Down River 9/16

By John Lipez

Co-opting Renovo’s Name:
While recently scrolling through the 1,423 channels on TV, I stumbled across a reference to Renovo RX on one of the business channels. It was in reference to a stock, listed as RNXT. The initial reaction was that the gang at Renovo’s Mountain View Pharmacy on Fourth Street had joined the Big Board and is now publicly traded.

Upon additional review, per a company online posting, Renovo RX is a Silicon Valley “clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing therapies for the local treatment of solid tumors…” The company is headquartered in San Jose and has eight employees.

The name Renovo obviously jumped out, showing up on the TV screen. It makes one wonder how company officials there decided on use of the name Renovo. It was engrained in Down River decades ago that Clinton County’s very own Renovo comes from the Latin for renew. This leads also to this question: who and how in the post-Civil War era came up with the name Renovo? Some Philadelphia and Erie Railroad guy who was subjected to Latin as a language in high school? Hopefully western Clinton County historians Wayne Short or Rich Wykoff can provide us an answer.

Curiosity heightened, Down River turned to the dictionary to see if Renovo appeared there. It does not; closest we could come were renovate and renown, but no Renovo.

But if you google Renovo, you’ll find the Silicon Valley company and that’s about it. Renova RX cream showed up and received glowing reviews for removing wrinkles. (As a footnote, it’s always been Renova to me when pronouncing the name of the town; how ‘bout you?).

Then it was a check of Wikipedia to see if there might be more there on the borough’s naming. Nothing there either, although there were close to ten pages devoted to the borough’s history.

You may or may not be aware, Wikipedia sometimes can be a little loosey-goosey with the facts, but what appeared about Renovo looked reasonably accurate.

Those Wiki-pages did miss a couple good ones Down River would have included. These would be late Renovo Record owner Bennett Shaffer and his efforts some half a century ago to get western Clinton County to secede from Clinton County and set up Bucktail County with Renovo as that county’s county seat. Bennie was a good, well-intentioned guy who always had Renovo’s best interests at heart. And he wore his views right on his sleeve and in his paper and felt strongly that his end of the county was treated unfairly when county money was dispensed. Bennie’s secession effort never came to fruition but it did get the flatlanders at the other end of the county to pay a bit more attention to the comings-and-goings up Route 120.

We would be remiss in writing of the late Mr. Shaffer if we didn’t note he took great pride in continuing publication of The Record through the occasional difficult times. It is, you know, the oldest newspaper in Clinton County (keep an eye out for a 150th birthday party coming later this year). Record ownership passed through a lot of folks, the last borough resident being Ron Dremel who forwarded the baton to the late Buck O’Reilly and myself 30 years or so ago; that very same baton is now in the possession of Mike Frank and he promises to keep The Record alive for another 150 years as the paper continues its successful transition to online status while not forgetting its print roots. All the owners have been Clinton County residents, a point well taken, I would say, in this age of absentee ownership.

And the Wikipedia pages failed to make mention of the real ‘Shot Heard ‘round the World.” You know what we talking about, old Renovo Railroaders. In writing of Renovo we are reminded how the borough has a glorious history for nicknames (Wikipedia doesn’t mention that either). Down River contemporary and Renovo native son Bernie Greene has written volumes about western Clinton County’s affinity for nicknames. The personal favorite here will always be Charles “Bullhead” Saltsman, another Down River contemporary famous for the down river heartbreak he caused in February of 1961; look it up and then submit all the disturbing (from this perspective) details to Wikipedia.

And writing of the winter of 1960-61, let’s close on a visitor to Clinton County that winter who can be seen this Saturday morning in nearby Centre County. Yes, it’s time for my Lee Corso story, Corso providing the comic relief on the ESPN Gameday show which will be originating Saturday from State College, the home of the Nittany Lions.

And what was Lee Corso doing in Clinton County on a cold winter night in 1961? He was at the time a fledgling recruiter for Maryland football and came to a Lock Haven High School basketball practice at the W. Main Street gym. He was there to recruit both Bill Bowes and Bud Yost to attend Maryland and play their football with the Terps.

Despite a later recruiting trip for the two to College Park, MD, Bowes and the late Mr. Yost elected instead to head down Route 64 to Penn State. If you run in to Lee Corso in State College Saturday morning, ask him if he remembers that visit to Lock Haven in 1961. I do (which is remarkable in itself).