Baldwin-Wallace Trustee, Judge Guy B. Findley was known as a magistrate who “mixed judicial dignity with a sharp wit and an occasional sharp tongue where he thought it would do the most good.”
Guy Findley received his law degree from the University of Michigan. His first public post came in 1911 when he was made city solicitor of Elyria. Serving in that office for two terms, he then moved on to spend two sessions as Lorain Common Pleas Court in Lorain County where he continued without primary or general election opposition until his retirement on October 14, 1950.
Judge Findley took a special interest in promoting welfare organizations especially for youngsters. He served as trustee of the Cleveland Christian Home for Children for 10 years; on the executive board of the Firelands area council of Boy Scouts of America and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis; and on the editorial committee of the Ohio Probation Association. In Elyria, he served for 25 years as a trustee of the First Christian Church; and as president of the Elyria Izaak Walton League and the local Community Chest.
Remembering happy hours spent in the woods during his childhood the Judge donated 890 acres of forest near Wellington to the state of Ohio as part of his fight against juvenile delinquency. The park has been named Findley State Forest.
Judge Findley not only donated forests, he served as president of the Ohio Forestry Association and vice president of the American Forestry Association (for which he was given the honor of being made vice president for life by an amendment to the constitution made by the group members).
The House of Representatives of the state of Ohio paid tribute to Judge Findley’s achievements in the adoption of a resolution “in commendation of the life and services of a great jurist and the contribution he made to legal jurisprudence and the political, social and cultural growth of the community in which he has so ably served, and the molding of the lives of those whose sphere of activity touched directly or indirectly (his) life.”
Citation: “Five to be Inducted into B-W Hall of Fame,” The Exponent (Berea, OH), January 25, 1980, p. 11.
DR. GEORGE FINNIE, 1917 graduate of Adelbert College of Western Reserve University, began as a CPA in 1921, with the Youngstown office of Ernst and Ernst. In 1937 he became cofounder and managing partner of Wilson, Finnie & Co., CPA firm.
Active on the Cleveland sports scene, Finnie has been a member of the Cleveland Indians and Cleveland Browns booster clubs, The Cleveland Athletic Club made him an honorary life member in 1957. He also served as vice-president of the club in 1939-40 and as president in 1941.
Devoted to the educational development of young people, Finnie has been a member of the -B-W Collage Board of-Trustees since April 1969. In the following year he was made an honorary B-W alumnus and was awarded Doctor of Humane Letters degree for his outstanding services to the college and community.
The George Finnie Stadium, rated as the finest NCAA Division III football and track facility in the nation, was named in honor of Dr. Finnie.
Citation: Frances F. Mills, ed., “Athletics,” Baldwin-Wallace Alumnus 11, no. 4 (1933): p. 26.
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"Eddie" Finnigan, graduate and former athletic star at Western Reserve University will assume his duties as instructor in the department of health and physical education and assistant football and basketball coach when the fall football practice begins on September 11. As varsity quarterback, Finnigan was W. R. U.'s outstanding gridder for the past three years, captaining the team in 1932. He also starred in basketball and track.
Eddie is a graduate of John Adams High School in Cleveland, Ohio, and is very popular and well known in Cleveland scholastic circles.
It is the opinion of Acting President Grover and the members of the Athletic Committee of the Board of Trustees that in Mr. Finnigan we have secured a most excellent man for the position.
Citation: Marion Cole, ed., “After Sixteen Years At B-W It's HEAD COACH FINNIGAN,” Baldwin-Wallace Alumnus 27, no. 4 (1949): pp. cover-1.
"It's very easy to be ordinary, but it takes a lot of courage to excell -and we must excell."
In the Fall of 1933 an enthusiastic youngster fresh from Western Reserve University hired himself out to Baldwin-Wallace as an assistant football coach and brought this philosophy with him.
Anyone who knows Eddie Finnigan at all well probably has heard him use his pet adage a number of times; and his firm conviction in excellence and the advantages of being on top has assured the great majority of Baldwin-Wallace football followers that Eddie will lead the Yellow Jackets brilliantly.
Sixteen seasons after his baptism he finds himself in the driver's seat -the head coach, now that Ray Watts has chosen to retire from the gridiron after more than two decades as Jacket headmaster.
Basically, Finnigan is the same vivacious guy whose personable, invigorating manner stacked up popularity and friendships as soon as he struck the campus. Except for a dimishing crop of brunette locks, Eddie might well be mistaken for a recent GI college graduate. But despite his youthful appearance, the smiling bow tie-wearing Irishman is a real coaching veteran.
He'll need all his experience and coaching skill, though. Succeeding Ray Watts as head football coach is certainly not the easiest task in the. world. Watts occupied the throne room for 21 seasons and lifted the Yellow Jackets from pigskin obscurity to national prominence-especially in 1935 and 1936 when they topped the nation's colleges in scoring.
The Wattsian Era produced 104 -victories and 14 ties against 54 losses, a truly remarkable record that stands as a testimonial to a fine mentor.
Naturally Watts would be particular about the heir to his job. "It's the most important thing on my mind; we certainly want to be sure we pick the right man for the job," Watts said last Spring when it was ascertained that he was leaving football.
He didn't have to look far. Watts' loyal assistant for 16 years, Finnigan was the logical selection and, as they would say in Flatbush, "The Peepul's Cheree.''
Finnigan came to Berea with a glowing reputation as a cracker-jack athlete and student. At John Adams High School in Cleveland and during his own campus days at Western Reserve he had stood opponents on their collective ears with his feats on the gridiron and basketball court.
In his senior year at Reserve he crashed the national spotlight by being picked as forward on the famous Chuck Taylor All-American basketball team.
Eddie tutored the basketball team at B-W for a few years but his continuous jobs have been those with the track squad and the football backfield.
It has been in track that Finnigan has gained his highest coaching accolades. His feats with the Jacket cinder squad have paralleled Watts' development of football.
When he took over, the tracksters would have had difficulty in consistently licking a small high school team. But it served as a challenge, and systematically the team grew in strength and prestige. By 1942 the Jackets climbed to the Number 2 Spot in the Ohio Conference and the following year, when Finnigan's great pupil Harrison Dillard became a sophomore, track at Baldwin-Wallace came of age.
The Jackets stepped to five straight Ohio Conference crowns and four consecutive All-Ohio titles. In 1945 and 1946 they were unbeaten and a 26- meet string of victories was snapped only by an elegant Ohio State team in 1947.
The B-W contingent many times was tagged the best small college track team in the U. S. by sportswriters who covered the country's harriers.
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Harrison Dillard gave Finnigan his most cherished coaching present on July 21, 1948. The place was Wembley Stadium, London, where 82,000 people had assembled for the Olympic Games. As everyone knows, Dillard made off with the 100 meter dash honors and Finnigan had realized a lifelong ambition of handling a world champion.
Incidentally, Eddie's dynamic personality had the same effect on the English as it had had on Americans. The first thing visiting Americans saw in a London daily as they arrived in the White City for the Olympics was a story on Finnigan. Although he was not an official U. S. coach and was along just to see Dillard run, and despite the fact that the EnglandAustralia cricket tests had crowded all Olympic news off the sports pages, Finnigan was in a very prominent column.
Finnigan is given much credit for shaping the classy backfields that have blazed forth for B-W year after year. A forward passer of note in his undergraduate days, Finnigan aided in bringing the "Aerial Circus" to B-W in the golden autumn days of 1934-35-36 when the "Touchdown Twins" - Kenny Noble and Norm Schoen - were bowling over Jacket foes with touchdown throws.
This season, the Yellow Jackets are sporting perhaps their most deadly passing attack and Finnigan is reviving the "Aerial Circus." The new Touchdown Twins are Tommy Phillips and Bob Hecker who have been under the Finnigan influence from the start of their careers.
Phillips learned his flipping game at Berea High from Noble, who was the local school's backfield coach, while Hecker was schooled at Olmsted Falls by Schoen. It is appropriate that the "Aerial Circus" should be rebuilt by these two.
In 1937, Finnigan was married and he and his wife, Miriam, have a daughter, Sharon. He lists his family as the only thing closer to him than his football team.
Track has afforded Finnigan the limelight but football always has been his favorite and he always has had the desire to coach football. He finally received his chance when Watts announced his withdrawal from gridology. Then there was a tough decision, for Finnigan was being sought by the Cleveland Browns to fill a vacancy on their staff under the heralded Paul Brown.
After much thought Eddie's affect ion for Baldwin-Wallace and Berea finally led him to take up Watts' position.
Long one of the most highly-esteemed professors on the campus, Eddie couldn't tear himself from Berea. "I like the kids and the people, the school and the town too much to leave," he has said.
Once he was notified of his appointment, Finnigan went to work on football as he has done on everything else- in a terrifically ambitious, systematic, high-spirited and intelligent manner. He and his assistants- Keith Piper, Ralph Adams and Lars Wagner- met every day during the summer, plotting and planning.
The coaches dug into every angle of Baldwin-Wallace football and drew up every minute of the season. Each detail became important; organization was the key word.
"I want the kids to know this game and to enjoy it- and the way to enjoy football is to win," Finnigan has stated. "If we know more about football than the next fellow, and do our job better, we will win."
As this is written, the Jackets have taken their first three ball games and have assumed the air of a well-trained, hard-hitting outfit.
Finnigan is excelling. And there's every reason why he should. He's not afraid of hard work; he has the courage; and all who have had contact with him know that he's never been content to be just ordinary.
" It's very easy to be ordinary, but it takes a lot of courage to excell - and we must excell." - Bud Collins, ‘51
Citation: “B-W prof wraps today inside the past; Mary Ann Fruth 'lives" drama,” News Sun, November 28, 1985, p. B1
By R. David Heileman
Had you lived during the late 1800s, at the height of the Victorian era, to be accused of not knowing your left shoe from your right wouldn't have been an insult at all.
"There were no right or left shoes," explains Mary Ann Fruth, Baldwin-Wallace (B-W) College professor of drama. "Both were the same. You put them on an made your own right or left shoe." Fruth, who was a member of the drama department staff and in charge of costuming at Kent State University (KSU) from 1964 to 1970, moved to B-W beginning with spring quarter, 1970.
Her duties at B-W include the usual professorial activities - teaching, designing makeup, costumes, sets and lighting for college theater productions - and in Fruth's case, presiding over the theater department's voluminous costume collection.
WHILE KSU BOASTS a multimillion dollar costume collection that went on public display Oct. 12, B-W can be proud of its own historic collection of costumes, numbering between 550 and 750 and dating back to the early 1800s.
"Most things have been donated by B-W alumni or friends of the college," says Fruth. "It's a case of We kept grandma's prom dress a lot longer than I wanted to,' and then they decide to donate it to us." B-W's historic collection of
costumes was originally stored at the old Methodist Children's Home, which was once where Jacob Kamm Hall now stands on East Center Street.
The collection is too fragile to be worn on stage, according to Fruth.
The antique garments are used as tools to teach today's drama students the ins and outs of costume design and construction.
"If you're building an 1890s dress, you can look and see how it's done and then use today's techniques to do it," Fruth says.
THUS FAR, the B-W drama department has staged three shows highlighting the old costumes. The most recent show, at Fawick Gallery in the B-W Art and Drama Center, was held last fall.
Featured were costumes from the 1880s and 1890s. Among them were gowns of a plush velvet material that is difficult to find today. "You can buy (similar) imported, French material, starting at $140 to $150 per yard," says Fruth.
She knows of only one shop, located on Cleveland's east side, which she declined to name, where such material may be purchased.
Victorians, she says, "bought it (the material) from a Sears catalogue."
Included in B-W's costume collection is a crosssection of children's clothing. "Kids' things didn't seem to vary that much,"
says Fruth.
Among the oldest garments, stored in a metal locker deep within the drama center building, is a 115-year-old bodice of a dress.
Fruth says the department has many old dress bodices, but few that old. Matching skirts "seldom make it," she says, explaining that when they became worn, "They were probably patched and then cut down to make children's clothing." APPEARING VERY PECULIAR to the modern eye - perhaps even a little bizarre - are the oddly-colored clothes which were considered high style in the 1850s.
Fruth explains that the "strange fuschias"
and a garish red coupled
with black used in those days were produced by using aniline dyes, first discovered in the mid-19th century. "They thought it was just the height of fashion."
Also in the collection are a number of men's suits - made mostly of silk and of 1908-1915 vintage. The suits are very small by today's standards, Fruth says.
"You'd have to be 5'5" or so to wear them."
The greatest number of costumes in the historic collection 1920s. Thethe "apper era" of the
1920s. There are many beaded and sequined evening gowns which Fruth says are "so heavy they rip right off the hangers.
"The bulk of our women's clothes are from the 1920s and
1930s. That's the time period when our (theater) patrons grew up. So we have a lot.
AN INTERESTING ITEM from the 1920s in the collection is an Indian blanket coat.
"This was probably worn by a college girl then - the same as a raccoon coat," says Fruth.
According to Fruth, a gray wollen Indian blanket was used to make the garment. "It was cut into pieces, so you still have the pattern."
Also of interest are the 1920s style white flannel men's pants.
"They have the extra-wide cuffs and measure 24 inches at the cuff." The two-foot wide cuff, she adds, was "considered proper for going out and boozing and wearing to the speakeasies."
Perhaps the oldest garment in the collection is an 1840s day dress which Fruth says, "was worn by a woman with very little to do but
trail around all day."
The dress, of ivory-colored silk with a pattern of green and blue poppies, was several yards long and meant to be worn "with petticoat after petticoat to give it a pyramidal effect."
THE THEATER department, Fruth says, will set up a show using the classic clothing for just about any club or organization that asks.
She says, however, that there are few takers. "I tried to sell the idea to various alumni groups, to set up (a show) as fund raisers. But they don't know what we have. And, of course, nobody comes to look."
Fruth says the department will set up the costume display free of charge. "All they have to do is provide the space."
Along with the antique collection, Fruth, who has a master's degree in theater from Smith College and a Ph.D from Ohio State University,
also oversees the collection of about 5,000 costumes which are used in the various B-W drama department productions.
That collection, she said, has to be inventoried and "weeded out" every so often, so a yearly costume sale is held just before Halloween each year. All items sold carry price tags of from 25 cents to a top of $5.
DONATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY costumes are seldom accepted, Fruth says, "because they don't stay around. Someone tries them on and says 'That would look really good on me. I think I'll borrow it.'" The borrowed costumes are seldom seen again. "We don't rent costumes, either," says Fruth. The only at the only to pick up costumes is at the annual sale."
Citation: “Fruth named drama director,” The Exponent, 1981
By Kate Darling
Dr. Mary Ann Fruth, affectionately known as "Doc," has been named Director of Drama. She is the first new director in twenty-five years, succeeding Prof. William Allman. When asked how she felt when she heard the news Doc Fruth replied, "Panicked." Incurably modest, Doc refused to divulge further information. In addition to her new responsibilities Doc Fruth will direct The Mandrake spring quarter. It is thought to be the only play written by Machiavelli, a Renaissance thinker better known for his political philosophy detailed in The Prince. Doc enjoys directing classic plays because they are her specialty and are not frequently produced. "The Mandrake is also a dirty play," she added, in-tending, no doubt, to take advantage of free advertising to entice theatre-goers. The play will open in April, but dates are still tentative.
Citation: “BW Professor gets award,” News Sun, Thursday, June 18th, 1981
Mary Ann Fruth,
associate professor of speech communication and theater at Baldwin-Wallace College, was named the recipient of the Strosacker award for excellence in teaching.
The Strosacker Award is given each year to an outstanding educator who is nominated by the faculty and students and selected by a panel made up of the three most recent recipients of the award.
The award was begun in 1960, and its recipients include 15 faculty persons who are currently active at B-W.
It carries with it a $1,500 gift from the Strosacker Endowment, which was established to recognize outstanding teaching.
Dr. Fruth came to Baldwin-Wallace in the fall of 1970 as an assistant professor of speech and theatre arts. A native of Fostoria, Ohio, she received her B.A. from Denison University, her A.M. from Smith College in Massachusetts and her Ph.D. from Ohio State. In 1975 she was made an associate professor.
Dr. Fruth is a member of the U.S. Institute for Theatre Technology, The American Theatre Assn., Phi Beta Kappa and Eta Sigma Phi honorary societies and the First Presbyterian Church of Fostoria. Dr. Fruth is an instructor of costume design and advanced directing. She lives in Berea.
Citation: “Their Loyalty Has Lasted 25 Years,” The Exponent (Berea, OH), November 11, 1930, pp. 1 & 4.
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Since 1903 Professor Fullmer has been head of the Department of Biology at B-W. Thus though serving the college for twenty-seven years he is the youngest member of the trio. In two other respects Professor Fullmer differs from Dr. Marting and Dr. Hertzler. In the first place he did not take his under-graduate work at Baldwin- Wallace, and in the second place he began his professorship, not at German Wallace College but at Baldwin University.
The building which is now occupied by the science departments of the college was moved, block by block from the south side of Berea to its present location. Each block was marked and put in its proper place when the building was reassembled on Its present site. The money for this undertaking was furnished by Carnegie Foundation, hence the present name "The Carnegie Science Hall." The blocks were marked and the moving supervised by Paul Baldwin, a grandson of the founder of the college.
Professor Edward Lawrence Fullmer was born on a farm located near Defiance, Ohio. He went to a preparatory college in Indiana and then to Ohio State University where he received both his bachelor's and master's degrees. During his last Iwo years at Ohio State, he was the recipient of a fellowship in botany that made it possible for him to teach one half of the time. This experience proved very valuable after he had graduated and had begun his teaching career. He taught four years at Dakota Wesleyan College, Mitchell, South Dakota, before coming lo B-W.
Conditions have changed greatly since 1903, and this is especially true in the realm of science. In fact science is constantly undergoing change. Since 1903 great improvement has been made in laboratory equipment deemed so essential to all scientific work. However Professor Fullmer believes that thoroughness in one's work is much more important than line equipment. He says that a pocket glass and nature's laboratory are sufficient.
A study of the methods of Professor Fullmer and the biology department should prove both interesting and valuable. Until about five years ago he did all of the work of the department himself. Since that time he has had two assistants, Miss Luella Klink during the school years 1926-27 and 27-28 and Mr. Thomas Surrarrer since 1928. Student aid has also been used in connection with the laboratory work. Professor Fullmer is particularly pleased with the classes which he has had in Special Methods in Biology during the past few years. The usual course of this nature consists of theory only, but at B-W theory is combined with practice. The students who intend to teach biology meet with Professor Fullmer once each week and discuss their problems. Then they devote four hours each week to work in the laboratory, supervising the work of the Freshmen, taking care of the equipment, etc. This plan worked out by Professor Fullmer and Dean Roehm has the unqualified approval of the State Department of Education.
One hundred and fifty students are taking courses in biology this year. Three Freshman courses and four advanced ones are being offered this semester, in addition to the many laboratory sections.
Professor Fullmer is the author of a very valuable bulletin on the Slime Molds of Ohio, published by the Ohio Biological Survey. The bulletin was written as the result of an exhaustive survey of the conditions affecting these peculiar saprophitic plants.
The other members of the Fullmer household are Mrs. Fuller and a daughter, Ruth, who graduated from B-W, received her masters degree at Columbia University, and at the present time is teaching at Thomas Jefferson Junior High School in Cleveland.
Congratulations! Professor Fullmer on your long and faithful service to Baldwin-Wallace, and may you long continue to serve her.
See also: Fullmer Arboretum (Campus Locations - F)
