dignified the stone stairway that took you up to the great white porch stretching from
end to end. An imposing structure. Whenever I passed it in later years, long after it
was no longer a hospital, I thought of its significance in my life. I was sorry when
years later it was razed.
Our house was Number 16 (later renumbered 216), the house in which my
mother now lived by virtue of her marriage into the Rohrer family in 1920. It was the
house that my great-grandfather,
Lorenzo Dow Rohrer, had built
in 1888 when he was a
prosperous flour mill owner.
While in the planning stages, it
was described in a newspaper
account as "very ornamental and
unlike any other houses here."
My mother once said that
she had met my father at a dance.
In 1920, the war that would later
be known as World War I had
been over for less than two years.
Like most single former
"doughboys" Charles Webster
Rohrer sought and found a wife,
Kathryn Ann Wallace. He was 25
and she 19. She was Catholic and
he was not, so their wedding was
restricted to a simple ceremony
in the rectory of Saints Peter and
Paul's Church, in accordance
with the Catholic Church's rules
at that time.
Kathryn was undoubtedly
proud of what she and her family
must have considered a
prestigious marriage. But in fact,
in 1920 Lorenzo was forced to go
out of business and Number 16
Baltimore Avenue no longer
represented the prosperity of
former years. And yet it was surely a break for the young couple to be invited to live
in the big house, for their income was probably not great: my father was a salesman
2
CWR with parents Kathryn and Charlie Rohrer, ca. 1923
