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❖ 1 ❖ FROM CLEVELAND TO NEW ORLEANS Jon Edgar Webb was born on February 1,1905,in Cleveland,Ohio,the first child of carpenter and building contractor T.W. Louis Webb and the former Ella Neely. Louis was born in Canada in 1878, the son of English emigrants. Ella was a year younger than her husband and, like her father, hailed from Philadelphia.Her mother was born in Ireland.The Webbs eventually had five children, with the addition of sons Harry, Thomas Louis, and William, and a daughter, Mary. Though blue collar, the Webbs were reasonably well-off. They were land owners, possessing a number of houses and a total of perhaps seventeen pieces of real estate. In 1930, their family home was valued at ten thousand dollars, a substantial sum. Louis and Ella sold their property some time before Louis’s death in the late 1950s. After the death of her husband , Ella moved to Florida, where she remained until her death in 1968. Turn-of-the-century Cleveland was a boom town, growing in population from just over seventeen thousand in 1850 to almost four hundred thousand in 1900, making it the seventh-largest city in America. It was a progressive city and a regional transportation hub with the excitement of electric streetcars , a professional baseball team, and the country’s first indoor shopping center. In 1905 the Cleveland News published its first issue, and the popular attraction Luna Park opened on thirty-five acres situated between Woodland Avenue, Woodhill, Mt. Carmel, and East 110th Street. Luna Park lured families in droves for thrill rides, swimming, roller skating, and culture. The great tenor Enrico Caruso once sang in the park’s concert garden. The grand Hollenden Hotel, which proved a favorite stopover for several United States presidents and other celebrities over the next six decades, was brandnew . John D. Rockefeller built his summer home, Forrest Hill, in Cleveland in 1890 and used it regularly until it was taken by fire in 1917. The massive Cuyahoga County Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, dedicated in 1894 to Cleveland-area residents who fought for the Union in the Civil War, towered over downtown’s Public Square. Jon Webb grew to manhood in this city. He was short and lean, but well- 9 ❖ From Cleveland to New Orleans ❖ proportioned, with the thin, sharply defined features of an aristocrat. In 1924, he married a local girl named Opal Marie Bennett. Jon was nineteen , Opal a year younger. The couple sneaked away to Flint, Michigan, for the ceremony, perhaps a bad omen. Their union was stormy at best. Opal was sexually promiscuous and a drinker who spiraled into alcoholism. The couple eventually had three children.Barbara was born in 1926,Joyce arrived the following year, and a son, Jon, Jr., came in 1928. Jon supported his family by working as a reporter at one time or another for both the Cleveland News and the Toronto Star, but there was never enough money in the house. This was before the Cleveland Newspaper Guild formed in 1934, and reporters with three or more years’ experience could expect to earn only twenty to twenty-five dollars a week. Jon, Jr., recalled that it was not uncommon for Opal to take the children to a breadline in order to keep them fed. Sometimes meals consisted of no more than hardtack bread and oranges. In 1932, Jon worked the police beat for the News. As part of the routine, he spent time at a precinct each day with competing reporters, digging for stories or waiting for a newsworthy event. When something big happened, the reporters raced to the scene and angled to get the best story. The life of a reporter could be stressful, combining long hours with low pay. The job mixed stretches of intense boredom with flurries of excitement when a good story broke. In Jon’s case, the pressures of work, family, and finances eventually acted upon him in a way probably no one would have expected. He decided to commit armed robbery. As he told it to his son years later, Jon picked out a jewelry store in upscale Cleveland Heights and carefully planned his crime. He went to the police station as usual on the day of the robbery. After a time, he went to the men’s room, climbed out a window and made his way to the jewelry store, where the robbery went off without incident. The next part of the plan was ingenious...

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