Katie Smith, 2008 WNBA Championship MVP

I went to Logan, Ohio High School to do a concert in the spring of 1992 and my concert ended up being a celebration for the girl's basketball team's trip to the state finals, where they were a proud runner-up. I left Logan a part of Katie Smith's extended family.

I have followed my sistah, Katie, through a trip with the Ohio State University to the NCAA finals in 1993, we celebrated two ABL championships with the Columbus Quest in 1997-98. I have sent her love with USA Basketball in Sidney, on crutches in Athens and victoriously in Beijing.

My Columbus brotha' Bill Dancey and I had tix for Monday, October 6, 2008, at The Palace in Auburn Hills, but instead, we replayed Sunday's match and wept in joy as our sistahs of the Detroit Shock swept game three of the 2008 WNBA Finals. Katie, your extended family in Central Ohio sends our love to you in this proud moment; we'll have hugs and kisses for you when you get back to North High Street.

The 2008 WNBA Season is over, my tears of joy are shed because now, my sistahs get a while to rest the aching bones, joints, tendons, ligaments, muscles and sleep in their own beds for a few weeks, before their journeys to make a living in sports continue with travel overseas. I love the game, every team and every player that participates in this sporting entertainment that gives such joy to our extended, women's basketball family.

I just wish our family was larger; that the tens of millions that worship Kobe, LeBron, Kevin, Tim and the NBA, would embrace the same passion that comes to the court with Candice Parker, Lisa Leslie, Katie, Deanna "Tweetie" Nolan, Beckie Hammond, Tamika Catchings and Diana Taurasi. But because our mighty WNBA Army remains small, it's mocked by small minds and overlooked by sports media.

I am a world traveled professional musician, a pilot, scuba diver and published author, but there is nothing more exciting in my life than women's basketball. The 2008 USA Basketball/WNBA season was the best; no ifs, ands or buts.

My personal MVP Award is shared by Katie, Ann Wauters and Taj McWilliams-Franklin; three mighty warriors.

Arnett Howard, at the end of the 2008 WNBA season

Joe's Corners

The corner of Broad Street and Reynoldsburg-New Albany Road, in the Blacklick area, was known as Joe’s Corners. Our rented farmhouse, known as the Milburn Place, for that was the family who originally settled there, set back from the northwest corner.

On the southwest corner there existed a restaurant-gas station structure, named for Joe Grubs, who was one of the early retailers there, selling everything from rolling pins to new-born pups. I am sure that this corner supplied residents and travelers to Columbus from the outlying farmland, for generations.

Blacklick got its name from H.G. Black, who owned the first farm south of what eventually became the little town. As early as 1806, the nearby stream was referred to as Black’s Lick Creek, as Mr. Black kept a salt lick on his farm.

Nowadays, the buzz of Eastpointe Shopping Center (on the site of our farmhouse) and countless suburbanites going to and fro interrupts the sound of Blacklick Creek flowing in its banks. When I was growing up there, the surrounding farmland was owned by the Ramey family, who had a house just north of us, on the opposite side of the road.

Lucy Ramey ran the Joe’s Corners restaurant for a time. She and Dr. Ramey held on to it, and the surrounding property for a long time, before allowing it to become developed as the sea of houses and businesses that it is today.

Here’s a description of the area from Ben Hayes on June 10, 1952: “Just a few months ago these very fields were wastelands of stripped cornstalks – forlorn vistas, the earth frozen hard, tattered here and there with ragged patches of snow as the whistling, biting wind rattled the debris which harvest leaves behind. Now, on every side, as I sit in the deep green shadow of the tree, are fields that have been plowed, harrowed and cultipacked into excellent seedbeds. From this pulverized earth, rain-moistened and warmed, hour after hour by the sun, is springing the tender green corn. This crop will climb skyward – you can see it grow in the shimmer of summer which already has begun. What a phenomenon!”

Now if we could only unpave that field, have back the ancient catalpa tree with my childhood swing and go back to the simple corn-fed life at Joe’s Corners.

Christine Hayes

Barbara Chavous: Arts Mother

For over thirty years Columbus’ artistic mother has been Barbara Chavous, painter and sculptor. Barbara was raised in Columbus, graduated from East High, Central State University and was married to movie photographer Adger Cowens in New York.

She met Stanley Sourelis in New York, they married and resettled in Columbus. She says that he taught her the sense of color that now characterizes her work.

During those exciting days, Stanley and Barbara were the artistic mentors to many of us; Queen Brooks, Terry Logan, Pheoris West, Candy Watkins, Stephen Canneto, Walt Neal, Sandy Aska and countless others. They moved to 776 Franklin Avenue, the former Henry Hallwood Mansion, and were one of the pioneering household in a diverse community now know as Olde Towne East.

Barbara was born and raised in Columbus in a very creative household. "I don't know that we called what we did art at the time, but we we always involved in things artistic."

She graduated from Columbus East High School, where she was involved in drama, music and she went to college at Central State University, graduating with a degree in elementary education. She met and married New York photographer Adger Cowans and had a son named Eden. She enjoyed living in New York, "A whole new world opened up to me. I felt at home there and discovered so many wonderful things about living."

She taught for ten years in the New York City School system, emphasizing visual arts. "At least once a week I took my classes somewhere. If it was not to a museum, we went to Midtown New York and strolled around looking at buildings." She continued educating herself by attending classes at the Museum of Natural History, the New York Art League and visiting galleries.

Barbara was noted for her sculpting called Jazz Totems, tall layered-wood pieces that frequently used found objects and recycled materials. Sculptures, wall hangings, drawings and other works by Chavous are included in the Columbus Museum of Art collection. Her commissioned sculpture The City stands Downtown in Bicentennial Park.

"I learned that art didn't have to be perfection; it had to do with spiritual feeling, emotions, reacting to nature and doing what comes naturally." She said, "I began to visit flea markets and wound up with a lot of junk. One day I started putting all that junk together and the education process started again. I was getting myself into wood and metal, seeing things in their natural form."

She established a circular trademark on her totems called loukoumis, named after a Greek candy that she liked (Sourelis is from a Greek family heritage). She says that she paints the whole structure white, then adds color to it as it occurs to her. In the 1990s she discovered puff paint, a dimensional paint that expands when heated and she added a new texture and meaning to her colorful palette.

"My jazz totem art does not fit into any mold. It doesn't have limitations; one has to explore who they are. America is a creative place and we do types of work here that are not done anywhere in the world."

"What makes people important to each other and to themselves is creativity. It doesn't answer all the questions of life, but it's a start."

In 2003, I was honored to be nominated for the Arts Freedom Award, presented by Southside Settlement House and the Columbus Museum. The two other honorees that year were Steven Anderson, director of Phoenix Theater for Children and Barbara Chavous, my mom.

What a joyful evening; like the proverbial “Old Home Night.” All of the Columbus arts family that we partied, exhibited and loved with during those frenzied days of the seventies and eighties came together to celebrate the recognition of our life’s work.

Barbara passed in January, 2008. To paraphrase a composition from my pastor Mary Kay Beale Carter, “With grateful heart I thank you, Lord, “ for bringing Barbara Chavous into my life.

Arnett Howard

Gary and Danny O'Brien

A cute picture of Gary and Danny O'Brien in the 1950s taken by their father, Don O'Brien.

Hubbard School

William B. Hubbard was the president of the Exchange Bank of Columbus from 1845 to 1852. He was also the president of the Mechanics’ Savings Institute (incorporated 1838) and on the Board of Trustees of Green Lawn Cemetery. Hubbard Avenue and the school were named after him.

I talked to Teresa Sadek, principal of Hubbard School. Whose decision to paint all the double doors and trim a plum color? She gave me some insight: the doors are of bright hues inside, as well. It was consensual. One hundred and ninety students brighten the halls, too, in grades Pre-K to Fifth. The building still has its original tin ceilings and hardwood floors. Ms. Sadek used to be principal of Medary School, another architectural highlight of Columbus.

She added two more notes of history. The records of Hubbard School are still intact, with students’ names, grade reports, and some exams they took, dating back to the origin of the school – an unburied time capsule. Also, she knows that there used to be an opening in the upstairs floor that enabled a teacher to look below into the downstairs hall. It has since been sealed due to safety issues.

The only change to the building has been an addition of a gym in the 1970’s. Ms. Sadek said that the recent renovation of the playground was accomplished through the generosity and cooperation of local businesses. Way to go, Short North!

The yellow-brick façade, with its arched-frame black windows above, looks smugly onto Hubbard Avenue. Above the double front peaks lies the imposing octagonal dome. What a landmark! I should like to be a child playing near its curved shape, and look up, and feel secure in its shadow. A child of say, the year 1900, for Hubbard School was built in 1892.

Christine Hayes

Fred and Howard's Studebaker Lark

I was going through the New York Times recently and I ran across an advertisement for a 1960 Studebaker Lark. The ad read, “The frumpy Lark nearly saved Studebaker, but few people saved Larks. It’s an ideal start to a collection of defunct brands. $10,000-$11,000.”

The photo of the plain automobile reminded me of a photo that I took back in 1996 of Fred Holdridge and Howard Burns in front of a Studebaker Lark that they owned. It was getting serviced at the German Village Shell station that was operated by the Vern Thacker family.

I don’t know the year of Fred and Howard’s pristine vehicle but I’m guessing that it was a 1960. According to a page on the Wikipedia website, “The Studebaker Lark is a "compact car" which was produced by Studebaker from 1959 to 1966. From its introduction in 1959 until 1962, the Lark was a product of the Studebaker-Packard Corporation. In mid-1962, the company dropped "Packard" from its name and reverted to its pre-1954 name, the Studebaker Corporation. In addition to being built in Studebaker's South Bend, Indiana, home plant, the Lark and its descendants were also built in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, from 1959-1966 by Studebaker of Canada Limited.”

Studebaker-Packard was a full-sized car and the Studebaker Company celebrated its one-hundredth year in 1952. But the company was losing money and the Lark was introduced as a compact that would save the company. It sold well for the years 1959 and 1960 and had two levels of trim; Fred and Howard’s was the Deluxe.

It seems obvious that Fred and Howard had their Lark painted, if not restored, by the looks of it’s exterior and chrome. If I rode in the car, it was not more than once. They would get new cars every couple of years and the Studebaker was just a whim for them, but I remember it sitting behind their German Village apartment until 2001.

The car was sold after Howard’s passing in 2001 and replaced with an electric Gem Car.

Arnett Howard

Salmon P. Chase's Boyhood Escapade

Salmon P. Chase served as U.S. Senator from Ohio 1849-1855, he was the 23rd Governor of Ohio 1856-1860, re-elected as Ohio Senator in 1860, but was called by President Abraham Lincoln to be Secretary of the Treasury in the President’s cabinet 1861-1864. He was placed by Lincoln as the sixth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1864, an office Chase held until 1871.

Upon the death of his father when he was nine, Salmon Chase was raised by his mother and then his uncle, Philander Chase, an Episcopal bishop, and came to live with him in Worthington when the boy was twelve in 1820. When young Salmon was not in school, he did chores about the farm, drove cows to pasture, took grain to the mill.

He once received instructions from his uncle to kill and dress a young pig which was to be roasted for dinner. He knew how to kill and scald him, but he could not pull out the bristles easily. He got a cousin’s razor and neatly shaved the pig, but nearly ruined the razor. This tale was told around Worthington until it reached Henry Howe’s ears. Hardly George Washington’s cherry tree incident, but Howe reports the job was well done.

Salmon lived with his uncle about a year and a half. Mr. Elias Lewis was a bricklayer in Worthington and Salmon assisted him. He spoke with Howe about his pride in that a man who became governor and a chief justice carried mortar for him.

Chase went on to school in Cincinnati (where he later settled and was in a literary society with the Stowes) and Dartmouth College, then moved to Washington, DC to study law. He was politically ambitious, moving from the Liberty Party to the Free Soil Party (“Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men” was their motto, coined by Chase) to the Republican Party. Chase opposed slave labor and was among the first to oppose the southern movement to control the Federal Government. As Ohio Governor he supported women’s rights, public education, and prison reform.

His other claim to fame is that his picture is featured on the $10,000 bill, which is now out of circulation, so don’t accept one if it is offered to you as change.

Christine Hayes