Found these pics in the March 1962 issue of BOWLING magazine. They’re from the ABC Convention of that year in Des Moines, Iowa. While he wears a crown, the title of “Joe Bowler” was bestowed upon Oscar Butts, seen in these pictures regally attired and in the company of what appears to be bowling Princesses. And or course, theres a picture of Iowa’s Governor Norman Erbe welcoming the Bowlers to the convention. Gov. Erbe was a pinboy in his younger days… he must’ve known plenty about setting ’em up only to watch ’em get knocked down again.
Call it morbid fascination, but I’ve been poring through a a trove of material that my wife Lynne dug up years ago when she worked at the University of Rochester’s Rush Rhees Library. When I was eight years old, my best friend Cremer was murdered by Mariann Colby, the mother of my other best friend Dane. Needless to say, it kicked off a very messed up period in my life. Lynne, who is quite a researcher, delved into this topic this about 25 years ago when we were dating. As she had access to tons of library resources she requested microfilm from the Plain Dealer Archives (not sure which institution stores them). Of course, back in those days one printed Microfiche onto thermal paper, so all of the pages were much like a paper based negative.
So, I fired up the scanner a few weeks back and started to process the images. I started off with a Cremer’s picture which appears to be a either a standard “portrait” done by a photo studio or perhaps an photo touched up by the newspaper’s photo department. The picture of Mariann looks like it was taken outside of the courtroom, her expression quite disturbing. I do remember being disturbed by the fact that my name wasn’t in the paper. It wasn’t until later, after Mariann’s arrest, I realized how close I came to being with Cremer on the day he was murdered.
I’ve added to the mix photos of other murdered children that were part of a companion article on Child Killers. Didn’t get the entire article, so I had to look up the names of the children to get more information. I was surprised to find out that Beverly Jarosz’s murder is still unsolved.
Charles Collins
James Collins
Beverly Jarosz, murder still unsolved
Mariann Colby, Cremer’s killer.
8 year old Sheila Ann Tuley, murdered in 1948 by Harold Beach
Donna Adkins, kidanpped and blinded in her left eye at age 7
Crener Young, murdered by Marian Colby
Once again, kudos to Lynne for digging up this information. There doesn’t seem to be much of any information about Cremer Young on the web. In this day & age information like this is quite incendiary; I’m certain that Nancy Grace would’ve hounded Mrs. Colby to no end.
I don’t know for sure why I’m so fascinated with Fred Rogers. I was 11 and living in Pittsburgh when his show started to become popular. My Mother worked at WQED as a volunteer and sometimes helped out with the show, but not in any major way that I can brag about. My Uncle worked in television advertising at CBS (he was a drinking buddy of Bob Keeshan’s, but that is a different story).
No, I think I started to *really* appreciate Fred Rogers in high school probably after hearing the National Lampoon Radio Hour bit (feat. Christopher Guest and Brian Doyle Murray). And now that I’m collecting kids records, I note that it’s hard to find a Mr. Rogers record that isn’t *totally* whipped. Kids played the crap out of his records.
