History

I first met Chris Dubbs in 2005, when I left my job as grant writer at Gannon University for another position. Chris was my replacement, and over lunch one day, I shared as much as I could with him about the grant-writing landscape at Gannon. So when I recently saw a notice about his latest book, America’s U-Boats:…

Note 2026: What follows is a draft of the prologue that appears in the book, William E. Dimorier: Servant Leader, self-published by Ann Silverthorn in 2022. Prologue Brilliant reflections of the early sun pierced the century-old glass of my office window, in a room once slept in by house servants. On the third floor of…

Sometimes, when I’m deep into my research on the life of W.E. Dimorier, I make discoveries that are compelling enough to have me take a slight detour. I reason that these are relevant to the project, because it’s become evident that Dimorier’s influence reached far away to China and far through the ages to situations like…

As I progress through my research on William E. Dimorier (known as Demmy), the Erie educator without whom Ainsworth Field, Veterans Memorial Stadium, District-10 sports, and Academy High School’s music programs would not have been the same, I pause and wish to share something with you. Today, while transcribing a note Dimorier wrote from his…

In 1916, the subject of my research, William E. Dimorier, an educator and poet, wrote an article called, “Significance of Poetry” for the Journal of Education. He begins his piece, The memorizing of choice passages of poetry is a popular and well established practice in high schools. In this materialistic age it is well that such is…

The day was November 22, 1963, and I was getting pretty comfortable in the third month of first grade at Our Lady of Peace. I had been so lonely the previous year, when we moved back to Erie from California, and my brothers left me every day for school. OLP didn’t have kindergarten in those…

Ever since my son and his wife moved to Washington, DC, about two years ago, we’ve made the six-hour trip to visit them every few months. Each time, we’ve considered taking a detour to visit the Flight 93 Memorial in southwestern Pennsylvania, but we never seemed to have the energy to add an hour or…

Last weekend, Husband Jim and I made the six-hour trip to Afton, NY, the home of William E. Dimorier (1871-1951), the poet and educator I have been researching for nearly a decade. Now that the project is ready to wrap up, I didn’t think I could call it complete without physically visiting his birthplace. After spending…

Since 2004, I have been researching the life and times of poet and educator, William E. Dimorier (1871-1951). I purchased his handwritten daybook of poetry at a printing house auction in 2004. Dimorier was born and died in Afton, NY, and he spent more than 30 years as an educator in the Erie, PA, school district,…

For the last two days of our vacation, we stayed in Gaeta, a seaside town south of Rome, for its proximity to Itri, which is where Jim’s maternal grandparents were born. Itri is much larger than Troia, where his paternal grandparents came from. When we were in Itri, we enjoyed the pool at our hotel,…