FORWARD:
American biography has been a genre of literature I have enjoyed since I was a grade school student at South Street School in Vermilion, Ohio where I grew up. Long before I entered the secondary grades I had become familiar with the likes of Walter Reuther, J.C. Penny, Henry Ford, and a man who would someday become the 37th President of the United States of America, Richard Milhouse Nixon. In later years I devoured the artistic/journalistic writings of men such as Jack Kerouac and John Dos Passos; the autobiographies of great Americans like Ben Franklin and Mark Twain - and the stories of many many more human beings who helped forge the destiny of our nation. It was not enough to know just the facts . I believed, and continue to believe, that it is important to understand how these human beings felt, and how they viewed the world, during their lives. What/who motivated them? What/who touched them?
And so it is from this passion that I have begun to put together short biographical sketches of the men and women who lived, loved, and worked in my home town. While very few acquired national and/or international notoriety they, each and everyone, played a vital role in the making of this little town on the southern most shore of Lake Erie.
It is not important for you to have known them or known of them to read of their lives. For, in essence, they are the very same people who once lived (and still live) in your town wherever you are in America.
I will add a new biography or two every week for as long as I am able. They will be listed below where you can "click" on their names and visit their lives at your leisure.
I hope you enjoy them as much as I did writing about them.
Rich Tarrant - July 11, 2006
Captain Henry Delker (1836-1890)
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© 2006 Rich Tarrant
