9/17/2023 0 Comments Captin hook boat![]() ![]() ![]() His family moved to Cincinnati in 1929 when he was 15, and he enrolled in an electrical trade school but was expelled after an altercation with a school staff member. Campbell Beatty - himself the son of a riverman - and his wife, Bertha Baker, John built his first vessel out of scrapped tin and riverbank clay at age 4. Born in Ironton, Ohio, in 1914 to riverboat salvager W. Beatty’s edgier personality was shaped by the river. It has been said she was the first woman on the Ohio River to operate a short-wave radio.Ĭapt. She was listed in the 1966-67 “Who’s Who Among American Women” and belonged to Zonta International, an organization of professionals whose mission is to advance the status of women in the business world. Clare Kinzeler married the widowed John Beatty the next year in 1944 and became Acree’s beloved mother.Ĭlare was a formidable leader as well as a parent and wife. “She was a lady,” said Acree, whose blood mother died when she was 5. Beatty wrecked on an ice floe at Markland Dam in January 1978. In its heyday in the 1960s and ’70s, Clare led tours of the converted paddle wheeler for school children and charmed celebrity guests such as Bob Hope, Perry Como, Mickey Rooney and Raymond Burr. She moved easily from the down-and-dirty dock to the fancy Fink, which had been a Mother’s Day gift from her husband. Kinzeler, a college-educated school teacher from Dayton who led the male staff of what was known as “Beatty’s Navy” on those many days when her husband was out on the river.Ĭlare Beatty, called “Elsie” by her family and friends, was graceful, stylish, poised and always polite, Acree said, whether in a social setting, hosting at the couple’s two riverboat restaurants - Captain Hook’s at the Public Landing and the Mike Fink in Covington - or managing their Columbia Boat Harbor’s schedule, staff, equipment and records. The balance weight in the barrel-chested Beatty’s life was his wife, Clare E. One quote by Beatty sums up what being him must have been like: “The way to know a riverman is that he talks of nothing but women when aboard and nothing but boats when ashore.” Beatty’s greatest enemy, he told a reporter for a 1950 Cincinnati Times Star article, was fog. ![]() The captain and his crew, for example, called the diminutive Lohre twins either “Pete and Repeat” or “Handy and Dandy.”īeatty was described by local writers as rough and always ready. The big man - Beatty’s daughter Beverly Acree of Hebron said he was 6-foot-1 and 270 pounds at his largest - had a fun side, too, Lohre said. Beatty towboat early in his art education days and displays it in his Clifton Home. Tom Lohre painted this portrait of the Clare E. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. “He took chances the Corps wouldn’t take. Those who did, such as officials with the Army Corps of Engineers who often called on Beatty to help solve problems along the river, learned just how he “could muscle his way to get his way,” Lohre said. “We were naive, but we knew not to second-guess him.” “He was a giant, like Mike Fink or Paul Bunyan,” Tom Lohre said. Along with twin brother Chuck, Lohre worked for Beatty’s marine rescue and salvage company during summers in the early 1970s. John Beatty took to the Ohio River as if he were legendary keelboater Mike Fink and wrestled with it like Paul Bunyan would a mighty tree.Īt least that’s how Cincinnati artist Tom Lohre saw it when he was a Covington Catholic High School kid. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |