A Defiance, OH, story

I grew up in Defiance, OH, a town of around 16,000 in the NW corner of Ohio midway between Fort Wayne, IN, and Toledo, OH.  We moved there when I was 4.  My father had finished his pediatric residency at Denver General Hospital and he wanted to practice medicine at the Defiance Clinic, which  his grandfather and uncle, and several other doctors had founded in Defiance a number of years prior to 1956.

Defiance was a sleepy backwater but occasionally there was an event that caused great excitement in the town.  Like when the Cisco Kid visited.

But the event that I remembered recently was when Judith Richards married Bob Hope's son.  This happened in the mid '60's.  Judith Richards' father had been the minister at the Methodist church in Defiance, but differences with the congregation led him to leave the church several years prior.  I understand from my friend, Julie, whose grandparents had been members of the church, that he managed a dry cleaners in Defiance after his departure.

Judith Richards graduated from Harvard Law School in 1964 after attending Wellesley College.  I don't know where she met Bob Hope's son, but the occasion of their wedding was a very big deal in my small town.  I'm sure that the wedding was a vindication for Reverend Richards in some small measure, although it was held in St. Mary's Catholic Church because the Hopes were Catholic.  In those days there was no question that if you married a Catholic, it had to be "in the Church."

A number of movie stars and celebrities like Liza Minnelli, Toots Shore, and Phyllis Diller, came to their wedding, causing great excitement in Defiance.  One of them,  Katherine Crosby, the wife of Bing Crosby, stopped at Daoust Drugs on Clinton Street and purchased some tamapax.  She didn't have enough cash, so she wrote a check  for $1.00 to the drugstore.  This was in the era before credit cards.  Daoust Drugs proudly displayed that check for a number of years.  I don't think they ever cashed it.  My initial reaction to this, was that movie stars writing checks was a great money making device, since small businesses probably were more impressed with the autograph than obtaining the money from the check.

Judith Richards Hope wrote about her Harvard Law School experiences in a book titled Pinstripes and Pearls.  She became quite successful and was something of a power in the Republican party.   Ronald Reagan nominated her for a seat on the DC Court of Appeals.  Unfortunately, she was not confirmed by the Senate and the seat was vacant until George HW Bush became president.  He then nominated Clarence Thomas for that seat.  I have some regrets on that score.