IT WAS A WARM April evening on a Friday in 1942. The town’s inhabitants were leaving work and making plans for the weekend. A Big Band concert scheduled that evening featured Tommy Dorsey, known as “The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing,” and the Artie Shaw string section. Down at the Orpheum Theater, The Pride of the Yankees, starring Gary Cooper, had just opened. A welterweight boxing match scheduled at WCMI Radio Hall that evening featured a local fighter. The Guyan Creamery and Grill, a favorite place to go on a hot summer evening in Huntington, had the best ice cream in town.

Huntington is a beautiful small town nestled along the picturesque Ohio River, with brick streets lined with maple, oak, and elm trees. The local college, named after John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was the town’s epicenter. The college’s beautifully landscaped grounds were interspersed with ivy-covered brick halls of learning with names like Old Main, Morrow Library, or the Shawkey Student Union.

The city had been planned by train magnate Collis P. Huntington, who also developed the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. He had the city laid out on the railroad’s southern terminus, paying particular attention to its aesthetic needs as well as its future growth and transportation requirements. Blessed with well-planned streets, criss-crossed with wide avenues, and having an extensive central park, the city was a beautiful place to live, work, and play.

The park abounded with picnic areas, tennis courts, and rose and water gardens that presented an idyllic picture. The rose gardens were bursting with their spring blooms whose scent filled the air. There were so many roses in the many gardens that to walk by them, you would believe that you had just opened a bottle of expensive French perfume.

Their combined fragrance permeated the air along the gravel paths and sidewalks that trail through the park. The water gardens included terraced reflecting pools slowly spilling their contents into the next iridescent pools below. Those sweet fragrances, coupled with the soft splashing and tinkling sounds of the gentle falling water, created a magical place. If you closed your eyes for a moment, you could almost see the town pictured on the cover of a Post Magazine.

Paperback: $17.95
ISBN: 978-159858-460-8
Hardcover: $29.95
ISBN: 978-159858-461-5

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