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Below are the five obits for Obit writer ""B."

Obit #1: Eva Mae Pugh

A plastic mold for making gel­atin desserts and salads sealed Eva Mae Pugh’s decision to become a Tupperware lady in the 1970s.

Eva couldn’t afford to pur­chase a Tupperware Jel-Ring Mold, so she agreed to host a Tupperware party in exchange for receiving the coveted mold as a complimentary gift. By the end of the party, she had become enamored with the products and was certain that she could sell them.

During her 30-some years of peddling plastic, Eva’s consis­tently high marks in Tupper­ware sales earned her a livable income and many more impres­sive gifts, including fine jewelry, furniture and a van, which she could not drive.

“She was always up in the top with her sales, even though she never drove a day in her life,” said Susan Enzor, a Tupperware colleague. “Her husband would drive her (and the Tupperware products) to parties.”

After her husband, Oris, died in 1986, Eva earned a van from Tupperware and engaged others to act as her chauffeur.

“At the time, with your sales, you could earn a vehicle that Tupperware paid for — insur­ance and everything,” Enzor said. “You had to be in the higher ranks of selling to be van ­eligible. Eva was always in the higher ranks.”

The Lorain resident, who died July 24, 2010, at age 86, did more than demonstrate how to burp the air out of food storage bowls to create an airtight seal. She shared recipes and entertained partygoers with first-person accounts of using Tupperware products in her own kitchen. She also offered tips on saving money and being pragmatic.

Fellow Tupperwarians called Eva their “Tupper Greeter.”

“She loved being at the door to welcome everyone who came into our sales meetings,” said Mary Rust, who worked with Eva for 10 years.
Eva embraced challenges, such as presenting skits at national sales meetings.

“She did a skit on how not to conduct a Tupperware party,” Rust said. “She was so hilarious that people were rolling on the floor. She kept such a straight face. All the while, she was doing everything wrong. She came out dressed in the most awful clothes, rollers in her hair and cigarette in her mouth. It was so-o-o not Eva, but so-o-o funny!”

The West Virginia native was born Eva Mae Fisher, a coal miner’s daughter, on April 19, 1924. Her father also worked in construction and ran a store with her mother.

Eva graduated from high school and began her sales career at a store in Webster Springs, W.Va.

She married Oris Pugh, a World War II Army veteran, on July 20, 1946. They were the parents of six children: Larry, Michael, James, Edward, Regina and Ronald, who died in 2008. In 1953, the Pughs joined a large portion of the population of Webster Springs in migrating to Lorain for job opportunities.

Oris worked at the Lorain steel mill for a short time before getting into the mobile home business. The Pughs also ran P&L Mobile Home Park and sold trailers in Lorain for more than 20 years.

“Dad did the maintenance; Mom did the selling,” said their son, Michael. “They always had partners. They started in the 1950s and stopped in the 1970s just before Mom started with Tupperware.”

Eva had gained experience as a public speaker in the 1960s as a result of losing weight with TOPS — Take Off Pounds Sensibly. During her first 10 months with the TOPS program, she lost 80 pounds and was crowned the 1964 Lorain County TOPS Queen.

She lost more than 100 pounds, and held leadership posts at meetings in Lorain, Erie and Huron counties.

In the late 1960s, Eva and Oris moved to Middletown, where they sold mobile homes. They returned to Lorain in about 1972. Within a few years, Eva switched from trailers to smaller items and sold Avon products before switching to Tupperware. She became a mentor, always advising people, “You have to work your business. You can’t wait for business to come to you.”

“She always shared her ideas how to be a good Tupperware rep,” said Nora Ritter, whom Eva took under her wing. “My goal was always to match her in sales each month. Trust me. It was hard to match her in sales, and she loved it that I tried.”

Eva continued with Tupperware after having a stroke that affected her speech and mobility. She set up her product display in her living room and had customers come to her.

She also worked at the Tupperware kiosk at Midway Mall and the Lorain County Fair, using a wheelchair or walker to get around. Eva eventually regained her speech and walked again but retired when bad knees interfered with her doing parties.

“She taught us all: Tupperware is more than just selling plastic,” Enzor said. “We became a family. She was like a mom to me.”

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Obit #2: Bernie and Virginia Schlather

The Schlather brood attracted lots of stares on their Sunday drives through Lorain, Cuyahoga and Geauga counties in the 1950s and ’60s.

“When we’d come to a red light, you could see the people next to us counting us in the car,” said Jeanne Frey, the 4th-born of Bernie and Virginia Schlather’s 13 kids. “We only had one car at a time for all of us — always a Ford and always a nine-passenger station wagon. We were all together for only one year.”

More than a year, really. All 13 kids lived under the same roof from January 1961, when the youngest child, Mary Agnes, was born, until September 1962, when Sister Mary Seton, a.k.a. Mary Rita, the eldest of the Schlather clan, left home to enter the convent.

The number of Schlather children at home in Elyria decreased as the kids graduated from high school and went off to college.

Numerous vehicles driven by Schlather offspring, grandchildren and friends filled the parking lots at Reichlin-Roberts Funeral Home and St. Jude Church in recent weeks for Bernie’s and Virginia’s funerals.

Bernard P. Schlather died May 21, 2010, and H. Virginia Schlather followed on June 26, 2010, both at age 90.

Both were born in Olmsted Falls: Bernie on Aug. 4, 1919; Virginia, whose maiden name was Bilskey, on Jan. 28, 1920.

Bernie, whose father ran a dry goods store, was the youngest of six siblings. Virginia, the daughter of a carpenter who built houses, was the second of five.

Bernie was born with club feet and had several operations on his legs in his youth. He used crutches until he was a teenager. Yet he managed to participate in athletics.
“He played baseball, but he was all-time pitcher because of his feet,” daughter Jeanne said. “He bowled, played tennis. With his feet, we were surprised that he played tennis.”

As a child, Virginia helped her maternal grandparents on their farm in Columbia Township.

The future Mr. and Mrs. Schlather may have known each other casually from St. Mary of the Falls Church, from Olmsted Falls High School or from around town, but they bonded as members of the Marian Club, a Catholic youth group.

After graduating from high school in 1936, Bernie lived with his aunts on West 41st Street in Cleveland, worked at Addressograph-Multigraph and attended night classes at Spencerian Business College. He began selling insurance in 1941.

He tried to join the military for service in World War II but was rejected because of his feet.

Virginia remained at OFHS as a school secretary from 1937, when she graduated, until 1944. She later served as bookkeeper for Bernie’s insurance business.

“She always told us that she thought she should be a nun, but Dad persuaded her to marry him,” daughter Jeanne said.

Bernie proposed on Christmas Eve 1941. They were married on July 5, 1943, at St. Mary of the Falls.

Virginia’s father built their house at 718 Gulf Road — not far from St. Jude Church and School — as a wedding gift. It was finished in 1948, and they moved in with their first four children that December.

“The story goes that Mom and Dad had a smaller home in their plans,” Jeanne said, “but Granddad made it bigger” to accommodate their growing family.

Bernie liked to say that they chose the location for its proximity to St. Jude.

“The Catholic faith was so integrated into our lives that we just expected to pray together at morning prayer before breakfast, meal prayers before each meal, and to interrupt our play in the evening and say the Rosary together,” said Sr. Mary Margaret Ann, the 3rd-born.
The Schlathers used weekly visits to the Elyria Public Library and read to their kids to encourage them to read.
Bernie, Lorain County Deanery Holy Name Society Man of the Year for 1960, kept the kids coming back for more with the clever use of cliffhangers at the end of each reading session.
“Dad would tantalize us with his expressive way of reading classics out loud, seeming to relish stopping at some of the most exciting parts of the story,” Sr. Mary Margaret Ann said.

Virginia and Bernie raised assorted vegetables, fruit trees and flowers in a garden the length of their yard. They set aside sections for which each child was responsible.

They cleared out a “postage stamp” diamond in the woods behind the house, where they played baseball and other games.

Bernie’s love of live Christmas trees led to his helping start Christmas tree sales to raise money for the church and the Boy Scouts. Virginia baked apple pies for church and East Elyria Kiwanis campaigns and events.

“She swore by Gold Medal flour and Crisco for the lard,” 1st-born daughter Sr. Mary Seton said.

Following their parents’ example to contribute to good causes, the kids organized backyard festivals as fundraisers.

They charged pennies for lemonade, cookies and games that promised prizes from cereal boxes to game winners. They donated the proceeds to missions in India connected with the Notre Dame Sisters, who taught at St. Jude’s school.

Two of the Schlather daughters, Sr. Mary Seton and Sr. Mary Margaret Ann, went on to join the order. Daughter Jeanne became music director at St. Jude, and Mary Agnes works in the marketing department of National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Bellville, Ill.

Son Raymond, the 6th-born, at one time began preparing for the priesthood, but ended up becoming a lawyer like his brother Robert, the 2nd-born.

Sons William and David, children No. 5 and 10 respectively, purchased the Schlather Insurance Agency from their father in 1985.

Child No. 7, Paul, is a retired accountant. Donald, No. 8, is a landscaper.

Roseann Brown, No. 9, works for the U. S. Postal Service. Kenneth, No. 11, is the Cornell University Cooperative Extension director, while No. 12, Patrick, is an engineer.

A story about all the Schlather children going to or having completed college was published in The Chronicle in June 1979 after the last Schlather child graduated from Elyria Catholic.

A few days later, an editorial writer observed, “One can only guess at the sacrifices required for this kind of achievement — the scrimping, the scrambling to keep everyone organized, clothed and fed, and the energy involved in supervising such a large household.”

When asked then about raising and educating 13 kids, Virginia said, “We sort of went along with the idea that the Lord will provide. And somehow He has.”

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Obit #3: Ray Church

During World War II, Ray Church scavenged abandoned tanks and combat sites for mechanical parts, weapons and ammunition.

The lifelong Wellington resident, who died Dec. 23, 2009, at age 91, adapted odds and ends from his collection of junk to maintain or improve the 176th Field Artillery Battalion’s communications system and weaponry.

His ingenuity and inability to throw away anything useful led to his receiving the Bronze Star Medal for meritorious while serving in France during World War II.

“We had run out of batteries and parts,” Ray told a Chronicle-Telegram reporter in the 1950s about the honor. “If we had had to wait for the parts to come through regular channels, some of the guns would have been out of action for a long time. … I had to improvise a lot, but that equipment always kept our communication system in order.”

Ray didn’t say much about his wartime service to his children, Janet Dawson and Chuck Church.

“You went, you did your duty, you went home and put your medals away,” Janet said, explaining her father’s philosophy. “Medals weren’t important. You just did the best you could.”

Ray was born Oct. 9, 1918, in Wellington, the second youngest of four siblings whose parents ran a novelty store, built picture frames and later ran an upholstery business.

Before graduating from Wellington High School in 1937, Ray helped organize what is believed to have been the first 4-H Radio Club in the country.

He repaired radios in his parents’ attic before taking a job at Wellington Foundry. Although he could have cited his skills as a core maker to obtain a military deferment as an essential production worker during the war, Ray enlisted in 1943 to serve as an Army radio operator.

After the war, he continued repairing radios, serving the public and squirreling away discarded items that might be useful.

Ray serviced sound systems, scoreboards and other electronics for the Wellington schools. He mounted a portable public address system on the back of his car to use at community and school events.

“He would lug that thing up and down the bleachers in his 80s,” said Jeff Jump, Wellington athletic director. “He raised the flag during the National Anthem (at home football games). He still pulled the rope at 91. He was just a true servant to the community, the country and the school.”

When Ray noticed that some parts from an old scoreboard would work in the town hall clock or other school scoreboards, he stripped those parts for future use.

“You don’t waste anything,” his daughter explained. ““He was a heck of a pack rat. Some of the old parts are still in back of the house.”

Ray had semi-retired from his own business, Church TV and Radio, but kept fixing TVs for friends.

“He was more or less into the old TVs,” his son said. “It was getting harder and harder for him to get parts for them.”

In the late 1960s, he and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 6941 campaigned for community support to restore the clock in the tower at Wellington Town Hall.

Ray helped clear pigeon carcasses and droppings from the tower so refurbishing could begin. When some hands from the original four-faced clock went missing, he stayed up all night to fashion new ones.

In the decades that followed, he climbed up the tower to change light bulbs and to reset the clock for Daylight Savings Time.

He was especially devoted to fellow veterans.

“Everybody contacted him for his knowledge of veterans’ services,” said Gil Cole, Wellington American Legion commander.

Ray explained benefits and helped fill out forms. He took ailing veterans to VA medical facilities in Cleveland and Brecksville. He visited residents of the Ohio Veterans Home in Sandusky several times a week.

“Once a week, we’d play bingo with the residents,” Cole said. “They were all strangers to him, but they were all his friends.”

As the post chaplain, Ray presided over military funerals. He and another veteran were charged with taking the American flag that covered the casket, folding it and presenting it to the family.

Each Memorial Day, he planted little flags on veterans’ graves at Greenwood Cemetery and raised the flag before and after the annual parade.

When a train derailed in Wellington exactly 50 years ago on the evening of Sunday, Jan. 10, 1960, Ray and his wife, Millie, immediately packed up their kids and joined other VFW members at the VFW Hall and converted it into an overnight aid center for the survivors.

“Anything anybody needed, he was pretty much there to do it for them,” his daughter said. “Dad would tell you, he was just an ordinary man doing what anybody would do.”

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Obit #4: Amos Campbell

Amos M. Campbell Jr. pulled taffy with more than 10,000 people in 10 different states over the last 10 years.

The Brunswick resident, who owned Karmel Korn franchises at malls in Cuyahoga County and made ice cream and candy apples at Mapleside Farms in Brunswick, gave hands-on training in old-fashioned taffy pulling, along with lessons in history, economics and science.

“My dad loves to talk,” said Amos’ son Phil. “Half of his taffy pulling was his explaining how it came about.”

While handing out warm samples of thick, gooey candy, Amos reminded his peers at senior centers and told elementary and middle school pupils that Americans in the 19th and early 20th centuries considered taffy-making a social event.

As his students donned plastic gloves to keep the candy from sticking to their fingers, he explained that pulling the taffy provides aeration necessary for making the candy lighter and easier to chew.

Amos, who died May 23, 2010, at age 82, also taught that pioneers sought such cheaper sweeteners as sorghum molasses as alternatives to high-priced sugar cane for making candy.

He related the story of the Boston molasses flood of 1919, when a tank holding 2.5 million gallons of molasses exploded, releasing a 15-foot wall of molasses that crushed houses, derailed trains and took 21 lives.

“It was about being with people and teaching people more than making taffy,” said his daughter Jane.

Amos, who was born Nov. 18, 1927, in Greenville, Pa., had fun learning to make taffy around the kitchen table while growing up with his seven siblings in rural Chicora near Butler, Pa.

“We lived in a farmhouse on 51 acres,” said his youngest brother, Fred. “We grew our own food. We had a cow, pigs, chickens.”

Amos’ parents initially called him “Junior,” because he was named after his machinist father, but he was dubbed “Jupie” thanks to his older sister’s mispronunciation of the word. Years later, he would christen his taffy-pulling project “Jupie’s Old Fashioned Sorghum Molasses Taffy Pull.”

He had an entrepreneurial spirit, even as a teenager during World War II, according to his brother Wayne.

“He always had a project,” Wayne said. “He took plywood, cut out a figure of the U.S. and put on it ‘V for Victory dot dot dash.’ Dot dot dash is Morse code for victory. And during school years, molding lead soldiers. He was always making those and taking them to school. I think he even sold some to the kids.

“Jupe was self-educated and a very smart man. He had a lot of common sense. I think that was displayed in this taffy pulling that he did.”

His work ethic, creativity and salesmanship emerged while he worked for Isaly’s dairy store in Butler. Amos, who didn’t have a car or driver’s license, hitchhiked 12 miles one way to work each day in the 1940s.

“At that time, that wasn’t that far,” said his sister Joan Garing. “Hitchhiking back then was a very common thing that people do not do now because it isn’t safe.”

Amos, who didn’t graduate from high school but completed a Dale Carnegie business course, began at Isaly’s as a soda jerk, making skyscraper ice cream cones and manning the counter.

Before he became manager of the Isaly’s in Columbiana near Youngstown, Ohio, he became enamored with a soda fountain manager named Freda at a nearby drugstore. They married, raised five children and ran Amos’ various business ventures together.

From the late 1950s until 1975, they owned a dry cleaners and Laundromat in Columbiana. Then they acquired Karmel Korn franchises at Parmatown and Randall Park malls. They later added a Karmel Korn store at Tower City in downtown Cleveland and a processing center in Middleburg Heights.

“The confectionary business was in my dad’s blood since Isaly’s,” said his son Jeff, who has a popcorn stand at Cleveland’s West Side Market. “He was always messing around in the kitchen with some kind of concoction or formula.”

After Karmel Korn, the Campbells made more than 40 flavors of homemade ice cream during the summer and sold candy, carmel and chocolate apples in winter. They sold the ice cream parlor before Freda’s death in 1998.

“I think he thought he was going to retire, but of course he just couldn’t do that,” son Phil said.

So Amos began developing a plan for his taffy business. Around the same time, he became friendly with a woman named Florence, who lived diagonally across the hall from him at the United Labor Towers retirement community.

“We met in the hall and became friends,” said Florence, better known as Flo, who became Amos’ second wife in April 2008. “We went to church together. He was a very beautiful man, very God-loving, and helping people wherever he could.”

The newlyweds traveled across the country demonstrating taffy pulling and visiting their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Amos routinely offered three standard bits of advice to family and friends.

If you want to make money, go to work.

To keep money, do not spend.

Don’t allow anyone to steal your joy.

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Obit #5: Bob Emery

In a Disney-like moment in the mid-1950s, Bob Emery looked at a plot of seemingly unus­able swampland in rural Summit County and envisioned a family­-friendly recreation area with a lake at its center.

Legendary filmmaker Walt Dis­ney had a similar experience in the 1960s, when he began pur­chasing Florida swampland on which to build his Disney World resort.

Bob and his wife, Darlene, bought the swampy property in the Norton area and transformed it into what would become known as Loyal Oak Lake Park.

“His vision was to make a lake out of it— a place where people could come to swim, picnic, play baseball and bring the family,” said Bob’s son Jack.

Bob, who died July 1, 2010, at age 78, dug out an area that became the lake and drained the adjacent land.

He placed water slides and div­ing platforms of different heights on the spring-fed lake to suit park visitors of various ages and levels of skill.
Teeter-totters, swings and other playground equipment on the sur­rounding land kept youngsters occupied. Friday night dances for teenagers and parties of all sorts took place in the park’s social hall.

Partygoers of all ages enjoyed the tennis, horse­shoe and basketball courts, arcade games, ping-pong tables and the baseball field. The park also featured bat­ting and golf-driving cages, where visitors could hone their sports skills.

Bob and Darlene provided grills in the wooded picnic area where families could cook their meals.

The Emerys ran the park 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, but some folks erected tents or brought camper trailers for overnight or longer stays.

“At one time, we had 1,000 members,” Darlene said.

The park became so pop­ular and its operation ran so smoothly that by its 20th anniversary, Bob was ready to try something new. He discussed taking on a sec­ond business with Phil Baker, a fellow member of the Beach & Pool Operators of America.

“He was a personable fel­low and was just a good guy,” Baker said. “We were both of us in the recreation business. We went out to dinner one night, and he said maybe we could look to buy a golf course.”

The two men became co-­owners of the Oak Knolls Golf Club in Kent in 1976.

Bob and Darlene contin­ued operating Loyal Oak Lake Park until they sold it in the fall of 1985. That December, they bought the long-neglected Ridge Top Golf Course in Montville Township and began work­ing their magic on it.

The Emerys renovated the clubhouse, installed indoor restrooms and built a pavil­ion. They revamped the course, installed asphalt cart paths and made other improvements.

During his 15 years of oper­ating the Medina County golf course, Bob continued running the golf club in Kent.

For several years in the 1960s and ’70s, he spent the off-sea­sons selling real estate to sup­port his family.

“He was such a busy person,” Darlene said. “He was always upbeat. He looked forward— to going to work.”

Bob, who was born Robert L. Emery on Feb. 17, 1932, began working at an early age on the family farm in Copley Town­ship with his 15 siblings. He was the 12th-born of 16.

“We did have a cow that he did milk,” said his sister Mary Pyles. “But other than that, we all planted vegetables. When he got a little older, he drove the tractor a bit.”

All work and no play? Hardly.

“He was ornery at times,” his sister said. “When we would be picking strawberries and we would get hit by one, we knew it was Bob, but he kept his head down and kept picking.

“We had to make our own fun. There were so many kids.”

While attending Copley High School in the late 1940s, Bob started working weekends at a grocery store that his older brothers opened in Copley. He went to a school in Toledo to learn the meat-cutting trade.
Bob also played trumpet in band, played basketball and began dating Darlene Brenner, a Copley cheerleader who was two years behind him in school.

After Bob graduated in 1950, he took a few classes at Akron University and had a short stint in the Navy. He married Dar­lene on Aug. 17, 1952, a couple of months after her graduation.

“When we got married, he came and worked at my fam­ily’s business— Brenner’s Mar­ket,” Darlene said.

The couple had four chil­dren: Denise, Jack, Sandra and Robert Jr., who died in 2007.

Bob Sr., who belonged to Northside Christian Church, Copley Kiwanis and Wadsworth Lions, annually attended conventions of the Beach & Pool Operators and holiday gatherings of the Emery clan.

“Our family would get together on Christmas Eve, usually at one of our older brothers’ place,” his sister said.

As the family grew larger with spouses and children, Bob and Darlene hosted the events at the Loyal Oak Lake Park social hall.

“They made a great couple,” Bob’s sister said. “They were fun to be around.”