At Yale back in 1909 I started smoking pipes and for many years they were a great comfort to me. I never smoked cigars and seldom smoked cigarettes.

I kept twenty pipes at my office and twenty of them at home. Every Sunday I cleaned out all forty with gin. When I was sixty-one years old and my son, Calhoun, was three years old, I thought to myself that if I gave up smoking, it might prolong my life. I hoped I could be living when Cal finished kindergarten.

With that hope and belief, I took all forty pipes and put them away in my attic. Often I would look at the pipes. There was the one I had bought at an Indian Reservation in Arizona. It was white inlaid with colors of a Navajo blanket. I looked with yearning at my Yale pipe with its silver inlay of Yale, Class of ’09 and my Meerschaum pipe whose color improved·every time I had smoked it. I longed for just one more smoke. So, with strong resolve, I discarded them all into the trashcan.

I lived to see my son Calhoun graduate from Laurel Kindergarten, Aiken Prep School, Pomfret School, Trinity College, Episcopal Theological Seminary and receive a Master’s Degree in Business Science from M.I.T.

I will be ninety-four this year and am blessed with excellent health. My decision to stop smoking really did prolong my life. And it is about my long life here in Cleveland that I would like to reminisce. What I want to tell you most about is my special ‘growing up’ on Millionaires’ Row -for that is what Euclid Avenue was called at the turn of the century when great castles and palaces lined the way. Millionaires’ Row, extending from Twenty-First Street to Fortieth Street, was like a large park with a row of dense elm trees arching the Avenue and secluding the colossal homes set way back on emerald green lawns graced by more trees. The mansions had their entranceways at the sides of the houses, insuring the greatest privacy, joining the front lawns in a sea of green, broken only by the one cross-street: Sterling Avenue (now East Thirtieth Street).

In those few blocks on Euclid Avenue lived Mssrs. Brush, Frasch, Wade and Alexander Brown -all inventors. Mr. Harvey H. Brown, the Mathers, with their shipping interests and Mr. Leonard C. Hanna with his mining interest. Mr. Rockefeller and ‘Aunt Edie’ Harkness of Standard Oil; Mayor Tom L. Johnson; leading bankers and lawyers. . .

They were hard working, earnest men who were born to gentility and shunned ostentation. But their clustering together in domestic splendor brought fame and glory to Cleveland and resulted in the establishment of many charitable and cultural institutions. The only apparent competition between Mr. John D. Rockefeller and Mr. Samuel Mather was to see who could give the largest gifts to Cleveland. Mr. Rockefeller was devoted to his Euclid Avenue Baptist Church (sometimes known as Rockefeller Baptist Church!) and Mr. Mather was devoted to his Episcopal Church, Trinity Cathedral. Mr. Samuel Mather was attending a vestry meeting when he decided to give his church a million dollars. He telephoned his secretary to make out such a check. His secretary asked, ” …at which bank shall I withdraw a million dollars?” Mr. Mather replied, “At any of my big banks.” Imagine having a million dollar balance in several banks!

But, wait, please . . .

Before I take you on a stroll along this once-fabulous Avenue, stopping at each great gateway to raise the polished door knocker … before I introduce the fabled occupants who inhabited my early life and marked the life of Cleveland, I must take a detour.

I must pause to tell you about how the Wick Family came to be in America, came to be in Ohio, came to be in Cleveland.