 12-foot-tall work of art features a pioneer with a rifle in his hand, standing behind his wife and child. It was the pride and joy of the company’s late President Fred I. Albrecht, grandson of the founder.
I traced the statue’s history through interviews and old newspaper and magazine accounts. I wish I had known about Bob Daily.
The owner of Daily Monuments, Daily was right in the thick of things, furnishing both the sculpture and the pedestal.
Daily is now 79 and living in Stow, where he moved after 40 years in Bath Township. Because the man writes so well, I’m turning the rest of the story over to him.
“Thanks for taking me down memory lane with your Acme Pioneer Family article. … Let me add a few details.
“Fred Albrecht sent me and one of his executives, Walter Scott, to Barre, Vt., to investigate options for the sculpture. The original goal was to copy the Portage Path Indian at Highland Square but with a Pioneer instead of an Indian.
“I took Walt first to a commercial sculptor who showed us his model, which was best described as a dowdy, stumblebum frontier man. Walt took a few pictures and we left.
“Then we went to Frank Gaylord’s studio. Frank was well-known in the stone industry as its premiere sculptor but was virtually unknown elsewhere. He survived producing tombstone relief sculptures but lived for occasional feature projects like the Pioneer Family.
“Frank presented a clay model on a turntable with angle lighting. He’d obviously spent a lot of time researching the topic. His model was of a visionary pioneer. Comparing the models was dramatic: visionary to stumblebum, Miss America to high school homecoming queen. Walt took a LOT of pictures back to Fred.
“The rest of the story was exactly as you describe except for one thing — the child.
“A couple of days after adding Mrs. Pioneer to the statue, Walt called and said Mrs. [Francia] Albrecht wasn’t done yet. She wanted a kid, too, so it would be a family. Fred had told Walt to make sure he couldn’t tell whether it was boy or girl. This was it. No dogs, no cats, no more.
“By the way, the sculpture is granite, not marble. Big difference. The sculpture granite is Salisbury Pink from Salisbury, N.C. The pedestal is Dakota Mahogany from Milbank, S.D., and an exact copy of the Indian pedestal (also furnished by us at Daily Monument in the early 1960s when the Indian was refurbished and moved to its current location).
“Frank Gaylord included the Pioneer Family in his presentation portfolio and finally earned national prominence as the creator of the 13 soldiers slogging through a rice paddy as part of the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C. Each of Frank’s projects now is referred to as ‘a Gaylord.’
“Oh, the ‘dowdy frontier man’? He made his way to Akron, too, much later as a prominent (?) civic sculpture [in Glendale Cemetery]. But not my fault, and a tale for another day.”
Today’s tale works just fine.
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.