Clyde area farmer active in community, ran businesses

10/27/2002

CLYDE, Ohio - Lee O. Myers, a longtime farmer in Sandusky County's York Township who formerly served on the Clyde Board of Education and who owned an auto dealership and a motel, died of congestive heart failure Wednesday in Bellevue Hospital. He was 86.

Mr. Myers farmed 300 acres and grew corn, soybeans, and, for a time, cucumbers, tomatoes, and cabbage. He retired in 1976.

He had worked on farms as a young man. He received a degree in accounting from what was then Tri-State College, Angola, Ind., and had been an accountant for Davidson Enamel Co.

He volunteered for the U.S. Maritime Service during World War II and, during a month-long ocean crossing to the Philippines, he decided he wanted to become a farmer.

“He had a lot of time to think when they crossed the Pacific,” his wife, Melva, said. “He thought he wanted to be his own boss more than anything.

“He liked to farm,” she said. “When a man loves the land, you can't ever take it out of him.”

He owned a Plymouth-Dodge agency in Clyde for about four years in the 1950s. He owned the Camp Grand Motel in Clyde from the 1950s until 1969.

A Democrat, Mr. Myers was elected in the 1960s to what is now the Clyde-Green Springs Exempted Village Schools Board of Education. He served one term.

“He was interested in public affairs,” his wife said. “He was in the Clyde Exchange Club. He was an active member of the community.”

Mr. Myers was born in Bradner, Ohio. He was a graduate of Clyde High School.

He was a member of the Sandusky County Farm Bureau.

He and his wife traveled the United States in retirement, and they spent winters in the Tampa area.

“He was a good, honest, high-principled person,” his wife said. “What was right was right, and he had little patience with people who were dishonest.”

Surviving are his wife, Melva E. Myers, whom he married Sept. 5, 1937; sons, Douglas, Lee, Jr., and Thomas; sister, Wanda Miller, and three grandchildren.

There will be no visitation. Memorial services will be at 2 p.m. Nov. 24 in Clyde Christian Church, of which he was a member. Arrangements are by the Mitchell-Auxter Mortuary, Clyde.

The family requests tributes to the church.