Other sports and recreation

Although Mom and Dad followed the Cleveland Indians baseball and Cleveland Browns football teams, I don’t remember them as being avid fans who had to stop everything else to listen to or watch the game. Maybe I’m wrong??

Mom and Dad were both good swimmers and enjoyed this sport. They shared their love of water and sun with us at our Lake Erie beach holiday each summer. They were our first swimming teachers. While growing up, Mom took us out to Sandy Beach on Main Street Extension (?) on [one of the] Turkeyfoot lake(s) for formal Red Cross swim lessons during the summer. And Dad swam laps daily at the downtown Akron YMCA as a measure of physical therapy after he was diagnosed with MS.

But I’m willing to bet that if we could ask them, they would both claim that dancing was their favorite thing to do. When we lived on Forge Street, and before MS took away this pleasure from them, I remember that if there was a babysitter taking care of us on Friday or Saturday night, it was probably so they could go out dancing: Myers Lake, Chippewa Lake and the dance hall that predated Borie’s Bowling Alley on Market Street where Big Bands would play when they came to town.