Now two months from his 95th birthday but strong-willed, compassionate, mentally sharp and as gregarious as humanly possible, Lylle Stuart refuses to let Father Time get in the way.
The lifelong Spencer Township resident drives his 2004 Saturn wherever he needs to go. He also rides a bicycle for enjoyment, making multi-mile trips that help him maintain great physical condition.
RON SCHWANE / GAZETTE
Former Spencer High standout Lylle Stuart will be inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame during Thursday ceremonies at The Galaxy Restaurant in Wadsworth.
In his late 80s, he wanted a deck behind his custom, double-wide trailer home that overlooks the lake at Shawnee Lake Park. So he built one following plans he designed in his head. He’s currently re-staining it.
Stuart isn’t afraid to boast about physical accomplishments — of course, he’s never been accused of being shy. He has never smoked a cigarette, only has a beer — maybe two, if he’s feeling frisky — in social settings and weighs the same as he did in high school: 162 pounds.
His secret to life, however, is not necessarily physical.
“First off all, if you don’t believe in something, you might as well kiss your butt goodbye,” he said. “You have to have certain values in your life that govern what you do and what you don’t do. If you’re not willing to sacrifice a little bit in order to have that, then you’re going to miss out on what’s best. I’ve always lived by that. I always like to treat people the way I’d like to be treated. That’s the way I like to go.
“Life is like a rubber band. If you pull one way, you can only go so far before you have to come back to the middle. You have to find that happy medium. There’s always a way out if you’re willing to bend a little bit.”
Stuart can rattle off vivid memories of his childhood, role as an instructor during World War II, career at General Motors, two happy marriages and founding Shawnee Lake Park just east of Spencer on the corner of state Route 162 and Congress Road. Most stories are anecdotal in nature.
But Stuart’s high school athletic career is hazy.
Stuart is proud that he became Medina County’s first state champion when he tied for the 1940 Class B high jump title at Ohio Stadium in Columbus.
He’s also proud of being a star forward for legendary Spencer High basketball coach Sid Sooy and genuinely honored that he’ll be inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame during Thursday ceremonies at The Galaxy Restaurant in Wadsworth.
What Stuart recalls about sports is his competitiveness, the discipline instilled by Sooy and bonding with his younger brother, Francis. That he will enter the same hall of fame as them is near to his heart.
Forgive Stuart for being vague. High school sports were pure and innocent in that era. Stuart competed to have fun, not to get his name in the newspaper or win ribbons he could brag about decades later.
Stuart gifted his state championship pin to his idol and second father figure, Sooy. The other accolades are displayed at the Spencer Historical Society alongside his brother’s.
Remember: Those four years at Spencer High School make up only 4 percent of his life.
“I always considered myself average, at least,” he said with a chuckle.
Molded by Sid
Lylle Russell Stuart was born Aug. 16, 1921 as the ninth of Cort and Alta’s 11 children. He shared a bed with Francis, two years his junior and an inseparable companion, until graduating high school.
The Stuarts lived on a 164-acre farm on Old Mill Road near the Medina/Lorain county border. Chores were hard and money was tight, but there was always food.
That was important during The Great Depression, so the Stuarts never felt like life was rough. Lylle’s earliest memories were neighborhood softball games — Cort molded popcorn and molasses to make a homemade softball — and eating homemade ice cream while the adults played cards in the farmhouse. Trips to Wellington to watch the series of Tarzan movies were rare treats.
Anything else Lylle and Francis wanted, including school clothes, was earned. They worked constantly throughout their childhoods, helping with building demolitions, painting houses, shucking wheat, running Sooy’s fur trap lines and being “chief honey-dippers” — a sarcastic name for outhouse cleaners.
The brothers also helped their father bottle beer during Prohibition, and they continued to do so after he was arrested — twice.
“Everyone was into bootlegging then,” Stuart pointed out.
No matter what Stuart was involved in, Francis was at his side. Francis later pitched Spencer to the 1941 Class B state tournament, was an All-Ohio basketball player, won the 1942 Class B 120-yard hurdles state championship and signed a contract with the Cleveland Indians after the war.
They were “two peas in a pod.”
“He and I had a wonderful relationship,” Lylle said. “I don’t ever, ever, ever, ever remember being mad at each other. It was one of those brotherly bonds that are few and far between today.”
Something else that is few and far between today is a three-sport standout. Lylle fit the bill.
Though basketball was his favorite sport, the muscular 6-foot-1 Stuart was best at track and field.
Stuart was a superstar locally, helping Spencer win three Medina County League championships. Individual results from his senior season are unavailable, but in 1938 he grabbed top-three ribbons in the long jump, pole vault and shot put. In 1939, Stuart won the 100-yard dash, high jump and pole vault and was third in the discus as the Redbirds crushed the 13-team field by 27½ points.
A few weeks later, Stuart smashed the Mentor District high jump record by clearing 5 feet, 9¾ inches. He missed other state berths in the pole vault and long jump by one placement but went on to take third in the high jump at Ohio Stadium. At the time, he was only the fourth state placer in county history.
“My father was a small person, and my mother was, too, so a lot of it is natural thing,” Stuart said of his versatility. “It comes to you. It’s born into you. It’s a matter of possibly somebody else helping you define it through a science. Here again, I keep mentioning Mr. Sooy.”
Sooy “fine-tuned” Stuart into a state champion.
Stuart initially starred in the high jump using the scissors technique that was popular at the time. The strict yet fair Sooy, a track and field star at Baldwin Wallace in the 1930s, tapped into Stuart’s potential.
Stuart began twisting his body and attacking the bar by arching his back. It was an unrefined version of the Fosbury Flop, the modern technique popularized by Dick Fosbury at the 1968 Olympics.
“When I was doing it that way, it was easier to get my body turned,” Stuart said. “I could throw my whole body into the air and get my back straightened out.
“I would say almost anything I could do and do fairly well, I always go back to the coach.”
The results were impressive.
Stuart was a man among boys as a senior, powering Spencer to an unheard of second-place finish at the 20-team Mentor District. He broke his high jump record (5-10) and won the long jump (20-4) along with grabbing second in the 220 and third in the 100. Francis Stuart (T-2nd, pole vault), Ray Spirek (2nd, mile) and Clarence Walkden (4th, 440) also placed.
On that day, Lylle Stuart became the first four-event state qualifier in county history during an era when the Ohio High School Athletic Association had only two divisions and well north of 1,200 schools.
Stuart doesn’t recall details about his state championship other than being wowed by all of the natural athletes who were at Ohio Stadium. Maybe that’s why he failed to place in the long jump, 100 and 220.
Stuart also recalls Sooy driving him back to Spencer after Friday preliminaries. He graduated that night, returned to Columbus on Saturday morning and won his favorite event, the high jump, at 5-7.
Stuart came home to little fanfare. High school sports weren’t as glorified as they are today, and the only mention in The Gazette consisted of four paragraphs at the bottom of the front page.
The first state track and field meet was held in 1908. Until Lodi’s Bill Heffelfinger won the Class A 220 in 1960, the only champions from the county were Lylle and Francis Stuart.
“Nobody ever beat me, so I figured I was pretty good,” Lylle said.
“It was a good feeling (winning the state championship). You had to feel proud of yourself. For a small farm town to do something like that, to me, it was great.”
Stuart wasn’t passionate about baseball because that was Francis’ sport. Sooy recognized Lylle could run like a deer, so Stuart patrolled center field for the Redbirds, who the year after Lylle graduated reached the Class B state quarterfinals behind Francis’ electric left pitching arm.
Lylle’s main love was basketball.
Though he was among the tallest players, Stuart was a modern-day small forward. He was a dead-eye shooter and used ball fakes that allowed him to either pull up for a set shot or use his leaping ability to attack the basket.
Spencer developed into a standout program under Sooy and quickly became the chief rival of Lodi, which won all four Medina County League Tournament championships during Stuart’s career.
Stuart was the Redbirds’ standout, earning first-team All-MLCT selections as a sophomore and junior. No all-tournament teams were published his senior year, but it’s hard to imagine Stuart not being honored after he broke the school single-game scoring record with 28 points.
With the Stuart brothers carrying the load, the 1939-40 Redbirds were the MCL regular-season champions, runners-up to Lodi in the tournament and Clearview Sectional qualifiers — a big deal considering small schools had to finish in the top three of their county to be eligible for a state title.
Spencer also had a 20-3 record with losses by one, two and four points. Two defeats were to Clearview, which won the Class B state championship two years later, while the other to Lodi was in sudden-death overtime. Stuart scored 12 of the Redbirds’ 22 points in his final game.
“Basketball was what I liked,” Stuart said. “It was competitive. I liked that there was a set of rules you had to go by, and in your whole life there’s always a set of rules — if you want to live by them.
“All I know is I lived to play basketball. I loved the sport. I still do.”
That’s not all: Stuart excelled despite being legally blind in his left eye. He sustained the injury and narrowly escaped death as a child when a horse kicked him in the head.
Life after sports
College wasn’t an option for the Stuart family. There was barely enough money to care for 11 children on a daily basis, let alone pay for advanced schooling.
Lylle was content because he dreamed of being a navy man anyway, but there was a problem: His bad eye that denied him an appointment out of high school.
Stuart went to work in a Chardon rubber factory. Stuart found out about Pearl Harbor on the radio Dec. 7, 1941. Stuart was soon drafted and assigned to the army. He applied for a navy transfer but again was denied.
With his eye keeping him from fighting overseas, Stuart was reassigned to the Air Force as an instructor.
Stuart headed Florida’s Boca Raton Army Airfield, where he trained cadets how to use the AN/APQ13 radar system used by B-29 Superfortresses in high-altitude bombing. The program was top secret.
Stuart was discharged shortly after V-J Day. His wife June soon became pregnant, and Stuart looked for a better job than being an apprentice at the local electrical store.
Stuart applied at General Motors’ Fisher Guide Plant in Elyria, where the highest-paying job available was third-shift buffing. Stuart accepted but soon loathed it, and he begged the electrical department supervisor every day until he became a factory-wide troubleshooter.
Stuart remained with GM for 24½ years but never forgot a dream he had while sitting on a hill at his father-in-law’s farm: Buying 35 acres and building a campground with a beautiful lake.
Decades later, Stuart’s home sits atop that hill, fewer than 50 yards from where the dream was born.
“For the longest time they called me, ‘The Dreamer,”’ Stuart said. “I could sit there and in my mind, if I were to do something, I could look at it and know exactly what to do. I don’t need a print or nothin’.”
Stuart began building Shawnee Lake Park in the 1950s. The facility grew to have 210 campsites, an outdoor theater and activities lodge, nature trails, a dam, a swimming area and other amenities. Now the campground is so popular it only sells seasonal passes.
Stuart sold Shawnee Lake Park in 1980 so he and his wife could travel — he’s been on 15 to 20 Caribbean cruises — but he kept a tiny piece of land and converted a trailer into a small home. The campground has natural gas, water and cable television, so Stuart gets all that for free.
Stuart is a snowbird and lives in Florida in the winter months, but expenses are virtually non-existent when he’s in Ohio because of his hard work and business deals.
“I think my electrical bill last month was $12,” he said with a smile.
Stuart spends most of his time around people — a social butterfly if there ever was one. June died in 1995, his second wife Shirley passed away in 2011 and his son, Rick, followed a year later. Stuart cherishes visits from his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as many live in Northeast Ohio.
“I hate being alone,” Stuart acknowledged.
Stuart isn’t alone much because of the campground, where he gets the biggest kick out of interacting with younger generations. Recently he bought four children slushies on the stipulation they pick up cigarette butts around the campground. He also once had 10 little ones crammed into his home.
Random acts of kindness are routine for Stuart, who has donated money to Native American reservations for the last 15 years. Every year he returns from Florida with chocolate-covered peanuts for the sole purpose of giving them away.
Last week, he bought four quarts of strawberries from Amish friends, who gifted him with a head of lettuce and homemade cookies. Then he went to a local salon for a pedicure — “Try it! You’re not a sissy if you have it,” Stuart insisted — but returned home empty-handed because he gave everything away.
“Stuff like that happens almost every day,” Stuart said.
Such is life for Stuart. There always is a memory to be made.
Past athletic accomplishments are only a small part of who he is. Impacting others is what keeps him going.
“In my lifetime, I’ve just seen so many things happen that upset me to a point,” Stuart said. “It’s like kind of trying to destroy memories, but the thing about that is the memories in your mind, they’re never going to be taken from you.
“I thank the good lord for every day he gives me. I really do.”