When The Shawshank Redemption was released in 1994, no one predicted the movie would make Mansfield, Ohio, a tourist destination for fans. Filmed almost entirely in and around Mansfield, the prison drama stars Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne, a banker wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, and Morgan Freeman as Ellis “Red” Redding, the resourceful inmate who befriends him.
In Ohio, there are an estimated 2,500 species of moths, compared to fewer than 140 butterfly species. An enthusiastic group of Ohio “moth-ers” (people who enjoy moths, rather than a maternal parent) is looking forward to celebrating these nighttime flyers during Mothapalooza, a bi-annual event taking place July 12 to 14 at Shawnee Lodge and Conference Center near West Portsmouth.
Michael Barhorst never tired of standing near the covered stage in the natural amphitheater on his property in rural Shelby County, watching thousands of country music fans enjoy the Country Concert he organized every year.
Fans came there to enjoy headliners, old favorites, and newcomers to the country music scene, to camp out and have fun with friends, and to share their love for the music with a massive crowd. “It is so rewarding,” Barhorst often remarked to friends and family, “to watch thousands of people take a shared emotional journey through the power of a song.”
The whole world watched on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong planted his left foot in the virgin lunar dust. That “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” rocketed Armstrong to instant immortality. As the first person to stand on a celestial body, Armstrong fulfilled the late President Kennedy’s goal of putting an American on the moon and rendered the United States the winner in its space race with the Soviet Union.
In 1951, a young boy was vacationing with his family near Milan, Italy. The boy, George Rau, was a scion of the well-known Lazarus family, which, for generations, ran one of the largest department store chains in Ohio.
Rau became enchanted with the docile lizards that sunned themselves on the rocky walls around Milan, and so he tucked 10 of them into a sock and brought them back to Cincinnati, where he released them in his family’s Torrence Court backyard.
Before there were bridges across the mighty, sometimes swift and muddy Ohio River, there were dozens of ferries that carried people, cargo, and the vehicles of the day from Ohio to Kentucky and West Virginia. Today, there are nearly 50 bridges, but only three ferries remain. Each of those that still ply their trade is cherished.
A Vietnam veteran was exploring the then newly opened National Veterans Memorial and Museum (NVMM) when he saw another man, a veteran of World War II, and stopped him in his tracks with a “Thank you for your service.”
“It was a very moving moment,” says Shelley Hoffman, associate director of external affairs, who witnessed the scene. The poignant episode epitomizes NVMM’s unique mission: saluting every veteran from every branch of the U.S. military in every period of war and peace.
