Dispatch
COMMENTARY
Decent man, OSU fan lived a good life
Thursday, September 28, 2006
MIKE HARDEN
The leaves on the windward side of the maples at Pleasant Hill Cemetery have gone saffron.
The weather is crisp, and though the breeze is occasionally gusty, it would be a perfect day for football.
Glenn Webb could not have hoped for a bluer sky or a more fitting season to take his place among the granite-etched names of Bidwell and Sollars, Brathwaite and Coe.
"Webbie," as he was known to all of West Jefferson, died Sunday after a heart attack. He was 90.
His devotion to Ohio State football was legendary in the Madison County town from which he hitchhiked to the ?Shoe to attend his first Buckeye game the year Woody Hayes graduated high school.
"He hadn?t missed a home game since 1931," Webb?s son, Bob, said Tuesday. "He went last year. This would have been his 75 th year.
"When he had 50 years, Ed Jennings gave him a plaque," Webb recalled of the presentation by OSU?s president in 1981.
Webbie lived long enough to be considered part of West Jefferson?s architecture. To not see him is akin to having a church spire suddenly erased from the village vista.
For decades, he operated a service station on Rt. 40. The old road was yet considered America?s Main Street when he opened for business, first as a Sinclair station, later as a Shell.
The Hudson Hornets and bullet-nosed Studebakers of a nation yet in the honeymoon phase of its love affair with the automobile rolled past on the National Road. Webbie filled their tanks, cleaned the bug mortuary off their windshields and sent them on their way west to Meramec Caverns or the Grand Canyon.
On Friday nights, he handed the gas station keys to someone else while he drove the West Jefferson football team bus to away games. For almost the entire 44-year epoch during which West Jeff never had a losing season (Eisenhower?s first term to the eve of Y2K), Webbie was behind the wheel.
"He?d get home from a West Jeff away game, then we?d drive all night to get to an Ohio State game at Iowa or Illinois," his son said.
About 30 years ago, following Webbie?s loss of his wife, Edith, he began teaching himself to play piano and organ. When he reached the limits of self-study, he commenced lessons. His musical proficiency ultimately landed him the job of organist at West Jeff?s Free Will Baptist Church. It was a job he kept until just before last Christmas.
"He just stopped all at once," said his neighbor Paul Geyer. "He couldn?t remember the notes."
He gave up his part-time job as janitor at the high school at age 89.
In his deepening confusion, he?d become lost in the town he had known since boyhood.
When he missed Ohio State?s home opener against Northern Illinois, it was clear that the end was at hand.
Webbie?s minister ? and, today, his eulogist ? the Rev. Jerry Newman remembered from his own lean days in Bible college that the man whose funeral he now conducts pressed a Shell card into his palm and handed him $1,000 for his final semester.
Webbie was the proverbial friend in need, Mayberry?s Andy Taylor without badge or gun.
He never discovered a vaccine, composed a symphony or invented a better mouse trap.
He was simply a good and decent man in an age when such are in perilously short supply.
COMMENTARY
Decent man, OSU fan lived a good life
Thursday, September 28, 2006
MIKE HARDEN
The leaves on the windward side of the maples at Pleasant Hill Cemetery have gone saffron.
The weather is crisp, and though the breeze is occasionally gusty, it would be a perfect day for football.
Glenn Webb could not have hoped for a bluer sky or a more fitting season to take his place among the granite-etched names of Bidwell and Sollars, Brathwaite and Coe.
"Webbie," as he was known to all of West Jefferson, died Sunday after a heart attack. He was 90.
His devotion to Ohio State football was legendary in the Madison County town from which he hitchhiked to the ?Shoe to attend his first Buckeye game the year Woody Hayes graduated high school.
"He hadn?t missed a home game since 1931," Webb?s son, Bob, said Tuesday. "He went last year. This would have been his 75 th year.
"When he had 50 years, Ed Jennings gave him a plaque," Webb recalled of the presentation by OSU?s president in 1981.
Webbie lived long enough to be considered part of West Jefferson?s architecture. To not see him is akin to having a church spire suddenly erased from the village vista.
For decades, he operated a service station on Rt. 40. The old road was yet considered America?s Main Street when he opened for business, first as a Sinclair station, later as a Shell.
The Hudson Hornets and bullet-nosed Studebakers of a nation yet in the honeymoon phase of its love affair with the automobile rolled past on the National Road. Webbie filled their tanks, cleaned the bug mortuary off their windshields and sent them on their way west to Meramec Caverns or the Grand Canyon.
On Friday nights, he handed the gas station keys to someone else while he drove the West Jefferson football team bus to away games. For almost the entire 44-year epoch during which West Jeff never had a losing season (Eisenhower?s first term to the eve of Y2K), Webbie was behind the wheel.
"He?d get home from a West Jeff away game, then we?d drive all night to get to an Ohio State game at Iowa or Illinois," his son said.
About 30 years ago, following Webbie?s loss of his wife, Edith, he began teaching himself to play piano and organ. When he reached the limits of self-study, he commenced lessons. His musical proficiency ultimately landed him the job of organist at West Jeff?s Free Will Baptist Church. It was a job he kept until just before last Christmas.
"He just stopped all at once," said his neighbor Paul Geyer. "He couldn?t remember the notes."
He gave up his part-time job as janitor at the high school at age 89.
In his deepening confusion, he?d become lost in the town he had known since boyhood.
When he missed Ohio State?s home opener against Northern Illinois, it was clear that the end was at hand.
Webbie?s minister ? and, today, his eulogist ? the Rev. Jerry Newman remembered from his own lean days in Bible college that the man whose funeral he now conducts pressed a Shell card into his palm and handed him $1,000 for his final semester.
Webbie was the proverbial friend in need, Mayberry?s Andy Taylor without badge or gun.
He never discovered a vaccine, composed a symphony or invented a better mouse trap.
He was simply a good and decent man in an age when such are in perilously short supply.
