Turtle Boy #PocketTurtle

There once was a boy from Nantucket. No, wait, it was Lima, Ohio.  He was born to an old woman who lived in a shoe.  No, that’s wrong too. I know what it was: his grandfather and father owned a shoe store!  Crawford Shoe Co. to be exact.  The store first opened in Lima around the turn of the century.  

You know, when people had buttons on their shoes.  Well, shoe styles had changed considerably by the time this boy set foot, a well-shod foot I am sure, in his family’s store.  This boy’s name was Chase, or Chipper, or Chip, depending on who was talking to him. 

Chip was a ginger, by all accounts. His school photos are all in black and white, but the extraordinary amount of freckles doesn’t lie.  When he was young he looked a bit like Conan O’Brien.  

He was an only child and it is obvious that his grandparents doted on him.  His grandpa lauded him for his performance in school and as a salesman in the family store. He told his “Dear pal Chip” in a letter that he was “such a super salesman” and to “show dad how a real salesman can put it over on the ordinary fellow!”  His grandfather also like to have him “run the cash cup up and down” when he visited the Dayton location of Crawford Shoe Co.  His grandma kept him abreast of all turtle sightings at her Texas home.

To say that ol’ Chipper was fond of turtles would be an understatement.  He was obsessed with the shelled reptiles.  When he was in fourth grade he researched turtles fervently and even scrapbooked his notes.  In tenth grade he entered a science fair with his exhibit “They bite; They swim; They crawl (Collection of Turtles).”

Winner.

 

Chip also enjoyed the company of a much slinkier type of reptile.  Yes, that’s right, he also loved him a good snake or two.  In an issue of The Lima News, Chip was featured in an article about his Florida king snake that was in need of other snakes to eat.  This fabulously weird article was titled “Snake Hungry; Snack Sought.” 

Chip knew so much about snakes and turtles that he was asked to give a lecture on the subject to a fourth grade class at nearby Garfield Elementary School. 

            

Chip’s love of reptiles and science continued, but he also excelled at mathematics.  For three summers in high school he attended Culver Academy’s Naval summer camp where he took higher level math courses while he enjoyed normal summer camp activities.  One of his instructors even remarked that he “did quite a bit of work on his own in the field of analytics and elementary calculus” in addition to the math classes he was actually taking.

Chip’s outstanding mind took him on to get his Bachelor’s degree from Ohio Wesleyan University, a Master’s degree from Miami University, and a Doctorate from Ohio State University in Mathematics.

            

Chip, the Lima turtle boy, eventually became the owner and President of Crawford Shoe Company after his father’s death.  And at his father’s funeral he showed my brother something that he had in his jacket pocket. Any guess as to what it was?  Yep, a small turtle.

#PocketTurtle

What else would a self-respecting math genius have in his pocket?