Died at the age of 20.
________________________________________
FROM THE AKRON CITY DIRECTORIES:
1915
Russell B. Borway, student, home - 338 Wooster Ave.
________________________________________
The following biography was written by Mark J. Price, Akron Beacon Journal staff writer. Published: February 22, 2015.
They weren’t supposed to last. Old slips of paper, the detritus of daily life, somehow escaped the trash can, getting tucked away in books, packed up in boxes, pushed back in drawers or set aside in attics. Pieces of ephemera are innocuous printed materials that were meant to be discarded after a brief time but unexpectedly survived. A sales receipt, a calling card, a playbill, a train schedule: Each one tells a story from long ago. The tales can be mundane, bittersweet, nostalgic, and sometimes unbearably sad. A small, thin, yellowed envelope came across the transom at The Bookseller, a used and rare bookshop owned by Frank Klein and his daughter Andrea Klein at Wallhaven in West Akron. Stuffed inside was a pristine blue ticket for a 1920 play at Music Hall, a downtown auditorium that met the wrecker’s ball 85 years ago. A cryptic note was scribbled in red ink on the envelope: “Russell bought these & never used them.” A chilling addendum was scrawled below: “He was shot Feb. 26, 1920.” Life couldn’t have been better for 20-year-old Russell Borway, a happy-go-lucky agent for the real estate company of Herberich-Hall-Harter. He was young and in love. For 18 months, he had dated Arline E. Peacock, a clerk at the M. O’Neil Co., and they were engaged to be married.
On a Thursday evening, the couple paid a visit to friends Frank and Lillian Schick at 260 Locust St. After a few hours of socializing, Borway escorted his fiancée to her home at 300 W. Center St., making sure she was back by 10 p.m.
The couple finalized their plans for the weekend. On Sunday night, they were going with a group to see the Pauline
MacLean Players production of The Woman in Room 13, a Music Hall drama that the Beacon Journal hailed as “one of the most thrilling and interesting productions ever on the boards of the popular playhouse.”
Trek home
Before midnight, Borway kissed Peacock good night and slipped away into the darkness for a 1-mile trek to his home at 338 Wooster Ave. Leather salesman J. Albert Eberhardt and his wife, Georgiana, were winding down in their home at 215 W. Chestnut St. when the night exploded in chaos. “I was just preparing for bed when I heard a shot, which seemed so close that I thought it was in my front yard,” Mrs. Eberhardt told the Akron Evening Times. “I went to get my husband when I heard someone scream ‘My God! Help! Help!’ “When we reached the street, 10 or 12 other people had come from their homes. I asked them what had happened and they said they believed a man had been shot in front of our house.” Around the corner, Akron bus driver Everett C. Beatty and his wife, Ora, heard a man shouting for help near their home at 410 Wabash Ave. They ran outside and found Borway sprawled on the sidewalk, conscious but in tremendous pain. With the help of neighbors, they carried him inside and called an ambulance.
Neighborhood scoured
Patrolmen Jacob Bollinger, S.D. Williams, Roy Barron and James T. Wilkinson set up a dragnet, scouring the neighborhood for suspects. Initially, police thought that Borway may have been shot by a rival suitor for his fiancée, but the theory was soon abandoned. “Borway was shot by a lone highwayman,” Capt. Eddie McDonnell announced. Officers awakened James A. Borway and his wife, Anna, at home to notify them about their boy. The family rushed to People’s Hospital (now Akron General Medical Center) and maintained a bedside vigil. Russell Borway told police that his attacker was a young, muscular, well-dressed man wearing a cap. He said the man leaped out from behind a building, pulled a pistol and ordered Borway to raise his hands. Instead of doing as instructed, the holdup victim laughed and kept walking.
“Thinking it was a friend playing a joke on me, I walked toward him when he shot me,” Borway explained. Porch lights turned on. The robber ran away without taking any money. Borway staggered for half a block, yelling for help before falling to the sidewalk. He didn’t realize the severity of the wound, telling his father at the hospital that he had been shot in the leg. In fact, he was hit in the stomach. The young man lost consciousness and could not be revived. Surrounded by family, Russell passed away about 4 a.m. Friday.
Fiancee traumatized
The death traumatized Arline Peacock, who had gone to sleep with happy dreams and woke up to the nightmare of her fiance’s murder. “His sweetheart is bed-ridden, and under the care of a physician,” the Beacon Journal reported Saturday. “She has been confined to her bed since she was first notified of the shooting at 5 o’clock Friday morning.”
Candy salesman James W. Peacock mourned the loss of his future son-in-law. “He was a jolly, good fellow, and well liked by all those who knew him,” Peacock told an Akron reporter. “He was the kind of chap that looked on the bright side of life.” While going through Russell’s pockets at the hospital, the Borway family found a gold watch, money and a small, thin envelope containing 16 tickets for the eight couples planning to attend the play Sunday night at Music Hall. Instead, Russell was buried that day at Glendale Cemetery in Akron.
$200 reward
Police investigated several leads and expected to make an arrest, but nothing panned out and the trail went cold. Summit County commissioners offered a $200 reward in May for information leading to the arrest of the killer. No one stepped forward. The fatal shooting of Russell Borway never was solved. If the gunman ever met justice for his cold-blooded crime, it was for a conviction in a different case. Some loved one — possibly Russell’s sister Helen, brother Raymond or fiancée Arline — saved the 83-cent ticket marked Orchestra, Row V, Seat 4. “Good for this date only,” it read. The blue ticket and Borway’s business card were preserved in the original envelope found in his pocket on the night he was killed. Music Hall at 44 E. Exchange St. was razed in 1929 to make room for a new headquarters for the Akron Times-Press. The building has served as the home of the Beacon Journal since 1938. The houses of the Borways, Peacocks, Schicks, Eberhardts and Beattys have all been knocked down over the past century. Yet that little blue ticket remains. After 95 years, it finally made it to its destination. Unusual pieces of ephemera come and go at The Bookseller. The envelope may have arrived from an estate sale. Someone with no idea of its significance could have donated it while cleaning house. The slip of paper was supposed to be discarded long ago. Someone couldn’t bear to throw it away.
Mark J. Price is the author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press.
________________________________________
________________________________________
FROM THE AKRON CITY DIRECTORIES:
1915
Russell B. Borway, student, home - 338 Wooster Ave.
________________________________________
The following biography was written by Mark J. Price, Akron Beacon Journal staff writer. Published: February 22, 2015.
They weren’t supposed to last. Old slips of paper, the detritus of daily life, somehow escaped the trash can, getting tucked away in books, packed up in boxes, pushed back in drawers or set aside in attics. Pieces of ephemera are innocuous printed materials that were meant to be discarded after a brief time but unexpectedly survived. A sales receipt, a calling card, a playbill, a train schedule: Each one tells a story from long ago. The tales can be mundane, bittersweet, nostalgic, and sometimes unbearably sad. A small, thin, yellowed envelope came across the transom at The Bookseller, a used and rare bookshop owned by Frank Klein and his daughter Andrea Klein at Wallhaven in West Akron. Stuffed inside was a pristine blue ticket for a 1920 play at Music Hall, a downtown auditorium that met the wrecker’s ball 85 years ago. A cryptic note was scribbled in red ink on the envelope: “Russell bought these & never used them.” A chilling addendum was scrawled below: “He was shot Feb. 26, 1920.” Life couldn’t have been better for 20-year-old Russell Borway, a happy-go-lucky agent for the real estate company of Herberich-Hall-Harter. He was young and in love. For 18 months, he had dated Arline E. Peacock, a clerk at the M. O’Neil Co., and they were engaged to be married.
On a Thursday evening, the couple paid a visit to friends Frank and Lillian Schick at 260 Locust St. After a few hours of socializing, Borway escorted his fiancée to her home at 300 W. Center St., making sure she was back by 10 p.m.
The couple finalized their plans for the weekend. On Sunday night, they were going with a group to see the Pauline
MacLean Players production of The Woman in Room 13, a Music Hall drama that the Beacon Journal hailed as “one of the most thrilling and interesting productions ever on the boards of the popular playhouse.”
Trek home
Before midnight, Borway kissed Peacock good night and slipped away into the darkness for a 1-mile trek to his home at 338 Wooster Ave. Leather salesman J. Albert Eberhardt and his wife, Georgiana, were winding down in their home at 215 W. Chestnut St. when the night exploded in chaos. “I was just preparing for bed when I heard a shot, which seemed so close that I thought it was in my front yard,” Mrs. Eberhardt told the Akron Evening Times. “I went to get my husband when I heard someone scream ‘My God! Help! Help!’ “When we reached the street, 10 or 12 other people had come from their homes. I asked them what had happened and they said they believed a man had been shot in front of our house.” Around the corner, Akron bus driver Everett C. Beatty and his wife, Ora, heard a man shouting for help near their home at 410 Wabash Ave. They ran outside and found Borway sprawled on the sidewalk, conscious but in tremendous pain. With the help of neighbors, they carried him inside and called an ambulance.
Neighborhood scoured
Patrolmen Jacob Bollinger, S.D. Williams, Roy Barron and James T. Wilkinson set up a dragnet, scouring the neighborhood for suspects. Initially, police thought that Borway may have been shot by a rival suitor for his fiancée, but the theory was soon abandoned. “Borway was shot by a lone highwayman,” Capt. Eddie McDonnell announced. Officers awakened James A. Borway and his wife, Anna, at home to notify them about their boy. The family rushed to People’s Hospital (now Akron General Medical Center) and maintained a bedside vigil. Russell Borway told police that his attacker was a young, muscular, well-dressed man wearing a cap. He said the man leaped out from behind a building, pulled a pistol and ordered Borway to raise his hands. Instead of doing as instructed, the holdup victim laughed and kept walking.
“Thinking it was a friend playing a joke on me, I walked toward him when he shot me,” Borway explained. Porch lights turned on. The robber ran away without taking any money. Borway staggered for half a block, yelling for help before falling to the sidewalk. He didn’t realize the severity of the wound, telling his father at the hospital that he had been shot in the leg. In fact, he was hit in the stomach. The young man lost consciousness and could not be revived. Surrounded by family, Russell passed away about 4 a.m. Friday.
Fiancee traumatized
The death traumatized Arline Peacock, who had gone to sleep with happy dreams and woke up to the nightmare of her fiance’s murder. “His sweetheart is bed-ridden, and under the care of a physician,” the Beacon Journal reported Saturday. “She has been confined to her bed since she was first notified of the shooting at 5 o’clock Friday morning.”
Candy salesman James W. Peacock mourned the loss of his future son-in-law. “He was a jolly, good fellow, and well liked by all those who knew him,” Peacock told an Akron reporter. “He was the kind of chap that looked on the bright side of life.” While going through Russell’s pockets at the hospital, the Borway family found a gold watch, money and a small, thin envelope containing 16 tickets for the eight couples planning to attend the play Sunday night at Music Hall. Instead, Russell was buried that day at Glendale Cemetery in Akron.
$200 reward
Police investigated several leads and expected to make an arrest, but nothing panned out and the trail went cold. Summit County commissioners offered a $200 reward in May for information leading to the arrest of the killer. No one stepped forward. The fatal shooting of Russell Borway never was solved. If the gunman ever met justice for his cold-blooded crime, it was for a conviction in a different case. Some loved one — possibly Russell’s sister Helen, brother Raymond or fiancée Arline — saved the 83-cent ticket marked Orchestra, Row V, Seat 4. “Good for this date only,” it read. The blue ticket and Borway’s business card were preserved in the original envelope found in his pocket on the night he was killed. Music Hall at 44 E. Exchange St. was razed in 1929 to make room for a new headquarters for the Akron Times-Press. The building has served as the home of the Beacon Journal since 1938. The houses of the Borways, Peacocks, Schicks, Eberhardts and Beattys have all been knocked down over the past century. Yet that little blue ticket remains. After 95 years, it finally made it to its destination. Unusual pieces of ephemera come and go at The Bookseller. The envelope may have arrived from an estate sale. Someone with no idea of its significance could have donated it while cleaning house. The slip of paper was supposed to be discarded long ago. Someone couldn’t bear to throw it away.
Mark J. Price is the author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press.
________________________________________
Died at the age of 20.
________________________________________
FROM THE AKRON CITY DIRECTORIES:
1915
Russell B. Borway, student, home - 338 Wooster Ave.
________________________________________
The following biography was written by Mark J. Price, Akron Beacon Journal staff writer. Published: February 22, 2015.
They weren’t supposed to last. Old slips of paper, the detritus of daily life, somehow escaped the trash can, getting tucked away in books, packed up in boxes, pushed back in drawers or set aside in attics. Pieces of ephemera are innocuous printed materials that were meant to be discarded after a brief time but unexpectedly survived. A sales receipt, a calling card, a playbill, a train schedule: Each one tells a story from long ago. The tales can be mundane, bittersweet, nostalgic, and sometimes unbearably sad. A small, thin, yellowed envelope came across the transom at The Bookseller, a used and rare bookshop owned by Frank Klein and his daughter Andrea Klein at Wallhaven in West Akron. Stuffed inside was a pristine blue ticket for a 1920 play at Music Hall, a downtown auditorium that met the wrecker’s ball 85 years ago. A cryptic note was scribbled in red ink on the envelope: “Russell bought these & never used them.” A chilling addendum was scrawled below: “He was shot Feb. 26, 1920.” Life couldn’t have been better for 20-year-old Russell Borway, a happy-go-lucky agent for the real estate company of Herberich-Hall-Harter. He was young and in love. For 18 months, he had dated Arline E. Peacock, a clerk at the M. O’Neil Co., and they were engaged to be married.
On a Thursday evening, the couple paid a visit to friends Frank and Lillian Schick at 260 Locust St. After a few hours of socializing, Borway escorted his fiancée to her home at 300 W. Center St., making sure she was back by 10 p.m.
The couple finalized their plans for the weekend. On Sunday night, they were going with a group to see the Pauline
MacLean Players production of The Woman in Room 13, a Music Hall drama that the Beacon Journal hailed as “one of the most thrilling and interesting productions ever on the boards of the popular playhouse.”
Trek home
Before midnight, Borway kissed Peacock good night and slipped away into the darkness for a 1-mile trek to his home at 338 Wooster Ave. Leather salesman J. Albert Eberhardt and his wife, Georgiana, were winding down in their home at 215 W. Chestnut St. when the night exploded in chaos. “I was just preparing for bed when I heard a shot, which seemed so close that I thought it was in my front yard,” Mrs. Eberhardt told the Akron Evening Times. “I went to get my husband when I heard someone scream ‘My God! Help! Help!’ “When we reached the street, 10 or 12 other people had come from their homes. I asked them what had happened and they said they believed a man had been shot in front of our house.” Around the corner, Akron bus driver Everett C. Beatty and his wife, Ora, heard a man shouting for help near their home at 410 Wabash Ave. They ran outside and found Borway sprawled on the sidewalk, conscious but in tremendous pain. With the help of neighbors, they carried him inside and called an ambulance.
Neighborhood scoured
Patrolmen Jacob Bollinger, S.D. Williams, Roy Barron and James T. Wilkinson set up a dragnet, scouring the neighborhood for suspects. Initially, police thought that Borway may have been shot by a rival suitor for his fiancée, but the theory was soon abandoned. “Borway was shot by a lone highwayman,” Capt. Eddie McDonnell announced. Officers awakened James A. Borway and his wife, Anna, at home to notify them about their boy. The family rushed to People’s Hospital (now Akron General Medical Center) and maintained a bedside vigil. Russell Borway told police that his attacker was a young, muscular, well-dressed man wearing a cap. He said the man leaped out from behind a building, pulled a pistol and ordered Borway to raise his hands. Instead of doing as instructed, the holdup victim laughed and kept walking.
“Thinking it was a friend playing a joke on me, I walked toward him when he shot me,” Borway explained. Porch lights turned on. The robber ran away without taking any money. Borway staggered for half a block, yelling for help before falling to the sidewalk. He didn’t realize the severity of the wound, telling his father at the hospital that he had been shot in the leg. In fact, he was hit in the stomach. The young man lost consciousness and could not be revived. Surrounded by family, Russell passed away about 4 a.m. Friday.
Fiancee traumatized
The death traumatized Arline Peacock, who had gone to sleep with happy dreams and woke up to the nightmare of her fiance’s murder. “His sweetheart is bed-ridden, and under the care of a physician,” the Beacon Journal reported Saturday. “She has been confined to her bed since she was first notified of the shooting at 5 o’clock Friday morning.”
Candy salesman James W. Peacock mourned the loss of his future son-in-law. “He was a jolly, good fellow, and well liked by all those who knew him,” Peacock told an Akron reporter. “He was the kind of chap that looked on the bright side of life.” While going through Russell’s pockets at the hospital, the Borway family found a gold watch, money and a small, thin envelope containing 16 tickets for the eight couples planning to attend the play Sunday night at Music Hall. Instead, Russell was buried that day at Glendale Cemetery in Akron.
$200 reward
Police investigated several leads and expected to make an arrest, but nothing panned out and the trail went cold. Summit County commissioners offered a $200 reward in May for information leading to the arrest of the killer. No one stepped forward. The fatal shooting of Russell Borway never was solved. If the gunman ever met justice for his cold-blooded crime, it was for a conviction in a different case. Some loved one — possibly Russell’s sister Helen, brother Raymond or fiancée Arline — saved the 83-cent ticket marked Orchestra, Row V, Seat 4. “Good for this date only,” it read. The blue ticket and Borway’s business card were preserved in the original envelope found in his pocket on the night he was killed. Music Hall at 44 E. Exchange St. was razed in 1929 to make room for a new headquarters for the Akron Times-Press. The building has served as the home of the Beacon Journal since 1938. The houses of the Borways, Peacocks, Schicks, Eberhardts and Beattys have all been knocked down over the past century. Yet that little blue ticket remains. After 95 years, it finally made it to its destination. Unusual pieces of ephemera come and go at The Bookseller. The envelope may have arrived from an estate sale. Someone with no idea of its significance could have donated it while cleaning house. The slip of paper was supposed to be discarded long ago. Someone couldn’t bear to throw it away.
Mark J. Price is the author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press.
________________________________________
________________________________________
FROM THE AKRON CITY DIRECTORIES:
1915
Russell B. Borway, student, home - 338 Wooster Ave.
________________________________________
The following biography was written by Mark J. Price, Akron Beacon Journal staff writer. Published: February 22, 2015.
They weren’t supposed to last. Old slips of paper, the detritus of daily life, somehow escaped the trash can, getting tucked away in books, packed up in boxes, pushed back in drawers or set aside in attics. Pieces of ephemera are innocuous printed materials that were meant to be discarded after a brief time but unexpectedly survived. A sales receipt, a calling card, a playbill, a train schedule: Each one tells a story from long ago. The tales can be mundane, bittersweet, nostalgic, and sometimes unbearably sad. A small, thin, yellowed envelope came across the transom at The Bookseller, a used and rare bookshop owned by Frank Klein and his daughter Andrea Klein at Wallhaven in West Akron. Stuffed inside was a pristine blue ticket for a 1920 play at Music Hall, a downtown auditorium that met the wrecker’s ball 85 years ago. A cryptic note was scribbled in red ink on the envelope: “Russell bought these & never used them.” A chilling addendum was scrawled below: “He was shot Feb. 26, 1920.” Life couldn’t have been better for 20-year-old Russell Borway, a happy-go-lucky agent for the real estate company of Herberich-Hall-Harter. He was young and in love. For 18 months, he had dated Arline E. Peacock, a clerk at the M. O’Neil Co., and they were engaged to be married.
On a Thursday evening, the couple paid a visit to friends Frank and Lillian Schick at 260 Locust St. After a few hours of socializing, Borway escorted his fiancée to her home at 300 W. Center St., making sure she was back by 10 p.m.
The couple finalized their plans for the weekend. On Sunday night, they were going with a group to see the Pauline
MacLean Players production of The Woman in Room 13, a Music Hall drama that the Beacon Journal hailed as “one of the most thrilling and interesting productions ever on the boards of the popular playhouse.”
Trek home
Before midnight, Borway kissed Peacock good night and slipped away into the darkness for a 1-mile trek to his home at 338 Wooster Ave. Leather salesman J. Albert Eberhardt and his wife, Georgiana, were winding down in their home at 215 W. Chestnut St. when the night exploded in chaos. “I was just preparing for bed when I heard a shot, which seemed so close that I thought it was in my front yard,” Mrs. Eberhardt told the Akron Evening Times. “I went to get my husband when I heard someone scream ‘My God! Help! Help!’ “When we reached the street, 10 or 12 other people had come from their homes. I asked them what had happened and they said they believed a man had been shot in front of our house.” Around the corner, Akron bus driver Everett C. Beatty and his wife, Ora, heard a man shouting for help near their home at 410 Wabash Ave. They ran outside and found Borway sprawled on the sidewalk, conscious but in tremendous pain. With the help of neighbors, they carried him inside and called an ambulance.
Neighborhood scoured
Patrolmen Jacob Bollinger, S.D. Williams, Roy Barron and James T. Wilkinson set up a dragnet, scouring the neighborhood for suspects. Initially, police thought that Borway may have been shot by a rival suitor for his fiancée, but the theory was soon abandoned. “Borway was shot by a lone highwayman,” Capt. Eddie McDonnell announced. Officers awakened James A. Borway and his wife, Anna, at home to notify them about their boy. The family rushed to People’s Hospital (now Akron General Medical Center) and maintained a bedside vigil. Russell Borway told police that his attacker was a young, muscular, well-dressed man wearing a cap. He said the man leaped out from behind a building, pulled a pistol and ordered Borway to raise his hands. Instead of doing as instructed, the holdup victim laughed and kept walking.
“Thinking it was a friend playing a joke on me, I walked toward him when he shot me,” Borway explained. Porch lights turned on. The robber ran away without taking any money. Borway staggered for half a block, yelling for help before falling to the sidewalk. He didn’t realize the severity of the wound, telling his father at the hospital that he had been shot in the leg. In fact, he was hit in the stomach. The young man lost consciousness and could not be revived. Surrounded by family, Russell passed away about 4 a.m. Friday.
Fiancee traumatized
The death traumatized Arline Peacock, who had gone to sleep with happy dreams and woke up to the nightmare of her fiance’s murder. “His sweetheart is bed-ridden, and under the care of a physician,” the Beacon Journal reported Saturday. “She has been confined to her bed since she was first notified of the shooting at 5 o’clock Friday morning.”
Candy salesman James W. Peacock mourned the loss of his future son-in-law. “He was a jolly, good fellow, and well liked by all those who knew him,” Peacock told an Akron reporter. “He was the kind of chap that looked on the bright side of life.” While going through Russell’s pockets at the hospital, the Borway family found a gold watch, money and a small, thin envelope containing 16 tickets for the eight couples planning to attend the play Sunday night at Music Hall. Instead, Russell was buried that day at Glendale Cemetery in Akron.
$200 reward
Police investigated several leads and expected to make an arrest, but nothing panned out and the trail went cold. Summit County commissioners offered a $200 reward in May for information leading to the arrest of the killer. No one stepped forward. The fatal shooting of Russell Borway never was solved. If the gunman ever met justice for his cold-blooded crime, it was for a conviction in a different case. Some loved one — possibly Russell’s sister Helen, brother Raymond or fiancée Arline — saved the 83-cent ticket marked Orchestra, Row V, Seat 4. “Good for this date only,” it read. The blue ticket and Borway’s business card were preserved in the original envelope found in his pocket on the night he was killed. Music Hall at 44 E. Exchange St. was razed in 1929 to make room for a new headquarters for the Akron Times-Press. The building has served as the home of the Beacon Journal since 1938. The houses of the Borways, Peacocks, Schicks, Eberhardts and Beattys have all been knocked down over the past century. Yet that little blue ticket remains. After 95 years, it finally made it to its destination. Unusual pieces of ephemera come and go at The Bookseller. The envelope may have arrived from an estate sale. Someone with no idea of its significance could have donated it while cleaning house. The slip of paper was supposed to be discarded long ago. Someone couldn’t bear to throw it away.
Mark J. Price is the author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press.
________________________________________
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