Lakewood Lore

Diary provides key to mystery for Lakewood woman

When the 1918 to 1922 diary of Jeannette Stranahan came to light last month, it solved a long-standing mystery for Lakewood's Carlyn Irwin. "Jeannette and I both graduated from Lakewood High School in 1922, but I never knew what happened to her afterward," Carlyn said. "Through the years I often wondered where the Stranahans had gone. Many times I passed their beautiful home on the northwest corner of Detroit and Nicholson and saw Jeannette in my mind's eye -- a very pretty, dark-haired girl in a middy blouse.

"She served as vice president of Lakewood High's Art Club, was on the Cinema yearbook staff and also belonged to the school's Friendship and Glee Clubs.

Irwin, now 88, has lived in Lakewood for 84 years, the past 20 at Lake Shore Towers. A longtime prominent community leader, she headed Lakewood's food and gasoline rationing board during the austere years of World War II.

Jeannette Stranahan, with her parents and younger sister, left for California in the family's Willys Knight with camper attachment in June of 1922 and spent their remaining years on the West Coast.

At first they drove to Victoria, British Columbia. Then they went down the California coast to Hollywood. There Jeannette enrolled at Los Angeles Normal School, now the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She met Gerald Snider at college, and this marked the end of her Lakewood years.

She married him in 1926. They moved to Redlands, Calif., where they lived all their years together and reared two daughters. Gerald died in 1963. After Jeannette died there last Feb.15 at age 90, her teen-age diary was published by one of her daughters, Joan D. Snider. It describes the day-to-day fabric of life in early Lakewood and reveals the reason for the Stranahans' departure from our community.

In 1922, father Frank had a catering, baked goods, candy-making and restaurant business in a six-story building at 421 Superior Ave., N.W., that was soon to be demolished because the city of Cleveland needed the space for "new tracks and buildings for a new depot."

"Papa says he is too old to rebuild," Jeannette chronicled in her diary. "It wouldn't be easy. The bakery ovens are built into the walls."

We are going to rent our house and go on a long trip this summer so that he won't have to see all his work torn down to rubble."

That trip, as it turned out, became a permanent move. The lovely 2½-story brick, frame and stucco home that Frank Stranahan had built in 1910 was rented to a Dr. Arthur Fath.

Frank died at age 76 in 1931, and two years later his two daughters, Jeannette and Maryon, received the estate. Eventually a Canfield Oil filling station was built at the intersection on what was once the Stranahans' front yard. Later this frontal property was sold to Standard Oil Co.

Robert C. Schoch came on the scene in 1950, first buying the Haefele Hardware Store in a building on Detroit adjacent to the filling station, and later changing the store name to "Bobson's," a word he coined by combining his nickname of "Bob" with "son," for his son Robert Jr.

Schoch bought the corner filling-station property in 1966. Two years later, he tore down the station and put up the present Bobson's Hardware Store -- a one-story brick and concrete block building at the intersection of Detroit and Nicholson.

The Stranahan home, which remains behind the store, was purchased in 1979 by Robert Schoch Jr., who is present owner. Some years before this acquisition, the large residence had been converted into five efficiency apartments. Four of them exist today, with all original natural hardwood retained. The former basement suite was renovated into an office for Bobson's.

Founder Schoch's daughter, Carol Wadden, is Bobson's office manager and a grandson, Michael, is store manager.

"A large stained-glass window in the home is still an eye-catcher," commented Michael. "Four or five times a year we get offers from interested collectors, but it is not for sale."

"And neither is the home," Carol added.

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post July 22, 1993. Reprinted with permission.

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