Meet the students and teachers at Estes School in the 1920s.
“Ollie” Schlesselman – I was going through an issue of “The Erie Echo” from 1927 [The Echo was an school annual for all the schools in Erie County] and was surprised when I came across this nice photograph of late Vermilionite Oliver “Ollie” Schlesselman’s senior class picture. He lived and went to school on Kelly’s Island.
I knew Ollie back in the 1960s when he was working as a fisherman for Kishman Fish. I frequented the bars back then and came to know him when he stopped in after work at Stan Kowalski’s “Liberty Tavern” (currently 2015 “Rudy’s) for a beer before dinner. I guess he’d been a fisherman all his life.
He was born around 1910 and passed on in 1976 – a rather young man. I also remember his son, Hank. His youngest child – a daughter (her name currently escapes me) became a Vermilion schoolteacher. She and her husband currently live on Washington Street right across from the Ritter Library.
Ollie was one of those real people who provided that which once was an otherwise dull village with a little bit of color. http://www.vermilionohio.org/
