Buckeye Buddy

I was perusing my facebook account on Sunday and a fellow traveller had posted a picture of a group of officials dedicating what was known as the Elmdale Grange bridge in Ross County, Ohio. Included in the view were some noted politicians of the era (1972-74) who were quite active at the time but no longer with us.

One spotted was Grant McDonald, at the time a county commissioner and part-time sportscaster at WBEX. I worked as a part-timer at WBEX and got to know Grant fairly well.

I had sort of a love/hate relationship with the man for several reasons. For one, he paid my salary, such as it was, by his ability to go out and "sell" a county basketball game broadcast. Truman Morris, the owner of the station, was kept afloat at times by the money that McDonald pulled in. On the other hand, the list of sponsors he kept bringing into the station and the list of businesses doing non-contract work for the county were suspiciously similar. To say that perhaps McDonald was taking in money for his own use would be disingenuous as he seemed to have a genuine love of the game. He loved youth baseball, too, and had on a number of occasions taken the remote broadcast transmitter to Mary Lou Patton Park to broadcast Scioto Valley Youth League baseball games... continuously repeating their motto that a man never stands so tall as when he stoops to help a boy.

Personally, Grant was a likeable person. Perhaps a bit too likeable for his own good in that he believed that he would be liked by everyone, everywhere. I recall running into Grant as I was getting out of class at Ohio University in Athens one Fall evening - he was running for either State Senator or State Representative and had presumably been to a candidate's forum. We had a conversation where he indicated that he was unsure that he would even see one friendly face outside of Ross County until he saw me.

Grant was in and out of my direct line of thought for a number of years. He graduated from being County Commissioner to heading up the Senior Center on Western Avenue. That's where the likeable Grant McDonald met his Waterloo. There were allegations about money being stolen from the Center, that the books just weren't quite right and in the center of the hullaballoo was Grant McDonald. There was a trial and a conviction. A radio person I had once worked with had supposedly gone to the sentencing, sat and mocked Grant as Grant kept repeating that now he knew how Jesus felt.

I was sorry to see the man treated as he was by that former co-worker. Grant deserved better as Grant had paid his salary at some point, too. Grant served his sentence and passed as a broken man.

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To directly answer the question regarding the opening of the Elmdale Grange Bridge, I would put it at some point in 1973. I recall being approached at the LK by someone involved with Glenn Turner's "Dare to be Great" pyramid scheme while taking pictures there for the CHS yearbook in late 1971/early 1972 and at that point the old truss bridge was still being used. In the spring of 1974 I dated a girl who lived out on Possum Hollow for a short while and recall that it certainly was handy to zip in and out of town on the new bridge. Early Ted Fickisen in the lower right corner of the photo in question? It sure looks like him. I have one of Ted's prints of St. Paul's hanging in my living room at this moment.

Be Seeing You!