Brady’s leap, Ravenna’s Redfern plant, a farewell KSU concert | Along The Way
Frontiersman Samuel Brady, for whom Brady Lake is named, did not, as some allege, breathe through a reed submerged in the waters of Brady Lake to escape detection by a band of native Americans who were after his scalp. He hid under a tree at the Lake’s southern end until his pursuers moved on searching for their prey.
That is the word from Brad Bolton, a naturalist and excellent photographer, who has turned himself into an expert on the life of Brady. On Tuesday, Bolton spoke on the topic to an almost standing room only crowd at Kent’s North Water Brewery, which hosts “Tap Talks” a monthly program of speakers concerning the community and its surroundings.
Brady’s leap, the stuff of legend, has sometimes been called into question. Bolton said it really did happen in 1780 during Brady’s flight from the Native Americans who had been chasing him from an area near what is now Cuyahoga Falls. Bolton said, the leap spanned an amazing 22 feet over the Cuyahoga River immediately south of the Fairchild Avenue Bridge. Fear motivated Brady. The fact that the eastern shore of the Cuyahoga was lower than the western bank from which he jumped helped. Brady was able to grab some branches on the eastern bank, right himself, and keep running.
Born in Shippensburg, Pa., Brady also served in the Continental Army under George Washington when it wintered in Valley Forge and did scouting for the Washington in the Ohio country which was contested by the Americans and the British, Bolton said.
The “Tap Talks” series, a collaboration of retired architect Doug Fuller, Tom Hatch of the Kent Historical Society, and Don Schjeldahl, the owner of North Water Brewery, is in its second year and a person needs to arrive early to get a good seat. The talks, usually the third Tuesday of the month, start promptly at 7 pm. The atmosphere is informal.
Redfern Plant demolition
Those brick piles at the site of the historic Redfern Plant on South Chestnut Street in Ravenna where Oak Rubber once operated a business, are left over from the demolition work of Old South Brick & Supply Company of Mississippi. The city of Ravenna is asking the company why its has not completed its work.
The last remaining building caught fire last April and the Old South Brick & Supply Company has not returned to clean up the site in accordance with the city’s demolition specifications. The work was being done as a kind of barter arrangement by which the Old South Brick & Supply Company demolished the building in return for bricks and wood, which the company would clean, cut to size, and sell to customers in the South who want rare, antique bricks for construction projects there.
It has been a win-win for both Ravenna and the Old South Brick & Supply Company and was going well until the fire broke out. The thinking is the property would be repurposed to productive use for the city. Its repurposing may eventually involve the Portage County Land Bank, which acquires tax delinquent properties to attain clear title and return to the tax duplicate as productive property. The city has had conversations with the Portage County Regional Planning Commission, the Portage County Land Bank and the Ohio EPA to discuss plans for clean up of the site.
A farewell concert at Kent State
After 44 years of teaching, Scott MacPherson, director of Choral Studies at Kent State University, is retiring at the end of spring semester.
Having established the tradition of the choirs performing with the KSU Orchestra in the final concert of the spring semester each year, MacPherson, partnering with KSU Orchestra conductor Jungho Kim, has planned a challenging, farewell concert for 7:30 p.m May 2 in Cartwright Hall Auditorium. The KSU Orchestra and Choirs will perform Vaughan Williams’ "Five Mystical Songs," Andrew Rindfleisch’s "Song of Jubilation" and Brahms’s "Nänie."
Kent State for years has had a town-gown chorus in which anyone who likes to sing can join the Kent Chorus, which meets weekly during the evening to rehearse for a concert at the end of each semester. I sang in it for three semesters until the pandemic. Well liked, MacPherson does a wonderful job of conducting. He is both demanding and encouraging. He also conducts the Kent Chorale and leads a graduate program in choral conducting.
Prior to Kent State, he served as director of Choral Activities at Trinity University in San Antonio. Before that he was assistant director of Choral Activities at the University of Wisconsin during the tenure of the late Robert Fountain, a national figure in choral conducting and close colleague of Robert Shaw when Shaw was with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. After Fountain retired, he mailed his entire personal choral library to Professor MacPherson.
David E. Dix is a retired publisher of the Record-Courier.
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: David Dix: Brady’s leap, Ravenna’s Redfern plant, a farewell concert
