Two centuries are the aggregate ages of these flying oldsters, Mrs. Almatia Bennett, 101, of Chicopee Fallls, Mass., and Charles W. Bradley, 99. By way of celebrating Mrs. Bennett’s 101st anniversary, they flew from Boston to Old Orchard, Me. And after an hour in the air Grandma Bennett said she would fly again on her 102nd birthday.
The Athens Messenger (Athens, Ohio) Sep 14, 1927
On the Trail of the Straight Silhouette
On One of Her Detours!
The Frederick Post (Frederick, Maryland) May 24, 1927
Lima News (Lima, Ohio) Apr 25, 1928
“PEP.”
This is the age of hustle, and there’s progress everywhere,
Why! We’re carrying “folks” and freight and mail
Away up in the air!
And the lad or lass with courage, initiative and pluck
Will put to rout, forever, that discouraging “tough luck.”
Achievement and expression; that’s the order every day,
Help yourselves, but others also “as we pass along this way.”
Hours fly when filled with worthwhile work, if tackled with a grin!
Just add it to your creed, my friend
You’ll be mighty sure to win!
Success and happiness you long for?
Really, truly want to “get?”
That elusive potent little word that’s labeled “pep?”
Well, here’s a tip, it’s old and new;
It’s that same little “up-to-you!
Don’t shirk, just work, and make our dream come true.”— Beatrice Kramer, in Seattle Post Intelligencer.
Olean Evening Times (Olean, New York) Dec 30, 1919
* * *
* * *
Nebraksa State Journal (Lincoln, Nebraska) May 6, 1938
Peppy Fashion!
Nashua Reporter (Nashua, Iowa) May 26, 1937
Smart Suits Put Pep in Your Step!
New Castle News (New Castle, Pennsylvania) Jun 18, 1918
Peppy Feet!
Indiana Evening Gazette (Indiana, Pennsylvania) Feb 19, 1927
Prices to Pep You Up!
San Antonio Light (San Antonio, Texas) Mar 8, 1929
Minty Pep!
Lima News (Lima, Ohio) Aug 21, 1924
Image from Tumblr
THEY MAKE US SAD, THEN MAKE US GLAD
— J.T. Reese —
How old Nature sighs and grieves,
‘Cause she’s losing all her leaves!
All her gowns of red and brown
Say “Good-bye,” then flutter down.Soon the trees look bare and cold,
In the park or in the wold;
Pretty leaves of brown and red
Silently just bow their head.Pretty leaves just feign to die,
And the trees just weep and sigh,
For the leaves sleep in the brake
Like they nevermore would wake.But when days are nice and warm,
No more you feel the winter’s storm,
The trees put on their stylish dress
And you admire their loveliness.A leaf looked down at me and said,
“You supposed we leaves were dead!
Though we wither up and dry,
Yet we never truly die.”
Cambridge City Tribune (Cambridge City, Indiana) Nov 10, 1927
The Right Answer
Teacher: Harold, in the sentence, “I saw the girl climb the fence,” how many i’s would you use?
Our Young Hero: Bofe of ’em, teacher.
San Antonio Light (San Antonio, Texas) Feb 27, 1927
“Let’s Go,” Says Flier Schoolmarm
MISS MILDRED DORAN, 22-year-old school teacher of Flint, Michigan, wants to be the first woman to make a transpacific flight, and she’s on her way with PILOT AUGIE PEDDLAR, who considers himself lucky in winning the job. Two aviators vied for the privilege of transporting the fair passenger, and on tossing a coin, Peddlar won. They arrived yesterday at Fort Worth, Texas, on their way to Long Beach for the hopoff in August. – P&A photo.
Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Jul 17, 1927
Schoolmarm ‘Somewhere at Sea’
MISS MILDRED DORAN, the flying schoolma’am of Flint, Mich., lone representative of her sex in the Dole race, whose plane, named after her and piloted by Auggy Pedlar, has been missing between here and Hawaii for more than 23 hours. No word of the craft’s position has been picked up by radio stations or the numerous navy and merchant vessels along the route of the flight.
Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Aug 17, 1927
Story Of Miss Mildred Doran’s Life Told By Artist In Sketches
She was born in Flint, Michigan, the daughter of William Doran.
When 16 her mother died.
She worked her way through high school as a telephone operator. William Malloska learned of her struggle and staked the girl to a teacher’s course at Michigan State Normal School.
Taught school at Caro, Mich.
When the Dole Prize was announced, Malloska decided to enter a Flint plane.
He joked with his protege. “How would you like to go?” he said without meaning it much. She tossed a coin between Pedlar and Sloniger and Pedlar won.
The Miss Doran had to make a second start after turning back when engine trouble developed.
Planes and ships started combing the Pacific for the lost flyers.
New Castle News (New Castle, Pennsylvania) Aug 20, 1927
By WILLIAM H. RITT
Exclusive Central Press Dispatch to The Kingsport Times
CARO, Michigan. — As grim, gray United States destroyers and great battle planes glided over the waters of the Pacific ocean in desperate search for Miss Mildred Doran, Caro school teacher lost in a plane with two others, a little boy sat on his porch steps here and wished aloud that he could help “somehow” to find her.
The little boy is Richard Goodell, 11, the “most spanked” boy, according to other pupils, in Miss Doran’s class. But now the spankings are past and all Richard wants is to hear that Miss Doran is on her way back to Caro to tell the children of her fateful flight toward Hawaii.
“Miss Doran was one of the best teachers a person ever had,” Richard will tell anyone. “She never spanked very hard, and then she always hit us kids on the hand, just a little. I guess we deserved a lot of it. Gee, she was nice, though.”
Marjorie’s Very Own Plan
While Richard worried over Miss Doran’s fate, little Marjorie Moore, nine, put into effect a plan of her own. Marjorie began saving her pennies, doing without ice creams cones and “shows” in order that her small fund might grow all the faster.
“As soon as I get enough money,” Marjorie said, as she helped hunt for a picture of Miss Doran at her home, “I’m going to spend it for a trip to California. Then I’m going to help them hunt for Miss Doran.”
Marjorie is the type of little girl who dreams a great deal. The other night she had a dream.
“It was the nicest dream,” she said. “I dreamt that I took an airplane and found Miss Doran. She was so glad to see me. I picked her up and we came back to Caro in my plane. All the people just hollered they were so glad to see her back again.”
Then there is Geraldine Jones, a little eleven-year-old, who hasn’t missed an edition of the city papers distributed in Caro since Miss Doran, John Auggy Pedlar, pilot, and Lieutenant V.R. Knope, navigator, flew away in the plane named after the young teacher.
“I think I was one of the first persons Miss Doran told that she was going to make the trip,” Geraldine said, proudly, as she scanned some headlines in a vain hunt for the good news. “I didn’t want her to go. I was afraid. You know the Pacific ocean is awful big, and airplanes aren’t so good, anyway.”
Though it was county fair week at Caro, in the shops and on the street, at the postoffice and at the little brick railroad depot Miss Doran and her plight were the chief topic of conversation. The elders, unlike the children, believed there was no hope.
An Airplane Descends!
One afternoon an airplane suddenly appeared above Caro, swung over the town and settled in a field to the east.Miss Doran’s former pupils, watching in the street, and filled with the absurd hopes of childhood that it might be the biplane in which she departed, bounced up and down in glee.
But Ole Louck, station agent at the small railroad station, stopped his game of horseshoes with some passengers waiting for the only southbound trains of the day, long enough to sadly shake his head.
“Nope,” he said, “she’s gone. Miss Doran took a brave chance, but failed. And this town has lost a very fine little citizen, too.”
The Kingsport Times (Kingsport, Tennessee) Aug 31, 1927
The map shows an imposing total of ten trans-oceanic flights this season, but against them were nine failures, costing more than a score of lives. Among the season’s heroes were Lindbergh (above), Byrd (left) and Chamberlin (below). Among the victims was Miss Mildred Doran (center insert), lost on a flight to Honolulu.
Appleton Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) Nov 17, 1927
* * * * *
MLIVE 2008 article:
Memorial lost, just like air pioneer Mildred Doran, says Flint Journal columnist Gary Flinn
* * * * *
MLIVE 2011 article:
Nephew sheds new light on Flint woman Mildred Doran’s tragic final flight
* * * * *
On YouTube:
* * * * *
By BERYL MILLER
Old father neptune seems to be bearing out the age-old superstition of sailors that women who dare the sea bring ill luck, misfortune and disaster.
Of eight trans-oceanic women flyers who have dared Neptune’s wrath, just two have escaped death. These are Amelia Earhart, who barely succeeded in reaching Wales on an attempted flight to London, and Ruth Elder, who was rescued by a freighter when forced down at sea.
Latest victim of Neptune’s ancient curse is Mrs. Beryl Hart, who was lost with Captain W.S. MacLaren, in an attempt to cross the Atlantic with the first load of airplane freights.
Eight aviatriees? who risked their lives over teh swirling sea are shown above:
1 — Mrs. Frances Grayson, who, in her plane, “The Dawn,” took off from Roosevelt Field, L.I., for Newfoundland, two days before Christmas, 1927, for a trans-Atlantic flight. Neither she nor her companions, Oskar Omdahl, Bryce Goldsborough and Fred Koehler, were seen again.
2 — Mildred Doran, the pretty Flint, Mich., school teacher, who left her blackboard and on Aug. 16, 1927 roared away from Oakland, Calif., toward Hawaii in an attempt to win the $35,000 Dole prize. She and her crew, John Pedlar and Lieutenant V.R. Knope, went to a watery grave.
3 — Mrs. Beryl Hart, who, with Captain W.S. MacLaren, in the monoplane, “Tradewind,” disappeared en route between Bermuda and the Azores on a proposed flight from New York to Paris, recently.
4 — Amelia Earhart, whose trimotored plane, “Friendship,” landed at Burry Port, Wales, June 18, 1928, after a 2000-mile flight from Newfoundland with Wilmer Slultz and Louis Gordon.
5 — Hon. Elsie Mackay, who sailed away to oblivion, March 13, 1928, in the plane, “Endeavor,” on a proposed flight from England to America with Captain Walter Hinchliffe.
6 — Lilil Dillonz?, Austrian actress, who got as far as the Azores in her intended flight from Germany to Newfoundland, late in 1927, and after repeated attempts to continue, gave up the venture.
7 — Ruth Elder, who barely eluded Neptune’s clinches when her plane, “The American Girl,” was forced down at sea, luckily alongside a freighter, on her attempted flight to Paris, in 1927, with George Haldeman.
8 — The 62-year-old Princess Lowenstein-Wertheim, who, with Captain Leslie Hamilton and Colonel F.F. Minchin of England, were lost on a flight from England to Canada in the “St. Raphael,” on Aug. 8, 1927.
News-Palladium (Benton Harbor, Michigan) Jan 15, 1931
The Bee (Danville, Virginia) Jan 19, 1927
The robe de style, as the French call the picturesque period frock, has been the easiest vehicle for exploiting the flounce ideas, and the great houses have turned out some bewitching models of the sort this summer, some hinting vaguely at 1830 models though far from all suggestion of crinoline, many reminiscent of the Grand Monarque and his court or Marie Antoinette’s days.
The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.) Aug 6, 1911
San Antonio Express (San Antonio, Texas) Mar 28, 1926
FASHIONED FOR YOUTH.
Period frocks, those charmingly youthful models with little bodices and wide, full skirts, have not by any means been relegated to the background. They are, if anything, more intriguing than ever, for they reveal a distinct Spanish influence which makes for certain picturesque qualities. Not the least interesting of these frocks are those which have an overdress of black Chantilly lace over a slip of satin which is a rich valencia pink in shade. Others of the same beautiful pink tone are flounced with black lace and the effect is enchanting.
However, the period frock is distinctly the costume of youth. While youth may be a matter of actual years, in modern days it frequently is a state of mind aided and abetted by all the arts of the modiste, the hairdresser and the beauty specialist. At all events, youthful contours are essential to the successful wearing of these piquant costumes.
The Davenport Democrat and Leader (Davenport, Iowa) May 10, 1925
Kingston Daily Freeman (Kingston, New York) Aug 17, 1927
The period frock, a headliner for spring, is no longer confined to the young set. Matrons are constantly demonstrating that one need not be overly slender to wear these frocks with distinction.
Decatur Herald (Decatur, Illinois) May 14, 1928
San Antonio Light ( San Antonio, Texas) Jun 6, 1929
DOUGHNUTS FOR DOUGHBOYS
Of course you’re planning a party for the boy home on a furlough and you will want to serve the food he likes best. Put doughnuts at the top of the list for at canteens they are first choice.
Here are doughnuts that will top any your doughboy ever tasted. Light as a feather, moist, tender, deliciously spicy pumpkin doughnuts. Sugar a few for the folks with a sweet tooth and serve wedges of cheese for added goodness. Make them often for the family, too.
Try this new way of frying doughnuts. See how light and tender they are — how delicate tasting. There’s no unpleasant smell or smoke, and foods fried the
Spry way are so digestible even the children can eat them. Will they love that pumpkin flavor, too!
Evening Standard (Uniontown, Pennsylvania) Oct 23, 1942
The doughnut has been removed from the list of indigestibles by the Chicago school of domestic science. Those who have been forced to take to their beds after eating them in the past, will now be able to partake in safety.
The Daily Herald (Chicago, Illinois) Jul 1, 1910
New York Times – Chicago Tribune Leased Wire.
CHICAGO. May 7. — Any housewife who things she may have unexpected guests — say, about 600 of them and mostly male — will do well to cut out and paste in her cook book “Ma” Burdick’s tested recipe for doughnuts.
“Pa” and “Ma” Burdick, the doughnut king and queen of the Salvation Army, reached Chicago yesterday, after nearly two years of service overseas — two years of work for the American doughboys.
“What’s the most important thing in making doughnuts?” “Ma” was asked.
“Speed, she replied. Then she gave her recipe.
“It’s for six hundred,” she said, “but I guess you can divide it.”
Here it is:
Salvation Doughnuts.
Twelve quarts of flour.
Six quarts sugar.
Twenty-four tablespoonsful baking powder.
Three teaspoonsful salt.
Three quarts milk.
Fry in deep fat.“The secret’s in the mixing,” said “Ma.”
“Ma” Burdick’s “shrapnel cake” was another favorite with the boys.
Here is the recipe:
Shrapnel Cake.
(Three pieces.)
Two large cups sugar.
One cup molasses.
Two cups milk.
One cup strong black coffee.
Three heaping teaspoonsful cinnamon.
One heaping teaspoonful cloves.
One teaspoonful salt.
One teaspoonful baking powder.
Two large cups raisins (the shrapnel).
Flour to make a stiff batter.The famous flapjacks were made in the following manner:
Fifty Flapjacks
One quart flour.
Two heaping teaspoons baking powder.
One teaspoon salt.
Milk to make a soft batter. Beat until light.
San Antonio Evening News (San Antonio, Texas) May 7, 1919
Hot, tasty doughnuts and a cup of steaming, fresh coffee really hit the spot these damp, cold days in England . . . and especially for two Iowa doughboys who know the Red Cross Iowa clubmobile was made possible through contributions by residents of their own state.
Once a week the club-kitchen on wheels drops in at an aerial reconnaissance station with “doughnuts for doughboys.” When it does, Cpl. Clyde Olsen, left, and Pfc. Carl C. Larsen, right, of Forest City, Ia., are among the first to welcome it and its two comely attendants, Miss Leo Lindsley of Fallons, Neb., and Mrs. Georgette Hayes of Middletown, N.J.
Corporal Olsen, a radio operator with a Station Complement squadron, assisted his father on his farm near Missouri Valley, Ia., before he entered the army May 29, 1942. He is the husband of Lucille Craig Olsen, 1 11 Stutsman street, Council Bluffs, and a son of Mr. and Mrs. John H. Olson, RFD No. 2, Missouri Valley.
Council Bluffs Nonpareil (Council Bluffs, Iowa) Nov 17, 1943
Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Sep 21, 1927
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Chronicle Telegram (Elyria, Ohio) Oct 11, 1926
* * * * *
By the way, it’s National Doughnut Day.
Image from Swing Fashionista
A MODERN VALENTINE
By Berton Braley
Oh Lady, be my Valentine and hearken to this plea of mine
Which will not be
Especially
Perfervid or impassioned;
For should I pull that kind of stuff you’d doubtless call it all a bluff
And calmly say
“Oh, run away,
That line of talk’s old fashioned.”And so to you, dear Valentine, I will not write a single line
In which “My heart”
Is rhymed with “dart”
Or such-like tender folly; –
That style of wooing girls is dead;
I’ll simply ask you “Will you wed?”
If you’d say “Yes,”
I must confess
I’d think it rather jolly!Then you, my modern Valentine, would keep your flat, and I keep mine;
You’d be content
To pay your rent,
I mine — just as at present,
And now and then by happy chance we might meet at a play or dance
Or at a tea,
And that would be
Indubitably pleasant
Oh Lady, Lady Valentine, I can’t adopt that modern line,
I love you, dear;
I want you near,
A sweet and loving woman!
What’s that? You will! Oh, gosh, that’s good — but still, I kinda thought you would,
You’re modern, yes;
But none the less
You’ve got a heart that’s human!(Copyright, 1922)
Lima News (Lima, Ohio) Feb 9, 1922
Hearts! How Many Can You Find?
HEARTS — HEARTS — HEARTS! JUST TRY TO COUNT THEM! ONE — TWO — THREE — HALF A DOZEN — AND THERE’S ANOTHER AND ANOTHER! HOW MANY HEARTS CAN YOU FIND IN THIS VALENTINE, DONE SO BEAUTIFULLY BY ETHEL HAYS.
Appleton Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) Feb 14, 1927
Also from the Feb, 9, 1922 Lima News
I’m not so sure Mother would be happy to get this particular Valentine!
Lynn, Massachusetts postcard image from Jovike’s photostream on flickr
LYNN
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch.Mayor Bauer of Lynn has spoken. No more shall the woman smoker be seen in that town on stage or screen. The billboards have also been purged of the contaminating influence exercised by the pictorial cigaret and girl. And the ukase will, we are sure, be heartening to everybody who worries about the frailties and peccadilloes of other folks and thinks something ought to be done about it.
Obviously, the Mayor of Lynn is every inch a wowser; Lynn itself, once gay and grimy, has come upon the semi-retirement of “the city that was.” Now its elegy may be written, in true wowserian strophe:
Here lies Lynn,
Sans gin, sans sin,
Sans Nicotin.
Decatur Herald (Decatur, Illinois) Oct 24, 1929
MAYOR BAUER’S REFORM.
Mayor Bauer of Lynn gets his name on the front pages of the newspapers again by issuing an ultimatum against bare-legged girls, but he would accomplish more as a reformer if he used a little quiet persuasion with school teachers and pupils.
We have failed to detect a grave menace in the fashion of bare sun-tanned legs. With all due regard to the sensitive nature of the fair sex, it must be said that most feminine legs are too imperfect in form and natural covering to permit of public display without artificial covering of some kind.
The bare-legged fashion will not get very far because most women have too much common sense to display the imperfections which are more conveniently concealed or minimized beneath sheer silk.
Fitchburg Sentinel (Fitchburg, Massachusetts) Oct 1, 1929
“The notions that were bred into being years and years ago are now being assaulted and turned topsy-turvy. Our social conduct is changing. We must admit that. Thirty or 40 years ago, if a flapper appeared on the street in the same costume she wears today, she would have been rushed to jail as fast as the smoke left her heels. Now no one cares about the flapper’s dress except Mayor Bauer of Lynn.
Fitchburg Sentinel (Fitchburg, Massachusetts) Nov 23, 1929
Not yet can they put you in jail for wondering so we wonder what Mayor Bauer of Lynn is going to attempt after he has pulled off that recently announced determination to make the school teachers of his city, men and women alike, cut out tobacco. It might be as well to wait until he has made good on that ruling before thinking up the next play for front page position in the newspapers.
If the Lynn teachers are human beings, the mayor is likely enough going to find it harder to make them quit the smoking habit than it was to give his city a reduced tax rate. It will be more or less like enforcing the Volstead act.
Theoretically, it can be done, and the dry leaders can prove it. Actually, it has not yet been done, and the wet leaders say you can’t prove it can be. Looking at it from a distance, it doesn’t strike us as being any of the Lynn mayor’s business if the school teachers wish to smoke, providing they do it in reason. We shouldn’t say that the women teachers should smoke at any time, and not at all in public. But as for exercising that privilege in their own homes it is hard to see where the mayor has any particular call to get stuffy about it.
As to making the men teachers take the anti-nicotine pledge, he has accepted a real job if the male breed down that way is anything like normal. The joker in the cold deck which Mayor Bauer has picked up appears in the situation as it affects the pupils in the schools.
Mayor Bauer may conceivably make the school teachers as smokeless as he decrees, but we have a natural curiosity to know how he is going to make the boys and girls who go to school quit it. Not that we know whether the Lynn school girls smoke, but many of the boys do, unless down in Lynn boys are no longs boys. For which reason the pupils are going to snicker as they look at their poor hen-pecked teachers who dare not smoke for fear of losing their jobs. And you don’t have to be a slave to nicotine to see the humor of the situation which Lynn’s great reform mayor seeks to bring about.
The Fitchburg Sentinel (Fitchburg, Massachusetts) Sep 8, 1926
Bone Dry or No Football Game
Lynn, Mass., Nov. 26. (AP) — Mayor Ralph S. Bauer saw so much drinking at the Harvard-Yale football game at Cambridge Saturday, he said, that he has ordered the Thanksgiving Day high school contest here to be bone dry or stopped.
Twelve thousand persons at the stadium for the Yale-Harvard contests, he estimated yesterday, were more interested in quart bottles and hip flasks than anything else. Many women “took a pull out of the bottles the same as the men,” the Mayor said, and neither the police nor the faculty interfered.
The Rev. Garfield Morgan, pastor of the Center Congregational Church, according to the Mayor, was approached by some one in a big fur coat who said to him, “you look like an old timer, have a drink.”
“Can this be the same Harvard of which the late President Eliot used to boast?” Mayor Bauer asked. “The factor that made her the dominant educational institution of our land was that she had been building men for nearly 300 years?”
On the Mayor’s order, the police chief will station fifty patrolmen and sergeants on duty Thursday at the Lynn-English classical high game with orders to arrest all persons who drink and to stop the game if drinking becomes serious.
Kingston Daily Freeman (Kingston, New York) Nov 26, 1929
Mayor Bauer, of Lynn, addressing a meeting of the Women’s Republican club at Cambridge, Mass., this week, said there were about 4,000 too many municipal employes in Boston and that he could discharge all of them without one being missed. “All city governments are ‘good fellow’ governments,” the mayor told his audience. “Public officials feel they have got to get jobs for their constituents and they don’t care whether there exists a job or not.”
The Bridgeport Telegram (Bridgeport, Connecticut) Jun 30, 1927
“THE NAKED TRUTH.”
“The Naked Truth” which is now showing at the Park theatre has caused considerable comment and discussion recently in Boston and Lynn, Mass. The Mayor of Boston, refused permission to present the film to Bostonians, and immediately upon taking this stand, Mayor Bauer of Lynn viewed the film and passed on it as a good and proper picture, bearing a message of beneficial value to the community and permitted the Lynn Auditorium to show the film for four weeks to record-breaking crowds. The film is featured by an all-star cast supported by Jack Mulhall and Helene Chadwick. This is the first showing of the film in this vicinity. “The Naked Truth” is to the point and calls a spade a spade.
The Bridgeport Telegram (Bridgeport, Connecticut) Nov 2, 1926
Image from Shorpy
DOGS MAY ROAM
LYNN, Mass., — Dec. 14. — (By The Associated Press.) — By proclamation of Mayor Bauer, dogs are assured the freedom of the streets if they do not make nuisances of themselves nor obstruct traffic like some political aspirants do. The more he sees of men, the more respect the mayor has for dogs. The proclamation was issued after state authorities urged that stray dogs be rounded up and killed because of the spread of rabies.
Ogden Standard Examiner (Ogden, Utah) Dec 14, 1927
Images of John P. McGloin from the Lynn Museum and Historical Society
Independent baseball will be played on the playgrounds at Lynn this summer with Mayor Fred Manning tossing out the first ball. Former Mayor Bauer stopped the games on the playgrounds when he was in office.
Fitchburg Sentinel (Fitchburg, Massachusetts) Jul 12, 1930
Mayor of Lynn
Ralph Sherman Bauer
Image from NOBLE Digital Heritage
The following biographical information (from Descendants of HANS MICHAEL BAUER, (BOWER)) tells of Mayor Bauer “pulling himself up by the bootstraps” and making a life for himself:
Notes for RALPH SHERMAN BOWER:
His father died when he was only seven years old. Even at that extremely early age he became the main support of a family consisting of his mother and three sisters, the youngest a nursing baby. The family then living in Philadelphia and it was there that Ralph S. Bauer began his career in the newspaper business. The result of his first day’s sales as a “newsie” was cents. From that time on, every dollar he has ever had has been made by his own business ability. During the first 15 years of his life, there was no kind of human poverty this family did not face, and through it all, held together as a family and received such education as could be obtained under such circumstances.
When Ralph Bauer, yet in his teens, determined to exchange the environment of Philadelphia for cultured Boston, his [wealth] when he landed amounted to 27 cents. Many were the hours of loneliness that were his, with neither kith nor kin nearer than the PA metropolis. Many were the night he slept on a Boston Common bench with the star-studded blue dome of the heavens above, his only coverlet. Oft were dreams rudely disturbed by the smart blow of a patrolman’s night-stick on the thin soles of his tattered shoes. Always with warm appreciation will remained his memory of one of Boston’s guardians of the peace, who drew from him the tale of his struggles for existence. Never will he forget the warmth of the coat the officer tucked about his lusty body while he promised to rouse him from his slumbers in time to get his share of the profits from the early morning edition of the Herald. True to his word the officer awakened the sleeping lad and provided him with a good hot breakfast. If that man is still alive today Ralph Bauer would like to know his whereabouts, for he has never forgotten his kindness to a little lonely lad in a great city, far from his lived ones. He was graduated from the Boston Latin school and immediately thereafter obtained a position in the mailing department of the Boston Herald.
YesterYear Once More 
