Lou’s View – Feb. 11, 2016
The Love Story of George and Helen Tidlow
by Lou Bernard
I write local history. Mostly. Nobody really doubts that, but with Valentine’s Day coming up, I figured I’d better write something else. This week, a love story. The kind of thing my wife and daughters like to watch in the movies. If I’m going to the movies, I want lightsabers and superheroes. If I see Hugh Jackman in a movie, he’d better have metal claws. But my wife and daughters like romantic comedies, so I thought I’d write about the closest thing Lock Haven has to one of those.
George and Helen Tidlow, a wonderful, sweet married couple who were very much in love.
In the mid-1920s, Helen Schwoerer was a young bank teller at First National on the corner of Vesper and Main Streets. George Tidlow was a general contractor and a widower—His wife, Marguerite, had died in 1925, leaving him with a three-year-old daughter. He’d been hired to do some work at the bank.
Helen worked next to another woman who wanted a husband. It was, apparently, all she heard about all day. Helen suggested that the woman ask George Tidlow out on a date, on the basis that he’d make good husband material.
George, however, had already taken notice of Helen. He would often stand in her line at the bank, and he liked how kind Helen was to his little daughter. George, as the job concluded, offered to take the girls at the bank to a football game as an excuse to spend some time with Helen.
Helen had plans, and couldn’t make it.
George said that all of the girls had to go, or else he couldn’t take anyone. The other girls begged Helen, and she relented, going to the game with them all.
George and Helen got to know each other, and Helen loved George’s little girl. And they were married on July 3, 1926. They moved into a house at the top of Bellefonte Avenue, where Great Island Cemetery had previously been until it was moved in 1918.
Helen had one big secret: She was a terrible cook.
This is not really an insult to her. She admitted it herself, to the end of her life. People who knew her claim that she couldn’t accomplish so much as boil an egg. But this wasn’t something she wanted to admit to her new husband. She preferred to confide, instead, in the store owner down the street.
Let me explain that.
According to a story told in the book “A Peek At The Past,” which is available at the Ross Library if you’ll forgive the shameless plug, Helen tried to make a roast early on in her marriage. This could be counted as somewhat less than successful; she burned the roast very badly and destroyed the pan. So she ran out back and buried the pan, and then ran down to the Dickey Hardware store on Main Street to buy a new one.
Robert Dickey, the owner of the store, knew what was going on, and learned to keep a steady supply of roast pans available. Helen got a little better at making a roast, and her digging skills improved considerably, as well.
Some time after, when they’d been married a few years, George had some downtime between jobs. He asked Helen if she’d like some work done in the yard, a few nice bushes, maybe a pond. Helen loved the idea, and George put some of his men to work on it.
Half an hour later, he came back inside, holding the remains of a charred roast pan.
“I knew this was a cemetery once,” George said,”But I didn’t know it was a garbage dump.”
“Oh, yeah,” Helen admitted. “You’re going to find more of those.”
(Still a better love story than Twilight.)
George died in 1952. Helen outlived him by over half a century, and never had the urge to marry anyone else. She finally passed away in 2006, just short of a hundred years old, which is pretty impressive for someone who never learned to cook healthy food. The two of them are buried together in Highland Cemetery.
They’re a nice love story, a romantic comedy, and they make a nice Valentine’s Day column. And if it’s Valentine’s Day, and you’re at home, reading this alone….Cheer up, champ! Better luck next year.
