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2928 West 13th St. Ashtabula, Ohio 44004 phone: 440-964-3396 Search This Site: The Early Years of the AAC: the 1950's: Posted: Friday, December 13, 2002 *** The following is the first in our yearlong series about the history of the Ashtabula Arts Center. Over the course of the year we will feature interviews in each newsletter with people influential in the growth and development of our facility. *** When the Ashtabula Fine Arts Center began in the former home of Katherine Hill 50 years ago, many doubted the organization would survive to see the next decade, much less grow to what it is today. It took the support of a few special people to ensure that the Arts Center kept moving steadily forward and not backward. Three of those people are Marian Carlisle, Corinne Loyd and Charlie Sheppard, all of whom were influential in the beginnings of the Arts Center and remain involved here in many ways to this day. Both Carlisle and Sheppard were original members of the Ashtabula Arts Center Board of Trustees in the 1950s, and worked closely with Hill in the early years of the Center. Both remember fondly the person who founded the AAC. “I remember Katherine well,” says Carlisle. “She was one of my favorite people,” says Sheppard. According to Sheppard, the idea for the Fine Arts Center came from Hill’s desire to bring the arts closer to home. “I think she decided Ashtabula needed more cultural activities,” he says. In the early years, the Fine Arts Center was only open limited hours, and was used primarily for art shows, art classes and musical instruction. Hill brought in the majority of the Center’s first teachers from the Cleveland area, including many students from the Cleveland Institute of Music and Lake Erie College. Other instructors were affiliated with the Cleveland Museum of Art. Hill also worked to bring in well-known artists for the exhibits. According to Sheppard, the first big exhibit was one by internationally known Swiss artist Paul Klee, held in the first few years of the Center. “That’s what Katherine wanted to establish,” he says. Loyd was the Arts Center’s first paid employee, hired in 1955, two years after the Center opened. She worked at the Center for 25 years, and, because the early years were a bit rough financially, she was called on to do a little bit of everything around the building, from cleaning to secretarial work to teaching classes. “When you didn’t have the money to hire someone else,” she laughs, “I was around.” Current Executive Director Beth Koski remembers meeting Loyd as a young child, when she took piano lessons at the Fine Arts Center. “I used to give her my piano money,” recalls Koski. Once Hill passed away in 1958, it was Loyd who was a driving force in keeping the Center open until the first professional director, Jim Frank, was hired in 1962. She was the person who applied to the Civic Development Corporation (CDC) for the grant which eventually built the current Arts Center. According to Carlisle’s son, Bert, Katherine’s brothers gave the family home to the YMCA following Katherine’s death, under the stipulation that they could use it for the next 10 years. “There had to be some decisions made as to whether the Arts Center could continue,” says Bert. Loyd applied to the CDC every five years from 1960 to 1970, and was finally given $167,000 in 1970 for the purchase of land on West 13th Street and the building of what we now know as the Ashtabula Arts Center. But they were a bit wary of the Center’s ability to survive, and Loyd says that the first contract stipulated that if the Center didn’t make it, then the land and building would be given to Kent State. “They didn’t trust us,” says Loyd. But the Arts Center flourished, even making it through some very hard financial times to become what it is today. “We had our ups and downs, you know how it is,” says Loyd. “But it was a great experience, it really was.” “I think one of the greatest things we started was the Straw Hat Theatre,” says Sheppard, who still regularly attends shows both at Straw Hat and G.B. Theatre to this day. “That was a real risk when we started out. Everything was a risk.” For Loyd, even starting out her job at the Center was a risk to her. She applied for the job after responding to an ad in the newspaper for a secretary. “It was one of the hardest things I ever did,” she says, “to walk up that walk and open the door.” Because Hill loved Boston and the New England area, Loyd jokes that “it was my New England accent that got me the job.” For Carlisle, it was for the love of her friend that she became a board member. “Katherine said that if I’d be on the Arts Center board, then she’d do something for me,” says Carlisle. “Somehow that never quite worked out.” “Too busy with the Arts Center, I guess,” says Sheppard. Sheppard, who served as Treasurer for the Board, believes it was his friendship with the Hill family that landed him on the original board. “I think the rest of us (on the board) were there because we were old friends of the Hills,” he says. However, each of these people also became involved in the Center because they thought it had something to offer the community at that time, and still does to this day. “The Arts Center has had wonderful things to give,” says Sheppard.