A HERO WALKED AMONG US--WAY BACK WHEN!

     It's amazing how much one can learn, if they are only willing to listen.  For instance, during a chit-chat session with my neighbor, Nicole Mitchell, who was born and raised in Elyria, I told her about my new blog on The Morning Journal's internet edition, and that I was on the lookout for stories to share on the blog.  She told me that she had some interesting stories to tell about her grandfather, Walter H. Murbach, an Elyria native.  As I listened, I found myself being drawn into the personal history of this long-ago Ohioan.  I decided to research some of the great stories that Nicole was telling me, and this is what I discovered:
     Walter was born into a fairly wealthy Lorain County family on November 14, 1883.  His parents were Jakob and Louisa, and they owned a mill.  Walter was a bit of a mischief-maker even while still in high school.  A senior in the Elyria High School Class of 1902, Walter and about a dozen of his classmates went to the old grist mill on East Bridge Street.  There they found a huge rock weighing almost one ton.  That evening, Walter and his friends secured a wagon and four houses and, with great difficulty, loaded the rock into the wagon, took it to the high school, and placed it at the corner of Middle Avenue and Sixth Street.  A man named Mr. Sands, who owned a barn across the street from the school, conspired with the boys by carving "02" into the rock to commemorate their graduation year of 1902.  Even so many years later, when Walter's granddaughter Nicole was a student at Elyria High, students could still be heard to say to one another, "Meet me at the Rock."  My "sources" tell me that, although it has since been moved from its original location, the rock still remains close to Elyria High School.
     A few years later, Walter Murbach once again made news.  While still in his early 20's, he rescued a boy who had fallen through the ice into the Black River.  As a reward for his valor, Walter Murbach became one of only five Ohioan that year to be awarded the Carnegie Medal for acts of unusual heroism, a medal created only a few years earlier by the famous philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie.
     So, with some careful listening and a little research, I was able to learn quite a bit about an "average" Elyria native whose sense of humor and whose bravery make his legacy far from average.  But then again, are any of us really just average?