Winter Blahs

February 1, 2011


After about a year of being lazy and not keeping the blog up day to day I decided that I needed to get back into it again. I guess that with other activities and or going brain dead it’s easy to skip a day, then a week, then it becomes months and now it’s a year.

One of the things that got me thinking about it was recently I was looking through some of my grandmothers old diaries. She always kept a dairy with a brief description of her and sometimes the family daily activities. Usually this included a brief description of the weather, the Bible verses she read that day, and any other activity she was involved in that day. Some of the diaries are in small pocket notebooks published for farmers to keep notes in, some are a little more sophisticated diaries. My sister-in-law has one from grandma that’s a five year diary that has entries over five years where entries are made on the same page for the same date but a year apart over a five year period.

What I decided to do was to put grandma’s entry for the day as a point of interest in the blog. At least it would be a way to preserve a part of our family history for others in the family or not in the family to read and maybe enjoy.

The diary that I picked to start with was a simple little pocket notebook that was published in 1910 by the Hardy’s Fertilizer Company in Columbus, Ohio. The front has a couple pages of fertilizer chemical compositions for about ten different fertilizers they produced with an encouragement to the farmer to send in a sample for them to analyze for free if they had any doubts about the results they were getting. The back has a couple of pages of the quantity of fertilizer to use for different crops and other tips. Also one page has the calendar for 1909 and 1910. Grandma was frugal so probably grabbed this little notebook that wasn’t used and began her 1914 diary and below is her 2/1/14 entry.
From Grandma’s diary-1914

“Feb. 1. Sun. Went to Sunday school. Read the first twenty three chapters of Job. All went over to John Ruthroffs to spend the evening.”

This was pretty concise and not very newsy and just a brief synopsis of the day.
In the last entry of this blog last year I promised to give an update on the results of the trial of the persons involved in the murder of my cousin. Below is part of a note received from his son after the trial. This is old news locally but those that might have been following the story may not have seen the results.

The summary of the trials are as follows:
Cortez Oliver:
Found guilty by a jury of his peers on Murder, Aggravated Burglary, and Aggravated Robbery
Received the maximum sentence of 35 years to life. That is 15 years to life + 10 years + 10 years to run consecutively. This means he is not eligble for parole for at least 35 years.
He will be appealing his case which will take about a year and half.

Jonathan Dukes:
Found guilty by a jury of his peers on Murder, Aggravated Burglary, and Aggravated Robbery
Also recieved the maximum sentence for each count but the Burglary and Robbery are to be run concurrently (at same time) for a total of 25 to life. Eligble for parole after 25 years.
He will be appealing his case which will take about a year and half.

Jodi Fetty
Personally plead guilty to Complicity to Commit Murder, Aggravated Burglary, and Aggravated Robbery
Received the same sentence as Jonathan, 25 years to life. She is eligble for parole after 25 years.
Since she plead guilty her options for appeal are severely limited.

Darrel Dukes (Driver)
Personally plead guilty to Complicity to Commit Aggravated Burglary and Complicity to Commit Aggravated Robbery. The charge of Murder was dropped for his earnest cooperation.
Received 7 years for Burglary and 8 years for Robbery to be served consecutively for a total of 15 years. He will not be eligible for parole.
He too has little room to appeal since he plead guilty.
End of Story!

Currently we are headed to Florida in search of sunshine and at my sister-in-laws in Tennessee. It’s just rain here and none of the nasty stuff up north in northern Ohio. We are heading to Atlanta tomorrow to see a sister there.

All for now -