BOOK LAUNCH ANNOUNCEMENT! SUNDAY FEBRUARY 16, 2025 10 AM (CST) SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.
On Sunday, February 16th, 2025, the official book launch for both of my latest books, Thursdays with Doc. Dr. Wayne C. Temple’s Recollections of Springfield & Lincoln and Osborn H. Oldroyd: Keeper of the Lincoln Flame, will be held in Springfield, Illinois. 10:00 am (Central Standard Time) at Books on the Square 427 E. Washington St. Springfield, IL 62701. (217) 965-5443
https://www.booksonthesquare.com/
The author will speak about Doc and Oldroyd, their connection to each other, and Springfield, the day after the Abraham Lincoln 216th Birthday Event: Symposium & Banquet in that historic building across from the Old State Capitol Building where Lincoln served. A book signing will follow the talk. All purchases of Doc’s book that day will include a limited edition, hand-numbered bookplate signed by Doc, Dr. James Cornelius, and the author.
Osborn H. Oldroyd devoted his life to acquiring everything relating to Abraham Lincoln. For nearly half his life, Osborn Oldroyd made his home and displayed his collection in two houses directly associated with the 16th President: the Lincoln Homestead in Springfield, Illinois, and the House Where Lincoln Died in Washington, D.C., a feat that will never be surpassed. Oldroyd guarded a gateway between two worlds. On one side was the world of the now and on the other, the world of the past. When Lincoln passed from life to history, the nation’s grief gave way to reverence; sorrow gave way to esteem. Oldroyd, the loyal log cabin Republican and veteran soldier, did his best to ensure no one forgot. Oldroyd had the institutional memory gained from walking in Lincoln’s footsteps, talking with Lincoln’s contemporaries, and examining the objects associated with his idol. Oldroyd was never trained as a curator. He was a born collector whose experience in handling and researching objects while building his personal collection was his curatorial education. His ability to recount the story behind the object and inject it with enthusiasm, humor, and believability, made him a folk hero to the common man. Just as Oldroyd’s museums can be considered the first of their kind in American museum history, Oldroyd himself can be labeled as America’s first folk curator. To the collection and study of Lincoln, Osborn Oldroyd’s name is unavoidable, particularly in the study of his assassination. It could easily be said that without the efforts of Osborn H. Oldroyd, we may have lost the Lincoln Home in Springfield, the House Where Lincoln Died, and Ford’s Theatre itself. Oldroyd’s obsessive, idiosyncratic devotion to Abraham Lincoln brought the martyred President down from the fog of intellectualism and back to earth for everyone to rediscover in object form. Oldroyd was the last of his kind and the first of another. He arrives by adoration and departs by dedication, opening doors for every Lincoln collector, admirer, and scholar that followed. Born in an age of covered wagons and canals, Oldroyd lived to see the age of the automobile and the airplane. And, thanks mainly to Osborn Oldroyd, visitors to the Petersen house today can walk through the first floor, down the long hallway to stand inside the tiny, dimly-lit otherwise insignificant room with the slanted ceiling where the last, best hope of a nation was lost.
KA series of informal discussions with Springfield Illinois Lincoln scholar and author Dr. Wayne C. Temple, known affectionately as “Doc”. Who, for over 56 years, worked for nine different Illinois Secretaries of State and ten different Governors representing both parties, a remarkable feat of its own. It is a record unlikely to be equaled. Doc was with the Illinois State Archives from 1964 to 2016, much of that time as the Chief Deputy Director. Before that, Doc was editor-in-chief of the Lincoln Herald and in charge of the Dept. of Lincolniana at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee from 1958 to 1964, remaining in that position remotely from Springfield until 1973. Doc was an honorary member of the Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission, 1959-1960, and served on the advisory council of the United States Civil War Centennial Commission, 1960-1966. Doc served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946, and during that time he helped to establish General Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower’s communications in Europe. Doc has authored over 20 books, mostly on Lincoln, and has written over 600 articles, poems, reviews, and papers during his career. Doc graduated from the University of Illinois in 1949, studying under his mentor J.G. Randall, the “Dean of Lincoln Scholars.” Doc’s accomplishments are well covered in this volume. This book spans almost three years of interviews with Doc, James Cornelius (former Curator of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum), and author/newspaper columnist Alan E. Hunter. The topics cover Abraham Lincoln, the little-known history and colorful personalities of Springfield, Illinois, the Indigenous Peoples of Illinois, and the life and times of Springfield’s preeminent Lincoln scholar. Now over 100 years old, Dr. Wayne C. Temple has seen it all.
The “Family Affair” Curse. Parts I & II.
Original publish date August 28, 2014. Republished on September 10, 2026.
https://weeklyview.net/2026/09/10/the-family-affair-curse-part-1-2
My wife and I visited an antique mall the other day. When we entered, I noticed a strange doll behind a glass case. I usually don’t pay attention to dolls, but this one looked familiar. It was about two feet tall and wore a blue-and-white polka-dot dress with yellow fringe. Her short blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and square glasses made her easy to recognize. I asked my wife, Rhonda, why the doll looked familiar, and she replied, “Oh, that’s Mrs. Beasley from Family Affair.”
Family Affair? I remember that TV show. Most of all, I remember the owner of that little doll; Anissa Jones. But before I get ahead of myself, for those of you who need a refresher course. Family Affair told the story of a handsome New York City bachelor who becomes the guardian of his nieces and nephew when their parents suddenly die in a car accident. William Davis (a.k.a. “Uncle Bill” played by Brian Keith) is the head of an engineering firm who finds that he has to put his playboy lifestyle on hold to raise these kids. At first he believes it will only be a temporary position, but by the end of the first episode he comes to adore the children and enlists his butler Mr. French (Sebastian Cabot) as their co-protector. The show ran for five seasons from 1966 to 1971 and was in the top five rated programs on TV for three of those seasons.
Maybe you’re visualizing that doll, Mrs. Beasley. Maybe the theme song is weaving a path through your head like an ear worm …”da da da dun dada da dun dun, da da da dun dada da dun dun.” Or maybe, like me, you remember Buffy — Anissa Jones. Did you know she was from Indiana? Ironically, on the show, the three kids were born and raised in Terre Haute when they moved to Manhattan to live with their Uncle Bill.
Mary Anissa Jones was born in West Lafayette, Indiana to Purdue faculty member Dr. John Paul Jones and his wife Mary “Paula” Tweel on March 11, 1958. Paula was of Lebanese descent and the child’s middle name (pronounced Ah-NEE-Sah) meant “little friend” in Arabic. A little over a year later, a baby brother, Paul, arrived. (More about him later).
The family moved to Playa del Rey, California while the children were still toddlers but the parents soon divorced in 1965. The divorce undoubtedly affected Anissa adversely and contributed to her precociousness. The most immediate change in behavior was that Anissa and her baby brother Paul became inseparable.
Anissa’ s mom was a school teacher; her dad, a well paid engineer for Hughes Aircraft. But Anissa’s dad has been described as a deadbeat who abandoned his family. Dr. Jones was court ordered to pay $80 per child per month in support. He eventually fell over $10,000.00 behind in child support. This delinquency caused the family car to be repossessed and the family home to go into foreclosure. Despite these terrible family setbacks, Anissa’s career was just starting to take off.
Paula enrolled Anissa in dance class at the tender age of four. Her troupe was asked to perform on The Art Linkletter Show, and 7-year-old Anissa was singled out to do a cartwheel. She failed the first time, landing on her rear end instead, and the audience roared with laughter. Anissa picked herself up and tried it again, this time she nailed it. Although the audience loved it, Anissa was mortified by her initial failure and cried all the way home. An agent was in the audience that night and he immediately contacted her mother to sign Anissa to a contract. Soon, Jones began landing jobs in television commercials, appearing in close to two dozen commercials before the age of eight. Television producer Don Fedderson was putting together the cast for a new series called Family Affair.
The show needed a 15-year-old girl (Cissy), an 6-year-old boy (Jodie) and another 6-year-old girl (Buffy). Although 8 years of age, Anissa auditioned for and won the part of Elizabeth “Buffy” Patterson-Davis thanks to her youthful look, charming personality and above-average acting talent. Series star Brian Keith suggested Fedderson consider a little boy he’d recently worked on in the film The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming who had the ability to cry on cue. Redheaded 6-year-old Johnnie Whitaker’s casting as Jodie required a shift in the concept. He and Jones were written as fraternal twins, with Cathy Garver cast as their 15-year-old sister. (Garver was nearly 21 at the time!)
In another case of life imitating art, Anissa’s parents bitter divorce caused upheaval in her home life which transferred well to her orphan TV character being shuttled here and there under traumatic circumstances. Anissa didn’t have to stretch to obtain the forlorn, dejected qualities that Buffy initially displayed on the show. The first couple of episodes of Family Affair highlighted the adjustments to this newly formed unconventional family unit and the misunderstandings that were sure to arise when a confirmed bachelor takes on three youngsters. This theme, perhaps commonplace by today’s standards, was considered edgy and controversial for the 1960s.
Eventually, the TV quintet solidified into a warm family unit dealing with the regular sort of issues befalling any family. Rotund Sebastian Cabot portrayed the fastidious, efficient British butler whose household and lifestyle are upended as much as his employer’s by the arrival of the children. His exasperation eventually melted into affection and the vision of this large man with a tiny twin on each side became a favorite TV image. At first, Anissa called him “Mr. Cabot,” but as their relationship grew closer she began calling him “Sabby.” When her cat Tiger (a gift from Brian Keith) had kittens, she named one of them Sabby in his honor.
Admittedly, the series was often over-produced and overly sweet, but it was also pleasant, charming, tender, amusing and most of all, cute. The premise of a sitcom featuring an unconventional family was considered innovative but Family Affair opened the door for future shows like Nanny and the Professor, The Brady Bunch, Diff’rent Strokes, and Who’s the Boss to be accepted and believable. The character of Cindy on The Brady Bunch (played by Susan Olsen) was in fact based on Anissa Jones’ Buffy character in both appearance and demeanor.
No doubt about it, Anissa Jones was cuter-than-cute. Her natural precocious manner along with her thoughtful freckle-faced visage and sweet plaintive voice made her irresistible to children and adults alike. The vision of the pint sized, pig-tailed prodigy asking questions that she didn’t know the answer to (but had suspicions of what the answers were) is what most fans remember Buffy for. Well, either that or the image of Mrs. Beasley, the doll that started this conversation off. Buffy and Mrs. Beasley were inseparable. Anissa’s character treated the doll not as an inanimate object, but as a close friend with whom she would often talk to and confide in.
Family Affair was, like Fedderson’s previous series My Three Sons starring Fred MacMurray, almost completely geared to fit its leading man. It must be remembered that both MacMurray and Keith were movie stars, not TV stars. Fred MacMurray arranged to have all of his scenes filmed together in a certain block of time, then the rest of the cast would do their own scenes later after MacMurray had left the set. Likewise, Keith’s scenes were filmed all in a row and in a certain time frame, leaving the rest of the cast to work around them after the fact.
It’s a testament to the acting skills of both child stars when you realize that Anissa Jones and Johnny Whitaker could give the type of performances they did while filming scenes and episodes completely out of sequence. Many times Uncle Bill wasn’t even present on the set, let alone in the room and the scenes were patched together later in editing. Keep in mind that they were filming 30 episodes a year during those first two years — many more than are filmed nowadays.
Anissa Jones, Sebastian Cabot, Johnny Whitaker.
Naturally, though they got on well with Keith (and Whitaker, in particular, adored him) his absences caused them to naturally gravitate more towards Sebastian Cabot. During the series, Cabot was stricken with bleeding ulcers in real life and had to exit the program for a while. In his absence, another actor stepped in as his brother and took over the role until Cabot returned — 40 pounds lighter than when he’d left! But the Buffy character proved to be so popular with fans that when Anissa broke her leg in real life, it was written into the show. For an entire year of episodes Anissa’s leg was put in a cast and the scripts were revised to reflect her injury so that there would be no loss of production time.
Anissa would play Buffy for the show’s entire five year run. Her schedule was grueling, often requiring her to work seven days a week year round. In June of 1969, the show hit number 1 in the ratings, turning Buffy and Jody into household names. Mrs. Beasley, Buffy’s doll, also became the best-selling doll in America.
Anissa’s fame skyrocketed. She guest-starred in numerous television specials including Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, To Rome With Love, and as a presenter at the 1967 Emmy Awards. Anissa, alongside Jimmy Durante, presented the Monkees with an Emmy for “Best Comedy Series” that year. Merchandising deals soon followed with Buffy paper dolls, Family Affair coloring books and lunch boxes, a Buffy line of children’s clothes, and a Buffy cookbook, not to mention magazines and more TV commercials. The strain on Anissa was beginning to show.
Her mother was still a hard working school teacher with bills to pay and much of Anissa’s growing fortune was locked away in a trust fund unavailable for anything other than emergencies until the child star turned 18. With no money to spare for babysitters, Anissa’s younger brother Paul almost always accompanied her to the studio. Anissa was extremely close to Paul and her love and kindness often showed on the set. As the star of a hit TV series, Anissa often received gifts from advertisers, fans and the studio. She always demanded that an identical one for her brother accompany any gift she received. If a gift were not brought for Paul, she would give hers away. Even at this young age, Anissa’s kind heart was beginning to show.
As proof of her kindness, when Earl Graham, a janitor on the Family Affair set died, Anissa had her Mom take out a $400 ad in Variety Magazine wherein Anissa said goodbye to her good friend. Although Earl was in reality nothing more than a janitor on the set, Anissa saw him as a kind friend. Family Affair would last for five seasons and 138 total episodes, garnering seven Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for the show and its stars along the way. But after the 1971 season the show began to slump in the ratings and was abruptly cancelled.
Surprisingly, Anissa was thrilled that the show’s run was over. Now she could finally go to school, hang out with her friends, and just be a normal girl. Most of all it meant she could finally be rid of those cursed pigtails and that stupid Mrs. Beasley doll that the producers insisted she continue to play with even though she was now 13 years old. Anissa Jones had grown tired of show biz.
Next week — Part 2. The Family Affair Curse.
The “Family Affair” Curse, Part 2
Original publish date September 4, 2014. Republished on September 17, 2026.
https://weeklyview.net/2026/09/17/the-family-affair-curse-part-2
Family Affair was one of the most successful family comedies of the 1960s. The show ran for five seasons from 1966 to 1971 and was in the top five for three of those five seasons. In 1969, the show hit number 1 in the ratings, turning fraternal TV twins Buffy and Jody into household names. Mrs. Beasley, Buffy’s doll, became the best-selling doll in America. Buffy’s likeness was everywhere: paper dolls, puzzles, coloring, comic and cookbooks, clothing and lunch boxes, not to mention movies and TV commercials. Everybody knew Buffy, but not many knew her alter-ego, Anissa Jones.
Anissa was born in Lafayette on March 11, 1958. She was cast in the role of Elizabeth “Buffy” Patterson-Davis Jones on Family Affair in 1965 at the age of 8. During filming, she attended school on the studio lot alongside many other child actors. However, a significant amount of her free time was spent promoting the show. She posed for still photos, went on promotional trips, appeared on other series including Laugh-In and an episode of To Rome with Love (as Buffy Davis). Her image was marketed in every conceivable way. In short, she knew life more as Buffy then Anissa.
In 1969, while Family Affair was still in production, Jones was cast alongside Elvis Presley in the movie The Trouble With Girls (and how to get into it.) It was one of Elvis’s last films featuring one of the most diverse casts ever assembled: Vincent Price, John Carradine, Dabney Coleman, the voices of Velma and Fred from “Scooby Doo” and baseball great Duke Snider. For once, Anissa was seen without her trademark Buffy pigtails. Ironically, also appearing (without credit) was Susan Olsen, who would herself become a Buffy clone on The Brady Bunch three weeks after the film hit the theatres. Despite her grueling work schedule and a rocky family life, 12-year-old Anissa was adjusting to her fame quite nicely.
In 1971, the show’s ratings fell out of the top 30 and CBS abruptly canceled it. The network was changing its image to more adult-oriented fare. Family Affair was still popular, with rumors of a switch from CBS to ABC, but in the end ABC decided that having The Brady Bunch was enough and nixed the deal. Far from lamenting the loss of her fame and fortune, Anissa was excited at the prospect of being unemployed. She had been working in show business almost nonstop since the age of 5 and now came an unexpected opportunity for Anissa to be a regular kid. For five years, she worked (often seven days a week), ate, studied (she attended school on set) and sometimes slept at the television studio. All the while tending to her little brother Paul at her own insistence.
Although canceled, CBS almost immediately sold the show into syndication keeping Buffy ever present in the public’s consciousness. Initially, Jones went to school and attempted a normal life, though her acting career was still garnering interest in Tinseltown. She auditioned for the role of satanically possessed Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist (the polar opposite of Buffy) but ultimately Linda Blair was cast.
Brian Keith asked her to work with him again on The Brian Keith Show, in which he played a Hawaiian pediatrician, but she declined the part. Amazingly, she was offered the role of Iris “Easy” Steensma in Taxi Driver, but turned it down. Only Jones knows why she didn’t take the part. It seemed to be just the sort of edgy, alternative work she was searching for in the wake of Mrs. Beasley and those pigtails. Instead, the role went to Jodie Foster, who was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her portrayal. Anissa seemed content to busy herself with school and friends.
She was offered the controversial role of a child prostitute in the film Pretty Baby, a film set in the brothels of New Orleans, whose key role was that of a 12-year-old girl. It seems that every young actress in Hollywood was connected to that film. Tatum O’Neal, Jodie Foster, Linda Blair, Kristy MacNichol and Dana Plato all allegedly turned it down. While others like Diane Lane, Michelle Pfeiffer, Melanie Griffith, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Laura Dern, and Helen Hunt auditioned for it. Sadly, Anissa would be dead before filming began. The role ultimately went to Brooke Shields whose career skyrocketed from it.
Friends and family later said that Anissa made a decision to quit acting after Family Affair ended in 1971. They claim that she auditioned only because she was collecting unemployment which required her to go to three auditions to receive benefits. After her unemployment ran out Anissa never went to another audition. Anissa walked away from fame, money and success with hope of becoming a regular kid.
In the months after the show ended, Anissa’s relationship with her divorced mother continued to deteriorate. For a time, Anissa and her brother Paul moved in with their father. But he died and the children moved back with their mother. Anissa’s grades at Westchester High School in L.A. began to slip and, rather than fighting it out with her mom, she began to couch surf at friend’s houses instead. Her mother reported her as a runaway and Anissa was sent to juvenile detention jail for a short time. Upon her release, Anissa again began hanging out at the beach, drinking and using drugs. Her life was spiraling out of control and any traces of Buffy seemed to be washing away like footprints in the sand. Her mother kicked her out and cut off all support. Hoping to make ends meet until she turned 18 and royalties from Family Affair kicked in, Anissa took a job at Winchell’s Donut Shop in Playa Del Rey. After her eighteenth birthday, Anissa would receive her $63,000 trust fund and $107,800 in U.S. Savings Bonds (actual cash value of $75,000.00) from her Family Affair earnings (the average household income in 1976 was $11,172 per annum). When Anissa turned 18, she and her brother Paul moved into an apartment together. Anissa bought herself a brand-new Ford Pinto and her brother a loaded Camaro that cost twice as much as her own car.
With newfound freedom, recent wealth (nearly three quarters of a million dollars in today’s money), and more drugs than she knew what to do with, Anissa embarked on the final role of her life. She began seeing Allan Kovan, a local partier heavily involved in the L.A. drug scene. Anissa’s substance abuse problem escalated from smoking weed and binge drinking to taking large doses of Quaaludes, angel dust, cocaine, and barbiturates. She was in serious trouble and Uncle Bill, Jody, Cissy and Mr. French were nowhere to help.
On August 28th, 1976, while attending a party at a friend’s house, Anissa consumed a potent cocktail of barbiturates, phencyclidine, cocaine and methaquaalone. Boyfriend Kovan later said he checked on her around 9:30 that morning and she was fine. Later, sometime between 11:00 to 11:30 a.m., her friends found Anissa lying in bed nude and unresponsive. After dressing her in a pair of boxer shorts, they called the paramedics an hour later at 12:29 p.m.
Paramedics and firemen were on scene at 12:34. Anissa was found face up, covered by a blanket and a sheet. At 4’ 11” and 85 lbs, one of the paramedics mistook her as a much younger girl and frantically tried to resuscitate her even though the arm, neck and face were already in rigor. They attached the electrodes and difib’ed her once but it was clearly useless, and the order was given to cease resuscitation efforts. Anissa died from what the coroner, who placed the time of death somewhere between 4:30-6:30 a.m., said was “one of the most massive overdoses I’ve ever seen”. She was just 18 years old.
Friend, fellow student and partygoer Steve Hanford recalled later, “The night Anissa died was weird. She wasn’t being very social. She and some other kids stayed in a bedroom taking angel dust and coke. When Anissa came out of the bedroom she said she and some friends were going down to Oceanside to visit her friend Helen Hennessey. The next thing I heard about Anissa was that she was dead. It blew my mind because I thought she was too smart to destroy herself with drugs. She didn’t seem depressed the week before she died.”
Her body was taken to McCormick Funeral Home in Inglewood and then to the Pacific Crest crematory in Redondo Beach for cremation. There were no official services held for her and on September 1, 1976 her ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean. But the story doesn’t end there. For years after Anissa’s death, one of the very first in a long line of tragic TV child star premature deaths, became an urban legend known as the “Curse of Family Affair.”
Sebastian Cabot was forced to leave the series for an entire season after being stricken with bleeding ulcers. He had to be replaced by another actor until his return, several months and some 40 pounds lighter. In 1977 Cabot suffered a stroke, his second in three years. He died on August 22, 1977 at the age of 59. His death coming less than a year after Anissa’s. Like his diminutive pig-tailed costar, he was cremated.
Before the show aired, Brian Keith suffered the real life loss of a child when his 8-year-old son Michael died from a sudden case of pneumonia. Keith’s stepmother was Peg Entwistle, a well-known Broadway actress who committed suicide by jumping from the “H” of the famous Hollywood Sign in 1932. In later life, Keith suffered from emphysema and lung cancer despite having quit smoking 10 years earlier. On June 24, 1997, he was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Malibu, two months after his daughter Daisy committed suicide. Keith left a handwritten note in which he wrote “The end is here. I’m finished. The pain is too much. Now it’s time for me to join our little Daisy. She needs me. She didn’t want to be without me here, so she’ll have me again over there. Don’t be sad. This had to come soon.”
Johnny Whitaker fell into drug and alcohol abuse for nine years during the 1980-90s before an intervention led him to a 12-step program. He has been clean and sober for 17 years. Eight years after Anissa’s accidental overdose, her brother, Paul, would also die from a drug overdose.
The host of the party at which Anissa attended that fateful night was a 14-year-old girl who lived at the house with her divorced father. This girl died at age 34 in a violent car crash in Keaau, Hawaii in 1996.
Today, Anissa Jones is entertaining a whole new generation of children whose parents, many of whom grew up watching her, show them TV Land reruns and DVD episodes of Family Affair. All five seasons are available on DVD. They are a delightful piece of entertainment for young and old. The story of Anissa Jones is a sad one, but her legacy still shines through the innocent countenance of freckle-faced, pig-tailed little Buffy Davis.
Stories from the Irvington Ghost Tours.
In the spirit of the season, here’s a podcast from the Irving Theatre in Indianapolis, Indiana on October 20, 2026. Tim Poynter, Cindy Adkins and Rhonda Hunter joined me for this “spirited” conversation.
Here’s the link to the podcast:
From Hell Gate to the Golden Gate in a Maxwell 30. The unlikely story of Alice Ramsey.
Publish date July 9, 2026.
https://weeklyview.net/2026/07/09/from-hell-gate-to-the-golden-gate-in-a-maxwell-30
It’s summertime in Indiana; the kids are out of school, the days are getting longer, the weather is heating up and Hoosier thoughts turn to . . . ROAD TRIP! Let me introduce you to the woman for whom the term road trip just may have been invented for. Alice Huyler Ramsey (November 11, 1886 – September 10, 1983) was the first woman to drive across the United States from coast-to-coast. On June 9, 1909, the 22-year-old housewife and mother from New Jersey began a 3,800-mile journey from Hell’s Gate in Manhattan to San Francisco in a green Maxwell 30 automobile. On her 59-day trek she was accompanied by her two older sisters-in-law and another female friend, none of whom could drive a car, meaning that Alice was the sole driver for the entire journey. Ramsey’s route roughly paralleled the route that, four years later, Indy 500 co-founder Carl Fisher would turn into the Lincoln Highway or modern day Route 30.
A century ago, it was thought that driving a car, like voting, required manly virtues, including “sound judgment” and “thoughtful decision-making.” More than a decade before women got the right to vote, Alice Ramsey proved to the world that a woman possessed the necessary virtues.
Alice Ramsey’s first love was horseback riding, and after showing a keen interest in the “new” automobiles she witnessed traversing the streets of Hackensack, her husband presented her with a shiny new 1908 Maxwell. After taking driving lessons at the local Maxwell dealership, Alice hit the roads of New Jersey, driving thousands of miles within the Garden State that summer. When the dealership heard about Ramsey’s driving, she was asked to enter an automotive endurance test in September 1908, a grueling 200-mile drive on unpaved roads. She handled the vehicle masterfully, received a perfect score, and drew great media attention as one of only two women drivers in the event.
After this, Maxwell sales manager Cadwallader Washburn Kelsey asked Mrs. Ramsey to undertake what became the biggest publicity stunt of the year, a cross-country drive from New York City to San Francisco, in a new Maxwell. Kelsey called the 21-year-old Vassar graduate (class of 1907) “the greatest natural woman driver I’ve ever seen.” He asked Ramsey if she would like to drive the company’s new 30-horsepower, four-cylinder Maxwell cross-country to prove that the car could make it and that a female motorist could do it. This open-air touring car seated four with a top speed of 40 mph.
In a time before interstate freeways, when many of the busiest back-country roads were not yet paved or even graveled, transcontinental drives were rare and respected accomplishments. The transcontinental speed record had recently been reduced from 63 days to a mere 15 days, but no female driver had yet accomplished the feat. The Maxwell company paid all expenses, and informed its dealerships of her itinerary, instructing them to have parts and mechanics on call in case of mechanical breakdowns. She was accompanied by a Maxwell press team in a separate car trailing behind.
In the late spring of 1909, Alice left her new baby with a nursemaid and set out on a rainy day in June from New York City, north to Poughkeepsie, and then made her way west through Buffalo, Cleveland, Gary and Chicago. Alice and her passengers/navigators used maps from AAA to chart their journey — no small feat considering that only 152 of the 3,600 miles the group traveled were paved. Over the course of the drive, Ramsey changed 11 tires, routinely cleaned the spark plugs, repaired a broken brake pedal and once had to sleep in the car after it got stuck in mud.
In 1909, only 155,000 of 80 million Americans owned cars. Most of the vehicles were in the East and Midwest; the land of good roads, comfortable lodgings, conveniently located service stations and plentiful eating places. Consequently, the expedition’s first half was relatively easy, with the only impediments to the journey’s progress being the incessant promotional meet-and-greets staged by Maxwell that seemingly stopped in every little town and burg to give locals the chance to gawk at and talk to the pioneering women. Her drive was more of a spectacle than a speed competition. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Alice was easy on the eyes.
The adventurous Ramsey seemed disinterested in this part of the excursion and mostly fidgeted her way through the circus-like stopovers and interviews as she itched to get back out on the open road. On Day 2, for instance, she noted, “We drove north past the handsome estates at Hyde Park and of John Jacob Astor near Rhinebeck, N.Y. . . . and continued with little in the way of diversion.” In fact, she bypassed the press corps waiting for her at the historic 1766 Rhinebeck Hotel, a place where George Washington actually did sleep.
All was peaches and cream over the flat lands and reasonably passable roads of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois until the group crossed over the Mighty Mississippi. Things changed dramatically once the group arrived in Iowa. Heavy rains and floods washed out roads and bridges in Iowa as Ramsey resisted suggestions to ship her Maxwell to Omaha by train. Alice recalled, “We were doing quite well until we entered Mechanicsville. . . . A sudden torrent descended upon us. We made quickly for the first shelter we could find . . . a livery stable. There were several buggies standing around, horses still hitched to them. To say the animals were astonished to be joined by a horseless carriage from which came the noise of a pulsating engine is putting it mildly!”
After two stagnant hours, the soggy party decided to brave the storm and ran to a nearby restaurant where Ramsey sat down at a vintage piano to entertain some “country lads” as she “tossed off a couple light numbers.” (This, by the way, in one of the few buildings Ramsey visited that is still standing: It’s now Bubba’s Sports Bar & Grill, 211 1st St. in Mechanicsville, in eastern Iowa.) That wet spring of 1909 turned Iowa and Nebraska into a muddy morass, and the usually hard packed dirt cart paths turned to sticky, rutted muck. Tires went flat and the Maxwell became mired so often that the engine regularly overheated. It didn’t faze the indomitable Alice Ramsey though — she loved it. “This was the route which later became the Lincoln Highway — I almost feel as if I was the ‘Mother’ of it!” she wrote. “And believe me, the labor pangs prior to its birth were terrific!”
Wyoming, Utah and Nevada were more forgiving; the roads were rough to nonexistent, but the weather was better and the land was mostly flat. Fording rivers was an imposing challenge that led to broken axles in the 4-foot-deep gullies and creek beds. Calling upon her skills as a mechanic as well as a driver (she was founder and president of the Women’s Motoring Club of New Jersey at age 21), Ramsey coaxed her battered vehicle across desert and over mountains. Still, the crew had time to enjoy the scenery. Seeing the Devil’s Slide natural rock monument southeast of Ogden, Utah, Ramsey turned tourist: “Quite a sight! So all-by-itself, and so stupendous.”
On August 10, 1909 Alice and her weary group of intrepid travelers arrived in San Francisco, nearly two months after they started. The quartet arrived in the City by the Bay to much fanfare and hoopla, but most importantly, they were all safe and sound. Most notably for her sponsors, sales of Maxwell autos more than doubled overnight. In case you’re wondering, the Maxwell company let Ramsey keep the car.
Alice was named the “Woman Motorist of the Century” by AAA in 1960. In later years, she lived quietly in Covina, California, where in 1961 she wrote and published the story of her journey, Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron. (In 2005, the story was updated and retitled as Alice’s Drive, which can be ordered through Amazon.) Between 1909 and 1975, Ramsey drove across the country more than 30 times. She was married to New Jersey Congressman John Rathbone Ramsey, Sr. and the couple had two children. Her husband never shared his wife’s passion for automobiles. He never learned how to drive and was uncomfortable riding in cars throughout his lifetime. Alice Ramsey continued driving until a year before her death in 1983. On October 17, 2000, she became the first woman inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, Michigan.
Alice’s closest moment to perfection came not in San Francisco where she was hailed as a hero and showered with roses, but as she entered California south of Lake Tahoe, heading down the Sierra slopes to Placerville. “Majestic sugar pines, Douglas firs and redwoods lined our road on both sides. What a land! What mountains! What blue skies and clear, sparkling water! Our hearts leapt within us. None of us had ever seen the like — and we loved it.” With that introduction to the state and her lifelong passion for the road, it feels appropriate that she settled in that region in the 1950s just as California was becoming the car culture capital of the world. Perhaps Alice Huyler Ramsey voiced her own epitaph during an interview 17 years before her death when asked about her life: “I’m probably happiest,” she said, “when I’m holding a wheel.”
Hackensack, Bergen County, New Jersey.
The Ghosts of Playground Productions in Irvington.
Original publish date October 16, 2025.
https://weeklyview.net/2025/10/16/the-ghosts-of-playground-productions-in-irvington/
One of the enjoyable aspects of leading ghost tours in Irvington every October is hearing the new ghost stories and spooky tales associated with the buildings we pass along the route. For the past few years, Adam Long and his wife, Andrea, have allowed the tours access to their building, Playground Productions Studio at 5529 N. Bonna Ave., as a jumping-off point to rest and recover after tours. Some of you may know Adam by his stage name, Adam Riviere, a homage to his mother’s whose maiden name. Most importantly, the studio hosts the crew from the Magick Candle every Friday and Saturday night during October for psychic readings for our tour guests and visitors, with the proceeds going to fund the food bank at Gaia Works (6125 E. Washington St.).
Adam graduated from Martinsville High School, studied at Butler University, and attended IUPUI for his graduate work. Adam is an accomplished musician and an artist in his own right. Andrea, originally from London, Kentucky, graduated from North Laurel High School there and from IUPUI in Indianapolis. Andrea is quiet, but when she talks, she speaks with an easy southern drawl that somehow soothes the listener’s ears. As I write this, the couple is celebrating their eleventh wedding anniversary. Adam and Andrea were married in 2014, but have been together since 2008. I first met Adam over a decade ago, when he was a guest on one of my ghost tours. After hearing the Abraham Lincoln ghost train story, which concludes each tour, Adam was sprung. He later informed me that the story resonated with him so deeply that he commissioned an artist friend to create a painting of the ethereal visage for display in his studio office. It comes as no surprise that Adam’s studio is located along the historic corridor of the railroad tracks upon which Lincoln’s funeral train traveled back on April 30, 1865.
Adam’s studio has an interesting history. Adam stated, “It was originally the Coal & Lime Company in Irvington. That was why they wanted to call this area the Coal Yard district, because this is the spot where the trucks would come and pick up the coal to deliver to the areas close by.” The name is a bit of a misnomer, however. While it is true that the company sold “Hoosier Red Pepper Coal” harvested “clean” and “hand picked” from “Indiana’s Richest Coal Mines,” contrary to it’s strict definition, the company specialized in providing hydrated mason’s lime used in the manufacture of common bedrock building materials like glazed tile, fire brick, cement blocks, and common bricks.
On August 3rd, 1922, an ad on page 10 of the Indianapolis Star boasted that the Irvington Coal & Lime Company supplied the “Western Brick as well as other builder’s supplies used in the construction of the new Masonic Temple,” a.k.a. Irvington Masonic Lodge 666, whose cornerstone was laid the year before. Adam was quick to point out to visitors to the property that a portion of the foundation for the old brick factory remains in place several yards away from his studio entrance. Adam informed, “In the early 1950s, a company called Foamcraft bought the building.”
Foamcraft still exists. According to their website, “In 1952, Robert T. Elliott, the founder of our company, started the Foamcraft Rubber Company. As a District Sales Manager for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, he was responsible for helping to start several foam rubber distributors. Foamcraft was his special passion, though, and in founding our company, he set a foundation for business integrity and dedication to service, as well as a vision to develop long-term relationships with our customers.” Foamcraft makes specialized cushioning used in furniture, beds, minivans, boats, and other products. The company buys large blocks of foam rubber called “Buns” or “Blocks” and cuts them to smaller sizes and shapes as needed by their customers. It was, and remains, a family-run operation with a very high-tenured workforce staffed by generations of families working “cutting foam” for a variety of customer products. The company boasts a 99.9% on-time production and delivery reputation.
Elliott opened his Irvington foam factory on Bonna Avenue in 1957, and it remained there for the next 44 years. Foamcraft briefly relocated in 2001 to a leased building on Post Road before moving to a much larger facility in Greenfield in 2016, where it remains today. Company headquarters are located at 9230 Harrison Park Ct. in between the Fort Benjamin branch library and Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital in Lawrence. Foamcraft also has a manufacturing facility in Elkhart. They never forgot their ties to Irvington, though. Employees referred to the old 20,000 square foot factory, made up of several buildings, simply as the “Bonna.” According to their Web site, employees remember the Bonna facility as “dark and spread out with rooms everywhere. It was sort of claustrophobic with low ceilings, and we worked elbow-to-elbow. It had slippery floors throughout the facility, which sometimes required us to spread sand or sawdust in certain areas.” Despite the distinctly ominous Irvington location’s appearance, inside and out, Foamcraft’s employees described the working atmosphere as “Valhalla.”
One former employee, Jim Quakenbush, recalls that Foamcraft Inc. “ was located on Bonna Ave. just east of Ritter Ave. I worked there for two summers, unloading railroad cars in 1970 & 1971. I have fond memories of working there. Rob Elliott, whose father owned the company, worked with me unloading train cars full of large refrigerator-sized foam rubber “buns”. I think Rob became the CEO and may still be. The warehouse building still stands, but the office building is gone. The railroad track is gone. I really enjoyed the people. My supervisor was Dave Fisher. Great guy. Don Scruggs was a truck driver, funny as hell. Larry Harding worked with me. [The] Sewing department had Ursie Hert, Ralph Wainwright, from Jamaica. Clayton Sneed was a saw operator. Paul was an autistic laborer who used to irritate Ralph. I laughed so hard listening to them argue back and forth. All in good fun. Good memories.”
The old Foamcraft building has quite a history to it, and apparently, a few ghosts as well. Adam recalled, “When I first moved in here, while I locked up at night, stepping out the door, there was a feeling. It wasn’t really ominous, but it definitely gave you a creepy feeling. “ When asked if he feels a presence in the building, Adam stated, “Yes, sometimes when I’m alone in the building, I can hear sharp knocks on the wood in the studio. When I check, nothing is there to explain it.” Adam and Andrea say they don’t ever feel uncomfortable in their building, and they don’t think there is any dark energy connected to their workspace. “We just take it as it comes, we’re used to it now.”
The factory site was visited by tragedy in the autumn of 1968. The front page of the November 12, 1968, Indy News announced “Plant Fire Kills Two Women. 33 Escape Blaze on Eastside.” At 3:34 in the afternoon, firefighters responded to a three-alarm fire at the Foamcraft factory plant. Mrs. Hilda F. Muffler, 59, of 6550 East Troy Avenue, and Mrs. Marjorie J. Smith, 40, of 152 South Summit Street, were killed in the blaze. Mrs. Muffler was employed as a seamstress, and Mrs. Smith as a cutter. Authorities theorized that the two women may have collided and been knocked unconscious during the frenzy to escape the fire. The women died of smoke inhalation and heat. According to the article, Fire Department investigators said the fire was caused by ‘misuse of electricity,’ but did not elaborate.
The article further reports, “An employee, Jack Miller, 56, 250 Audubon Circle, said he was seated at his desk and heard a crackling sound. He looked at a nearby thermostat and said he saw sparks flying from the mechanism. Miller said he ran into another room to get a fire extinguisher, but when he returned, the sparks had ignited stacks of latex foam rubber nearby. There was nothing I could do with the fire extinguisher by the time I got back. It was out of control.” Another Star article quotes Miller as saying he saw a “flash of lightning” come from the wall thermostat and strike a pile of foam. Deputy Marion County Coroner and chief of the fire prevention bureau, Donald E. Bollinger, said the victim’s bodies suffered no burns and were found lying face down perpendicular, one atop the other, in the one-story concrete block plant. The women were found within 4 feet of an office door and only 8 feet from the nearest exit door.
They were discovered to be some 70 feet from the nearest fire damage about 25 minutes after the first alarm had sounded. Other employees challenged the notion that the women panicked trying to escape. Bollinger later theorized that since Mrs. Smith’s coat was found lying next to her body, the women may have attempted to reach a restroom to retrieve their coats and purses before being overcome by smoke.
The fire was spectacular, with flames shooting over 100 feet high in the sky, and the massive plumes of heavy black smoke could be seen from all over the city of Indianapolis. The high-intensity heat hampered firefighters’ efforts to extinguish it quickly. The first alarm came at 3:34, the second at 3:44, and the third at 4:42 pm. Emergency first responders arrived quickly with over 20 pieces of firefighting equipment and 65 firefighters. John T. O’Brien, owner of the Bonna Printing Company at 5543 Bonna Avenue, reported that his adjacent building suffered only minor smoke and water damage during the conflagration. Other adjacent businesses, Krauter Equipment Company & the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company, also reported minor damage. At 12:17 am, the blaze briefly reignited, and firemen were again called to extinguish the flames. That second fire had ignited beneath the collapsed roof of the factory and was brought under control at 1:17 am.
The Foamcraft building was destroyed in the inferno. Investigators determined the fire started along the north wall of the “blackened pillow room” on the northeast corner of the building. Deputy Chief Bollinger later speculated that the fire could have been prevented if the wall receptacle box, which contained the mechanism controlling the heating blowers, had been properly covered. One unnamed employee told Bollinger that he tried to make a metal cover for the box the week before the blaze, but was shocked during the attempted installation and was unable to do so. That same employee said that he had informed company officials of the problem, but it had not been fixed yet.
Learning that Adam and Andrea’s building may have a resident ghost, one could believe that the spirits of Playgorund Productions Studio are those of the tragic victims of the Foamcraft factory fire from 1968, but that does not appear to be the case. Tim Poynter, intuitive psychic empath who has worked with me on the tours for decades and now spends every October Friday and Saturday night in the building, admits that he encounters those spirits regularly, “But they aren’t necessarily attached to the building. They seem to be just passing through. Sometimes the tour guests bring them, and at other times, they are brought in by the readers.” Likewise, longtime tour volunteer Cindy Adkins, who was featured as a psychic intuitive in an episode of Zak Bagans’ Ghost Adventures in 2019, does not feel a resident ghost in the building. “They’re not in here permanently. I don’t feel them inside, but I do think some spirits are roaming around outside the building.” said Cindy. Indeed, it should be noted that the spot where the two employees died is located outside the studio, about 20-30 yards northwest of the door.
Today, Playground Productions Studio is a far cry from the old, dark, and spooky, chopped-up Foamcraft factory. The working studio is now full of light and texture. Walls are constructed of a naturally grounded hardwood facia and are peppered by soft blankets buffering any echoes and sounds that might affect the recording work. The artists, bands, and performers who regularly work or visit the Playground are joyful and carefree whenever there is an event or party going on. Knowing the depth of feeling that former Foamcraft employees have for the old “Bonna” location, it is easy to imagine that if there are spirits hovering around the property, inside or out, they do so with mirth and glee.
Foamcraft has created a fantastic, informative, and historical video with scenes shot at the old factory on Bonna. It can be found on the Web at: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/foamcraft-inc-_the-story-of-foamcraft-inc-activity-7089985534889975808-y92J/
