It was clear from the start of his political career that U.S. Rep. Michael J. Kirwan held a special reverence for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
In what might be his first official correspondence as a congressman, Kirwan writes the Callan family Jan. 7, 1937, to thank them for the flowers he received the day before. The Callans owned the Crockery City Ice & Products Co. in East Liverpool.
Kirwan begins, "Yesterday noon, just before leaving for the Capitol Building, where I was to hear the greatest humanitarian that ever lived give his address to the 75th Congress of these great United StatesÂ…"
The letter is punctuated with the sort of pure political syrup that Kirwan used so well, and sets in motion an illustrious career that spanned 33 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. Backed with the clout of the then heavily industrial Mahoning Valley, the New Deal Democrat cultivated the proper political connections and rose to become one of the most influential members of the House.
Among the pet projects Kirwan took with him to Washington was an ambitious plan to build a canal connecting the Ohio River with Lake Erie. The path of "Kirwan's Ditch" as the effort became known was plotted from the Ohio River near East Liverpool, through the heart of the Mahoning Valley's steel industry, and into the port of Ashtabula on Lake Erie.
The idea wasn't new; canals were dug throughout Ohio during the early and mid-19th century, and a lake-to-river waterway connected Cleveland, Akron and Portsmouth in the 1830s, bypassing the Mahoning Valley. But it was the timing of Kirwan's request that was unusual.
The Cleveland-to-Portsmouth canal shut down in 1913, and the Army Corps of Engineers became wary of approving such costly projects with little prospect of financial return. Railroads had proved a better investment both to carry passengers and haul freight and money continued to pour into upgrading the country's rail system.
Kirwan, spurred on early by Youngstown industrialists, lobbied for the canal throughout his entire career. Less than one month in office, the congressman received a letter from James L. Wick Jr., president of Falcon Bronze Co., Youngstown, and a member of one of the city's most affluent families. Wick asked Kirwan to convince Charles West, the undersecretary of the Department of Interior, of the merits of such a project.
"There is some chance for our canal even though the Army Engineers are not entirely sold on the project," Wick wrote Jan. 30, 1937. "If you know Charlie West, put the work on him, Old Man."
Kirwan replied two days later, saying he'd met West, and found the official "would be receptive to the idea of a canal."
As Kirwan's power grew in Congress, support for his canal did not. In the end, the project proved too costly and impractical for 20th century transportation. Despite endless studies and surveys that dated from the 19th century, ground was never broken.
In his early years in Congress, Kirwan's office was bombarded with routine letters from office seekers, recommendations for appointments and others requesting his help on public improvements. One letter in January 1937 requests he locate a deadbeat father who ditched his wife and refused to pay $15 a month in child support.
"If you give me more dope [information], I'll send J. Edgar Hoover himself after the guy," Kirwan's secretary, Roberta Messerly, responded.
Other matters involving Kirwan's constituents centered on national events that planted the seeds of sweeping social change in the 1950s and 1960s.
On Feb. 25, 1939, J. Maynard Dickerson, publisher of Youngstown's Buckeye Review, then one of the most influential black newspapers in Ohio, wrote Kirwan requesting that he lodge a formal protest against the Daughters of the American Revolution. Days earlier, the black opera star Marian Anderson was kept from performing at Constitutional Hall in Washington, D.C., owned by the DAR. Since 1932, the theater had operated under a "white artists only" provision.
Another effort was made to secure the auditorium of District of Columbia's Central High School for the performance, but the district board of education also denied Anderson.
In his letter, Dickerson asks the congressman to use his influence to secure the Central High venue. "I am in very deep sympathy with your problem," Kirwan replied Feb. 27, and noted he would do "everything I can" to secure the auditorium for Anderson.
It wasn't until first lady Eleanor Roosevelt interceded, by resigning from the DAR in protest, that a site was secured for Anderson. On Easter Sunday, 1939, Anderson performed before an integrated audience of 75,000 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial a moving, dramatic moment that gave an early victory to the modern civil rights movement.
Copyright 2008 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.