The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Have you dined with the presidents?
Local troupe preps for another Dinner with the Presidents
The living history group known as We Made History will be out in full force for the upcoming Presidents Day holiday, Feb. 19.
Lucretia Garfield, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln will start the day from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the James A. Garfield National Historic Site, where Presidents Day is celebrated as something of an open house, with free admission, trivia games and crafts.
A few hours later, Yours Truly restaurant in Mentor hosts its 11th annual Dinner with the Presidents from 5 to 8 p.m. with George Washington and James A. Garfield strolling among diners along with their respective wives, Martha and Lucretia. In real life, they are Dale Fellows, Ed Haney, Nancy Fellows and Debbie Weinkamer. A guest on hand from another re-enactor group will be Ruth Pangrace of Rocky River, portraying first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
The Lincolns (played by John and Marian King) and Ulysses S. Grant (Don Miller of Bainbridge Township) already will have been at the Yours Truly in Hudson on Feb. 18 for its Dinner with the Presidents.
As the re-enactors mix and mingle with diners, they answer many questions and tell them about their lives, remaining true to the period in which they lived.
“It amazes me how wellinformed some of the children are,” said Fellows, a relative newcomer to the acting troupe.
“One young man who comes every year can tell you every president, when they served, along with other interesting information about each one.”
Fellows has appeared the last five years at the Yours Truly dinners and has performed as George Washington at more than 100 events throughout Ohio and neighboring states.
The re-enactors said they all have encountered folks who try to trip them up and get them to speak about modern things instead of remaining in the character of their time. Sometimes they need to think quickly, but the actors are wellversed about their characters and are up to the challenge.
“When I had a guy asking me about (President Donald) Trump, I acted as if he was asking about the game of euchre when cards trump one another,” said John King.
King won an Abe Lincoln look-alike contest last year in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and, like the other reenactors, he has immersed himself in learning all he can about the 16th president.
He’s discovered that more has been written about Lincoln than any other president — including the information that he liked cats.
When members of the acting troupe learned Fellows was fascinated with the Founding Fathers and especially well-informed about Washington, they asked him to join them in We Made History. His many visits to Colonial Williamsburg made him intrigued with the idea even though he had no acting experience.
“But Williamsburg’s George Washington re-enactor, Ron Carnegie, shared some time with me and gave me some tips,” he said. So he accepted the role. Pangrace debuts with the local acting troupe at this year’s Dinner with the Presidents, taking over as Roosevelt for Linda Laronge, who died in 2016 after a long illness.
Pangrace, who works with the Lakewood-based Women in History group, has also portrayed first lady Florence Harding, war hero Molly Pitcher, newspaperwoman Louella Parsons and abolitionist writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, among others. But Roosevelt is her favorite.
Schoolchildren who may not know about Roosevelt quickly warm up to Pangrace once they get past the animal skin she wears around her neck. It’s a mink stole complete with head and tail that was often worn by Roosevelt, although some children think it looks like a squirrel.
The first Dinner with the Presidents took place in 2005 at Lawnfield Inn and Suites in Mentor.
“(Lawnfield Inn and Suites owners) Nancy and Rob Kneen hosted it as a formal dinner with us as guests and speakers,” recalled Debbie Weinkamer, who has played Lucretia Garfield for many years.
In the late 1980s, Ed Haney, who was involved in community theater at the Fine Arts Association in Willoughby, was asked by Lawnfield volunteer Maureen Osborne to play Garfield for a Lawnfield fundraiser. She was a Lawnfield volunteer.
Haney and Weinkamer met a few years later at the James A. Garfield National Historic site, where they both were interpreters and gave tours. They teamed up to portray the Garfields for the first time in 2001 at an ice cream social there.
The Yours Truly dinners began in 2008 and have been a popular fixture in Lake County ever since.
Your Truly co-owner Jeff Shibley, who lives in Kirtland Hills, said the Mentor restaurant sees about 300 people for the Dinner with the Presidents.