Author Gerry Griffith

June 23, 2018

“Dominick,” called out the old man who sat atop the wooden playground structure where children spent warm weather afternoons spinning a toy steering wheel and pretending to be riverboat pilots. “I haven’t seen ...

The Griffith Files: Christopher Cerone – Legendary Businessman, Musician, Mentor

February 17, 2018

In the early 1960s, every lawyer, judge, politician and policeman in the city of Wheeling knew Chris Cerone. He was the blind man who, from his busy snack stand at the Wheeling Ohio County Courthouse, served up...

The Griffith Files: Nick’s Music

January 8, 2018

Nick’s Music was a Cradle of the Folk Music Revival of the 1960s and it Vanished – or did it? Before he could expand upon his fading memories about growing up in Wheeling for the brief stories he wrote for ...

Blind Justice of the Peace Showed Christmas Compassion

December 21, 2017

Justice, as doled out by one man in Moundsville in the early 1960s, really was blind. One chilly night near Christmas, I was lucky enough to observe that he was also unexpectedly compassionate. Chester Burk ...

Columbus Day

October 9, 2017

Folks in Wheeling, like folks in hundreds of towns and communities across America, celebrate Monday as Columbus Day. But, should they? Like so many things that were drilled into us in childhood, the Christopher...

The Griffith Files: A Wheeling Delivery Boy in the 1960s

August 11, 2017

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Dodging Snippy Dogs and Dealing with Cranky Doltish Husbands: a Wheeling Delivery Boy in the 1960s Even with my limp, I could always outrun a yappy little dog like a Chihuahua or a Pug, and a Dachs...

The Griffith Files: A Gift of Music From an Ohio River Barge

July 1, 2017

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An Old Ohio River Barge Boat Cook Brings a Musical Gift of a Lifetime to a Fledging Wheeling Musician named Griffith She was a feisty old river woman who we called Aunt Ruth even though she was no relation. ...

Griffith Files: Grandma’s Rocker-A Baby Boomer’s Downsizing Dilemma

May 27, 2017

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They are taking away my grandma’s rocking chair tomorrow and it feels like an old friend I’ve known all my life is going away to live with strangers. The decision to give it up was a tormenting struggle invo...

We Watch Forever

May 10, 2017

They had a party at our prison last night and they thought we couldn’t see.This rotten stone hell where we walk in darkness forever is not as it was when I faced the hangman in 1932 or as it was when my compa...

In Pittsburgh: Church Brew Works and The Breezer Brothers

April 27, 2017

The Beezer Brothers—Pittsburgh’s Twin Architects—Revisit one of their Legacy Projects and Find a Brewery Instead of a Church Architects Louis Beezer, and his twin brother Michael died more than 8 d...

The Griffith Files: Kruger Street School Sparks Good Memories and One Nightmare

April 10, 2017

In a dusty cardboard box that sits on a basement shelf in my house, there is a plain-looking red brick. It is lacquered and polished with a simple little gold plastic plate on its top that reads, “Kruger Street...

The Griffith Files: A Wheeling Boy’s Curiosity Leads to a Life in Music

February 4, 2017

In the late 1950s, my brother, Terry, often found time on his hands to explore the dusty back rooms and storage closets of long-abandoned but safe South and Center Wheeling storefronts. On one of thos...

The Griffith Files: Remembering John F. Kennedy’s 1962 Visit to Wheeling

November 22, 2016

Author’s note: As promised more than a year ago when I began this series, the stories have progressed beyond the memories and stories of my Mother, Mabel, and are now the product of my own experiences. Thus, th...

The Mabel Files: Sightless Workers Guild Rescues Mabel and Lizzie

September 4, 2016

He didn’t have a gavel so Christopher Cerone rapped his knuckles loudly on the wooden table to bring the meeting to order. It was tough to get the attention of the room. The 25 or so blind people were much too ...

The Mabel Files: Standing Up for Sightless Folks

July 21, 2016

Lizzie Goes on Wheeling TV and Stands Up for Sightless Folks Of all the remarkable things that the remarkable sightless Lizzie Minns did in her remarkable life from raising a sighted daughter and becoming a ...

The Mabel Files: A ’52 Nash in Elm Grove

June 7, 2016

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Mabel Wrestles a Four-Wheeled Beast Called Nash on the Streets of Elm Grove Mabel jammed the gear shift on the steering column of the hulking 1952 Nash Ambassador into what she believed was first gear. Then,...

Mabel Files: A New Home, but Staggering New Challenges

May 11, 2016

Elm Grove was a welcoming neighborhood for Mabel, George, Lizzie, and little Terry in 1953. The cozy little house on Columbia Avenue had something for everyone, and it was where the little family finally recove...

Mabel Files: Harry Truman’s Pop-In at the McLure Hotel

March 24, 2016

Harry S. Truman concluded his business at the front desk of Wheeling’s McLure Hotel, turned quickly to depart, and bumped forcefully into 36-year-old George Griffith. Both men were startled by the sudden contac...

Mabel Files: Tom Becomes Part of the Spirit of Wheeling

March 7, 2016

When Tom Minns died at Ohio Valley General Hospital on September 13, 1951, his little family in Center Wheeling was devastated. His death was not sudden, but that didn’t mean they were prepared. For nearly a...

The Mabel Files: Health Challenges and an Iconic Wheeling Doctor

February 25, 2016

Wheeling’s Dr. Earl S. Phillips had been the Minns’ family doctor for 20 years, seen the family through illness and injury, delivered Mabel and George’s first baby boy, performed all the regular health checkups...

Mabel Files: Red Scare Campaign Launched in Wheeling

February 1, 2016

George Griffith hurriedly shoved the unopened, official-looking envelope into the breast pocket of his U.S. Postal Service uniform jacket, as he left the letter carriers’ locker room at Wheeling’s main post off...

The Mabel Files: Monsters, Wheeling Creek and New Arrival

January 14, 2016

The Monster in the Basement, Washing the Car in Wheeling Creek, and the New Arrival In 1947, the Minns/Griffith family enjoyed post-war prosperity. Their little white house on Wood Street in Wh...

The Mabel Files: A Christmas Gift of Faith

December 23, 2015

Tom and Lizzie Minns rarely had much to spend on each other at Christmas during their long and frugal marriage. The blind couple had always used what little money they had managed to save from their Wheeling co...

The Mabel Files: A Homecoming

October 12, 2015

A Homecoming: Grief, and New Beginnings in the Spring of 1945 Writer’s note: Mabel Griffith passed away on September 28 at the age of 95. She told me many more stories of her family’s life in Wheel...

The Mabel Files: The 1924 Benwood Mine Disaster

September 13, 2015

With a loud click, a wrinkled shaky hand placed 15 cents on the glass countertop of Tom Minns’ confectionary on Market Street on a rainy Thursday morning in late 1944. “What can I get for you?”...

The Mabel Files: Tom Minns’ Call to Political Action

August 26, 2015

Familiar-Sounding Themes of the Presidential Campaign of 1944 The speaker strode to the McClure Hotel Ballroom podium. The polite applause that began with his introduction grew into a more enthusiastic ...

The Mabel Files: How Tom Minns Became One of Wheeling’s First Telemarketers

August 13, 2015

Tom Minns drummed his fingers on the glass candy counter and let out a heavy sigh. Lizzie sat in her usual chair next to the doorway that led from the store to the family’s living quarters. A ball of string was...

The Mabel Files: A Long Nervous Wait

July 27, 2015

Mabel Minns and her blind father, Tom, sat restlessly on a bench in the massive marble-floored waiting area of Wheeling’s B&O Station on a rainy evening in April 1944. Tom tapped his little bamboo...

The Mabel Files: Goodbye to a Little Dog with a Big Heart

July 16, 2015

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. – Mark Twain The streets of Wheeling have always been populated with colorful and remarkable characters whose exist...

The Mabel Files: A Working Dog’s Story

June 30, 2015

Feature Picture from paintlater.wordpress.com Mabel Files 17 When I was a young dog just trying to survive on the streets of Wheeling in the early 1930s, few people ever paid any attention to me except, o...

The Mabel Files: Wheeling Men in Aleutian Islands

June 22, 2015

Wheeling Men Endure Isolation, Cold, Grueling Labor, and Air Attacks in the Aleutian Islands In the early days of World War II, the military masterminds of both Japan and the United States cast strategic eye...

“The Mabel Files” Part 15: Japan “Casts the Die”

June 15, 2015

Wheeling’s Centre Market, and the shops nearby like Tom and Lizzie Minns’ Confectionary on Market Street, were at rest on Sunday afternoon, Dec. 7, 1941, while the USS West Virginia and USS Tennessee were on fi...

The Mabel Files: Tale of the Sweeney Punchbowls

May 18, 2015

“Young lady,” whispered the old man to Mabel Minns as he moved slowly and quietly between weathered gravestones and pointed a bent, wrinkled finger toward an unusual mass of granite and glass. “Do you know what...

The Mabel Files: Wheeling Boys Go to War

May 1, 2015

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Wheeling barber George Griffith was about to go to war in the Spring of 1941 and the Army fatigues he was issued and directed to wear from boot camp to deployment, just like the plain but tough uniform he had w...

The Mabel Files: Centre Market

April 13, 2015

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The Mabel Files: Part 11 Learning the Colorful History of a Keystone Wheeling Neighborhood It was a sweltering July Saturday in 1938, when Mabel spotted the “for rent” sign in the window of the little sto...

The Mabel Files: WWVA Jamboree and “It’s Wheeling Steel”

April 3, 2015

Mabel Files 11—Tom’s Radio Part 2 Lizzie Minns had a restless night that Saturday in January 1933. She tossed and turned and couldn’t seem to get herself to go unconscious. There was no reason in particular ...

The Mabel Files: Fireside Chats and the Flood of ’36

March 19, 2015

Mabel Files 10—Tom’s Radio Part 1 “He’s coming Mama and he’s got it,” 13-year-old Mabel called out to her mother, Lizzie, on a Saturday morning in April 1932. Mabel had been gazing up the sidewalk of Jacob S...

Mabel Files: Wheeling’s Bonnie and Clyde

March 9, 2015

By Gerry Griffith Weelunk Contibutor Wheeling Couple’s Bloody Crime Spree Keeps the Minns Confectionary Crew Buzzing When Tom Minns walked into his little store in South Wheeling on a rainy aft...

The “Mabel Files” 8: When George Met Mabel

March 2, 2015

By Gerry Griffith Weelunk Contributor Mabel, 15, and George, 18, in 1934 Nineteen-year-old George Griffith’s shovel dug into the hard Colorado soil and created a stone-on-metal scraping noise. So did th...

The “Mabel Files”: Wheeling’s Underworld and Big Bill

February 21, 2015

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By Gerry Griffith Weelunk Contributor Keeping out of Harm’s Way in a Dangerous Time Tom Minns in the 1930s. “Man, don’t you know who Big Bill Lias is?” asked the smarmy little m...

The “Mabel Files”: The Loss of a Jazz Giant – Wheeling’s Chu Berry

February 8, 2015

By Gerry Griffith Weelunk Contributor The Minns Confectionary Feels the Loss of a Jazz Giant – Wheeling’s Chu Berry Chris Cerone, the blind, balding 41-year-old musical genius who kept the patron “loaf...

The “Mabel Files”: Part 5

February 2, 2015

By Gerry Griffith Weelunk Contributor The Mabel Files Part 5: Stogies, Sandwiches, and Crocheted Lace The 1920s and 1930s were tough times for Tom and Lizzie Minns, the blind proprietors of a...

The “Mabel Files”: Part 4

January 26, 2015

By Gerry Griffith Weelunk Contributor The Mabel Files Part 4: Music, talk, and danger inside the Minns’ Confectionary A safe warm gathering place for friendship, but for thieves ... not so much Even...

The “Mabel Files”: Part 3

January 17, 2015

T.J. Minns and his “Pal” By Gerry Griffith Weelunk Contributor When my grandfather, Thomas J. Minns, had a full head of steam on the sidewalks of South Wheeling in the second two decades of t...

The “Mabel Files”, Part 2: Lindy Visits Wheeling

January 11, 2015

By Gerry Griffith The young people who loitered around Tom and Lizzie Minns’ little confectionary in South Wheeling on an early summer afternoon in 1927 were excited about the newspaper story that one young ...

The “Mabel Files”: Part 1