Category: The Investigations

The last time we talked (which could be 5 minutes ago, 5 days ago, or 5 weeks ago—it’s totally your call), we were discussing the life of Reuben B. Robertson, Jr., the president of Champion Paper and Fibre Company from 1950 to 1955 and from 1957 to 1960. During the interim two years, Robertson was deputy secretary of defense under Secretary Charles Wilson.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that the part about his being the deputy defense secretary is impressive and all, but that was two years after Ron Tammen disappeared. Come to think of it, all of those hires he’d made of top-tier military and intelligence personnel happened during or after his Department of Defense (DoD) gig. What was he doing on a national level in the spring of 1953?

You make a good point. In the spring of 1953, Reuben Jr. had just returned from a trip. In February, he’d been named by President Eisenhower and Harold Stassen, director of the Mutual Security Agency, to lead a team of businessmen on a tour of Germany to assess the effects of U.S. spending there. The Mutual Security Agency was created in 1951 to facilitate the military and economic recovery of America’s allies after WWII. As director of the MSA, Stassen was a member of the National Security Council. He was also a member of Eisenhower’s cabinet. For this trip, 55 businessmen traveled to 14 Western European countries, and Reuben Jr. had led the German contingent, which included six other men. After two days of training, they arrived in Germany on February 16, 1953. Although news articles that I’ve read don’t state how long the trip lasted, I’m guessing that they were back by the end of February or early March.

One month earlier, in January 1953, Reuben Jr. had been elected to serve as one of four vice chairmen on the executive committee of the Business Advisory Council. The Business Advisory Council, now called the Business Council, was, at that time, an esteemed advisory group to the U.S. Department of Commerce, which was headed by the newly-appointed Secretary Sinclair Weeks. President Eisenhower had selected a number of his other cabinet posts from individuals who sat on the BAC, including Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, who was formerly president of General Motors.

So, in a nutshell, in the spring of 1953, Reuben Jr. was in Hamilton, while he was also helping out two of President Eisenhower’s cabinet members when he was asked, which seemed to be on a regular basis. He was traveling in powerful circles and making headlines while doing so. 

Because I’m writing this on a deadline, and because much of this post involves speculation, I think we’ll go back to a Q&A format. Hope you’re cool with that?

Yeah, that’s fine. So you say he was making headlines. Is that how Miami University officials came to know him?

Headlines and word of mouth certainly contributed to his visibility in southwest Ohio. If you have a strong business school—and Miami University certainly does—you’re going to notice the most successful businesses in your area, especially if the company president’s network of friends and associates extends as broadly as Reuben Jr.’s did. People in the business school did take notice. In May of 1951, the School of Business Administration sponsored an industrial management conference and Reuben was the luncheon speaker. He spoke on wage stabilization, a topic he knew well, since his appointment on the federal Wage Stabilization Board was coming to an end in June.

Max Rosselot, an assistant professor of secretarial studies and office management in Miami’s School of Business Administration, spent the summer of 1952 working with Champion’s pool of stenographers, immersing himself in the company’s business practices to enhance his courses for future stenographers and secretaries. Rosselot would later go on to become Miami’s Registrar in the early- to mid-1960s.

Champion had noticed Miami too. In 1947, a staff member in Miami’s Psychology Department, R.C. Crosby, director of student counseling, taught a course in business psychology to 24 Champion employees. According to the December 1947 issue of The Log, “This course deals with some general principles of the psychology of human relationships and their application to business and industrial groups.” If you’re wondering why St. Clair Switzer wouldn’t be teaching the course—after all, business psychology was his baby—this was at a time when Switzer was still counseling veterans after the war and he hadn’t yet gone back to teaching courses at Miami. I’m sure he would have been interested though.

Another way that Miami officials would have known about Reuben Jr. was through his aunt. 

His aunt? Who was Reuben Jr.’s aunt?

Rueben Robertson, Jr.’s aunt was Mary Moore Dabney Thomson, wife of Alexander Thomson, who, in turn, was Reuben Robertson, Sr.’s brother-in-law. (If you need to work that through your heads a minute, I can wait.) Alexander Thomson was a longtime executive with Champion Paper and Fibre, and was chairman of the board from 1935 until his death in 1939. 

But Mary Moore Dabney Thomson did stuff too. From 1933 to 1941, she was a member of the Western College for Women’s Board of Trustees, and during the years 1941 though 1945, she was president of the college. As many of you know, Western College for Women was across the street from Miami University and, in 1974, it became part of the university. In fact, Thomson Hall was named for Mary Moore Dabney Thomson.

But here’s the rub: you know how I discussed in part 2 that women in those days tended to relinquish their first names when they got married? One case in point is Mary Moore Dabney Thomson, who was often referred to in the press as Mrs. Alexander Thomson. Seriously. She was president of a prestigious women’s college, and people still referred to her by her husband’s name, even when he was no longer alive. I say this with all due respect, but what the bloody hell is up with that, members of the 1930s…’40s…and ‘50s press?

Mary Moore Dabney Thomson was well-known in the Oxford community before the Champion Coated Paper Company merged with Champion Fibre Company in 1935, and well before her nephew Reuben Jr. arrived in Hamilton in 1937. I’d even bet that it was through her that some Miami officials became familiar with the Thomson and Robertson names.

In what can only be described as pure coincidence, Mary Moore Dabney Thomson’s portrait was revealed on April 18, 1953, in Western’s Clawson Hall, the day before Ron Tammen disappeared.

You mentioned previously that Reuben Robertson, Jr., sat on Miami’s Board of Trustees from 1957 until his death in 1960. Did Miami officials seek his input on anything earlier than that, such as when Ron was still a student?

Yes, they sure did. Shortly after President Ernest Hahne died in November 1952, Reuben Robertson, Jr., was asked by the vice president of Miami’s Board of Trustees to sit on the committee that would select the next president. Rueben Jr. represented the public on the six-member committee, which included the president of the Board of Trustees as an ex-officio member. Several months later, that committee decided upon John D. Millett, who was affirmed by the 27-member board in March 1953.

President Millett must have been equally impressed with Reuben Robertson, Jr. In 1956, he would invite him to be a commencement speaker, and, at that time, Reuben was bestowed an honorary law degree.

So…what’s your theory?

I’m thinking that someone contacted Lt. Col. Reuben Robertson, Jr., for help in funding research that was being conducted by Lt. Col. Switzer in Miami’s Department of Psychology. (Using military rank might go a long way when making the ask.) The asker might have come from Miami University, from the military, or from somewhere else. Reuben Robertson, Jr., knew a lot of people.

The reason that someone may have asked for his help is that universities are usually strapped for cash and the restrictions placed on the government’s spending of taxpayer dollars are tight. Perhaps they asked Reuben Jr. if he’d be willing to support students taking part in a university study that would benefit national security. That doesn’t sound too different than asking him if he’d be willing to buy a box of cookies to support the Girl Scouts. Reuben Robertson, Jr., believed strongly in education and national security. He was also a busy man. Maybe that’s all he felt he needed to know.

How might Dorothy Craig have fit into the picture?

Dorothy Craig was a loyal employee of Champion Paper and Fibre Company. In 1953 she’d been working there for 16 years as an order clerk, a job that carried a lot of weight. She was well-liked, and, like Reuben Jr., she treasured her family. Her main activity outside of work was church. 

Even though Dorothy Craig dropped out of high school after her sophomore year, she still attended her alumni reunions—that’s how much of a people person she was. In a Hamilton Journal-News photo of their 45^th class reunion, which took place in the summer of 1965, Dorothy is standing on the far righthand side of the third row. When I first saw the picture, I was hoping that Dorothy was the woman who was standing two people to her left. The other woman was tall with short, jet black hair, white-rimmed glasses with dark lenses, and dark lipstick. She looked like a spy who wouldn’t take sass from anybody. Dorothy, on the other hand, looked a little more motherly—a gentle woman with a genuine, sweet smile. If someone needed a go-between to provide payments to Ron Tammen—someone who could handle an errand without asking too many questions—Dorothy Craig would have been perfect. Besides, she probably would have wanted to help support college students and protect national security too.

(I tried to obtain permission to post the photo, but I haven’t heard back from my contact. If I ever do, I’ll post it. In the meantime, if you have access to Newspaperarchives.com, you can view it here.)

What do you find most telling about the check from Dorothy Craig?

The quiet…always the quiet. When Carl Knox wrote his note about Dorothy, he didn’t include any additional information about the check—the date, the amount, and where it was cashed—even though I’m sure that information was provided to him. He didn’t include contact information for Dorothy Craig either, even though that information would have been given to him as well. And he kept Dorothy’s identity to himself or among a very small circle of people. Neither he nor the Oxford PD ever mentioned her in the news. If someone had contacted her, and her transaction with Ron was deemed inconsequential, they could have still provided an update to news reporters while protecting her anonymity. Something like: “An area woman had written a check to Ron for X dollars, but it turned out to be for (fill in the blank).” 

Likewise, Dorothy Craig had just written a check to Ronald Tammen, a smart, serious-minded college student who disappeared shortly afterward. The news coverage would have been hard to miss, especially for someone who happened to be sitting in a roomful of order clerks at a paper company. Early and often, investigators lamented the lack of clues in the case. If I were Dorothy? I think I would have come forward and told someone about that check, be it the university, the Oxford PD, or even the FBI when they stepped in. Something like: “I just saw him on Saturday when I wrote him a check for (fill in the blank). He seemed OK.”

That is, unless I was instructed not to.

Do you think Dorothy Craig was the ‘woman from Hamilton’?

Let’s put it this way: I think Dorothy Craig was a woman from Hamilton who may have been acting as a liaison to help compensate Tammen for some activity he was involved with, such as a university study, perhaps. Whether she was the woman from Hamilton who I believe drove Ron away from Fisher Hall, I really don’t know.

You know what I’m thinking? 

No, what?

I’m thinking that this new Hamilton connection could make Ron’s blood type test a little more significant. 

Interesting. Also, we may have landed on some new words that Carl Knox’s secretary was told not to say in front of a reporter.

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Whew! This concludes today’s posts. I’d love to hear any comments or questions you might have about Dorothy Craig, Reuben Robertson, Jr., or any other topic you feel like discussing concerning Ronald Tammen’s disappearance.

Hamilton, Ohio, may seem like a long way from our nation’s capital, but in the 1950s, Champion Paper and Fibre Company had garnered the attention of some powerful people at the top. “What people?” you ask. Oh, only Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. Both Harry and Ike had a lot of respect for Champion Paper. They or people in their administrations would frequently turn to the company’s leadership for their expertise in business and matters pertaining to national defense. 

You heard me. National defense.

Mostly, it had to do with the company’s president, Reuben Buck Robertson, Jr. Reuben Jr. was intelligent, innovative, and oh my gosh, the man had charm. He had looks too, especially in his youth. His dimples could stop traffic. (He was probably told that a lot.) You could say that he attained his position as a birthright—his father, Reuben Sr., had preceded him as company president—but Reuben Jr. was very good at his job. Exceptional, really.

Before I tell you anything more about Dorothy Craig’s larger-than-life boss, let’s have a quick run-down on the company’s history and how Reuben Jr. got where he was.

The Champion Paper and Fibre Company had its official start in 1893 as the Champion Coated Paper Company. Its founder, Peter G. Thomson, was a bookstore owner, publisher, and printer from Cincinnati. Because of Thomson’s love for the printed word, he had a high regard for paper as well. When printers started using halftones—tiny dots of ink—to reproduce illustrations instead of hand-drawing or etching them, Thomson knew that the paper needed to be coated to create a smooth surface that would hold the ink in place. If the paper weren’t coated, the ink would sink into little crevices and spread. In 1891, Thomson purchased 200 acres in Hamilton to build a coating mill, and in 1894, his new business was up and running. But there were a few snags: in order to operate a fully-functioning coating mill, he needed sufficient quantities of paper to coat. As a remedy, he constructed a paper mill in town. Next Thomson discovered that, in order to operate a fully-functioning paper mill, he needed a consistent supply of wood pulp. Thomson found an ideal spot in Canton, North Carolina, an area so thick with pine trees, it probably smelled like the world’s best car freshener 24/7. The pulp mill was constructed in 1908, and, with that addition, Thomson now had a self-sufficient paper-manufacturing operation that would continue to develop and grow.

The pulp mill in North Carolina was named the Champion Fibre Company, and Thomson’s son-in-law was put in charge. That son-in-law was Reuben Buck Robertson, and his marriage to Peter’s daughter Hope Thomson would be the start of the Thomson-Robertson dynasty of Champion Paper. Peter’s three sons, Peter Jr., Alexander, and Logan Thomson, would all assume positions of leadership in the company, as would other family members, including Reuben’s son, Reuben Robertson, Jr., who was born in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1908.

Reuben Jr. graduated from Yale Sheffield Scientific School in 1930 with a degree in chemical engineering. That same year, he started working at Champion Fibre for his father. Reuben Jr. was the ultimate Undercover Boss. He started low—as a laborer in the woodyard—and worked his way up the ladder. He toiled and sweated along with everyone else. He asked a ton of questions. In doing so, he developed a keen understanding of every aspect of the papermaking business and the people on whose backs the business relied upon.

In 1935, the two companies were merged to form Champion Paper and Fibre Company, which included adding a new paper mill in East Texas. With the merger, Logan Thomson was made president, Reuben Jr. was vice president, and Reuben Sr. was executive v.p. Two years later, Reuben Jr. moved from North Carolina to work in the General Office Building in Hamilton, a stately building on North B Street that housed roughly 75 Champion office staff. That same year, Dorothy Craig was hired by Champion to work in its General Office Building as an order clerk. 

Seventy-five people is a relatively small number of occupants, and Reuben Jr. was a people person. He would make a point of knowing his employees—both those in the office building, and those in all the other buildings too. Dorothy strikes me as a people person too. 

Why do I think that? A man named Bill McDulin used to write a folksy column for the Hamilton Journal-News titled “Got a Minute?” that shared newsy tidbits for the locals. McDulin’s guiding principle seemed to be to leave people with a good feeling about themselves and their community. Because they happened to be neighbors, Dorothy Craig, of Carmen Avenue, was mentioned several times in McDulin’s column. In one of his “Remember when” blurbs from 1976, he asked his readers “Remember when Charlie Betz was a member of the Hamilton police department?…Mrs. David (Geraldine) Adkins started writing poetry?”…[and so forth, and then]…Dorothy Craig worked at Champion?”

Literally thousands of people worked at Champion Paper and Fibre Company. For Bill McDulin to have singled out Dorothy over everyone else seems…well, it seems like she must have been known by quite a few people. So without question, Dorothy and Reuben Jr. would have known each other, and not just to say “hello.” Reuben Jr. would have asked Dorothy about Henry and the kids, or sometimes he likely would’ve wanted to know “How are the orders coming in today, Dorothy?” Dorothy would have felt at ease with Reuben Jr. and could answer him honestly, without sugarcoating, even if the news was less than favorable. 

Reuben Jr. got his first taste of policymaking on the national stage in 1942, when he was asked to serve on the War Production Board. Although its name sounds as if it was a small group of men in suits sitting around a table and talking about war stuff, the War Production Board was an entire agency tasked with readying the country for WWII. The War Production Board was responsible for converting a variety of domestic manufacturing plants into weapons manufacturers. They’re the agency that coordinated the collection and recycling of aluminum, tin, rubber, steel, and other materials to be used for military purposes. For its part, the Champion Paper and Fibre Company had developed a paper substitute for the aluminum liner that went inside packs of cigarettes. They were brainstorming to that level of detail. And even though people today don’t normally think of foods like coffee and meat as commodities with implications for combat, the War Production Board did, and they formulated strict rules to ration certain foods to conserve resources.

But serving on the War Production Board didn’t stop Reuben Jr. from taking part in the war itself. He also enlisted. From 1942 to 1945, he was an officer in the Control Division of the Army Service Forces, advancing to lieutenant colonel by V-J Day. 

Shortly after Reuben Jr.’s return to Hamilton, the Champion Paper and Fibre Company experienced another musical-chairs-style shift in leadership. Logan Thomson died in 1946, and with his death, Reuben Sr. became president. Four years later, Reuben Jr. would be elected president of the company, and his father would be elevated to chairman of the board.

Even with Reuben Jr.’s added responsibilities in running the entire company, Washington continued to call. Over the next five years, he was asked by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to serve in the following ways:

• He was appointed by President Truman to the Wage Stabilization Board, from 1950 to June 1951.
• In 1953, he was appointed by President Eisenhower and Mutual Security Director Harold Stassen to lead a team of businessmen to evaluate the effects of U.S. spending in Germany.
• From 1953 to 1955, he served as vice chair of the Secretary of Commerce’s Business Advisory Council. 
• In 1955, he served as vice chair of the Hoover Commission Task Force Committee on Business Organization for the Department of Defense.

So, yeah. The people in the highest posts of all the land were interested in hearing what Reuben Jr. had to say. And…are you ready for this? In 1955, President Eisenhower asked Reuben Jr. to serve as deputy secretary of defense under Secretary Charles Wilson. Which. Was. Huge. Reuben’s company would continue to be in good hands while he was away, since Reuben’s father would take over as president in the interim.

Some have described the deputy secretary of defense as the secretary’s alter ego. The deputy secretary knows everything the secretary knows, including issues pertaining to national security. I would hasten to remind readers that the U.S. was now engaged in the Cold War, so there was a lot to know, national-security-wise. I would quickly add that, on an org chart, the deputy secretary is immediately below the secretary and above anyone else having to do with the Department of Defense (DoD), including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Research and Development Board, the heads of all the military branches, you name it. It was Reuben Jr.’s job to oversee the day-to-day matters involved with managing the largest agency in the federal government. Of course, he was a natural. 

Still, while he was in that awesomely important role at the DoD in the middle of the Cold War, Reuben Jr. would commute between Hamilton and D.C. by plane almost daily, according to a knowledgeable source. This was made possible thanks to an airstrip on his home property in Glendale, a small community about 12 miles from Hamilton. With that airstrip, plus the use of the company’s fleet of aircraft maintained at Lunken Airport, and Champion’s team of licensed pilots, Reuben Jr. could rub elbows with the nation’s top brass in the morning and still be home in time for dinner with wife Peggy and their six kids.

Oops, my bad. Did I neglect to mention that Reuben Jr. was an amazing husband and dad? Well, dude was an amazing husband and dad. There’s a photo in the company newsletter, The Log, in which he’s walking hand in hand with two of his children, who were dressed like a cowboy and a cowgirl, and he’s beaming away, dimples fully deployed. It’s so clear that Reuben’s children adored their father, just as Reuben’s employees adored their boss.

You may be wondering what papermaking could possibly have to do with the nation’s defense (other than the manufacture of paper liners for cigarette packs, that is). It had to do with the times they were living in. Back then, paper was—let’s see, I need to be careful not to overstate this—paper was everything. If someone from the DoD had an idea they wanted to put into motion, then they were going to need a sh*t-ton of paper to get that idea across to other people. It’s how the government communicated. It was how information was disseminated. After all, they didn’t earn the name “paper pushers” for nothing. Those ration books?  Paper. The Uncle Sam posters asking people to bring in their toothpaste and shaving cream tubes for the tin? Paper. And maps. Millions of paper maps. In an August 1995 article, Jim Blount, a former editor for the Hamilton Journal-News who was also a treasured local historian for many years, shared this information that he’d found in a Champion newsletter concerning the importance of paper during WWII:

“For army maneuvers in 1942 in the Carolinas, 95 tons of paper went into 4.5 million maps. Every soldier in that operation received 21 maps covering the 12,000-square-mile area. 

‘All ration cards and instructions must be printed on paper, and there is hardly a branch of this defense wherein paper is not used wholly or in part,’ noted The Log, a Champion publication. ‘It is necessary to plotting systems, giving instructions for air raid precautions, first aid instructions, communications and records of all kinds. Bonds, tax stamps, notes, orders, correspondence, even money itself is paper required by the Treasury Department, and the chances are that the bond you buy or the revenue stamp which is canceled on the can of tobacco is made by Champion.’

The 1942 article said ‘in this greatest of all wars in the history of mankind, there is needed for this year alone, 18 million tons of paper.’”

And that was just WWII. The United States needed paper during the Cold War too, for which 1950 was a banner year. On June 27, 1950, which happened to be Reuben Jr.’s 42^nd birthday, the United States had entered the Korean War. On September 4, 1950, then-General Eisenhower—he wouldn’t be president until January 1953—kicked off Crusade for Freedom, a CIA-backed endeavor to raise funds for Radio Free Europe, which, at that time, was a U.S. propaganda tool based in West Germany. Even though it was said to be supported privately by everyday Americans, government dollars were also invested into the printing of stamps, posters, and leaflets by the millions. Some leaflets were used for fundraising at home and abroad. Others were dropped from balloons behind so-called Iron Curtain countries, such as East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, denouncing communism and advertising radio wavelengths and program schedules. Crusade for Freedom, which ran from 1950 to 1960, was a paper-palooza, and Champion Paper was there for it. Reuben Sr. oversaw the crusade’s two-state region of North and South Carolina. You can watch a 5-minute video on the Crusade for Freedom on C-Span’s Classroom program. 

There was talk that Reuben Jr. would become defense secretary after Charles Wilson stepped down, but Reuben wasn’t interested. He wanted to be more present for his family, and he tendered his resignation in 1957. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t still have an avid interest in defense. In 1955, the same year in which he started at the DoD, Reuben Jr. kicked off the Chapaco Council—“Chapaco” being the initial letters from the three words Champion, Paper, and Company—which was a series of retreats for company management at Lake Logan in North Carolina. The line-up of speakers was a mix of military might with big names in business, industry, higher education, and journalism.

Speakers representing the U.S. government for the five years in which the retreats were held were:

• 1955: Walter Williams, undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce
• 1956: Donald A. Quarles, secretary of the Air Force
• 1957: Wilber M. Brucker, secretary of the Army
• 1958: Wilfred J. McNeil, assistant secretary for defense and comptroller
• 1958 and 1959: Admiral Arthur W. Radford, retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Reuben Jr. also hired some of the highest military and intelligence officials the country had to offer to work for Champion Paper and Fibre Company. Conversely, one man, Thomas D. Morris, would be propelled from Champion to the DoD. Here’s the list that I’ve been able to assemble of Reuben’s most decorated hires. To keep things brief, instead of including their entire resume, I included the last position(s) held before they made their career change.

• Col. Kilbourne “Pat” Johnston
  • Assistant director of CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination, 1950-52
  • Champion Paper and Fibre in Texas, 1955
  • Champion Headquarters in Hamilton, 1957
  • Vice president of Champion Paper and Fibre, 1962
• Thomas D. Morris
  • Director of management and planning, asst. to the president of Champion Paper, and Fibre 1958-60
  • Assistant secretary of defense 
    • Installations and Logisitics, Jan 29, 1961-Dec 11, 1964
    • Manpower and Personnel, Oct 1, 1965-August 31, 1967
    • Installations and Logistics, Sept 1, 1967-Feb 1, 1969
• Col. Karl Bendetsen
  • Assistant secretary of the Army, 1950-52
  • Undersecretary of the Army, 1952
  • Vice president, Texas Division, Champion Paper and Fibre, 1955
  • Vice president of operations, Champion Paper and Fibre, Hamilton, 1957
  • Vice president, Champion Paper and Fibre, 1960 
• Admiral Arthur Radford
  • Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1953-1957
  • Consultant for Champion Paper and Fibre, 1957, Washington, D.C. office
• Major General Frederick J. Dau
  • Assistant for materiel program coordination to the commander, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, August 1952
  • Deputy director of supply and services, WPAFB, November 1952
  • Director of supply and services, WPAFB, May l954
  • Awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the highest military award during peacetime, 1959
  • Accepted position at Champion Paper and Fibre, 1959

I’d challenge anyone to find a similarly elite cadre of military brass working together at one civilian business anywhere. I have to believe that Reuben Robertson, Jr., was the reason.

Look, there’s no easy way to tell you what happened next. In the early hours of Sunday morning, March 13, 1960, Reuben Jr. was driving home with his wife Peggy from a social engagement in Cincinnati. On a dark stretch of highway, the Robertsons were startled by a car that was sitting in the center lane, unable to move. According to an Associated Press account: “Robertson swerved his Cadillac, but he clipped the stalled car and grazed a passenger who was standing outside.” Evidently, the other car had run out of gas. Of course, Reuben got out of his car to talk to the people in the disabled vehicle, probably to find out if they were OK and to tell them that his insurance would cover the damage to their car. I wouldn’t be surprised if he also offered to bring them back some gas. Suddenly, a drunk driver came careening down the road and knocked into Reuben, throwing him 50 feet into the air. Reuben Buck Robertson, Jr., died almost instantly at the age of 51.

I’m sure you can imagine the news coverage. Everyone who knew him was devastated, including, I’m sure, Dorothy Craig. His memorial service was attended by dignitaries, Champion employees, and family and friends. A memorial issue of The Log was dedicated to his life and career. (I encourage you to download it so you can view all of the pictures.) Miami University’s Board of Trustees, of which Reuben Robertson had been a member since 1957, issued a statement on the loss of their friend and colleague. 

Oops, sorry. Did I neglect to mention that Miami University had known Reuben B. Robertson, Jr., quite well? My bad.

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UPDATE: Two readers have asked for more details about the accident, wondering if its cause could have been more nefarious in nature. The driver of the car that killed Reuben Jr. was Willie Lee Griffin, age 31, of Rockdale Avenue, in Avondale, Ohio, which is part of Cincinnati. Oddly, he was only charged with drunk and reckless driving even though he killed someone. Vehicular manslaughter, a felony, was definitely a charge that could have been brought against him at that time. Later, in 1967, Ohio law divided the category into first and second degree vehicular manslaughter, with drunk and/or reckless driving considered to be first degree offenses, and therefore, still a felony. I don’t know why they didn’t hold him accountable for Reuben Jr.’s death.

According to Carl Knox’s notes, shortly before Ronald Tammen disappeared, he cashed a check from Dorothy Craig. He doesn’t say the date or the amount of the check. He doesn’t say why the check was written. He doesn’t say where Ron cashed it. And he doesn’t say who Dorothy Craig was. Why do I even bother to mention it here? I mention it because of all the information he did say. Despite the ambiguity, he still managed to tell us quite a bit.

Here are the exact words that Carl Knox had written at the top of one of his note pages:

Oxford Natl

Dorothy Craig

Where was it cashed

For this first blog post of the 70^th anniversary of Ron’s disappearance, I think I’m going to return to my favorite format—good ol’ Q&A—because Q&As are the cotton blend joggers of journalism, the baggy shorts of blogging, which is to say that they’re my comfort zone. You get to bounce around from topic to topic without an outline or even a game plan and yet, in the end, you still end up with something reasonably cohesive. Also, the topic we’re about to discuss just naturally raises a bunch of questions. It just does. 

I should probably also let you know that I was a bank teller at one time. I wasn’t the head teller or even the back-up head teller when the head teller was sick or on vacation. I was just a run-of-the-mill teller in her late teens to early 20s who was trying to figure out her life’s purpose and, during that time, cashed checks for people. It’s just kind of hilarious that I’m having to tap into that forgettable part of my past now as I try to figure out this aspect of Ron’s case.

OK, let’s do this.

How do you know that Dorothy Craig wrote the check to Ron and not the other way around?

Four words: Where was it cashed. (He left off the question mark.) I love Carl’s question soooo much. We know that Dorothy Craig wrote the check to Ron Tammen because Carl wouldn’t care where the check was cashed if Ron had written the check to Dorothy. He might have asked “Who’s Dorothy Craig?” or “Why did Ron write the check to Dorothy?” but not “Where was it cashed?” Carl Knox cares where the check was cashed because it’s an obvious question to ask when you’re busy looking for a missing person. If Carl found out where Dorothy’s check was cashed, he might have learned something about Ron’s whereabouts. 

Which bank was the check written on?

As you’ll soon see why, I’m convinced that the check was written on an account from “Oxford Natl,” short for Oxford National Bank. In 1953, the Oxford National Bank was located at 7 West High Street, where Rapid Fired Pizza is now located. The building was impressively bank-like in appearance, constructed of etched stone and, according to a picture in the 1957 Miami Recensio, a lit sign that provided the time and temperature to passersby. There were no branches in nearby cities and towns—the building on High Street was all there was. 

To say that the Oxford National Bank had close ties to its collegiate community would be a colossal understatement. Sure, both Miami and the Western College for Women had bank accounts there. But more than that, several individuals affiliated with Oxford National Bank concurrently held high positions at Miami University. 

Take A.K. Morris, for example. According to the Dayton Daily News, Morris was president of Oxford National Bank from 1932 until 1960. But that wasn’t all he did for a living. Beginning in 1922, he’d worked in a variety of roles, including alumni relations, as an assistant to Miami University Presidents Raymond Hughes and Alfred Upham. In 1937, Morris was named vice president of Miami, and in 1946-47, he became acting president of the university—again, while serving as president of Oxford National Bank. At the time of Ron’s disappearance, Morris was working solely at the bank, though he undoubtedly knew Miami’s leadership well.

Two other individuals with an Oxford National Bank/Miami University connection were Philip D. Shera and his brother Donald. Their father, Caleb, had founded the bank in 1902. For 12 years, until his death in 1942, Philip was treasurer of Miami’s Board of Trustees while also serving as vice president and cashier at the bank. Donald Shera was named to the post of treasurer of the Board of Trustees in 1949, also while serving as vice president and cashier at the bank. You might remember Don Shera’s name from an earlier blog post. He was corresponding with Carl Knox about how to apply Ron’s bank balance of $87.25 to Ron’s outstanding university bills after he’d disappeared. Don Shera replaced E. Bruce Ferguson, who died unexpectedly, and who was a treasurer for the Board of Trustees from 1942 to 1949 while also an assistant cashier for the bank.

If you think these dual appointments seem unusual and, quite frankly, a conflict of interest, I agree with you. But I’m so happy that they didn’t see it that way back then. As a result of Oxford National Bank’s close ties to Miami University, we can feel confident that Carl Knox had first-hand knowledge of Ron’s bank account information, not to mention Dorothy Craig’s. 

How do you know that Carl was talking to someone from Oxford National Bank about Dorothy Craig’s check?

We already know that Ron banked there, since we have Don Shera’s letters to Carl Knox about Ron’s balance after Ron disappeared. Carl Knox certainly would have contacted someone there early in his investigation to learn as much as he could about Ron’s finances.

At the top of the same note that held Dorothy Craig’s information is a note about a $15 deposit to the Cleveland Trust Co. that Ron had written concerning an American Express account. Therefore, it’s logical to conclude that the source was someone from Oxford National Bank. I suspect that, in those frantic early days, Carl’s source was Don Shera or A.K. Morris.

What makes you think that Dorothy had a checking account at Oxford National Bank?

It’s true that the words “Oxford Natl” above Dorothy Craig’s name could be interpreted in a few ways. While one interpretation is that it refers to Dorothy’s checking account, another view could be that it’s in reference to Carl’s source—the person he’s speaking with—and a third might be that Oxford National was the institution who cashed Ron’s check for him. There may be other interpretations as well.

Here’s why I believe the first interpretation is the correct one:

We know that Carl is speaking with someone from Oxford National Bank because of the information about the $15 deposit to Cleveland Trust. We know that Dorothy wrote the check because of Carl’s question, “Where was it cashed.” And we also know that Ron had cashed the check versus depositing it, again because of Carl’s question.

If Shera or Morris had told Carl “We recently cashed a check for Ron Tammen from someone named Dorothy Craig,” then Carl might have jotted down the bank’s name above Craig’s in response, but he also would have had his answer regarding where the check had been cashed. In other words, if Oxford National Bank had cashed Ron’s check, Carl wouldn’t have even written the question down. Therefore, we can conclude that Ron had cashed the check somewhere else.

But here’s the kicker: If Ron had cashed the check somewhere else, and if Dorothy’s check had been written on another bank account, then Oxford National Bank officials wouldn’t have even known about the check. They would have been bypassed completely. But they did know about the check so the check must have been written on an Oxford National Bank account—Dorothy Craig’s.

Carl’s brilliantly simple 4-word question gave us two key pieces of intelligence: that Dorothy Craig had written a check to Ron Tammen and that Dorothy’s checking account was with Oxford National Bank, which happened to be an annex of sorts to Miami University.

Why wouldn’t Ron have cashed the check at the Oxford National Bank?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Not sure. It’s where he banked. It was conveniently located on High Street and he could have cashed it when he was depositing another check. Of course, in those days, bankers would frequently call it a day at 2:30 p.m.—something known as bankers’ hours—so maybe the bank had closed and Ron decided to cash the check elsewhere. Or perhaps he did it for another reason.

Is it possible that Dorothy alerted the university that she’d written the check to Ron?

Unlikely. If she’d notified the university, there would have been more info in Carl’s notes concerning who she was, why she’d written the check, how she knew Ron, perhaps his disposition when she last saw him—things like that. Carl’s note was about a check, not a person. It came from a bank official.

Do you think Carl got an answer to his question of where the check was cashed?

Carl’s notes don’t indicate whether he’d received an answer to his question, though he should have. No matter where Ron cashed the check, the Oxford National Bank, as the drawing bank, would have received the check back from the establishment that had cashed it, likely for deposit, or from the establishment’s bank. Officials could have easily told Carl where the check was cashed as well as the date of the check and the check’s amount, just as they did for another check that Ron had cashed at a drugstore up the street, which you’ll hear about in a second.

Do you remember how newspaper reports said that Ron had $11 or $12 on him when he disappeared? Could that be the value of Dorothy’s check?

Interesting theory. Actually, newspapers credit Charles Findlay with that guesstimate, which is all I think that it was. I don’t think he was basing that number on any prior knowledge regarding Ron’s check-cashing activity. For example, Carl Knox had written a note saying that, on April 16, Ron cashed a $5.00 check at John Minnis Drugstore. Does that mean that Dorothy’s check was for $6.00 or $7.00? I doubt it. My guess is that Dorothy’s check was for a larger amount.

Did Carl Knox try to track down Dorothy Craig? 

This, I believe, is the crucial question, since, In the eyes of university officials, this could have been a big clue. Carl had undoubtedly been told by students and the Oxford Police about a woman from Hamilton who was spotted driving Ron away the night of April 19. Was this our girl? Regardless of whether she was or wasn’t, Carl should have been interested in tracking her down. He could have done so easily thanks to the contact information that she would have supplied when she opened her bank account—information that Morris or Shera could have given to him. So far, I’ve seen no evidence that a conversation took place, however.

If the check was written by Dorothy Craig to Ron, and he cashed it somewhere else, how did bank officials manage to flag it?

I think it could have happened like this: Carl Knox appears to have had at least two conversations with officials of Oxford National Bank concerning Ron’s bank transactions. In the first conversation, which appeared to occur very early in Knox’s investigation, officials reported on checks that the bank had received by April 6, 1953. In other words, when Carl first contacted them, let’s say sometime around April 22 perhaps, the bank had only received checks that Ron had written up through April 6, 1953. (Things obviously moved at a slower pace back then.)

After their initial conversation, however, several additional checks had arrived at the bank. In the second conversation, officials had reported on checks that the bank had received later—most of which were written during the week prior to Ron’s disappearance. Among those checks was the check written by Dorothy Craig to Ron.

Here’s a timeline of Ron’s banking activity according to Carl Knox’s notes:

Conversation #1

Knox wrote down the words “$10 check $30 check” and beside that: “Playing Jobs,” in reference to a couple of Ron’s gigs. Ron had either cashed or deposited those checks, likely the latter.

Knox wrote “$100 check on a Loan,” which evidently would have been a check that Ron had written to help pay off one of his loans.

Beneath those two notes, Knox had written “No activity in Bank Account since April 6^th,” which supports the conclusion that this information came from the first of two conversations.

Conversation #2

On Monday, April 13, Ron wrote two checks. One was for $24.45 to Delta Tau Delta, Ron’s fraternity, and the other was to Shillito’s, a Cincinnati-based department store for which Oxford had a small outlet, for $4.07. 

On Wednesday, April 15, he wrote the $15.00 check for deposit to the Cleveland Trust Company, which had to do with an American Express account. 

On Thursday, April 16, he wrote a $5.00 check payable to “cash” at John Minnis Drugstore. 

(Note: In 1976, we learned from Joe Cella, reporter for the Hamilton Journal-News, that on Friday, April 17, Ron had paid a car insurance premium of $17.45 by personal check to Glenn Dennison. I’m not sure why Carl Knox hadn’t learned of this check during his second conversation, although, perhaps it hadn’t arrived at the bank yet.)

It was sometime during this second conversation that Carl Knox would come to learn that Ron had cashed the check from Dorothy Craig. This is further confirmation that the check had been written on the Oxford National Bank and had made its way back to them by way of the establishment that had cashed it or the establishment’s own bank. The check’s amount would be withdrawn from Dorothy’s account and Dorothy would receive the canceled check with her next statement. (Can you imagine being Dorothy Craig and reading all of the headlines about Ronald Tammen going missing and you’re sitting there with a canceled check with his signature on it? Too bad they didn’t have eBay back then.)

Although I don’t know exactly how bank officials managed to flag it, my guess is that, by the time it had arrived, they were on high alert for anything with Ronald Tammen’s name on it. Still, I think we’re fortunate that someone did catch it and let Carl Knox know.

What isn’t clear is why Carl Knox didn’t write down the date and amount of Dorothy’s check as he had been doing for every other check during that second conversation. 

So who was Dorothy Craig and why did she write a check to Ron Tammen?

Exactly.