~~~LUCASVILLE LEGENDS~~~


UNDER DEVELOPMENT~~NOT A COMPLETE LIST
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Agriculture

David Adkins
photo from http://www.amerpoultryassn.com/district_directors.htm
American Poultry Association, Secretary

Arts and Entertainment

Dana Romanello

Josh Stewart

Laurie Franks

picture from http://allthingswildlyconsidered.blogspot.com/2017/06/lucasville-and-actress-laurie-franks.html
After graduation from Valley High School, Laurie Franks earned teaching credentials in organ, piano, and voice at the Cincinnati College of music where she graduated with at Bachelor of Music in Voice and a Masters of Music in Voice.
​
Franks taught voice and organ at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio, and she taught voice at Hendrix Methodist College in Conway, Arkansas. She received an honorary Doctorate from Emmanuel United Methodist Church, Ohio.

After going to New York, Franks became a soprano soloist with “The Master Singers” under the direction of Joseph Liebling, whose musical genius was acknowledged by no less a composer than Igor Stravinsky She later toured the United States with “The Little Chorale.”

Franks became a soloist at many New York Churches while also studying acting in New York. She began her “serious” acting career in the title role of Leave It to Jane (1959), an off-Broadway hit. Franks went on to act in many Broadway shows including Bells Are Ringing, Fanny, Mame, Kiss Me Kate, Peter Pan, Cabaret, Oklahoma, and Oliver. While in New York, she became involved in over 250 Actors Equity Shows including Broadway.

Laurie also sang leading roles in many musicals from Toronto, Canada, to Sydney, Australia with leading men such as John Raitt, Zachary Scott, Robert Roundsville, Ted Scott, Jack Cassidy, Darren McGavin, and Robert Horton.

She has also starred in many television shows, and she has done work in commercials on all the major television networks.

Franks has had significant roles in major films such as Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Tales From the Crypt (1992), Ed and His Dead Mother (1993), and Dave (1993). Her career continued in Los Angeles as church director, film actress and author of the book Lucasville Lore. Laurie Franks was previously married to Philip Bruns (May 2, 1931 – February 8, 2012). Bruns was also an actor, known for roles in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976), General Hospital (1963) and Flashdance (1983).

​Article from Frank Thompson's http://allthingswildlyconsidered.blogspot.com/2017/06/lucasville-and-actress-laurie-franks.html
​Roy Rogers
Picture from
​http://www.bobnolan-sop.net/Biographies/Bob%20Nolan/Bob%20Nolan%20bio/Bob%201946-49.htm
Roy Rogers, the King of the Cowboys, was actually born in the city. It was in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 5, 1911, that Leonard Slye (later to be known as Roy Rogers) was born to Mattie and Andy Slye. Years later, the building where he was born was torn down to make way for Riverfront Stadium (recently renamed Cinergy Field), the home of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team. Roy liked to say that he was born right where second base is now located. But the Slye family was never cut out for city life, so a few months after Roy was born, Andy Slye moved his family to Portsmouth, Ohio (a hundred miles east of Cincinnati), where they lived on the houseboat that he and Roy's uncle built. When Roy was seven years old his father decided it was time they settled on solid ground, so he bought a small farm in nearby Duck Run. Living on a farm meant long hours and hard work, but no matter how hard they worked the land there was little money to be made. Roy often said that about all they could raise on their farm were rocks. Eventually Andy Slye realized that he'd have to return to his old factory job at the United States Shoe Company in Cincinnati if he was going to be able to support his family. Since his father would be able to return home only on weekends, this meant that even more of the responsibilities for farm chores fell onto Roy's young shoulders.

Mattie Slye suffered from lameness as a result of the polio she had contracted as a child, and Roy always marveled at the way she was able to raise four active children (Roy and his sisters, Mary, Cleda, and Kathleen) despite her disability. Still, farm life agreed with Roy, who often rode to school on Babe, the old, sulky racehorse his father had bought for him. According to Roy, "We lived so far out in the country, they had to pipe sunlight to us." Living on the farm meant they had to make their own entertainment, since radio was in its earliest days and television was far in the future. On Saturday nights the Slye family often invited some of their neighbors over for a square dance, during which Roy would sing and play the mandolin. Before long he became skilled at calling square dances, and throughout the years he always enjoyed finding opportunities to showcase this talent in his films and television appearances.

​It was also while he was growing up on the farm in Duck Run that Roy learned to yodel. Andy Slye had brought home a cylinder player (the predecessor to the phonograph) along with some cylinders, including one by a Swiss yodeler. Roy played that cylinder again and again and soon began developing his own yodeling style. Before long, Roy and his mother worked out a way of communicating with each other by using different types of yodels. Mattie would use one type of yodel to let Roy know that it was time for lunch, another to warn that a storm was brewing, and still another to call him in at the end of the day. Roy would then relay that message to his sisters by yodeling across the fields to them.

By the time Roy had completed his second year of high school, it was clear that their farm would never support the family, so he made the difficult decision to drop out of school and take a job with his father at the shoe factory in Cincinnati. Roy quickly discovered that factory work was just as hot, monotonous, and unpleasant for him as it was for his father. Since his older sister Mary had married and moved to Lawndale, California (close to Los Angeles), Roy and his father decided they should quit their jobs, pack up the car, and take the family out to visit her. Somehow their old car held together, and they eventually made it to Lawndale. (The old Dodge family car in which they made that trip is now on display at The Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum.) After a four-month visit the Slye family returned to Cincinnati, but by now the cold Ohio winters couldn't compete with the lure of California's warmer climate. A few months later Roy returned to Southern California, where the rest of his family soon joined him. Although the Depression was growing worse by the day, Roy and his father had hoped that jobs would be easier to find on the West Coast than they were in Ohio. However, California turned out to be just as hard hit as the rest of the country. Jobs were hard to come by, and they didn't tend to last very long. Roy worked at anything he could find, including driving a gravel truck on a highway construction crew until the truck's owner went bankrupt. In the spring of 1931 Roy went up to Tulare (located in central California's farm belt), where he picked peaches for Del Monte and lived in the same labor camps John Steinbeck wrote about so powerfully in his classic novel, "The Grapes Of Wrath".

​He received a phone call asking if he'd like to join a local country music group called The Rocky Mountaineers. Despite his shyness Roy was always willing to reach out for any opportunity that came his way, so he accepted the group's offer and became a member of the band in August of 1931. In June 1933 Roy and Tim Spencer joined a new group called The O-Bar-O Cowboys and embarked on what turned out to be a disastrous tour of theSouthwest. In September 1933 The O-Bar-O Cowboys straggled back to Los Angeles and the fellows went their separate ways. Roy was able to land a job singing with Jack And His Texas Outlaws on radio station KFWB. Still, the desire to be part of a good harmony group wouldn't leave him. Roy always loved harmony singing, and even after achieving success as a solo performer, he always preferred singing harmony to singing solo. He contacted Tim Spencer and talked him into giving it another try and said he thought Bob Nolan should be the third member of the trio. Roy and Tim drove out to the Bel Air Country Club where Bob was working as a golf caddy. The boys decided to put the emphasis on Western music and call themselves The Pioneer Trio. The Pioneer Trio started out on the Jack And His Texas Outlaws radio program, where their fine harmonies soon began attracting quite a bit of fan mail along with good newspaper reviews. The Pioneer Trio's harmonies and Nolan & Spencer's songs have since become the very foundation of Western music. Always determined to improve their sound, the fellows soon decided they needed a good instrumentalist and added superb fiddler Hugh Farr to the group. One day Harry Hall caught the boys off guard by introducing them as The Sons Of The Pioneers. After their broadcast they asked why he'd changed their introduction. Hall said he thought they were too young to be pioneers, but that they certainly could be Sons Of The Pioneers.

​Meanwhile, radio work had led to the Pioneers' first film appearance, in the Warner Bros. short Radio Scout, starring Swedish comedian El Brendel. A few months later the Pioneers made their feature film debut, in The Old Homestead, which featured Mary Carlisle. These films were soon followed by their appearances in two Westerns starring Charles Starrett (Gallant Defender and The Mysterious Avenger), two with Dick Foran (Song Of The Saddle and California Mail), and an appearance in the Bing Crosby film Rhythm On The Range, where they joined Bing in singing "I'm An Old Cowhand (From The Rio Grande)." In July 1936 the Pioneers left KFWB and traveled to Dallas to appear at the Texas Centennial. While performing there they appeared in Gene Autry's film The Big Show, which was partially filmed on location at the Centennial. Interestingly, one of the visitors who saw The Sons Of The Pioneers perform at the Texas Centennial was a young singer named Dale Evans.

One day while Roy (who was still known as Len Slye) was in a hat store in Glendale, he heard someone say that Republic was holding auditions for a singing cowboy the following day. "I saddled my guitar the next morning and went out there, but I couldn't get in because I didn't have an appointment. So I waited around until the extras began coming back from lunch, and I got on the opposite side of the crowd of people and came in with them. I'd just gotten inside the door when a hand fell on my shoulder. It was Sol Siegel, the head producer of Western pictures." Siegel, who remembered Roy from the work he and the Pioneers had done in two of Gene Autry's films, asked what he was doing there. When Roy said he'd heard they were looking for another singing cowboy, Siegel asked if he'd brought his guitar with him. Roy said it was in his car, but that he'd run back and get it. By the time he got back to the producer's office he was out of breath and couldn't sing. Siegel told Roy to rest for a minute and then he'd listen to him. The wait must have been worthwhile, because on Wednesday, October 13, 1937, Republic Pictures signed Len Slye to a seven-year contract. Republic put him to work in the Three Mesquiteers film Wild Horse Rodeo in which billed as Dick Weston, he sang one song. Things were quiet for a few months until Gene Autry failed to report for the start of his next film. By then the studio was prepared, and they put Len Slye, who had been renamed Roy Rogers, into the lead role in Under Western Stars, the film that had been scheduled for Autry. When Under Western Stars was released in April 1938, it became an immediate hit, and it made a star of Roy Rogers. Gene Autry and the studio soon resolved their differences, but in the meantime Republic Pictures had launched Roy Rogers' career.

​Although Roy's film career was going well, he was concerned about his less-than-healthy financial situation and knew he needed better management. Early in 1940 Art Rush, who had been the West Coast head of RCA Victor Records, where he produced recording sessions by artists as diverse as Tommy Dorsey and Leopold Stokowski, invited him to lunch. Art had then become managing director of a major talent agency before starting a management company of his own. Over lunch Art said he wanted to represent Roy and that he felt he could do a good job for him. Although Roy liked Art Rush personally, he was concerned that a manager who represented Nelson Eddy wasn't exactly the right person for a cowboy like himself. Just as they were finishing lunch Roy asked Art where he was from. When he said he was from Ohio, Roy reached out his hand and said they had a deal. For the next 49 years (until his death in 1989), Art Rush represented Roy Rogers. Their handshake was the only contract they ever had.

Over the course of the next few years Art Rush was able to have Roy's contract with Republic rewritten. Although it wasn't as financially rewarding as they had hoped, he did get the studio to include a clause giving Roy the right to his name, voice, and image. As innocuous as it may seem, this clause was actually the beginning of financial security for Roy and his family; Art Rush began negotiating deals with a number of companies to put out a wide variety of products bearing the Roy Rogers name. Before long there were Roy Rogers hats, shirts, and bandannas. There were Roy Rogers cap pistols, holsters, and lassos. There were Roy Rogers furniture, sheets, blankets, and clocks. Roy Rogers's wristwatches were sought after by countless kids, and the Roy Rogers lunch box became an essential part of growing up. Roy Rogers became the biggest individual name in product licensing, second only to the array of Walt Disney cartoon characters when it came to product endorsements. Roy was always concerned about the quality of any product that bore his name. If he found that a product was shoddy or unsatisfactory, he wouldn't renew his contract with that company, because any product that bore his name had to be of a high quality.

​In 1943 Roy was voted the #1 Western star at the box office, and Republic began billing him as the King of the Cowboys. A few months later he made a guest appearance in the Warner Bros. all-star wartime musical film Hollywood Canteen, in which he and the Pioneers introduced the Cole Porter song "Don't Fence Me In." By 1944 Roy had starred in 39 films and had worked with almost as many leading ladies. All this changed when the studio cast Dale Evans in The Cowboy And The Senorita. The wonderful chemistry between Roy and Dale was apparent to everyone right from the start, as the movie screen lit up with a special kind of magic.

​Ever since The Cowboy And The Senorita, Dale Evans had been working with Roy in his films, on his radio program, and at personal appearances around the country. Late in 1947 they were appearing at the rodeo in Chicago. One evening as they were waiting for the announcer to introduce them, Roy turned to Dale and asked if she was doing anything on New Year's Eve. When Dale said she hadn't planned anything, Roy suggested they get married that day. Before Dale could reply, Roy heard his introduction, and he and Trigger went racing out into the arena. When Dale got to the center of the arena she smiled and accepted Roy's proposal. Roy always grinned when he said that Dale must have really loved him, because when she married him he had three young children and 34 coon dogs. On New Year's Eve 1947 Roy and Dale were married on a ranch in Davis, Oklahoma, where a few months earlier they had filmed Home In Oklahoma. Art Rush was Roy's best man, and his wife, Mary Jo, was Dale's matron of honor. On December 31, 1997, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary at their home in Apple Valley, California.
​
Lovenna Kimbler Runyon

picture from Lucasville, OH Sesquicentennial 1969 Program

Edith Dernback Schultheis

picture from Lucasville, OH Sesquicentennial 1969 Program

Barry Sparks
Barry Sparks is a talented bassist and guitarist, who has performed and recorded with many legendary Rock Bands, like: Yngwie Malmsteen, Uli Jon Roth, The Michael Schenker Group, Scorpions, Dokken, U.F.O., Ted Nugent and currently on stage with B'z! The new album is out now, "Riot on Mars". All music by Barry Sparks, Vocals by Michael Vescera. To keep up to date with the latest news from Barry Sparks, go to Barry Sparks Official Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/BarrySparks/

​Athletics

(Wesley) Branch Rickey

picture from http://every-day-is-special.blogspot.com/2014/12/december-20-happy-birthday-branch-rickey.html

Article from a LAHS Scrapbook 
Brian Gahm
Brian is a two-time IHRA World Champion and is credited with winning back-to-back world championships in 2002 and 2003, plus becoming the first driver to officially run a 6.4, 6.3 and 6.2 elapsed time. He also has 11 national event wins in seven years.

Mandy Merritt
Patrick Riehl

picture from http://www.milb.com/player/index.jsp?player_id=669278#/career/R/pitching/2017/ALL

Dean Schuler

picture from https://associationdatabase.com/aws/OHSBCA/pt/sd/news_article/9303/_PARENT/layout_details/false


​Gene Tenace (born Fiore Gino Tennaci)

picture from https://alchetron.com/Gene-Tenace-850985-W


​​Education and Research


​​Government and Law

John Lucas


​Robert Lucas
​12th Governor of OH (1781-1853)
and Governor of new Iowa Territory until 1841

picture from http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Robert_Lucas

Ted Strickland
68th Governor of Ohio (2007-2011) and served as US House of Representative from OH for two terms (1993–1995) and (1997-2007)

picture from https://alchetron.com/Ted-Strickland-834269-W

Military

Command Sgt. Maj. Richard E. Merritt