When I was a kid, my mother couldn’t keep me indoors. I was constantly roaming the woods and fields near our home, dragging back sick and injured wildlife — probably to the animal’s detriment. But the day Mom drew the line (“No more critters!”) was the day she saw me coming down the road with a live great blue heron under my arm. The 4-foot bird with the dagger-like beak was nearly as tall as I was.
Where others see modern-day cities, he sees ancient Indian villages. Where others see today’s crop fields, he sees vast virgin forests. In short, Robert Griffing sees Ohio as it was long before it ever became a state. He also sees — and paints — the Native American people who lived here more than 250 years ago.
Location: Downtown Xenia, about one block from the Greene County Courthouse.
Provenance: Brothers George and Andrew Dodds, both of whom were stonemasons and immigrants from Scotland, started making memorials in Yellow Springs in 1859. Five years later, they relocated to a building on West Main Street in the railroad hub of Xenia. It’s now one of the nation’s largest monument companies.
When Americans conjure a place called “Columbus,” many imagine Ohio — home of The Ohio State University and its legions of Buckeye football fans.
There is, however, another Columbus not too far away — west across the state line to just south of Indianapolis. While its population is only about 45,000, the town enjoys an outsized reputation as a modern architectural Mecca.
Location: On the east side of Cleveland in Lake View Cemetery.
Provenance: Founded in 1869, Lake View Cemetery was among the nation’s first garden-style cemeteries, and President James A. Garfield, who was born and raised near Cleveland, had expressed his desire to make its scenic grounds his final resting place. Shortly after his inauguration, Garfield was shot by a disappointed office-seeker and lingered for two months before dying on Sept. 19, 1881.
Charles Young was born into slavery in Mays Lick, Kentucky, in the time just after Abraham Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation and just before the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.
His parents, technically still considered runaway slaves, carried him as an infant across the Ohio River to the freedom granted them when his father enlisted in the Union Army.
The highlight of February’s Winterfest in Perrysburg will be the U.S. National Ice Carving Championship, but Chad Hartson, who owns one of the nation’s largest ice-sculpting companies — Ice Creations in Napoleon — and is himself a former world champion, won’t be a contender. “The National Ice Carving Association (NICA) sanctions the event,” explains Hartson. “Since I’m president of its board and helping organize the championship, I can’t be competing too.”
