CRS Community

Topic: CRS Version
In the 1930s, Lynn Rohrbough talked about turning Cooperative Recreation Service into a true cooperative enterprise. [1]  However, his experiments with Carl Hutchinson, mentioned in the post for 26 September 2021, had shown some ideals do not translate well into complex organizations.  In 1954, when he was in his mid-50s, Rohrbough formally incorporated his business. [2]

By then, his children were grown, and grandchildren were beginning to visit.  One son-in-law bought land next to the Rohrboughs’ farm and built a recreation complex in 1948. [3]  In 1939, [4] Lynn had converted his barn into an area for square dances by adding a concrete floor and fireplaces. [5]  However, as mentioned in the post for 1 May 2022, the expanding print shop had encroached on the space.

His wife, the former Katherine Ferris, recalled that something that had begun as extension of their recreation work had become a “three-ring circus, what with making a living by day and running parties for various groups every evening and on Saturday.”  She added that “when our son-in-law became interested enough to propose taking over all the parties, we were glad to have him do it.” [6]

Then, in 1953 Rohrbough turned his wooden-game manufacturing operations over to Oscar Bailey’s brother, Warren.  Warren’s wife, Mary Lea, had been a roommate of one of Rohrboughs’ daughters at the Quaker’s Earlham College. [7]  She had spent the summer of 1948 in Delaware where her job was “to teach folk dances to group requests that came to Lynn and Katherine.” [8]

Both the son-in-law and Mary Lea became CRS’s representatives to the Buckeye Recreation Workshop. [9]  They probably began by attending sessions as vendors. [10]  In 1963, both were on the board along with Bruce Tom and Kathryn Thompson Good. [11]

Everyone who worked with CRS says the company hired neighbors.  Larry Holcomb was more specific.  He wrote, in 1960, “neighbors and high school students often helped during the busiest months of the spring and summer, and foreign students studying at nearby colleges often worked for the CRS during vacations and holidays.” [12]

David Jarrett lived in Delaware when he was a young boy, from 1939 to 1948.  In 2008, he published a novel set in Delaware in 1944.  The plot and characters are products of his imagination, but he admitted he used details of his personal life to describe the main character.  He called the town Wyandota while Ohio Wesleyan University became Ohio Polytechnic Institute.

He mentioned Rohrbough by name.  Jarrett said Rohrbough’s “‘Campfire Song Books’ were found in the back pockets of boys and girls in Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York: even as far east as Vermont, and Marie Swenson Parrot help him put them there.” [13]  His mother, like Marie, “directed the choir at the Methodist church.” [14]

From this, I assume his mother was one of the “neighbors” who helped out in the shipping department.  It was the one area of CRS’s operations that did not require any special skills, and the one that would need extra help when the presses were running full time.

The use of the word “neighbors” is rhetorical. [15]  The Rohrbough’s farm was just that, a farm located five miles [16] northwest of Ohio Wesleyan’s campus.  Farmers have few neighbors if the word is construed to mean those living on the next pieces of land.  In 1941, members of the Wesleyan Peace Fellowship “hiked” to the farm for a steak fry, and returned in hay wagons. [17]  A university bus took members of the International Students Association to a picnic at the farm in 1953. [18]

While the Rohrboughs always stressed their recreation center was open to everyone, it is clear Jarratt is correct when he says its “staunchest supporters came from the faculty of Ohio Poly.  Department Heads wagered their members could dance rings around that of a rival department.” [19]

In 1939, Nancy Oldfield said Rohrbough “directs the square dancing at the faculty hours held on Friday evening at the dance studio” on the Ohio Wesleyan campus. [20]  A few years later, a woman, who had been on the English faculty since 1921, [21] told readers of the Methodist’s Highroad magazine, that “Rohrbough holds open house at his home once a month for college students faculty members of universities and youth groups.” [22]

Later, a chemistry professor at OWU recalled “from twenty to fifty people came once a month, year round.  We danced outside sometimes but usually in the barn.  A printing press and a cow were the only things in the barn. [. . .]  The adults brought their children, and they danced and played easier games.  We had pot-luck suppers.” [23]

There is nothing inconsistent in the Rohrboughs saying their square dance evenings were open to all and the perception of a young boy that a certain amount of quiet coercion was directed toward new faculty members, like his father, to participate.  For, it is likely that, while the invitations were open, the attendees were a self-selected group.  This is the nature of small communities that form within the social boundaries of larger ones.

The community that the Rohrboughs built included customers from all parts of the country, and a few who continued to work with him as advisors.  Many were Methodists, because, after all, Rohrbough was not just a Methodist, but one with a degree from a church seminary.  Some, like Olcutt Sanders, mentioned in the post for 13 February 2022, and the Bailey brothers were Quakers who, as mentioned in the post for 1 March 2020, overlapped with Methodists in some ways.

Ernest Amy arrived at Ohio Wesleyan before Rohrbough was a student.  It was a period when the department hired “able young assistants” for short periods of time.  Amy was able to survive by taking over the administrative work when his supervisor became dean of the college in 1917. [24]  In 1957, when he was part of the old guard at OWU, he wrote a glowing description of Rohrbough’s company that claimed his idealism carried “well beyond the publishing business.” [25]  He remembered that:

“until a bolt of lightening destroyed their cattle barn, the Rohrbough farm was a collection and shipping center of the Heifer Project” which sent animals to European farmers who lived in areas devastated by World War II. [26]

This was the brainchild of Jack Eberly and the Church of the Brethren. [27]  Eberly was a friend of Edward Schlingman, [28] who met Rohrbough through commissioning a songbook for the Evangelical and Reformed Church in 1940 [29] that went through many editions. [30]

Like the monthly square dances, the community that coalesced around the Rohrboughs’ Cooperative Recreation Service included a core of people who shared many interests, and a larger group who cared about a certain kind of music.  Many of the latter were the one-time visitors and one-time customers who kept the presses running and people like the Baileys employed.

Notes on Performers
Warren Oliver Bailey was two years younger than Oscar, [31] and born in 1926 in Tacoma, Ohio.  He graduated from Olney Friends School in 1945, and trained as a hardwood lumber inspector in 1951. [32]  Mary Lea remembered that he worked for a sawmill and was “an excellent woodworker.” [33]

Mary Lea Wolfe’s father, who was born in Grafton, West Virginia, [34] became an electrical engineer.  His work for Forest Service and the Rural Electrification Administration made him an itinerant. [35]  He married Eugenia Rosskopf in Saint Clair, Illinois. [36]  Mary Lea was born in 1927.  By 1929, her parents were living in Cleveland, Ohio. [37]  They were reported in Newago, Michigan, in 1940, in Washington, DC, in 1945 [38] and Circleville, West Virginia, in 1947. [39]  The last seems to have become the family home, at least for her sister Laurie. [40]

Dance may have been a family tradition.  Her mother’s high-school yearbook recalled she and another girl did a “Dance of the Fairies” at a festival in a Saint Louis, Missouri, park. [41]  Mary Lea danced at summer camps and, at Earlham, she and Rohrbough’s daughter were in charge of choreography for a production of Richard Sheridan’s The Rivals. [42]  Her first job after graduating from Earlham in 1947 was teaching folk dancing at the Oglebay Park in Wheeling, West Virginia.  This is where she met Warren. [43]  Her work is discussed briefly in the post for 29 May 2022.

In 1986, the Baileys sold World Wide Games to a similar company in Connecticut. [44] Warren became active with the American Kite Flyers Association, [45] of which Oscar was a member.  She was president of the Columbus Folk Dancers in 1996. [46]  He died in 2016, but she is very much alive.  “She still seeks any opportunity to dance (now with the help of a walker.” [47]

David Arthur Jarratt’s parents probably met as music students at Saint Olaf College: [48] she was a voice teacher and he became a concert tenor. [49]  David was born in Greencastle, Indiana, [50] when his father was on the faculty of DePauw University. [51]  While living in Delaware, his father sang tenor in the Messiah produced annually in Massillon, Ohio, [52] while his mother taught in the public schools. [53]  It was during this period that David would have absorbed his parent’s impressions of pressures placed on faculty members and their wives.

His father did not return to Delaware from his time World War II service in the navy, [55] and David and his mother moved to Newton, Massachusetts, in 1949.  David earned a music degree from St. Olaf before serving in the Army. [56]  He later studied music at Southern Methodist University.  David continued flying while working as a professional singer.  He died in 2012. [57]

Graphics
Mary Lea and Warren Bailey, in 1950.  Published in her retirement community’s newsletter, and reprinted with permission from Mary Lea Bailey and Cathy B. Courtice on behalf of the retirement community.

End Notes
1.  Nancy Oldfield.  “Rohrbough 22 Provides Novel Recreation Center.”  The Ohio Wesleyan Transcript, Ohio Wesleyan University, 1,4:14 March 1939.  4.

2.  Larry Nial Holcomb.  “A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service.”  PhD dissertation.  University of Michigan, 1972.  112.

3.  Holcomb.  94–95.
4.  Oldfield.  1.
5.  Holcomb.  92.

6.  Katherine Ferris Rohrbough.  “Good Times as a Career.”  Wellesley Alumnae Magazine 84–86:January 1956.  Quoted by Holcomb.  95.

7.  Holcomb.  98.
8.  Mary Lea Bailey.  Email to John Blocher, Jr.  25 June 2016.
9.  The Buckeye Recreation Workshop is discussed in the post for 3 October 2021.

10.  I only have detailed information on attendance for 1955.  Neither name appears on the workshop roster for that year, but Rohrbough’s name does. [58]  One did not get elected to the board the first year one attended a workshop; their leadership roles in 1963 imply they had been involved for some time.

11.  Item.  Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, Lancaster, Ohio, 15 February 1963.  13.  Bruce Tom is profiled in the post for 3 October 2021, and mentioned in ones for 12 September 2021, 19 September 2021, 3 October 2021, and 17 October 2021.  Kathryn Thompson Good is featured in the post for 10 October 2021 and her photograph appears on the Photos K tab.

12.  Holcomb.  135.  Katherine wrote: “gradually, though, the business grew, and we began to hire some of our neighbors.” [59]  Donald Frye recalled in the 1940s “various neighbors and the three Rohrbough [children] were frequently needed to augment the staff.” [60]

13.  David Arthur Jarratt.  Quarry.  Xlibris, 2008.  167.  The information on shipping locations is narrower than the list of songbooks published by CRS would suggest.  If Jarratt’s mother did work in the shipping department, that is when he may have heard about the distribution of CRS songbooks.  She died in 1968, [61] so any specific information would have come from his memories and those of his younger sister.

14.  Jarratt.  7.

15.  Around 1949, the Rohrboughs purchased a nearby farm and turned it into housing development; [62] lots in Homestead Acres were sold at cost.  Among those who lived there were two of their printers, Oscar Bailey and Hugh Macmillan.  Some Ohio Wesleyan faculty members also purchased home sites. [63]

16.  “Prints Drennan Article.”  The Ohio Wesleyan Transcript, Ohio Wesleyan University, 17 March 1942.  1.

17.  “Fellowship Group To Hike Saturday.”  The Ohio Wesleyan Transcript, Ohio Wesleyan University, 14 October 1941.  1.

18.  Item.  The Ohio Wesleyan Transcript, Ohio Wesleyan University, 13 May 1953.

19.  Jarratt.  167.  The preceding sentence indicates Jarratt had done a little research on CRS.  He wrote Rohrbough’s center “was a little-known but growing Mecca of folk songs, games and dances, and Friday nights were his to share with his neighbors in Wyandota and environs.”

20.  Oldfield.  1.
21.  “Marie Drennan.”  Le Bejou, Ohio Wesleyan University yearbook, 1948.  61.
22.  “Drennan Article.”

23.  Dr. Roy Bossert.  Interviewed by Larry Nial Holcomb on 7 January 1972.  Quoted by Holcomb.  93.

24.  Henry George Hubbart.  Ohio Wesleyan’s First Hundred Years.  Delaware, Ohio: Ohio Wesleyan University, 1943.  211.  Amy wrote The Text of Chaucer’s Legend of the Good Women in 1918.  [WorldCat entry.]

25.  Ernest Amy.  “Cooperative Recreation Service: A Unique Project.”  Midwest Folklore 7:202–206:1957.  205.

26.  Amy.  205.
27.  “I:  How it all began: 1949-1957.”  International Cultural Youth Exchange website.
28.  ICYE.
29.  Edward Schliming is discussed in the post for 6 March 2022.

30.  Songs of Many Nations, published for Evangelical and Reformed Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Custom Printed Songs.  The editor probably was Edward Schlingman.  It is discussed in the post for 20 February 2022.

31.  Elizabeth J. (Hall) Hartley.  Descendants of Moses Hall, John Dounda, and Benjamin Hall (Quaker Families of Belmont County, Ohio, from Virginia & North Carolina).  Denver, 1958, second private printing.  Oscar and the Bailey family are discussed in the post for 1 May 2022.

32.  “Warren O. Bailey.”  The Delaware Gazette, Delaware, Ohio, 13 July 2016.

33.  Mary Lea Bailey.  Interviewed by staff of her retirement home, and published in its newsletter.

34.  “Harry Cunningham Wolfe.”  Mormon’s FamilySearch website.
35.  “Henry C. Wolfe, Engineer.  Papers.”  West Virginia University website.
36.  “Harry Cunningham Wolfe.”

37.  “Laurie Jean Murray.”  Basagic Funeral Home, Franklin, West Virginia, website, December 2020.

38.  “Changes Made in Play Cast.”  The Palladium-Item, Richmond, Indiana, 25 February 1945.  4.

39.  “Former Earlham Coed Weds New Yorker In Eastern Rites.”  The Palladium-Item and Sun-Telegram, Richmond, Indiana, 7 September 1947.  Mary Lea was a bridesmaid.

40.  “Laurie Jean Murray.”  She graduated from Circleville High School and was living there when she died in 2020.  Her obituary said she died “in her father’s home in the same room that she slept in as a child.”

41.  The Beacon.  Grover Cleveland High School, Saint Louis, Missouri, yearbook.  January 1917.  29.

42.  “Changes Made.”
43.  Retirement home newsletter.  Oglebay Park is discussed in the post for 15 May 2022.

44.  Carolyn Battista.  “Specialty Games, Puzzles Have World Wide Appeal World Wide Appeal.”  The New York Times News Service, 22 March 1989.  In 1966, [64] the Baileys had purchased the recreation center built by Rohrbough’s son-in-law, [65] and turned it into a manufacturing plant and show room. [66]

45.  Masthead.  American Kite Flyers Association AKA News 7(1):3:January 1985.  Warren was second vice-president.  Oscar’s interest in kites is mentioned in the post for 1 May 2022.

46.  Dagmar Clanell.  “Folk Dancers Keep Their Art Alive and Have a Great Time.”  The Lantern, Ohio State University, 12 August 1996.

47.  Retirement home newsletter.

48.  This is a surmise.  Since she was Norwegian [67] and a singer, it would have been a logical choice for her to study at St. Olaf.  Its choir is discussed in the post for 12 August 2018.

49.  “Clayton, Jarratt Appear Tonight.”  The Campus, Allegheny College 85(11):1:11 January 1951.  He began studying aeronautical engineering at Augustana College in South Dakota, before transferring to St. Olaf for his junior year.

50.  “David Arthur Jarratt.”  Boston Globe, 22 March 2012; reprinted by Legacy website.
51.  Mirage, DePauw University yearbook, 1937.
52.  “Messiah Facts 1938–1992.”  Massillon Museum, Massillon, Ohio, website.

53.  Connie Jones Maguire.  Comment on Legacy website, 11 April 2012.  “His mother Ingeborg was our music teacher.”

Kay E. Conklin.  “The Rec Center at the old North School.”  The Willis Class of 1961 website.  “His mother was a singing teacher and came to my grade school classroom once a week to teach group singing.”  She cites the description of “the Friday Square Dances at Rohrbaugh’s” to say “it’s a lot more fun to read a book with references to your home town.”

54.  Allegheny College.  Howard went to New York to study under Joseph Reneas, and, in 1947, married Betty Targett.  She graduated from Ohio Wesleyan in 1945.  Their marriage ended in 1966. [68]

55.  Quarry.  Back cover.  It says he retired “US Army Lt. Colonel, Master Army Aviator.”  His obituary says he was in “a second lieutenant in the Air Force.”

56.  Howard was named chairman of the SMU’s Opera Department in 1962. [69]  By 1970, he was general manager of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. [70]  Since David does not say when he was studying in Dallas, it is not clear if he was there when his father was on the faculty.  He stayed closed enough to his father to have his step-sisters mentioned in his obituary.

57.  David Jarratt obituary.

58.  “Buckeye Recreation Workshop – 1955.”  Mimeographed sheet.  Copy courtesy of Barry Jolliff, Buckeye Leadership Workshop.

59.  Katherine Ferris Rohrbough.  64.  Quoted by Holcomb.  108.

60.  Donald Frye.  Interviewed by Larry Nial Holcomb on 7 January 1972.  Cited by Holcomb.  109.

61.  Athanatos. “Ingebord Larsen Jarratt.”  Find a Grave website, 13 June 2015.
62.  Katherine Ferris Rohrbough.  Quoted by Holcomb.  110–111.

63.  Grace Goulder.  “Good Neighbors in Action.”  Cleveland Plain Dealer Pictorial Magazine.  Copy provided by Oscar Bailey’s family.  Notes on the date of this publication appear in the post for 1 May 2022.

64.  Richard Fisher.  “World Wide Games – Delaware Ohio.”  Delaware O History website, 25 December 2019.

65.  Jeffrey T. Darbee.  Delaware and Delaware County.  Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2012.  52.

66.  Fisher.
67.  Athanatos.  Her father was Lauritz Larsen.
68.  “Betty Jarratt.”  Portland Press Herald, Portland, Maine, 8 October 2017.
69.  Betty Jarratt obituary.

70.  Anshel Brusilow and Robin Underdahl.  Shoot the Conductor: Too Close to Monteux, Szell, and Ormandy.  Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2016.  229.