Over the years I have shared several stories about my friend Claire Cressler and his wife, Gloria. In 2020, long after they both had died, I moved into Claire and Gloria’s home. Guests frequently tell me my house has a comforting warmth. I believe that comes from the abiding love Claire and Gloria shared in the home, both with each other and their friends, for over 60 years.
While it pleases me to share stories of the Cresslers, stories shared with me by readers who knew them are even more wonderful.
Claire was a graphic artist at the same billboard company his entire career and the first reminiscence I received was from Elaine Slaybaugh, whose father was a colleague of Claire’s:
“Claire was a name I often heard in my childhood. My father, Lyle Kimmel, sold advertising for General Outdoor Advertising. He would think of a picture and slogan that might be displayed on a billboard and present that idea to an Akron-based company and would often call upon Claire to do sketches of that idea. One vivid sketch I remember as an 8-year-old [in 1948] was for a furniture company with a robin saying, ‘Come on in and feather your nest.’ Claire was a talented and gentle person from my past.”
A younger reader, Patty Fann, knew the Cresslers from church:
“I was acquainted with the Cresslers when we attended the same church, Church of Our Savior in West Hill. I can’t say I knew them; I always admired them. I was a young mother and they were a dapper older couple who kept mostly to their group of the church’s ‘old guard.’ I remember his well trimmed mustache and her beautiful, colorful clothes.”
Reader Ned Thiell sent a photo of a Cressler painting he owns, along with this note:
“My parents were friends with Claire and Gloria. I knew them from church and can picture them to this day. They were so nice and always made me smile. In the mid-seventies my father acquired from Claire a painting of South Howard Street as it was being demolished for ‘urban renewal.’ It hung over their fireplace for more than 45 years. We all valued and enjoyed its presence. As an architect I particularly identified with the buildings and the message that nothing lasts forever. I inherited the painting from my parents, and it now hangs in my home. It reminds me of an Akron long gone, and always the Cresslers.”
These letters and conversations have allowed me to become better acquainted with Gloria, who died four years before I met Claire, and, as strange as it may sound, continue my friendship with Claire, who died in 2008. I felt this keenly when I recently spent over two hours with reader Karen Cimini at her home.
Cimini’s mother, Esther Weiss, became best friends with Gloria Winter in kindergarten at Portage Path Elementary in the late 1920s. The two remained close while growing up during the Depression when everyone in the neighborhood did whatever they could to get by. The girls often skipped school to take Gloria’s wagon around town searching for bottles they could turn in for the 2-cent deposit.
Both graduated from West High School and at age 19 married and moved with their newly enlisted husbands to cities on the East Coast – Boston for Esther and Morry Tass, Baltimore for Gloria and Claire Cressler– where the men trained and waited for orders to a World War II theater. This commonly took several months, and the couples rented apartments in their temporary cities until Morry was sent to the Philippines, Claire to England.
Everyone reunited in Akron after the war and in 1946 Claire painted a portrait of Esther, which hangs in Cimini’s living room. In the years just after the war, Esther and Morry had two children, Martin and Karen. Gloria and Claire, who never had children, doted on those of their friends and Cimini regularly received beautifully wrapped gifts from the Cresslers, including two Whimsy Dolls.
The two couples attended each other’s parties and at one held by the Cresslers, Cimini, who is Jewish, saw a private Christmas tree (as opposed to those in department store windows) for the first time. Their home was also where Cimini first saw a martini glass and ate a maraschino cherry (placed in her first Shirley Temple mocktail).
The more Cimini described mid-century Gloria Cressler, the more I envisioned Auntie Mame from the eponymous Broadway play. Gloria regularly wore toreador pants and once a shiny golden balloon dress. She smoked cigarettes in black, theater-length holders and wore cat’s eye glasses with highly exaggerated points. Meanwhile, Claire was the first person Cimini ever saw in what she considered an “artist’s hat,” a beret, and smoked a pipe.
Now, dear readers, at the end of our engaging conversation, Cimini shared a mystery for you. When visiting the Cresslers at age 7, Cimini read a Western to them from her school reader. Subsequently, Claire painted a large Western scene, possibly 3-feet wide by 2-feet high, that included mountains. Cimini’s second grade teacher, Mrs. Koon, hung it in her classroom in what was then the new section of the old Fairlawn Elementary School. And there it remained even after Cimini had completed the second grade. Sixty-eight years later, she can’t help but wonder if the painting still exists?
If anyone has any information, please contact me at whoopsiepiggle@gmail.com.
This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, September 27, 2026.
