Chalkboard Thoughts

      Mary Petry was born on October 12th, 1949 to Marcella Louise Petry and Paul William Petry. She had an identical twin sister named Martha.     In 1970, Mary was an honor student at Cincinnati’s Mt. St. Joseph College. She was studying French. (Her twin sister, Martha was away at college in Minnesota.)    William Sproat was born in 1947. He was from a suburb of Philadelphia: Havertown, Pennsylvania. His parents were Mary and William J. Sproat. On the 1950 census William’s father worked at a Distillery. On that same Census, William has a younger sister named Patricia Ann.     In 1970, William Sproat was a graduate student, also studying French, at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He lived with a roommate at  178 West 8th Avenue in Apartment C.   On Friday evening February 27th, 1970, Mary traveled to Columbus to see William. She took a cab. Today an Uber would cost you $117 dollars or more to make the ...

       Kathryn Louise Wiltrout was born on May 31st, 1945 in Sidney, Nebraska. Her parents were Doris and Robert Wiltrout. That’s in Cheyenne County which is way out in Western Nebraska. Interstate 80 runs past it. I have driven that stretch of I-80 but I must admit that I did not recall Sidney, Nebraska. Looking at the map you can see that Lodgepole Creek runs through the town.  I imagine the town grew up there because of the water supply. The railroad likely came along next and then the Interstate came about a century later.     By 1950, the Wiltrout family was living in Akron, Ohio according to the 1950 Census.    Kathryn Wiltrout married Jay Bevington in 1963 when she was 17 and he was 20. Jay was in the AirForce at the time. They had been high school sweethearts at Coventry High School.   Kathryn Bevington was a young mother in 1972. She and Jay had a son and a daughter.    Kathryn took on a job ...

       Bobbie Lee Dorough Wells was born in Alabama on the 16th of November 1949 to Mr. and Mrs. Woodrow Dorough of Pell City, Alabama . Bobbie was born into a large family. She had four sisters and five brothers.  Bobbie married Larry Wells. They lived in Taylor, Michigan . They had a daughter named Renée. Renee was grown and married by 1980. She and her husband also lived in Taylor, Michigan.    Bobbie Lee Wells was working in the medical field, it seems, in her last year of life. I found a photo of her in her nurses uniform on her Find-a-Grave profile .    Taylor, Michigan is a nice town.  It’s a suburb of Detroit. It’s just a couple minutes north of Flat Rock, Michigan .    On February 19th, 1980, Bobbie Lee Wells disappeared. I didn’t see anything about the time of day that she disappeared but I am going to guess that she was leaving work after an evening shift.        One of...