By James A. Raykie Jr.
Editor, The Herald

Sometimes even with the best of intentions, things seem to go awry, especially in newspaper stories. It’s usually Murphy’s Law at its finest. Such was the case in a story published in the Washington Post on Feb. 1 [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9408-2002Feb1.html]about the historic Frank H. Buhl mansion on East State Street overlooking downtown Sharon.

A Post writer was intrigued when she learned of the turn-of-the-century home’s Five-Diamond rating by the American Automobile Association. To quell her curiosity, she decided to come to Sharon and write a travel piece and check out the majestic structure for herself.

"I scan the predictable pieces of AAA’s 2002 list of Five-Diamond lodgings -- hotels like the Penin-sula in Beverly Hills and Manhattan, the Ritz Carltons here and there. My eyes jerk to a halt at the Buhl Mansion in Sharon, Pa.," wrote the author, Cindy Loose, in the introduction to her story.

The former home of Sharon industrialist Frank H. Buhl and his wife, Julia, the mansion today is a beautiful inn operated by Jim and Donna Winner. It has been so well redecorated and restored that it has achieved the AAA’s most lofty status.

It’s usually good to be noticed by one of the country’s most prestigious newspapers. But it’s bad when information about the Shenango Valley’s most influential and prominent family is misleading, and in some cases, plain wrong.

Mary B. (Forker) McDowell, formerly of Sharon, is the great niece of Frank and Julia Buhl and spent many years living in the mansion with her father after the death of Frank and Julia.

The story was brought to her attention. "Now that I have my anger and outrage and disbelief un-der control, I would like to address this scurrilous and almost completely inaccurate article," she wrote in a letter to me last week.

The story doesn’t name him, but her father was Henry Porter Forker Jr., the nephew of Frank and Julia. Her brother was Harry Porter Forker III, for whom the lab at Penn State Shenango is named.

"I lived in the house from 1933, when I was eight years old, until I was married from it in 1947. I moved back to the house with my father in 1948 and lived there with my husband and infant son for several years," she said in the letter.

What has Mrs. McDowell upset about the story, which refers to Frank as James, are inaccuracies like that, and information about her father.

According to the story, "Eventually, the mansion ended up in the hands of a nephew. According to our tour guide, the nephew ‘had lost a lot of money in the stock crash. He couldn’t support him-self, but he continued his lifestyle.’ For a while, he rented out the upstairs rooms, but by the 1950s, he was forced to sell."

Among other things wrong with the story, according to Mrs. McDowell, who lives in Hilton Head, S.C., it’s that part that has her livid. She writes in her letter:

"I take strong exception to the references to ‘the nephew,’ my father. He was very close to Julia and Frank Buhl. We lived across the street from them and, after Frank Buhl died, I can remember going over to the house almost every evening of my young life, to read and play while my father and Aunt Julia talked business.

"The Depression was in full swing, my father never lost a dime in those troubled times, and the fact that he ‘couldn’t support himself’ is not only ludicrous, it is an outright lie. He lived very well; he was never in his whole life even close to indigent.

"He not only took care of his family, he took care of a large segment of the local population who were down and out. They ran soup kitchens in the schools, and I remember going with local chil-dren to buy warm coats during the winter ... hundreds of them. Not exactly what a man who had ‘lost a lot of money’ in the crash would do!"

More misinformation. "Another outright lie. He never ‘rented out upstairs rooms.’ Instead, he tastefully and responsibly had some large apartments carved out of the space, and several well-known locals lived happily in these for many years. My father lived in one of these spacious apart-ments until his death in 1962."

And even more. According to the story, "James (it’s Frank) Buhl, born to a wealthy Detroit steel family, came to Sharon to start new steel plants there after graduating from Yale. He persuaded col-lege buddies John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, James Farrell and Andrew Mellon to come along and start their fortunes in Sharon, too."

Mrs. McDowell recalls it very differently. "And there is another flagrant misstatement. Rockefeller, Carnegie, Farrell and Mellon may have been acquaintances, but there was never any question of any of them having anything to do with the Buhl Steel Company. Frank Buhl was perfectly capable of running his own business."

And according to the story, "The mansion’s original owner had filled it with works by then-struggling artists like van Gogh, Matisse and Renoir. The newest owners commissioned expert re-productions to hang in museum-quality frames."

Not so, says Mrs. McDowell. "The mansion (it’s hard to see one’s former home referred to as such) never, ever had a van Gogh, nor a Matisse or a Renoir. The art was lovely, but definitely not museum quality. I have one large oil hanging in my house and I enjoy it simply because I’ve lived with it all of my life.

"There were instead lesser art works, all chosen by an art dealer from New York while the Buhls were in Europe. The Winners have, to put it mildly, put their own stamp on the house, and I wish them well. To have lost a landmark such as 422 East State would have been a pity."

The tour guide’s script may sound great, but it also sounds like it’s either full of misinformation, or that she was misquoted and misunderstood at length by the writer from the Washington Post.

I’m betting it’s the script. Maybe someone should check it out with Mrs. McDowell or other de-scendants. "I realize that Ms. Loose was drawing heavily from what the tour guide was reciting, but somewhere, someone should have checked for the facts," Mrs. McDowell concluded.

You know, like in Journalism 101.