Word: columbus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Home Life. James Grover Thurber was born in Columbus in 1894, second of the three children of Charles Leander and Mary Agnes Fisher Thurber. (Mrs. Thurber didn't like the "Leander," so her husband, a loyal Republican, changed it to "Lincoln.") Their other sons were William, a year older than Jim, and Robert, two years younger...
...return for his unflagging idealism and perseverance, he received appointments that were largely drudgery: secretary to two governors of Ohio (Asa Bushnell and William McKinley), to a mayor of Columbus; member of a committee to investigate hazing at West Point; state organizer for Teddy Roosevelt's unsuccessful Bull Moose campaign for the presidency in 1912, etc. In a piece called Gentleman from Indiana, Jim has written lovingly and beautifully of his father...
Another time, she attended an overflow meeting conducted by a faith healer, who with his exhortations and layings-on-of-hands had set Columbus afire. Somehow she got hold of a stretcher, lay down on it, and had a couple of friends carry her toward the platform. Halfway down the aisle, Mamie flipped to her feet, yelling, "I can walk! I can walk! It's the first time I've walked in 40 years!" Hundreds wept or screamed at the miracle...
...staggering faculties impaired. Wolcott Gibbs, of The New Yorker, has written of Thurber's "sure grasp of confusion." Nobody who ever heard Jim's mother tell a long, detailed, uproarious misadventure story would wonder where his sureness of grasp came from. There are oldtimers in Columbus who insist that Jim is but his mother's pale copy...
Fourth Estate. After returning from Paris in 1920, Thurber went to work as a reporter on the Columbus Dispatch, where he stayed three years, mostly covering the City Hall beat. To Thurber's city editor, the pattern of a perfect lead for all stories whatsoever was: "John Holtsapple, 63, prominent Columbus galosh manufacturer, died of complications last night at his home, 396 N. Persimmon Blvd." Any attempts by the staff to get wit or originality into the paper usually landed on the spike. The city editor, who began by addressing Thurber as "Author" and "Phi Beta Kappa," came...