Lakewood Lore

City had top secret role in WWI's underwater doings

World War I was no secret. We know that 26 Lakewoodites gave their lives in the conflict. Their names are engraved on the new Veterans War Memorial in Lakewood Park.

But during the war, not many of us knew about our area arms contribution toward winning it -- the building of four sub chasers at the mouth of Rocky River. [See "ed. note" at linked article]

That was so because the project was top secret. However, even though under tight wraps, shipbuilding was a hard thing to hide from a boy and his bicycle.

“When I was a student at Lakewood High, I used to pedal to Rocky River Bridge and look over the side to watch the sub chasers being built below,” said Vernon Lieblein of Clifton Boulevard, 88-year-old self-styled Lakewood historian.

Construction took place in 1917-18 on the west bank of the river near the base of the bridge, after which the ships were rushed to our French allies for use in minesweeping and in fighting the dreaded German U-boats.

“The sub chasers were 110 feet long and made of wood instead of steel so they wouldn’t fall prey to the magnetic mines used in World War I,” according to Lieblein.

Assembling them was a firm known as the Rocky River Dry Dock Co., and parts were manufactured by Mathews Boat Co. of Port Clinton. Records show that 50 such ships were secretly built in the Great Lakes area during the period.

The four locally made vessels were launched into Lake Erie, then piloted eastward through the Erie Canal and down the Hudson River for the French to pick up.

Lieblein came into possession of a picture of one of the four -- the SC 403 -- from its original captain, Walter F. Sass, whom he met in 1966.

It was a chance encounter while Lieblein was visiting California. Capt. Sass, who was 78 at the time (24 years ago), said the SC 403 was a beautiful ship, and even had a new invention -- refrigeration.

However, Sass continued, the French were skeptical of the refrigeration equipment, about which they knew nothing, so they loaded the deck of the ship with crates of live chickens, boring holes in the hand-rubbed mahogany rails to tie down the crates.

The captain told Lieblein that the last time he saw the vessel she was heading into the Atlantic, her deck stacked high with crates of squawking poultry.

Editor’s Note: this story is the last reminiscence of Vernon H. Lieblein, who died Friday [Nov. 2, 1990] at the Aristocrat Lakewood nursing home. His obituary follows.

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post November 8, 1990. Reprinted with permission.

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Vernon H. Lieblein, lived Lakewood history

By DAN CHABEK

Many elderly Lakewood reminiscences slipped away with Vernon H. Lieblein, 88-year-old self-styled historian of our city, who died of heart failure on Friday, Nov. 2, at Aristocrat Lakewood nursing home.

Lieblein loved Lakewood and recalled the adventures of his youth here as if they happened yesterday. He had a reporter’s easy sense of what makes news. With every memory, he would uncover a feature angle, tell all that was pertinent about it, and then end with the pronouncement, “So that’s the story.”

He remembered when Detroit Avenue was a dirt road, when snow was removed from the suburb’s streets by a horse-drawn wooden plow, and when Lakewood had an 80-foot-high water tower next to the fire station on Warren Road at Detroit, a landmark between 1912 and 1934.

The Lieblein family home during his youth was only two doors from the tower, and Vernon, a wireless ham operator during his teens, built an aerial atop the tall reservoir.

Getting permission to do so was not as difficult as one would expect. Vernon’s father, Edward R. Lieblein was superintendent of the Lakewood water division at the time.

Vernon stayed home when the big flu epidemic closed the city’s schools in 1918. In 1920 he played tackle for Lakewood High’s football team. It was the year it won the Lake Erie League championship.

Vernon enrolled in the University of Michigan in 1921. There he met famous band leader Fred Waring, who had heard that Vernon could play the banjo.

“I played him one song -- “Whispering” -- and he signed me up,” Vernon liked to recount. Afterwards, Lieblein strummed for the memorable maestro on campuses in the Midwest for two years.

Until recently Vernon, a long-time Lakewood Kiwanian, plucked his banjo at his club’s Tuesday luncheons and played the organ for several of his Masonic lodges.

Vernon left U. of M. in 1923 to enroll in the Union Business Institute at Detroit and W. 65th Street. There he met Lavone Runyan. They were married at Lakewood United Methodist Church in 1928, after which they settled into the present Lieblein home on Clifton Boulevard, where they reared two sons William and Robert. Lavone died last July 15.

Vernon founded the Lakewood Electric Co. in 1924, and during his long career as an electrician, serviced hundreds of homes in this area. Among his customers were famous Lakewoodites, including Eliot Ness, legendary Cleveland safety director, and Neil McGill, who prosecuted Ness’s criminal cases and later became a judge.

Through the years, travel and photography were Vernon's favorite hobbies. He and Lavone drove to all the western parks and made four trips to Alaska and the Arctic Circle. He took thousands of slides, which he narrated.

Vernon had a couple of close calls as a child. In 1901, several weeks after he was born in the second house from the west end of Lorain Road Bridge in Fairview Park, an eagle from Rocky River valley swooped down on him while he was in a baby carriage in his backyard.

Vernon’s father scared off the predator with a shot-gun blast, but after the harrowing experience, mother Lieblein insisted the family move immediately.

The Liebleins came to Lakewood pronto, where in 1910 Vernon nearly drowned when he fell through thin ice at Maile’s brickyard quarry, once a favorite neighborhood skating spot south of Hilliard Road between Victoria and Elmwood.

Surviving Vernon, besides his sons, are six grandchildren and one great grandchild. He was buried in a long-held family plot in West Park’s pioneer Alger Cemetery, alongside Lavone and his grandfather, Enoch Haines, who was head gardener of Queen Victoria’s palace grounds and, in 1889, the hamlet of Lakewood’s first official gardener.

So that’s the story, as Vernon would have said. Lakewood will miss its storyteller, but we expect he has already found a welcome ear in that great city room in the sky.

This obituary appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post November 8, 1990. Reprinted with permission.

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