Jefferson County Historical Society submitted the following article:
[PHOTO: When Bowdish moved his exhibit to Pittsburgh, he would often camp out at Buhl Planetarium while building it, a fact established by talking to people who knew him then. (Courtesy Jefferson County History Center)]
Submitted by Carole Briggs:
FACTS ABOUT CHARLIE
School records for Charles Albert Bowdish are hard to find, and newspapers do not list him among the graduates.
Newspapers do list him as #342 of draftees in 1917, and we know he left for Camp Lee, Virginia, shortly before his 22nd birthday. Like other young men his age, Charlie must have been proud to enter the military. Wearing his uniform, he posed for pictures at Knapp’s Studio on Main Street. Later, he sent the editor of the Brookville American a photograph of Camp Lee and then appeared himself several days later, saying he’d strained a “heart muscle” and was on a sixty-day furlough.
A copy of Charlie’s honorable discharge paper dated July 12, 1920; however, shows that his military service was terminated due to “valvular heart disease, incurred not in line of duty.” In other words, Charlie had a heart problem that may have been present from birth or caused by an infection. He did not return to Camp Lee, and he did not travel to Europe where the war raged, and he did not suffer the ill effects of mustard gas.
Instead, his parents encouraged him to take over the responsibility of creating the annual Christmas exhibit that his father, Albert, had done for years. Even before electricity was common, Albert had created special displays with moving figures powered by a windmill!
Charlie did, and when his brother, George, married Mae Loesser on Christmas Day of 1919, friends did see his work, and word did spread thanks to Alfred Truman.
The Carnegie Science Center once said Charlie’s first exhibit was in 1920.
Was it?
George and Mae’s marriage is described in the Jeffersonian Democrat in January of 1920, an easy mistake for someone doing quick research to make, but the wedding described in the January 1920 newspaper had occurred the month before, on December 25, 1919.
The CSC has corrected that fact!
Did 600 people come as reported in Pennsylvania Profiles in 1989? Charlie himself recalled in an interview by David Putnam that about 400 came and he enjoyed it! “It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary but around 400 visited our home that Christmas season to view the display and that attention got me started.”
The facts about the man or the myth?
Does it matter when bright-eyed children catch the fun when the rooster crows and the trains begin to run on the Bowdish Model Railroad Layout at the History Center? Probably not! For historians, though, and for adults the facts should be important.
Copyright@Jefferson County Historical Society, Inc.
Copyright © 2024 EYT Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Any copying, redistribution or retransmission of the contents of this service without the express written consent of EYT Media Group, Inc. is expressly prohibited.
