A Little piece of Paradise… College Hill, Ohio - SELFCRAFT

Kentucky on their approach to the Greater Cincinnati Airport with the loss of lives totaling nearly 200.And more recently was the emergency landing of the Air Canada DC-9, Flight 797, with fire aboard andits burning on the tarmac of the airport with the loss of 23 lives.And who among us doesn’t remember May 30, 1977 when Beverly Hill Supper Club burned takingits toll of 166 victims. The memories of that time when I was called away from friends at home to ‘cover’the catastrophe knowing that my son, Kerry, now Editor of the Brunswick News (Georgia) was to be atthe Supper Club that evening with a date.As I stepped around on the grass I could not then realize that these persons had not just been placedthere for fresh air until they revived from the smoke. For them it was over. The panic of uncertainty andtrying to do my job as a news photographer, and all the while wondering where my son and his date mightbe, was indescribable. With my two-way radio I could talk back to The Cincinnati Post but there was noone to respond to my queries but the night watchman and he did not know how to work the radio. Then,sometime later, almost as though it was journalistically pre-ordained, a WLW-TV reporter got word tome on the scene that Kerry had called home and was at the Enquirer, with his date, and writing some ofhis versions of the event. Later I was to learn his tickets were for the late show. The fire came and therewas no show.In the 1950’s and 60’s newspapers were about their business in a manner differently than they aretoday. There was more of a personal concern of the little events that made up the lives of individuals. Itwas reporting by neighborhoods. We all had an interest in what was happening down the street, or acrosstown as trivial, or as saddening as it might seem.Two such events I recall involve a dog and a cat. Another involves a young girl whose cry I hear tothis day. The dog story is this: As I was returning from one story I heard on the police radio in my car ofUnit 152 being dispatched to an Over-the-Rhine address. We knew this to be a fire department rescue unitso we responded only to find that the fireman had just ‘rescued’ a small dog whose tail had been caught inthe gears of a washing machine. The cat story: It too happened downtown. The newspaper had beencalled by a woman who kept hearing a cat whine in the wall of her apartment. People used to callnewspapers with things like this. I was dispatched and after a time was successful in coaxing the cat to atorn section of the wall where I freed the cat and this time made a picture. The sobbing of the young girlwas in the College Hill area many years ago when her father, on a Saturday, had a tree fall on him as hewas attempting to cut it down. It pinned him to the ground and killed him. The girl’s cry, “My Daddy istoo young to die” is still in memory. I took no picture that time.Anecdotes of the many years of photographing the Cincinnati Reds in baseball spring training; in theclubhouse and on the field would fill volumes. The closing of old Coney Island; tearing down the manyhistoric buildings to make way for a new downtown; the racial unrest in the Spring of 1968; arrivals anddepartures at Union Terminal and then its closing; old Fountain Square in the center of Fifth Street andthen its re-birth; General Motors 40 millionth car off the assembly line in Norwood in 1959; the Beatlessinging group arrival in 1964; walking the Union Terminal concourse with President Truman in the weehours of his train’s layover; and the list goes on. It seems endless. These are the memories. And this iswhat history is made of. (ed. note, The Post ended Dec. 31, 2007.)OMI Baseball Team, 1892Courtesy of the Emerson family255