"Boz": The Life of Ralph Boswell Jones (1897 - 1976)
 |
[Previous] [Next] |
 |
Chapter 7
Divorce and Remarriage,
Dougherty-Jones,
Declining Years
Divorce
For many years Ralph worked the business while Dorothy raised the family. The distance between them, both emotional and physical, increased each passing year until divorce seemed the only option. Although Dorothy petitioned for the final decree, it was, in fact, a one-sided affair, with Ralph forcing the separation through his absence. Cynthia recalls seeing her mother kneeling beside Ralph’s bed at the farm, her mother pleading with her dad.[1] It seems that Dorothy wanted the marriage to survive, but could not persuade Ralph. As Ralph’s children describe it, Ralph wanted a different kind of wife, one who was upscale, social, outgoing. Dorothy was a homebody; Ralph, a social climber.[2]
The stress of an unhappy marriage and ongoing physical ailments led Dorothy to severe depression. Dorothy and Cynthia moved to North Fairfield in Huron County after the farm was sold, and Dorothy went to work for the Willard Hospital.[3] Ralph seldom visited them after the move. Dorothy developed pyorrhea of the teeth, and her emotional state worsened until she signed herself into a mental hospital in Toledo. There she underwent shock treatments for depression, and was told that her recovery depended on either reconciliation with Ralph or acceptance of the reality of divorce. [4]
Reconciliation with Ralph proved impossible. As a result, on October 31, 1951, Dorothy signed a petition for divorce at the Huron County Court of Common Pleas. On November 12, the summons was served to Ralph at Euclid Avenue, and on Saturday, December 15, the decree became final. The court found that Ralph was guilty of “gross neglect of duty”. At that time Cynthia was officially placed in the custody of Dorothy, and Ralph was ordered to pay support and alimony of $35 a week. [5]
Remarriage
Two months later, on February 16, 1952, Ralph remarried.[6] His new wife was Margaret Elizabeth Rawlings Guenther, who worked for the Cleveland News in the church and funeral advertising department.[7] As JoAnne notes, “Margaret was what Dad wanted…a very social person who knew the ‘right’ people and was an asset to the business.”[8]
Margaret’s background was inauspicious. As her grandson notes, “Granny Peg didn’t have a lot of money growing up.” [9] Her father, William F. Rawlings, was born in London, England, emmigrated to America in 1876, married ten years later, and worked as a salesman for the U.S. Rubber Company in Chicago. [10] Hattie L. Rockwood, her mother, was born in Colon, Michigan.[11] After Margaret’s parents were married at Westminster Abbey in England,[12] they settled in Chicago on Belden Avenue. Margaret, who was born on September 9, 1898, was the couple’s third child. [13] Her sisters, Mabel and Maude, were 12 and 8 years older than Margaret, respectively. Hence, Margaret was the baby of the family.
Margaret grew to adulthood in Chicago and at age 18 (1917) married Lawrence Guenther, a young man from Ohio. Early in their marriage the couple lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. [14] In the early 1920s they moved with their infant daughter, Marjorie, to Ohio. They took up residence in a duplex near Lawrence’s parents, on East 118th Street in Cleveland. [15] As the depression deepened, the family struggled financially. Lawrence found a job with Prudential Insurance Company selling insurance and collecting premiums door to door.[16] By 1930 Lawrence’s father had died, so his mother, Louisa, moved in with Lawrence and Margaret at their home on Franklin Road in Maple Heights,[17] a suburb of Cleveland. [18] By April of that year Lawrence was working as a salesman in a radio shop, while Margaret was soliciting advertising for the Cleveland News.[19] Unfortunately, their financial difficulties continued. The family found themselves unable to afford the home in Maple Heights, and the bank foreclosed. As a result, Lawrence Guenther and his family moved to the second story of a two-family house on the edge of Shaker Heights in Cleveland.[20]
It was in this home, in late April 1943, that tragedy struck. Lawrence Guenther was killed when he fell from a second-story window. [21]
Marjorie, Lawrence’s only child, had just completed her Easter vacation and was soon to graduate from Lake Erie College for Women in Painesville, Ohio.[22] The family income was now diminished, so Margaret and Marjorie moved to a very small apartment at Shaker and Lee Road in Cleveland Heights. Thereafter Marjorie returned to Lake Erie College to teach math and the following June married Ed Zimmerlin. [23]
Thus, Margaret, at age 44, found herself alone and a widow. By that time, she had been promoted at the newspaper firm and was taking advertising for churches and funerals. Accordingly, she was in contact with members of the mortician community and thereby met Ralph Boswell Jones.[24] In fact, Margaret had seen Ralph’s daughter Cynthia as an infant in 1935, [25] so apparently knew Ralph before her husband died.
Margaret, also known as “Granny Peg” to her grandchildren, has been uniformly described by Ralph’s children and her own grandson as stubborn and opinionated. “She was a nice person,” her grandson Mark Zimmerlin notes, “but one had to do things her way.” She also had “her full set of prejudices”.[26] Tom Jones remembers having to hold his tongue when hearing some of Margaret’s comments, including disparaging remarks about her Catholic son-in-law, Ed Zimmerlin. Margaret’s husband also endured her inflexibility. On one occasion, for example, she served dinner guests on paper plates because Ralph wouldn’t buy her a dishwasher. [27] Mark Zimmerlin also remembers:
“I lived on the 3rd floor of their home on Euclid Avenue, and wrote a letter to a girl friend, which I did not intent to send. Granny Peg went into my room, found my letter, and mailed it. When I was upset, she said, in so many words, that she could do what she pleased in her own house.”[28]
Despite Margaret’s idiosyncrasies, she truly loved Ralph and was able to reach him when others could not. Margaret could also be generous. When the time came for Cynthia’s high school prom, for example, Margaret bought her a silk dress.[29] She would also take some of her grandchildren on the electric train to downtown Cleveland as a treat, allowing them to buy toys and indulging them in the movies.[30] As her daughter notes, “My mother was a very vivacious and attractive person. She loved to entertain, and enjoyed the life Boz gave her.”[31] In addition, Margaret provided tender care for Ralph during his final illness. “She certainly took good care of him when he was ill,” JoAnne says, “and I’ve always been grateful for that caring.” [32]
Boz and Margaret, July 1963Dougherty-Jones Mortuary
After he left the employ of DeVand Funeral Home, Ralph began looking for ways to reestablish a funeral business on his own. In fact, he would park across the street from Delford Dougherty’s funeral home on Euclid Avenue and visualize the day when he would own the business. [33] That day came when he leased the house and funeral home from Mr. Dougherty. The business was christened the Dougherty-Boswell Jones Funeral Home. By 1965, after Mr. Dougherty’s retirement, Ralph had acquired the business and changed the name to Boswell Jones Mortuary and Crematory, Incorporated. Their slogan was “Funeral Services Based on Christian Principles”.[34] As Mark Zimmerlin describes the business,
“Boz was basically on call 24 hours a day for the funeral business. He also had an ambulatory service, taking patients from nursing homes to doctors’ offices to hospitals. When people died, we would pick them up at their residences, nursing homes, hospitals and the county morgue. Boz spent most of his days in a little office in the funeral home on the first floor, where his desk was located. In the basement of the funeral home was a smoking lounge, and on the third floor was a casket display room and another office.” [35]
Marjorie Zimmerlin recalls her mother saying that “we would never know all the good he [Boz] did for other people… he often gave a Christian burial to those left with no one to care for them.”[36]
In common with other businessmen, Ralph hoped to groom a successor, someone who could operate the business when he retired. One commentator describes the process as follows:
“In smaller funeral homes embalming is often done by the funeral director, who also will be a licensed embalmer. His relations to his working personnel are likely to be colored by the tradition of having his probable successor with him. His assistant is apt to be groomed from the beginning as his eventual successor. He may be a son, a relative or connection by marriage, or even a young man to whom he has taken a liking or fancy, because of his expressed interest in the funeral directing field. Such a person begins as an apprentice “helping out,” and later goes to a school of mortuary science, passes his state board examination, receives his license, returns to the same home, and in the course of a long period of dedicated work and training in the necessary skills of funeral direction takes over the director’s role upon the latter’s retirement.” [37]
Thus Boz sought successors. For a while his son Ralph D. was an apprentice at DeVand’s Funeral Home and, presumably, a potential successor. Later Boz asked Bud Kaiser, his son-in-law, to join the business. JoAnne and Bud sold their business—the Keiser Home for Funerals in North Fairfield, Ohio—as well as their home at 17 South Pleasant Street in Norwalk, Ohio, to take up Ralph’s offer. [38] They lived on the third floor of Ralph’s home for about six months before finding a house of their own. Unfortunately, “Bud never felt like a partner as it was presented to him,” JoAnne says, “and after 9 months he left and we moved back to Norwalk”.
Ralph’s son, Tom, was also encouraged to join the business. “Upon graduation the 2nd time from O.S.U. with an engineering degree,” Tom says, “he did ask me to come into business with him. He seemed to think my college degree would be ‘good for business’. I felt complimented, but since I already had plans to start a career with S.C.S. [the Soil Conservation Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture], I refused and wrote him a letter to that effect.”[39]
Finally, Ralph sought an apprentice/successor in his step grandson, Mark Zimmerlin:
“Boz wanted me to succeed him in his funeral business, so in high school he hired me to do odd jobs, yard work, cleaning, and document delivery for the mortuary business on Euclid Ave in Cleveland. I started working for him part time in 1965. After high school I lived with Boz and Granny Peg and worked for him full time from about 1966 to 1971 or 1972. At that time I was also enrolled at a nearby college. The business had four employees: Boz, Karl Deck (the embalmer), me, and an older man named Claire … At one point, Boz told me that the business couldn’t support my salary and Claire’s, so at that time I decided to resign so that Claire could keep his job. I went to work for a floor covering firm, and decided that I did not want to take over the funeral business.”[40]
Thus, Boz found no successor.
Declining years
As Ralph entered the latter part of his life, his demeanor softened and he seemed to take more time for outside activities. Ralph could also be generous, even to competitors. For example, when a fire destroyed another funeral director’s business, Ralph called the owner and offered to let him use the Boswell Jones facilities for a time. On another occasion, Ralph rented a hotel suite and ordered a full Thanksgiving dinner, via room service, so that Margaret and Marjorie wouldn’t have to cook. Boz enjoyed entertaining in style. As Marjorie Zimmerlin recalls,
“Boz loved nice things. I never was served on paper plates at their home. In fact, when we went there for dinner, Ed had to wear a suit coat and I and the girls were not allowed to wear slacks. Usually they had someone in to serve dinner and clean up afterwards. We would have Thanksgiving at their place. When this became difficult, they took us all to the Wade Park Manor which was a real treat.” [41]
Ralph also cultivated a friendship with a Catholic Monsieur and invited him regularly to dinner and cocktails. For relaxation, Ralph and Margaret occasionally traveled—to Italy and France, to the Bermudas, to the opening of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. They also regularly attended plays and symphonies.[42]
But mostly he continued to attend the funeral business. Whether the firm ever became the prosperous and vital enterprise Ralph had envisioned is a matter of interpretation. As Tom recalls, “When making our quarterly visits to the funeral home after we were married, we often discussed business, which was always bad, and ‘you couldn’t have a sale’!” [43] On the other hand, Mark Zimmerlin says:
“Boz was an innovator. He started the Cleveland Memorial Society, which enabled clients to make prepaid funeral arrangements. This was done through the Margaret Wagner house. The charges were approximately $225 for a cremation and an additional $150 for a casket if the deceased was to be buried (clients purchased their own cemetery plots). At the time of Boz's death, there were hundreds of clients signed up for this service, which represented a significant amount of revenue for the business. Karl Deck, who was Boz's embalmer, hoodwinked Granny Peg after Boz died, getting her to sign over the business's assets to him. So he basically walked off with the business.”[44]
In fact, Ralph’s probate file shows that, within three months of his death, stock in the funeral home had declined significantly in value. The appraisal report stated: “These shares are valued at Book Value [of $9,000], although the actual value is far less because of the future prospects of the funeral home.”[45] As Marjorie notes, “When Boz died, the business died with him.”[46]
For the last 25 years of his life, Ralph suffered restricted circulation and severe varicose veins in his legs. To ease the pain, he wore elastic stockings and tried to keep off his feet. He smoked an average of three packs of cigarettes per day and struggled with his weight, which undoubtedly contributed to his poor circulation. During the last five years of his life, he was hospitalized on several occasions. He suffered strokes and three amputations—first the front of a foot, later the entire foot, then the leg below the knee. About a year elapsed from the time of this final amputation until his death.[47]
During that final episode of his life, Ralph became increasingly despondent.[48] His daughter Cynthia recalls that “we visited him in the hospital and he had had a stroke. At that time, he was sitting in a wheelchair and broke down and cried. I can still picture that because he never showed any emotion.”[49]
At 3:20am on March 4, 1976 at the University Hospital of Cleveland, Ralph died of heart disease. [50] He had just turned 79 years old. [51]
[1] Cynthia.
[2] Tom B.
[3] Cynthia, Tom B.
[4] Cynthia, Tom B., JoAnne.
[5] Divorce documents, Dorothy vs Boswell Jones.
[6] Marriage certificate, Boswell Jones and Margaret Guenther, Cuyahoga County, No. A 230323.
[7] Interview by telephone, Marjorie Zimmerlin, with the author, 24 May 2002. Hereinafter cited as Marjorie.
[8] Barbara.
[9] Mark Zimmerlin.
[10] Federal census, 1900, North Town, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, ED 618, pg.222, line 34. Also, marriage license # 00102951; Cook County, IL, 27 May 1886.
[11] Federal census, 1920, Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, ED 174, Sheet 2B, line 85. Also, Birth certificate, Margaret Elizabeth Rawlings, Cook County, Chicago, IL, Department of Public Health, Cert. #240984. The birth certificate was not filed until 1943, and was signed by Mabel A. Reynolds, Margaret’s sister.
[12] Marjorie.
[13] Birth certificate, Margaret Elizabeth Rawlings.
[14] Federal census, 1920, Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, ED 174, Sheet 2B, line 85.
[15] Marjorie said that her family moved from Chicago to Cleveland when she was an infant. As of 2 Apr 1930, the census gives her age as 8 years old. Hence, the family moved in the early 1920s.
[16] Letter from Marjorie Zimmerlin to the author, November 2002. Hereinafter cited as Marjorie letter.
[17] Margaret’s application for a Social Security account number gives her address as of 3 Dec 1936 as 21004 Franklin Road. Her employer was located at 1801 Superior in Cleveland.
[18] Federal census, 1930, Maple Heights, Cuyahoga County, OH, ED. 667, Sheet 1A.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Marjorie letter.
[21] Interviews via telephone, author with Mark Zimmerlin, Phoenix, AZ, 5 May 2002 and 19 May 2002. Hereinafter cited as Mark Zimmerlin. Also, Marjorie letter.
[22] Marjorie.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Cynthia.
[26] Mark Zimmerlin.
[27] Cynthia.
[28] Mark Zimmerlin.
[29] Cynthia.
[30] Mark Zimmerlin.
[31] Marjorie letter.
[32] JoAnne.
[33] Mark Zimmerlin.
[34] Cleveland (Cuyahoga County, OH) City Directory, 1965, FHL #977.131E4c.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Marjorie letter.
[37] Habenstein, p. 587.
[38] Directory of Licensed Embalmers and Licensed Funeral Directors and Funeral Firms of the State of Ohio (Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors of Ohio, Columbus: 1960), p. 37, 104.
[39] Tom B.
[40] Mark Zimmerlin.
[41] Marjorie letter.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Tom B.
[44] Ibid. Note that correspondence between the author and the Cleveland Memorial Society (Jackie Stimpert, Executive Secretary, in a letter dated 16 May 2002) does not substantiate that Ralph Jones founded that organization. Meeting minutes of the original Board of Trustees who founded the Cleveland Memorial Society (May – August 1948) do not list Ralph Jones as a founding member. Ms. Stimpert notes, however, that he may have been one of the original funeral directors with whom the Society contracted. A list of those funeral directors was not available at this writing. The Society’s original objective was “for the furtherance of simplicity in funeral rites.”
[45] Probate file, Ralph B. Jones, Probate Court of Cuyahoga County, Doc. 847, No. 848482.
[46] Marjorie letter.
[47] Tom B., Cynthia, Mark Zimmerlin.
[48] Mark Zimmerlin.
[49] Cynthia.
[50] Death certificate, Ralph Boswell Jones, Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, Reg. Dist. 1801, Reg. No. 1674. The immediate cause of death was described as a ruptured aortic aneurysm due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Contributing conditions were diabetes mellitus and chronic obstructive lung disease. Ralph was buried in nearby Lake View Cemetery (Section 31, Lot 341B, Grave 1).