Sandusky’s American Crayon Company

A CHAT WITH JOHN KROPF, AUTHOR OF COLOR CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, WITH TIM FERAN

It’s safe to say that, for most Ohioans, the city of Sandusky is synonymous with the amusement park Cedar Point, the roller coaster capital of the world.

But John Kropf knows that there’s a much more colorful story to be told. In Color Capital of the World: Growing Up with the Legacy of a Crayon Company, the Sandusky native poignantly weaves together personal memoir, family history, the social and economic rise and fall of blue-collar Sandusky, and company history of the American Crayon Company. (The company made brands such as Prang in Sandusky after a merger in 1913.)

Now living and working as a lawyer in the Washington, D.C., area, Kropf recently answered some questions about the book and his family’s involvement in the once-dominant crayon company.

Echoes: When did you first think about writing the book? Did it evolve from one idea into its final form, or is this form what you had in mind from the beginning?

JK: The book began as a very personal story. It was the combination of two factors coming together. The first was reading about the slow demise of the empty American Crayon Company factory in Sandusky, and its final days before demolition. Landscape is often our repository of a community’s memories. The factory was part of Sandusky’s memory for a community and the many generations of families who worked there. Once the factory was gone, there was the danger of losing those memories in those stories.

At the same time, I experienced two losses in my immediate family when my mother and sister died within a year of each other. Both times took me back to Sandusky, where they were buried in the family plot next to the founders of the American Crayon Company. With so much loss, I felt that the stories of my family who started the company also needed to be told.

Echoes: The conjuring of sense memory in the book is very potent— the smell, feel, look and even taste of crayons—and will take readers back to their grade school days, too. Is this something that you’ve always had in mind, or did it spring forth as you wrote the book?

JK: Those first experiences with crayons were extremely strong imprints on a young memory. The sensory part about the smell and taste of the crayons didn’t fully come to me until I started writing about it. I opened an old pack of Prang crayons, and the wax smell transported me back. I’ve heard smell is the strongest of the senses to trigger memory. Writing, reflecting and writing some more then becomes a form of excavation, which brings these memories to the surface and allows you to dust them off and examine them fresh.

Echoes: The sad final days of the factory are all too familiar to anyone who has witnessed the dismemberment of blue-collar jobs in Ohio. In your interviews with Sandusky folks, how much bitterness or anger was there about having to train their own replacements? Did you have a sense that the demise of the company was all but inevitable, or were there moments when you were aghast at some blown opportunities?

JK: I was not present for the transition of the Sandusky workers being asked to train their own replacements. What I wrote about in the book was essentially from newspaper accounts and other media. When I gave one of my first book talks at the Sandusky Library, I was fortunate enough to meet one of the union workers from the factory, who told me firsthand that they refused to train their replacements, and that “scabs” were brought in to do the training. I can’t imagine how angering and upsetting it would be for these workers—some of whom worked there 30 and 40 years and who made a worldclass product—being asked to put themselves out of a job.

One of the mysteries that I never fully solved was how it came to be that the company was sold and eventually closed. I have some clues and guesses, but none of the officers in the company is left to confirm. One theory is that after the third generation, there were no male descendants in the families to take over the reins of the company, and at that time the women in the family—my mother and her cousins— were not trained and brought into management, and that may have been the reason to sell.

As for the factory, part of the demise was that much of the factory equipment was not upgraded. I believe the factory was still coal-fired, and many of the equipment pieces were decades-old, with even some original from the early 1900s. I compare this to Binney & Smith, the makers of Crayola, who continued to fight successfully from the late ’50s onward to grow and strengthen their production capability. The NAFTA agreement in 1990, creating access to cheap labor, was the final straw.

Echoes: There’s a detailed description of your gradeschool class visit to the factory. Was that something that was indelibly fixed in your memory, or did you have some prompting from old friends?

JK: Again, like the smell of the crayons, the impressions on my early memory were very, very strong ones. Getting to see the inside of a crayon factory with its vats of pigment and conveyor belts and machinery was, and is still, indelible for me. It just took time to sit with the memories and recall the details.

Echoes: You describe how your mother spent money “without restraint” and wanted your stock to spend as well. This is very personal and probably painful stuff. Have you come to a sense of peace or understanding about her life and its effect on yours?

JK: There is a saying that the first generation makes it, the second generation manages it, while the third generation spends it. At the time I was upset with my mother, but in later years we made peace. For her time and place, she was never expected to make business decisions.

Left: Marcellus F. Cowdery (1815–1885), Sandusky’s first superintendent of schools and brother-in-law of William Curtis, encouraged Curtis in his pursuit of a usable school crayon. Middle: John Whitworth (1852–1907) married Caroline “Carrie” Curtis. He was the financier, general manager and treasurer of the American Crayon Company.

Right: John S. Cowdery (1833–1896) was president of Western School Supplies, forerunner of the American Crayon Company.

Echoes: That was a great detail about how the folks at the “Color Capital” gave advice to automakers on how to bring a pigment other than black to cars. When did you learn about that, and is there more to tell?

JK: That was the kind of detail that I learned as I read through the company documents and artifacts that had come down to me, supplemented by some news stories of the time. The American Crayon Company had more than one influence with the early automobile industry.

The company was known for making high-quality lightweight wood boxes for shipping their crayons and chalks. The boxes were also ideally suited to provide a grounding for Henry Ford’s electric starters in his Model Ts. The boxes were produced in the millions for the Ford Motor Company until Ford finally changed his design.

Echoes: There’s a story in the book about a fake Howard Hughes last will and testament that your sister wrote, and somehow gained widespread notoriety. How in the world did that memory stick with you? Or was it one of those “If I ever write a book, I HAVE TO put this in” moments?

JK: The Howard Hughes will was out of the imagination of my sister, who was highly creative and eccentric, and yes, there was a little bit of “if I ever write a book I want to find a way to include that story” as an example of her imagination. The fact that it was reported in Ohio papers quoting experts made it even more amazing.

Echoes: A quirky question—did you happen to write the book, take notes or do anything associated with the book using crayons, pencils or other such material?

JK: Whenever I sell a book, I inscribe it in an original American crayon with a color of the buyer’s choice.

Echoes: Deep in the book you describe driving back to the D.C. area with the “nagging sensation ... wasting my life.” Do the recent efforts to revive Sandusky and other Ohio towns give you some encouragement, especially with the publication of this book?

JK: That passage in the book is really more about me, struggling with my memories of the past, and the ending of the crayon factory, and the spirit of innovation from my ancestors three generations ago. I had gone in a completely different direction and was still trying to let go of the past, and assure myself that I was going in a new direction that was correct for me. By telling the stories in the book, I felt I could finally honor those memories.

Echoes: Near the end of the book, you pose this question: “Can a factory have a soul?” How do you answer that?

JK: On that topic of a factory having a soul, I’d like to think that a crayon factory evokes greater feelings of nostalgia and affection than, say, a ball-bearing factory, because all of us as kids had that first crayon experience of creativity.

I suppose the one thing I would like to see through with this book—and I think would be important to your readers—is the idea of having a state historic marker on the site of the former factory. I was in Columbus not long ago and saw an Ohio Historical Marker for the site of the very first Wendy’s hamburger restaurant. The American Crayon

Company was the very first company to manufacture children’s color crayons, and at one time manufactured more crayons and color paints than anywhere else in the world. I’d like to see the company’s industrial legacy be remembered.

Tim Feran is a native of Cleveland and a graduate of Harvard University. For more than 40 years, he’s been a professional journalist, first at the Lorain Journal, then for 30 years at The Columbus Dispatch, and currently as a freelance writer. He lives in Columbus with his wife, Maryellen O’Shaughnessy, Franklin County clerk of courts.

Top left: The caption to this stereograph reads: “President Harding Holds ‘Pow Wow’ with Umatilla Indians at Meachem [sic], Oregon.”

Middle left: The caption to this stereograph reads: “President and Mrs. Harding and Official Party Before Great Alaskan Totem Pole at Sitka.”

Bottom left: This stereograph by Keystone View Company shows President Warren G. Harding meeting children in Valdez, Alaska, during his Voyage of Understanding.