MOUNT VERNON — Fascinating replies have arrived in response to the invitation to write about “Where Have You Been?” as posted on the Web site at www.mountvernonnews.com. Many people in many states and countries read the Mount Vernon News online, and some of them shared their memories of the county in which they grew up.
Cindy (Hill) Jahner, who lives in Wake Forest, N.C., graduated from Mount Vernon High School and left Knox County for college in 1972. She described herself as being “born with wanderlust” and, indeed, she and her husband lived in the Republic of Singapore for 10 years and traveled all over the world from there.
“I tried to get my husband to move to Mount Vernon, but he said that he would agree to that when I agreed to move to his hometown, Bismarck, N.D. Wake Forest seemed like a fair trade,” she said.
Nonetheless, she said, “I still love visiting Mount Vernon and seeing all my old buddies from high school, and some even from kindergarten. I was very impressed when I came back last summer for my 35th high school reunion. Mount Vernon looks better than I remember it ever looking.”
Jahner said she still considers Mount Vernon her hometown.
“I always have a soft spot for my hometown at Christmas,” she said. “Mount Vernon helped me through this journey of life in so many different ways. I was blessed with teachers that were very good at showing us that life does exist outside of the town limits. I don’t think I have ever met a stranger; that too came from Mount Vernon.”
Lynda Richards Hart lives in Kansas City, Mo., but graduated from East Knox High School in 1963.
“Now a widow, mother and grandmother,” she wrote, “it shocks me to realize that I’ve been away from my Ohio roots for over 40 years. I’ve been reading the News online for quite some time and enjoy the familiarity I find there. Names are familiar, locations and civic activities bring back memories. Most of my family and friends are no longer in Knox County, but through reading the paper, I feel like a part of me still is rooted there.”
Candy (Vernon) Marley has vivid memories of Mount Vernon, of living on Martinsburg Road with her grandparents, Royal and Lillian Vernon, going to Beck’s for french fries, shopping at Woolworth’s and Big Bear, eating out in Utica, flying kites in the park and playing with her friends at the YMCA or in the creek. She has lived in Pennsylvania, Texas, North Carolina, Vermont, New York and Oklahoma, and two years ago, moved to Danville.
“[Mount Vernon] was a wonderful town to grow up in,” she wrote. “It was wonderful to come back.”
Marian (Purdy) Charrier lives in West Chester but said she was “born and raised in eastern Knox County” and graduated from Howard High School.
“Knox County instilled values in me,” she wrote, “that taught me to think of myself as being no better nor worse than anybody else. I live by this solid foundation even today. I live ... the big city life, so to speak, but have never forgotten my roots.”
“Gambier will always be ‘where I’m from,’” wrote Rex Rowley, who moved to Englewood, Fla., 32 years ago.
He said his family has been back to Knox County to visit many times, and they still miss Ringwalt’s, Rudin’s and Big Bear.
Dwight R. Decker and his family moved away in 1968; he lives in the Chicago area, but has been back to visit.
“I think I’ve been most struck by what a derelict ruin the old high school on Mulberry Street was allowed to become,” he wrote. “I’ve also noticed that the intersection at Parrott Street and Newark Road recently had a traffic light installed. That’s my old neighborhood, and a traffic light was needed there 50 years ago!”
Cal Porter of Lake Osoyoos, Wash., who went to school with Mount Vernon Mayor Richard Mavis, said he has some fine memories of “being raised up in Knox County. ‘Round ’64 to ’66 or so, I was a City Patrolman (Unit 12) in Mount Vernon. Tom Bartlett was a beat cop at the time and Harry Hamilton was the Chief. We had two patrol cars.
“I’m specially intrigued by your recent series about high places in the county. We would view the WMVO Radio towers from my grandmother’s house ... back then I believe it was called Chestnut Ridge Road that branched off Cavallo Road that runs east out of Millwood. They [the towers] had to be 15 miles to the west.”
Sandy Porter didn’t go too far from home after graduating from Centerburg High School in 1958. She moved to Mount Vernon, then Delaware.
“I enjoy coming back and driving through Mount Vernon to see all the changes,” Porter wrote. “To me, it’s the greatest place I have ever lived.”
Many of those who “went away” mentioned they would enjoy receiving e-mails from those who remember them when they lived in Knox County.
