During the reception before the Commemoration service, I introduced myself to Mr. and Mrs. Ames and soon mentioned that I had considered speaking about how Minor’s interests developed in his youth. Wisely, I decided that Joffre and Minor III would handsomely represent our family, so there was no need for me to add anything, especially duration, to the event. The Ames replied that they wished that I had decided to speak, because they always wondered about Minor’s early years. In addition, they were now helping to nurture their grandchildren, so the topic would have been timely and interesting to them.
So from his brother, younger by three years, here for the Ames family and for you are a few speculations about the formative events in Minor’s youth.
Innate or learned?
When you have children, you experience situations that cause you to wonder about where they got some of their early ideas, interests, talents, and behaviors, since they surely didn’t get them from either parent.
At an learning institution, like Illinois Wesleyan, we can’t do much to change that nature part of the person, so we pay great attention to the nurture portion.
Grandparents
Minor was influenced by his grandfathers who started him on the collecting road with postage stamps and coins. When our grandfather would give us a silver dollar, which he had collected during his days while running his company that built bridges and tunnels for the railroads in the western United States, I would notice the silvery shine, the hefty weight, the interesting designs, the date, and, of course, the value. Minor noticed the same, but due to his age and innate curiosity, he went further to ask, "1878, I wonder what happened in 1878 when this was made." His interest in historic context continued for the rest of his life, as you know.
Our appreciation and participation in the arts originated with our grandmothers. Our maternal grandmother was an accomplished pianist; I remember her giving Minor lessons when we visited our grandparents in Minneapolis. Our travel there and back was usually by train (that’s a hint). Our paternal grandmother died in 1928 when our father was 14, so she is the grandmother we never knew directly. But influence us she did, through her wonderful watercolors and pastels and through her piano, which was always present and well-played (but not always played well) in our home. Photographs of her, often theatrical, also boosted our understanding and appreciation of her. The curiosity about our missing grandmother perhaps also caused Minor to want to talk with lots of folks about their history before they weren’t there to answer. Our paternal grandfather added his love of music through the many recordings he played for us at his home in Akron. Our mother supported our development in the arts and Minor’s interest in history, while our father encouraged activities that later could have the potential to make money and discouraged wasting time on trivial pursuits.
I’ll fast forward through early public school and weekly piano lessons to the age of 11 or 12.
By this time, Minor had developed an interest in history that included visits to our family’s section in the cemetery to learn and chart the names and dates of relatives and also to investigate the earliest settlers in our home township of Copley, Ohio, west of Akron. His research then extended to interviews with senior members of the community whose memories of the earlier days were still vivid and colorful. Of course, as he researched these important subjects, it was equally vital that the results of his research be documented for posterity, which resulted in him becoming the self-appointed publisher of, typist for, and sole contributor to The Copley Historian. A few editions of this one-fold pamphlet with official cover were printed and distributed; the works still exist in the local historical society and public library.
Minor was the first born of four children, two boys, a girl, and a boy. As is usual for first borns, they get undivided parental attention for some time and are delegated leadership responsibilities (caring for, attending to, and herding younger children) at an early age. That naturally established the foundation for Minor’s leadership.
The Farm
We grew up on a farm of about 100 acres that had been in the family for two generations. The farm included a large three-story hand-hewn timber-frame barn; an old-growth woods; a large swamp continuously fed by a ten-foot-wide creek; an active line of the Akron, Canton & Youngstown railroad that ran through the property; a stocked fish pond; and the land that was farmed. Animals over the years included sheep, chickens, ponies, and horses, as well as the requisite dogs and cats (mostly strays that joined the throng), plus wild groundhogs, muskrats, rabbits, snakes, frogs, pheasant, and large flocks of birds focused on eating the grain growing in the fields. Before our teens, the four of us could easily stick to the horses, bareback, at any speed. Minor was our specialist for proper English posting at the trot. We roamed the farm with only occasional supervision, or so it seemed, and knew the land, plants, and animals as well as our hands.
In addition to caring for the animals and the farm, each year we planted a vegetable garden, which was more like a small truck farm, since our father thought always bigger was always better, and he had the kid-power to hitch up and work it. On the third picking of the beans and peas each year, I terminated further picking by instructing my siblings to pull out the plants to save our backs as we commenced our final picking, with which they completely agreed. We had tons of vegetables already stored; there was no room for more anywhere. Late in the summer, it became harder to find good tomatoes, so "you know who" always started the rotten tomato fights. There was ammunition by the hundreds.
Now you can sense Minor’s developing attention to nature and railroads and his enjoyment at instigating a little friendly sibling competition.
Historian and anthropologist
Our father and uncle, Minor and Alden, were lawyers, as was their father. (So Minor III continues that line.) They inherited a home in Akron that had been in the family for many years. For several decades, the home had been rented by a professor. When the professor died, he left no heirs. The attorney handling his estate sold the professor’s best arrowheads, lead soldiers, and coins to pay for the professor’s burial. The attorney then called our father and uncle, asking if they had any interest in the remainder of the estate, which was located in the house. Both said absolutely not. The attorney countered, "Oh, come on, make me an offer, it has to go somewhere." Alden and Minor senior conferred in their law office for a few seconds, not wanting the ownership or the task, but being horse traders, replied "OK, five bucks," knowing that the attorney surely would recognize a ridiculously low bid when he heard one. "Sold!" said the attorney, quickly completing the oral contract and closing the estate. My father and uncle had been unsuccessful at deflecting the task and property, which now became the family’s.
As I remember, Professor George Hantelmann taught history and anthropology at the University of Akron. Without family or offspring, he surely poured all his energy and attention into his research, teaching, and students.
The house had three floors, each stuffed with possessions. The first task was to deal with the three inches of dense gray dust that had accumulated. The dust resulted from the burning of coal for heat, from the residue often in the air from Akron’s thriving tire and rubber industry, and from plain old dirt. House cleaning clearly had not been high on the professor’s agenda for the last 30 years.
Based on the contents of the house, his first-hand research and collecting had generated an accumulation used to extend, support, and enliven his teaching.
Photographs, stored in cigar boxes, which were stacked from floor to ceiling and covered one large wall, documented his trips to Africa and other parts of the world. Every significant event in his lifetime was captured in chronologically stored newspapers, also stacked floor-to-ceiling. Each column was wedged at the ceiling so it wouldn’t fall. Ditto magazines, other periodicals, and professional journals. The professor’s stacks were literal. Three floors full. We found later that there really was paint and wallpaper behind the stacks, but you couldn’t know that at the start by looking.
It was impossible to walk through the house without knocking something over.
Let me take you through a quick tour of the remainder of the contents:
• centuries of war equipment that included helmets (leather, pith, and metal), flintlocks, muskets, octagon barrel rifles, pistols, bayonets, swords, medals, hand grenades, small cannons, ammunition, mortar rounds, bombs (including a 15 footer that may have been live – Uncle Alden’s experience as an Army officer was invaluable for safety with these disposal tasks), gas masks, uniforms, and much more;
• African spears, shields, walking sticks, shrunken heads, and artwork;
• a human skull, which Minor named Hektor for reasons unknown;
• the remnants of the coin collection, stamp collection, and the lesser arrowheads and lead soldiers;
• clocks, watches, and other timepieces;
• silverware and silver travel mementos, which probably were not included in the university lessons;
• animals of all varieties, especially smaller ones, that had received the benefits of taxidermy, less the parts consumed by those that hadn’t;
• a thousand or so books on history, anthropology, astronomy, philosophy, economics, and other subjects, plus novels;
• musical instruments;
• phonographs and records;
• photographic equipment and stereoscopic cards and viewers;
• post cards kept in cigar boxes, stacked;
• collections of walking canes and hats; and
• numerous other items, the details of which I will spare you.
The Myers Museum
On the farm we had a few small buildings that served over the years as chicken coops and dog houses. These buildings were on log skids so they could be moved by chain and tractor. By Minor’s early teens, one of the buildings remained. We moved it to an appropriate spot in the woods not too near the house, cleaned it up, and christened it The Myers Museum, complete with a hand-lettered door and a sign-in register. Minor, as primary curator, and his siblings filled the museum’s rustic shelves with a selection from the valuable treasures that each of us had cherry-picked from the Hantelmann estate. Of course, we charged a modest admission fee, but adults could visit for free (if they dared) just by signing in. Eventually we decided that the humidity and temperatures of summer and winter would damage our treasures, so the valuable and vulnerable ones were moved into our bedroom closets, much to my mother’s dismay.
We all knew that the Hantelmann estate was the find of a lifetime. You certainly can see the influence, which was greatest on the eldest child. For $5, it was a lot of work, but it was dirt cheap entertainment and a great educational stimulus that lasted for many years.
Piano and organ
Minor continued to study piano and practiced more than most young students. In his teens, he convinced our father and the organist at our First Congregational Church in Akron that he was ready for organ lessons. So instead of one keyboard, he was now playing on four plus the pedal board, learning the mechanics and combinations of all the stops, performing the music of Bach and other composers, and rattling the rafters of the church with the king of instruments. That preparation eventually led to his duties as organist at The Calvary Episcopal Church in Stonington, which he did for fun during his many years in Connecticut. The responsibility meant that he learned at least two new works every week, one for the prelude, one for the postlude, plus hymns.
Williamsburg
When I took care of Minor for about two weeks this past May in Bloomington, he mentioned how he came to like colonial furniture. One of our family’s numerous car trips was to Williamsburg, Virginia. Minor said that he liked the furniture and living style there so much that he decided that was how he wanted to live. He succeeded. This experience supplemented our almost continuous self-assigned woodworking projects at home, which were nothing monumental, just playing with wood and tools and learning a lot. So now you understand the genesis of Minor’s interest in the colonial period, wood, furniture, and silverware. And the wood, woodworking, and a year or two of violin lessons were undoubtedly the sparks that ignited his interest in collecting orphaned violins.
Academic development
Minor did well in public school, as you might expect. He surprised our mother and father when he went to the podium to address his high school graduating class as valedictorian; he hadn’t remembered to tell them, because, I suspect, he modestly didn’t think it was that big a deal.
His collegiate years and early working life are well known to you in summary form, to which I can add nothing.
So now you have the background that led, in turn, to the nurturing he did at Illinois Wesleyan.
Appreciation
I have always been pleased by my brother’s success. This weekend, I was very happy to see and meet some of his friends that he taught, touched, and tempted to ever higher goals.
Miss him I do.
Thank you for your kind comments and the love you expressed for him before, during, and after the Commemoration.
All the best to you … oh, and Do Good!
Tom is currently the subject matter expert for the University of California, Irvine’s beginning and ending online extension courses in investor relations. He has contributed more than 30 years of leadership in business, finance, investor relations, and the U.S. Army and holds a B.S.B.A. from The Ohio State University (finance major, music minor, 1968) and an M.B.A. from the University of Cincinnati (1970). Like Minor had, he has many interests.
