Lincoln Highway wrap-up #1, from South Bend, IN.
This is the first of a couple of concluding sets. One of the delights on the drive was seeing all of the murals – here is a random sampling.
I didn’t see any in New Jersey, and they started appearing in Pennsylvania. Ohio seemed to have the best ones, but there were some very good ones in Indiana and Pennsylvania, too.
It is a hard choice but my grand prize has to go to the wall mural in Massillon, OH (near Canton) for a mural commemorating 100 years of Massillon high school football. They take their football very seriously in Ohio and Massillon in particular. The rivalry between Massillon’s Washington High School and Canton’s McKinley High School is said to be legendary – there is apparently a documentary about it. As I was looking at it a local explained it all to me (very chatty around there) and pointed out (proudly) that his likeness is in one of the panels. Over on the left you see the legendary coach Paul Brown depicted – a Massillon native. He is buried there. In 1932, Massillon hired a young Paul Brown as head football coach at the high school (his teams lost only 10 games in 11 seasons). He went to OSU after that, then later the Browns and the Bengals. One can make a good case that without Paul Brown hiring Bill Walsh as an offensive assistant in Cincinnati (where working under Brown Walsh’s West Coast offense had its beginnings), no 49er resurgence in the 80s, no Super Bowls…
