A graduate of the class of 1931, Merle McCurdy is seated in the first row and sixth in on the right side.

Newspaper clipping of the names associated with the1931 graduating class photo of Conneaut High School featuring Merle McCurdy.

Merle would initially follow the employment path of his father, Roy, and other family members. For a brief time, he worked on the ore boats that served the dock-to-rail steel production centers of U.S. Steel, then located near Youngstown, OH and Pittsburgh, PA.

Photo of Merle (far left) and his fellow cooks on one of many ore boats that operated on the Great Lakes.

Written on the back of the photo by Merle, “All our jackets & aprons were dirty, but luckily dirt does not show up in a picture.”

Merle McCurdy dressed in a cook’s attire on the deck of an ore ship on the Great Lakes.

Merle’s career on ore ships was short lived. Pressured by the economic constrains generated by the Great Depression, the Pittsburgh Steamship Co. in 1932 reduced its iron ore shipping volume by ninety percent. Hoping that the market erosion due to the steel industry would be short-lived, the company reassigned many of its experienced sailors to shipping jobs previously opened only to African Americans such as porters, cooks, and stewards.

Merle was suddenly out of a job and with few options available, he moves to Cleveland, OH. He finds work as a bellhop at the Hollenden Hotel, a downtown luxury hotel that was frequented at the time by popular celebrities and industrialists.

Source

Miller, A. (1999). Tin Stackers : the history of the Pittsburgh Steamship Company. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.

It was at the Hollenden Hotel that Merle fell in love with Rosetta “Rosie” Scott who operated the hotel’s elevator.

As described in the Pittsburgh Courier, Merle’s initial attempts to engage Rosie were disrupted by “fleeting departures” as she would always disappear from sight while operating the elevator’s controls whenever he tried to approach. Merle persisted, and was finally able to strike up a conversation with Rosie, a task he later described as one of his more “difficult undertakings" (McKeever, 1959, p. 2).

The couple wed in 1937 and lived in Cleveland with Merle’s mother, Evelyn, who had married Clarence Cowan five years earlier.

Sources

Cuyahoga County Courthouse. (1971). Ohio, County Marriages, 1789-2013: Cuyahoga: Marriage Records 1933, vol 169. Salt Lake City, UT: Genealogical Society of Utah. Retrieved from https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9392-B5ZP-P?i=18&cc=1614804

McKeever, D. (1959, June 6). Brilliant Prosecutor Practices Golden Rule. The Pittsburgh Courier, p. 2

Living in Cleveland on East 87^th St with Merle’s mother, Merle and Rosie started a family of two daughters, Myrna (right) and Brenda (left).

In the early 1940s Merle explored several occupations, including real estate, to support his new family but had long aspired to work in law enforcement. Stricken with tuberculosis, a bacterial infection that typically impairs the lungs, he spent a significant amount of time recovering at a sanitarium. For Merle, this ended his dream of becoming a police officer.

Sources

Bureau of the US Census. (1940). Sixteenth Census of the United States, Population Schedule-Ohio, Cleveland. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Conneaut High School. (1931). The Tattler. Conneaut, OH.

McCurdy Rhodes, B. by Dana, R. (Personal Communication, March 22, 2015).