Legend of I-77’s ‘father’ still looms large in Marietta
By Connie Cartmell, ccartmell@mariettatimes.comArticle Photos
S. Durward Hoag was one of the first people Mahlon Fauss met when he came to Marietta in 1950 to launch his dry cleaning business.
Their chance meeting turned out to be beneficial for both businessmen.
"I opened up on Front Street with $150. One day this big man came in the front door," said Fauss, 81. "He had a rough voice.'They tell me you're in the laundry business,' he said."
Hoag, owner of the Lafayette Hotel, told Fauss that he'd been having trouble with his current cleaner getting the laundry of hotel guests back to them on time.
"'I'll give you a try,' he said to me," Fauss recalled.
Fauss, a Williamstown resident and founder and owner of Vogue-Swift Cleaners, 120 Third St., had a happy customer in Durward Hoag.
Countless tales are told about this larger-than-life man who has been called "a visionary," "Mr. Marietta," "The Father of I-77" and even "Marietta's Innkeeper."
"He was one heck of a man," Fauss said. "If he liked you, he'd do anything for you. If he didn't, he might say something about you in his column in the paper."
"Round and Round Below the R.R. Tracks," a paid ad by Hoag, ran Tuesdays for years in The Marietta Times. Readers looked forward to it, Fauss said.
Hoag meticulously saved his clippings, capturing them in volumes of scrapbooks - 60 to 70 in total. The collection is at the Washington County Public Library's history and genealogy department.
"Everybody wanted to see who he was 'riding,'" Fauss said.
Hoag was an evangelist when it came to parking. He constantly preached that business doesn't happen without it.
"He took the riverbank next to the hotel and made it into a parking lot," Fauss said. "Durward often said that if you want business, provide parking."
One of Hoag's greatest contribution to Marietta came on wheels.
"He was always interested in transportation, any type of transportation - river, rail, roads," said Ernie Thode, manager of the library's local history and genealogy branch. "Hoag was a determined man, instrumental in the development of I-77 through the area."
The hotel owner was most interested in getting customers in his front door. He heard about the federal government's plan to build a super highway from Cleveland to Charlotte, N.C., but the original route would follow winding roads from northern Ohio through Athens, then to Parkersburg, and on south.
Hoag began to ponder the proposed route, got out his pencil and did some sharp figuring. He discovered that there was a more direct route north to south and it passed Marietta. Then president of Marietta City Council, he put together a committee to go to Washington, D.C., and lobby legislators.
"He straightened out the road," Thode said. "His research saved the government money and he asked for the extra miles. Nobody else had thought about it, let alone asked."
The highway was built in increments, and when it finally crossed the Ohio River Bridge at Marietta, Hoag was asked to cut the ribbon.
It's been said that single event did more to bring tourism to historic Marietta and the Mid-Ohio Valley than anything else.
The late Roy Snediker, a close friend of Hoag for years, said in a 1999 interview, that Hoag opened Marietta to the outside world.
"He is the father of Interstate 77," Snediker had said.
Despite the many benefits the interstate would bring to Marietta, Hoag was also in line to experience the drawbacks for his own business.
A flourishing motel business began to grow along the interstate and particularly at the Marietta exit. Friends say Hoag must have known this would ultimately hurt his future operations, but he forged ahead.
"He was Steve to us," said Sally Hille, now of Williamstown. "He came out to our place, brought along his dog (Spud) and photographed the house."
Her husband, Dr. Richard Hille, a Marietta family physician for decades, owned Archer's Fork Manor at the time, a farm estate between Newport and New Matamoras.
"I admired Steve Hoag," Sally Hille said. "He was a really sweet guy and always helped me with publicity with the Humane Society."
One time when her husband was chairman of the polio vaccine program, she was having trouble getting a story in the paper about the vaccine and program, she said.
"I called Steve, told him about it, and 10 minutes later he called me back. 'You've got your story,' he said," Hille recalled.
It was the Lafayette Hotel itself that brings the most fond memories for Sally Hille.
"Everything in Marietta centered around the hotel," she said. "There were luncheons, bridge club, dances, dinners - it was the 'in' place. The hotel was jumping."
The couple were close friends of the late Stephen D. Hoag Jr., Hoag's only son, she said.
In a Sunday article in the Columbus Dispatch in October 1980, writer Joe Ionne spoke of Hoag, his hotel experience, vision and involvement in regional highway expansion. In the piece, friends said Hoag was the kind of guy who always wanted to see Rome built in the morning - so he could enjoy it that afternoon.
"Hoag lived and worked hard," Ionne wrote. "With graying hair brushed from his forehead and blue eyes twinkling beneath bushy brows, he looks like a crusty old showman. In a way, that's what he was and still is."
S. Durward Hoag died Oct. 18, 1982, at 81. He is entombed at East Lawn Cemetery. A year before he died, he was honored with a street bearing his name.
The street, S. Durward Hoag Drive, runs in front of the Kmart shopping center, appropriately nestled in the shadow of Interstate 77.
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flabuckeye
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07-12-09 11:12 AM
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I always looked forward to "Professor O. U. Kidder."
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