These days, I spend most of my time on four research projects. I bounce from one to the next without much rhyme or reason, although I have to admit that for the last year or so, I've forsaken a couple of them. Three of the projects (two of which intermingle somewhat) are related to my dad's naval service during World War II, while the fourth is about the sixty-eight people with whom my mom graduated 8th Grade in the Bronx in 1940.
One of the projects, and probably the most massive of the bunch, involves researching all the men who served aboard the USS Zircon (PY-16). The initial scope of that project was very narrow, but the more I learned about the ship and its men, my interests fanned out into something way bigger. Probably too big. Nonetheless, I persist.
Out of the blue recently, I received an email from someone inquiring about one of the sailors of the Zircon, Stanley David Simon, who was the Medical Officer aboard the ship when my dad was one of its crew. Along with Dad, he was one of the key figures during the USS YF-415 disaster, treating the men rescued during that ordeal. In the initial days of my research ten years or so ago, I got in touch by email with Simon's children, and they shared some stories, but since then, I've not spent much time working on his story, so this inquiry nudged me to get back to him.
Simon went to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and graduated in 1937. There is a 1937 Cornellian, the school's student yearbook, available at Ancestry to peruse, and as I was flipping through the pages to find Simon's Senior portrait, another portrait and profile caught my eye, that of Henry Arnold Page, Jr., who just so happened to be from my hometown of Toledo, Ohio.
Because I am nothing if not curious, I did a newspaper search in the Toledo newspaper (The Blade) to see what might have become of him, and I found this mention of his impending degree at Cornell.
And what caught my eye about the article was that it included yet another Toledoan who was graduating from Cornell—Franklin Smith Macomber.
If you lived for any length of time in Toledo between 1938 and 1991, you would have heard the name Macomber. It was the name of the vocational high school in the city, its proper name being Irving E. Macomber Vocational Technical High School, and named for Irving Emerson Macomber, who died in June of 1935. According to Wikipedia, Macomber helped develop Toledo's schools and parks, and once lived on the property upon which the school was built. And... he was Franklin Smith Macomber's father. Also of note, one of Macomber's pallbearers was Wayne M. Canaday, President and Chairman of Willy-Overland Motors, Inc., which developed and produced the military jeep during World War II.
Beyond having friends who went to Macomber, I'd never given the place—much less its namesake—much thought. And because this post is about worlds colliding, my dad briefly attended Macomber before joining the Merchant Marines.
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