Lou’s View – Nov. 2013

By Lou Bernard

Ada Spearing’s Birthday

Mayor William F. Sperring stood out in a lot of ways. He was the only Lock Haven mayor ever elected as an independent. He was the only Lock Haven mayor to serve twice with a two-decade gap, elected in both 1902 and 1928. He’s the only Lock Haven mayor ever to donate his home to be made into a women’s shelter. And, to the best of my knowledge, he’s the only Lock Haven mayor to have his daughter light the table on fire at her thirteenth birthday party.

Oh, did that one get your attention?

October 20, 1903 was young Ada Elizabeth Sperring’s thirteenth birthday. She wanted to hold a huge party and have a good time, which her parents gave her permission to do. She wanted the kind of party that would leave a lasting memory. It was a Tuesday night, and Ada invited her best friends to her home at 601 Bellefonte Avenue, on the corner of Bellefonte and North Fairview.

Everyone accepted the invitation. Ada was a sweet, popular girl with musical talent—She enjoyed singing in her church choir, and later went to college as a music major.

That Tuesday evening, Ada opened her doors and let her guests come in, and everyone was having a wonderful time. The newspaper reported,”The parlors had been tastefully decorated….Profusely decorated with Japanese lanterns and colored paper streamers.”

Everyone socialized, admired the decorations, and gave gifts to Ada. And, after a while, Mrs. Sperring sat all the guests down at the kitchen table for cake and ice cream.

And then it happened. One of the kids bumped a candle. As I learned when my wife tried to do fondue with our kids some years ago, teenagers and fire are not a good combination.

The table ignited. And apparently at this point the newspaper reporters came out of the woodwork, because the paper reported on it in great detail: “By some means a candle turned over and ignited the light paper and soon the whole was ablaze. It caused considerable excitement for a few moments.”

The mayor rushed in, and in spite of the panicked teenagers, was able to get the fire out. The table had taken some damage, and so had the ceiling, but the damage was minor and everyone was okay. (Kind of makes the time I accidentally fired a rifle in the kitchen look not so bad, doesn’t it, DAD?)

The article referred to it as “a most delightful time.”

Ada had, in fact, managed to throw the kind of party that would leave a lasting memory. It took Mayor Charles Herr’s little daughter Katherine swallowing a knife some years later to erase Ada’s reputation as the mayor’s troublesome daughter.

With the fire extinguished, the kids sat down for the rest of the food, presumably with a new topic of conversation now. They discovered that the ice cream had ashes in it, and had to be thrown out, but the cake was okay.

Some years later, Sperring left his home to the city so that they could make it into a sort of halfway house and women’s shelter, the Sperring Home For Friendless Women. I assume he either fixed the damage, or the friendless women spent a lot of time wondering what the deal was with the scorch mark on the ceiling.

Ada Sperring grew up to become a popular musician, singing in several churches and clubs. She had just finished up with a rehearsal and was telling her parents about it when she went into convulsions and had to be rushed to the hospital. After a three-week stay there, she passed away and was buried in Highland Cemetery.

I assume if she’d torched the hospital somehow, the papers would have reported on it.