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On an 8-by-10 photo, Bain E. “Shorty” Fulton drew the Rubber City’s future in white grease pen. He sketched the letters “A-K-R-O-N” on the hill where the Rubber Bowl would be built.
Fulton had a vision for Akron. And when he wanted something, he was hell-bent on making it happen. Just as Shorty had dreamt up the Akron Municipal Airport from an empty farm, he saw the hill carved out to level the airport as a horseshoe, the perfect shape for a stadium and recreation area where Akronites could gather — a place that could be the center of city life.
The completion of the 35,600-seat municipal stadium on the airport in 1940 gives us one of the finest recreational areas anywhere in America, attracting over a million people annually to the entire development,” wrote Shorty in a 1942 letter. “This has taken the community goodwill and a lot of hard work.”
Nearly 80 years later, Shorty’s grandson, Mike, of Uniontown, clutches a binder with the photo and letter, and gushes about his grandpa any chance he gets. At 60, he has become the Fulton family historian, spreading the word about the man who gave us our own version of the Hollywood sign through extensive photos, films, documents and memorabilia he has donated to Akron-Summit County Public Library.
Shorty’s bullish determination to bring this and other projects to fruition is what Mike and his brother, Joe, of New Mexico, admire about their late grandpa.
“What you saw was what you got. He was rough around the edges — to everybody,” Mike says. “He was going to get his way. He was looking at the big picture. He never lost sight of it. That was his driving force.”
“I worked for him as a teenager,” Joe adds, recalling a life lesson he learned as a child when Shorty handed him a lug wrench and told him to change a tire on a 1964 Chevy Nova. Joe tried but said he couldn’t do it. “Shorty handed the wrench back and said, ‘There’s no such thing as an impossible situation.’ ”
The innovative spirit in seeing possibilities where there were none — creating the Rubber Bowl, Derby Downs and what is now the Akron Fulton International Airport — is what makes Shorty one of the most historically influential Akronites. And it wasn’t by chance all three creations were on the same plot of land right across the street from Shorty’s home.
“He had a vision to create an entertainment complex with the airport as the center,” Joe says. “His idea: ‘This could be something good for the city.’ ”
The avid pilot and auto racer felt adding these anchors to Akron would make it more competitive. “His vision was that all great cities have airports and stadiums,” Mike says. “Derby Downs was all about kids.”
While pieces of that vision may be crumbling, his grandsons are ensuring Shorty’s story is still being told and the legacy of Shorty — simply Grandpa to them — lives on.
Derby Downs got moved to Akron the way most of Shorty’s projects got done: through one of his outlandish schemes. The overbearing, often hot-tempered businessman had a hunch intimidation would work, so he painted an ax red and glued bristles to it. Shorty took the ax to a meeting with officials, threw it on the conference table and brashly declared, “This is what happened to the last guy who said the National Soap Box Derby would not be in Akron.” At least, that’s how the incident is recalled by Elynore Fulton Hambleton, one of Shorty’s two daughters, in her book on Shorty titled, They Broke the Mold.
His hunch was right. The derby moved to Akron in 1935.
The derby was a hullabaloo of movie stars, bands, parades and flyovers that left attendees with indelible memories, some good — Shorty leading the Soap Box Derby parade each year in a hot rod vrooming by stands packed with roaring fans — some not so good: Mike begrudgingly recalls being on the grounds to drive dump trucks hauling trash at 16 years old.
Briefly, the hill was a winter sports center with ski runs, a bobsled run, sledding, toboggan chutes and an ice-skating rink — until city officials shut down winter sports there in the early 1940s because of injuries and damage caused by the sleds’ metal runners.
Shorty’s grandsons have bittersweet memories of the derby. Joe expresses one major disappointment he and his brother share: “We weren’t allowed to race in the derby.”
Mike and Joe’s father, Bain J. “Bud” Fulton, raced as a youth. “The Beacon Journal wrote about Dad being booed by 35,000 people,” Joe recalls. “That’s why we weren’t allowed [to race].” The mid-1930s crowd was reacting to Shorty giving 11-year-old Bud a ride up the hill on his motorcycle.
Now in its 81st year, the derby has become an international organization with 100 racing districts around the world. Its headquarters and the Derby Hall of Fame and Museum remain in Akron where a week of race activities leads up to the First Energy All-American Soap Box Derby World Championship Race at Derby Downs July 21.
The Rubber Bowl, Shorty’s other sports-related brainchild, shares a similarly unconventional origin story. The movement to build the stadium started in 1939 when Shorty and Akron Beacon Journal sports editor Jim Schlemmer asked the community to contribute $1 each toward the cost of construction, a crowdfunding model that was unheard of at the time. About 30,000 residents did just that. The Depression-era Works Progress Administration jumped in to help later that year by putting up the other $516,000.
The stadium drew a capacity crowd at its August 1940 celebratory opening that featured performances by local schoolchildren, fireworks and a keynote by Charles Seiberling. Droves returned for decades to attend University of Akron and high school football games, midget car races, the circus, the rodeo, church services and concerts ranging from Tom Petty to Aretha Franklin to Metallica.
The huge, multiuse facility filled a void. In a Beacon Magazine story about the stadium’s 50th anniversary, dated Aug. 12, 1990, Beacon Journal reporter Tom Gaffney credited Shorty and Schlemmer, among others, with turning “a hillside at the northeast corner of the Akron Municipal Airport into a long-overdue place for Akron to play, to meet, to enjoy.”
Mike and Joe didn’t visit the Rubber Bowl with Shorty but went often with their dad.
“One of our jobs was to keep people from walking across the field,” Joe recalls.
The Rubber Bowl does not share the vibrant future Derby Downs maintains for the 21st century. The stadium fell into disuse in 2008, and The University of Akron sold it to Team 1 properties of Canton in 2013. Foreclosure proceedings followed, and the Summit County Land Bank acquired the property in November. The city of Akron has since condemned the stadium and is set to demolish it this year. “The building is in such bad condition that it’s dangerous. Our main concern is that it’s too close to the derby lanes to be safe,” explains Brad Beckert, Akron Economic Development Department manager.
The demolition of his grandfather’s life’s work is a sore subject for Mike. “We don’t talk about it as a family,” he says. “I’m saddened by it.”
It is fitting that Akron named its Akron Fulton International Airport for Shorty. He sold 46 acres of family-owned land on Triplett Boulevard to the city for just $1 in 1925 to create it. Then, on April 11, 1926, the Akron Sunday Times published a Page 1 story under the headline “Akron Flier Seeks to Establish Municipal Flying Field.” The airport was once home to the original Goodyear Airdock, where the first lighter-than-air ships were built. Spectators flocked to the airport to catch sight of zeppelins and balloon pilots.
“We were into blimps,” Mike says, recalling how he and Joe loved to watch them soar.
As a child, he also discovered calling cards of Shorty’s love for aviation, including a note from Orville Wright.
Shorty’s name was synonymous with pioneering aviation. “He probably taught himself to fly,’’ Joe says. Shorty rebuilt his own airplane, a biplane he bought for $35 and named Jenny in 1925, around the time he moved to his farm on Massillon Road. He told his wife, Leah, that he opened the airport so he could fly Jenny. He established the Fulton Flying Service, which offered charters, flight instruction and excursions, and flew passengers in Jenny to supplement his income from the Firestone rubber shop.
The airport was a Fulton family affair. Leah sewed a 7-foot canvas windsock so the airport could be like others. To make a large “A” seal on the ground to attract flyers, Shorty had his 9-year-old daughter, Eileen, drive a truck filled with steel slag and his 7-year-old daughter, Elynore, help move the slag.
The airport drew thousands for air shows with trapeze artists, wing walkers, parachute jumps and skywritings. Shorty flew out every Memorial Day to scatter flowers from his plane over local cemeteries, Elynore recalls in They Broke the Mold. Famous aviators, such as Amelia Earhart and Shorty’s dear friend, Jimmy Doolittle, jetted through the Akron airport.
The business and aviation community airport still thrives, but it’s been a fight to keep it that way. Joe says he and his father were part of a citizens group, Save Ohio’s Aviation Resources, that opposed a proposal to sell the airport in 1991. The group, which included 10 to 15 pilots, reached out to the residents of surrounding Ellet for support and found success.
“We have a very pro-airport community,” Joe says. “We need to make sure that never changes. I’m proudest of his saving the airport. It’s a little city unto itself.”
Shorty’s love for the skies spurred him to enlist in the Army Air Corps during World War II. He petitioned the government in 1942 to allow him to join the war at age 50. Doolittle made it happen and sent Shorty to an airbase in Saudi Arabia. He was an observer and a waist gunner with the 486th Bombardment Group when his plane went down, landing him in the Stalag Luft 1 camp, a prisoner among nearly 9,000 airmen.
Mike produces a posthumous magazine biography that mentions the injuries Shorty sustained while a captive: broken ribs, upper plate and nose. He also pulls out a yellowed Beacon Journal clipping of Shorty’s Page 1 1979 obituary that includes a photo of him as a prisoner of war.
The obituary mentions Shorty’s adopted German stepson, Gerhard Mohr, who came to the United States. Mohr worked for the IRS and, Mike recalls with a smile, became a millionaire. Their friendship landed them on the reality TV show “This is Your Life,” where family and friends shared stories about contestants.
“He was an S.S. guard at the POW camp Shorty was in,” Mike says of Mohr, noting that although their nations were wartime foes, the two became friends during Shorty’s POW days. Mike went to a Bomb Group reunion a few years ago, where one of the attendees told him Shorty saved his life when they were at Stalag Luft 1.
“He was patriotic to an extreme,” Joe says, recalling how upset Shorty was when he displayed a silver-plated U.S. penny moments before his death on Feb. 28, 1979. Defacing U.S. currency is against the law, and Shorty made sure his family knew how he felt about it.
Shorty has been remembered for his gruff, courageous and gentle demeanor. “I’m a God-fearing man, but he’s the only one I’m afraid of,” reads one quote from the man.
Although the Rubber Bowl is coming down, Akronites still share stories of the raging Rolling Stones concert there or the time Ringo Starr played. And nearly 40 years later, the Derby Downs still brings thousands to Akron to cheer on racers because Shorty stood up for his dream. Small planes are still flown out of the airport that bears Shorty’s name, as he did many times nearly nine decades ago.
Paging through the binder of photos and letters, Mike, a tall man with white hair and wire-framed glasses, gets choked up. “Grandpa almost raised me,” Mike says.
To ensure Grandpa’s memories are preserved, Mike spent three months in Shorty’s house sorting almost 1,000 negatives Shorty took on a slim Minox camera he loved, recovering 16 mm films Shorty shot and handwritten letters from famous aviators Shorty had stowed away. It meant being away from his wife, but it was a labor of love. Mike donated much of the memorabilia to the public library, and it has been showcased in myriad forms, from local restaurants to PBS documentaries. Like his endlessly kinetic Grandpa, he’s far from finished. He just wants to make sure people don’t forget what Shorty did for Akron.
“That’s the Grandpa part of me,” Mike says.
