DARKE COUNTY, OHIO BIOGRAPHIES
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File contributed for Ohio Biographies Project by:
Name: Francis Motschman, Sr. 
Email: dalesr99@earthlink.net 
Date: August 5, 2003
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The Shultz Family of Darke County, Ohio

 The Biography of  Earl Wesley Shultz
Son of Sherman Harold Shultz and Myrtle Virginia Dalton
by Francis D. Motschman, Sr.

	When I think of my brother-in-law, Earl Shultz, I picture a tall, strong 
young  man throwing a bowling ball down the alley with such tremendous speed 
that it amazes you that the pins didn't break. I guess he thought that the speed 
of the ball would mix the pins up so much that it would compensate for not 
hitting your mark. Sometimes his theory was correct and sometimes it wasn't. 
Earl went after life pretty much the same way he bowled.

	Earl was born on Wed., October 7, 1925. My wife, Juanita V. Shultz 
Motschman, who is my only live source of facts from those early years, does not 
know where they lived when Earl was born. She knows only that they lived in 
Dayton, Ohio at that time. She was born in Indiana and all the rest of the 
children were born in Ohio. 

	Earl was a street kid in his early years. His mother was very ill with a 
kidney problem so she didn't keep track of him as you would think a mother 
should. His father was working or training boxers or playing cards at either 
Koors 29 on Fifth St in Dayton or at the Pony House on Jefferson St. These 
establishments were for Men Only. They had a huge bar, especially at the Pony 
House, card games going on all the time (mostly Euchre) and men taking bets on 
the horse races and other men at a huge blackboard posting race results. It was 
hard to find a drug store or a mom and pop store that didn't have pin ball 
machines or slot machines. Gambling was everywhere at that time so if a man 
needed money it was pretty natural to turn to gambling to get it. The smell of 
tobacco smoke and beer filled the air at both establishments. Earl's father as 
you may note in his biography had a male/female problem concerning his work. He 
naturally gravitated to these all male places to gamble. Here in his eyes, he 
was a man, among men doing mens things, but oddly, he neither drank nor smoked. 

	His lack of supervision created situations  where his father would have 
to punish him. Sherman would lose his temper if the kids did anything wrong. The 
oldest of the children took the brunt of it and especially the oldest male, 
which was Earl. He took some violent beatings from his dad and afterwards 
Juanita would try and put something soothing on his back and talk to him and try 
to quell the anger raging inside. She was afraid that he would run away; and to 
her credit he stayed home.

	Myrtle died just a few days after Earls ninth birthday and Earl and his 
brothers and sisters ended up as part of the children at Wernle Childrens Home 
in Richmond, Indiana. They were very sad at this turn of events but after a 
while the sadness left and under the direction of Mr. and Mrs. Baumer they were 
actually fairly happy. Sherman would come to see them when he could but he was 
hampered at not having a car. Earl and Rickie, their Aunt and Uncle from Ansonia 
came to see them pretty often as well as other relatives.

	After they were there for about three years, Mr. Baumer's health began 
to deteriorate and they had to leave. Mr. and Mrs. Keothe a german couple with 2 
sons were brought in to run the home. The two boy's, Hans and Fritz, ages 16 and 
18 were put in charge of the boys and given the freedom of punishing  as they 
wished. 

	One day Earl got into trouble by climbing up into a Mulberry tree. The 
children had been allowed to get mulberries when the Baumers were there but the 
Keothe's put the tree on the forbidden list. The boys saw Earl up in the tree 
and made him come down. They drug him into the entry hall  of the home and 
started beating him and kicking him. Earl was just 12 and no match for them so 
he curled up into a ball on the floor. Juanita came in as this was going on and 
she got in their faces and told them she was going to notify their dad. That 
night she penned a letter to him and left it in the office to be mailed.

	The next day a friend of Juanita's asked her if she had sent a letter to 
her dad. She said yes and the girl told her that her dad was never going to get 
it. Juanita's friend had the job of cleaning the Office and had seen it torn up 
and in the waste basket. This challanged Juanita and she composeed another 
letter which she gave to a schoof friend of hers to mail. The end result was 
that he came down and was raging. He was told by the Keothe's that he had no 
complaint since his children were non paying wards of the institution. Now he 
was furious. He went back to Dayton and got all his receipts that he had been 
paying every month and went to the Lutheran Minister in Dayton who was on the 
Wernle Board. It turns out that the Keothe's had been pocketing his monthly 
payments as well as the payments of another family. The Keothe's were sent 
packing and another nice couple came in to run the home.  Shortly after that 
Sherman married Adelaide Brandt of Dayton, Ohio and brought all six of the 
children back home to live with them. That was one brave Adelaide Brandt. She 
was only ten years older than Juanita... it wasn't easy for Addie, as everyone 
called her, or the children. Everyone worked hard to make it a success.

	When he was old enough, Earl joined the Navy and was stationed on a ship 
in the South Pacific. While he was in the Navy he married a hometown girl, 
Marilyn Adams and they had two children, Susan and David. Susan was born Abt. 
1946 and David in 1949. When he got out of the Service after Susan was born he 
worked at the National Cash Register Co. for a while and purchased a home on 
Reading Ave., in South East Dayton. A couple of years later he was laid off at 
the NCR Co., and he and Marilyn decided to sell the house and move to Florida.

	Even though he and Marilyn disagreed with each other a lot, their time 
in Florida was enjoyable for Earl. He loved to swim and he and Marilyn would 
take the kids to the ocean and Earl tought the little ones to do deep sea 
diving. Many was the evening where they had lobster that they had caught, as 
their evening meal right there on the beach. For some reason they thought that 
it would be better living in California and they moved there. After living in 
California for some time Earl and Marilyn broke up and Earl started to go out 
with a friend of Susan's. In 1966 Earl and Darlene (Dolly) J. Kretzman, Susan's 
friend were married in Florida.

	Dolly presented Earl with another son on Wed., March 5, 1969. He was 
very pleased with this gift. Then tragedy struck on Earl's birthday in 1972. His 
son David and his wife, Terry and their son Chris was visiting Earl for his 
birthday. Just before David and his family hopped on their motorcycle to journey 
back to California, Earl and he got into a big argument. The result was Earl and 
David were not speaking when David left. Two or three hours later Earl got a 
phone call from the State Police telling him that David had been killed in an 
accident and Terry and Chris were alive but were in bad shape.
Earl was never the same man after that call. He blamed himself for everything.

	Earl wanted to get back to California and they were checking the 
California papers for something that they could afford to buy. They found an ad 
for the sale of 40 acres up rather high on a mountain near Willits. They rushed 
across country to see the property and they both seemed to like it. So, they 
purchased it. There were no roads up to their place then and it was a 
tremendous, but very self satisifying job, clearing the land and putting in 
their own makeshift road. They managed to bring two mobile homes up there and 
connect them to make one dwelling. There was no electricity or phone service 
that far up, but there was pride in ownership, all kind of game and a huge 
swimming pool. He and Dolly both started to work at a nursing home in Ukiah. It 
was a hard but good life, one that they both seemed to enjoy. They were not 
getting ahead as most people would want but their wants were different and for 
their wants they were doing OK. Chris came to live with them for a while but he 
soon took off to go to college and get married. He now lives in Washington 
State. Wesley got married, too and that left just Dolly and Earl. 

	In the mid 1980's Earl had to have an operation to remove his voice box 
due to cancer of the throat, this left him with almost no voice and a hole in 
his throat to breath through. He wore a bib tied around his throat to cover the 
hole at all times. For almost ten years he stayed like this. He absolutely 
refused to get an artificial voice box. If you couldn't get  what he was saying, 
whispering, actually, he would get angry and tell you to get a hearing aid. He 
was extremely jealous of Dolly and would constantly accuse her of infidelities, 
which were figments of his demented imagination.

	In the late 1990's Dolly left him and he came to live with his Dad in 
Laura, Ohio. This was a relationship that almost caused Sherman to have a 
nervous break down. Earl wasn't broke, he received his portion of the sale of 
their mountain property. He entrusted me to look out for it, giving him what he 
needed when ever that occasion would occur. His father's health was being 
threatened and giving in to the urging of all of the family here he agreed to go 
back to California and live with his son and daughter-in-law. I gave him $600 of 
his own money and put him on a train to Chicago. I explained to him that the 
train depot was in a bad end of town so he was not to leave the depot for any 
reason. The next day I was called by the Railway Police and they said they had 
found three pieces of luggage in the middle of the floor at the depot. I thought 
that maybe he had got on the train and forgotten his luggage but the police said 
that they were going to radio the engineer and a search would be made on the 
train for him.The search was fruitless. I notified the Chicago Police and they 
started a search for him. I then called the Martinez depot and explained the 
situation to them and they said they would have people looking for him when the 
train got there. That Chicago Police Dept. was wonderful... they called us every 
day to let us know what was happening there. A policewoman saw, what looked to 
her, to be a naked man dart behind a bush in a park. She investigated and it was 
Earl, badly beaten, hungry and needing clothes. They notified us immediately and 
one of his cousins, Bob Williams and I went to Chicago to get him. His luggage 
had already been sent on to California. A policeman in Chicago had given him 
some of his clothes so he was presentable. When we got home with him my wife got 
me aside and told me that her brother Ronnie had called just a few hours before 
we got back with the news that Earl's daughter, Susan, had died out in 
California while Earl was lost in Chicago. I told her that I would tell him. I 
waited until morning and he and I were up early. I made some bacon and eggs for 
him and as we were drinking our coffee  I told him that I had some bad news, and 
I told him. He put his head down and cried for about a minute, then he raised 
his head I think he forgot what it was he was crying for. We never talked of her 
again.

	After a few days of recupperation Bob, Earl and I took the train 
together to California. Sherman said he would pay for everything  so when I 
bought the tickets, trying to save him some money, I bought Coach tickets. A 
BAAD mistake. That is too far to go in a coach. 

	We had a scare, one night, it must have been about 2:00 a.m. and I woke 
up. We were stopped and in a few minutes the train started up again. I looked 
around and Earl was gone. I felt my heart drop... had Earl wandered off the 
train?  I woke Bobby and we went off in different directions looking for him. I 
didn't see him and I turned around and walked back toward our seats. Bobby had 
found him. What a relief!!! Earl had got to the observation car and then forgot 
which way to go to get back so he sat down and waited.

	After we got to Martinez we got something to eat and rented a motel 
room. We tried to call an Auto Rental from the restaurant. There are none in 
Martinez, we have to go to Concord, the next town for that. We went to our motel 
and settled in for the night. We weren't there very long when Earl said, "OK, 
you guys, what do you plan on doing with me? Are you planning on killing me? If 
you are why don't you just do it? To hell with you guys... I'm leaving", and he 
went out of the door and started up the street. I had taken a shower and wasn't 
dressed for chasing but Bobby flew out and grabbed hold of Earl. "We don't have 
any plans to kill you, but if you don't get back in that motel room I'm gonna 
kick your butt from here to there". Earl came back in the room highly agitated 
demanding to know why we had kidnapped him. He wouldn't believe we were who we 
said we were, so I asked, "Earl, who is Juanita?".
"That's my sis", he answered

	"I'm going to call her, would you believe anything she tells you?", I 
asked him.

	With his affirmative answer to that, I called my wife and told her that 
Earl wanted to ask her some questions. I gave him the phone and she said 
something to him, "Hi sis", he said, "say, these two guys have got me locked up 
in a motel room.... Oh, OK, sis, ...  if you say so, I'll honor that", and he 
gave the phone back to me. We never had any more trouble after that. The next 
day we took a taxicab to Concord, rented the car and took him to his son's house 
in Willits. After we dropped his things off we took him to the bank and opened 
up a checking account with his money, took him back to his boy's and we left for 
the loooong  trip back. I can't tell you how much I dreaded that long train ride 
back.

Earl died on Sun., February 27, 2000. He was cremated and his ashes scattered at 
sea.
God bless him!!