Let's Romp in the Field of Words

Here is a playful and picky look at our way-word language . . . unique, off-beat, and funny. It's what guests would steal from your coffee table, so you might need two.

Sheldon Harper is a West Virginia Ohioan. He was born in 1921 in Frenchton, West Virginia, and schooled in Fairmont, West Virginia, graduating from East Fairmont High in 1939. He moved to Akron, Ohio in 1939, graduated from Hammel Business University there in 1940, and worked at Goodyear Aircraft Corporation before World War II military service from 1942 to 1946. At Ohio State University he received a BA degree in journalism in 1950 and edited the campus daily, The Lantern, in his senior year. Father of four, grandfather of seven, and widowed since 2000, his marriage to Juanita Glisson in 1948 endured for more than 51 years. Currently he lives in Strongsville, Ohio, with Madge (Claudia) Lee. He has been an advertising manager and writer for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Akron, Berkley & Company in Iowa, and, in Cleveland, True Temper Corporation, Mills Hall Walborn advertising agency, and Cuyahoga Savings & Loan. He has been a reporter/writer for city publications in Brecksville and Broadview Heights, both in Ohio, and a councilman in the latter city. He has been writing a newsletter, now numbering 67 issues since 1989, to his high school classmates. Because he has been writing for many years, and because he has been away from the nine-to-five life since 1986, he can reasonably be called a has-been. I am Sheldon Harper and I approve this message.