Average Joe: Match made on an elevator is a sweet Polsky's legacy

You never know whose path you'll cross when you’re waiting for an elevator and those doors slide open.

It’s one of those twist-of-fate scenarios that endlessly fascinate script writers and well-behaved rock bands like Aerosmith. Call it cliché all you want, but there’s both thrill and dread when you step aboard a lift without knowing whether that ride is going to involve friendly faces, sworn enemies or a budding romance between perfect strangers. Sure, Hollywood can contrive it — but anyone can live it.

This is the story of one such happenstance encounter that played out right here in Akron.

We’ll need to go back to the 1930s, in the heart of downtown. Just ahead of the calamity that seized Wall Street, Akron’s two biggest department stores had staked out their futures by constructing spacious, handsome new stores — with Polsky’s and O’Neil’s setting up across South Main Street from one another and vying for customers in the midst of the Great Depression. Jobs were tough to find throughout the land, but searchers still streamed into Akron with hopes of landing employment in the Rubber Capital of the World.

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Among those arriving here was a young man named Ray. He was born to Welsh immigrants in Maryland’s coal country. His mother died in 1911 before he reached his first birthday, and his father died in 1917.

Ray was sent to Baltimore to live at St. Mary’s Industrial School — an orphanage that also served as a reform school. The school’s most famous alumnus, George Herman “Babe” Ruth, was also its greatest benefactor — a precursor to the generosity that other world-famous athletes such as LeBron James would continue to bestow upon their hometowns generations later. Baseball’s king kept the lads at St. Mary’s close to his heart, returning from time to time to raise funds and spread cheer by playing ball with the youngsters growing up on his old sandlot.

During one of these visits, Ray was selected to play catcher as The Babe took the mound. It was a particularly special honor, as catcher was a position Ruth himself had played while at St. Mary’s. Though Ray wasn’t one to brag, he did enjoy telling the people close to him the story about how Ruth took him aside and offered him some pointers for working behind home plate.

He had barely more to his name than this enviable brush with greatness when he graduated from St. Mary’s and hit the road. That path led to Akron, where his luck stretched further when he landed a job with B.F. Goodrich.

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Sophie, too, was an orphan.

She was born in Cleveland to Polish immigrants, but few details are known about her parents and their lives and deaths beyond a horrific steel mill blast that ripped her father apart. A letter from her brother described how searchers worked in vain to recover all of the scattered remains.

As a young woman of Eastern European descent, Sophie had two built-in strikes against her with many prospective employers. Shortening her last name from Kolasinski to the more hiring-friendly Cole, she set out to make a living. She too, caught a lucky break after coming to Akron and finding a place that was welcoming to both women and Poles — The A. Polsky Co. store.

Though it wasn’t quite the same as having a catch with The Babe, Sophie had her own moment in the spotlight. Barely more than a year and a half after Prohibition ended, she was pictured in the society page in a June 1935 edition of the Beacon Journal raising a mug of beer in a toast with two other women who “show they know what to do with a warm summer night” during the annual Polsky’s summer picnic at Meyers Lake Park in Canton.

At Polsky’s, Sophie worked as an elevator attendant. She assisted countless riders, likely including some of Akron’s most prosperous residents. But it wasn’t until a young man who worked at the rubber company down the street stepped aboard her lift that fortune smiled on both Sophie and Ray in a way that neither had ever known.

Their marriage brought forth six children. But just as Ray and Sophie had each coped with the early loss of their parents, together they would endure the heartbreaking deaths of two of their children. Their only daughter, Mary Elizabeth, died on the day she was born. Son Billy died of leukemia at age 9. Still, they counted their blessings with four other sons — Ray Jr., Jim, Larry and Bob — and a humble home in Firestone Park. The chance elevator meeting of two orphans who had arrived in Akron with next to nothing gave root to a family that flourishes here and elsewhere to this day. I wouldn’t exist without it.

Ray and Sophie Thomas had been married for just over 53 years when he died in November 1988; she died the following spring. They’ve been on my mind a lot lately as the Beacon Journal rolls its mobile newsroom initiative into my grandparents’ former neighborhood for a few weeks at the Firestone Park Branch of the Akron-Summit County Public Library. Our team is eager to learn and share stories of the community’s modern-day inhabitants.

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On Thursday, I took reporter Anthony Thompson on a 40-minute driving tour of Firestone Park, pointing out all the landmarks and making a slight detour to look upon the Highview Avenue address that my grandparents called home. Then I headed back to the Beacon Journal, which in 2019 moved its offices to 388 S. Main St. inside a beautifully refurbished B.F. Goodrich building. Though I’m not sure if Grandpa ever worked in the same building where I do now, I nonetheless feel connected to him every time I walk through the doors.

Just up the road, the grand building that Polsky’s vacated in 1978 still stands, now as part of the University of Akron. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Sophie have taken classes in the same place where she kindly tended to so many customers and met the love of her life. And the building is getting ready for a $20 million-plus renovation through the generosity of The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The grant will carry the Polsky Building forward as a university and community resource for years to come — an investment as electrifying as a Babe Ruth home run or a LeBron James slam dunk. The landmark’s sentimental dividends, meanwhile, already are beyond calculation for the many descendants of Sophie and Ray. Who knows how many other life-changing elevator encounters await, or what other legacies will arise out of this special place?

When he isn’t toiling away as the Beacon Journal metro editor, you can occasionally find Joe Thomas musing about everyday life as the Average Joe. Reach him at jthomas@thebeaconjournal.com

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Average Joe: Chance meeting on an elevator is a sweet Polsky's legacy