Jimmie, Millie and the romance of "61"

"It was always love at first sight...."

By TIM YARNALL Correspondent

Photos courtesy of Tim Yarnall and the personal collection of Millie VanSickle

A love story can have many meanings.

I have a love story that will stir many feelings old and new. It is a love story of friends, family, a couple named Jimmie and Millie and a love, of all things, of motorcycles. Millie and Jimmie came together on a blind date and as Millie has said "it was love at first sight."

The former Millie Cross lived on Hazen Road next to Bob Abbott. And it was Abbott who introduced Millie to Jim on a blind date. That started a romance that lasted for the next 63 years. And that romance just happened to get a kick start from an unlikely vehicle that kept the love alive for more than six decades.

Jimmie Van Sickle bought his Harley from Hemmis Harley Davidson in 1939. The bike is a 1938 Harley Davidson EL 61 (today known as a Knucklehead). The bike was the couple's only source of transportation. In the spring of 1947, the Van Sickles were expecting their second child. Millie told her husband it was time to sell the motorcycle and buy a car. Jim's reply was...

To read Jim's response and to find out how the Harley kept a romance in check throughout and even beyond a marriage, click here...

This Valentine's Day...

Time to Get Savage

How the love of custom motorcycles led three friends to open a one of a kind company on the outskirts of Frostburg.

By SHANE RIGGS Managing Editor

Photography by Bridget White Angelo for Allegany Magazine

In the summer of 2002, Sean Snyder and his wife Lorrie took what turned out to be the trip of a lifetime to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The couple planned to take in some sights, soak up some sun and have a romantic getaway for two. What ended up happening is that Snyder fell in love -- with an idea.

"It happened to be bike week when we got down there and I got the fever to build a bike," he said.

When he returned to Western Maryland, he called up friend Mike Dixon and told him of his idea for a custom made motorcycle, one the pair could manufacture and fabricate from the ground up. The bike got built and was entered in a show -- where someone made an offer on it Dixon and Snyder could not refuse.

With the money they earned, they decided to build a second bike and this time enlisted the help of Jeremy Gordon. A second, third and fourth bike was then constructed -- a bike for each man. Again, however, those bikes were also entered in a national show in Pittsburgh and were sold. Not only that, bike enthusiasts at the show ordered more bikes and a small business venture started.

Savage Cycles was first run out of Snyder's house and then the demand for business became so great the team went looking for a space. What they found in 2004 was a ....

To find out more about how three friends founded a successful motorcycle design shop from the ground up...click here...

The army invasion of 1894

The fanfare, the music, the pageantry, and the simple laborer from Ohio with a point to be made.

The visit of Coxey's Army to Cumberland

By JAMES RADA JR. Correspondent

On April 14, 1894, the invasion the residents of Frostburg had been expecting for weeks happened. Coxey's Army appeared at the crest of Federal Hill and marched into town right down Main Street.

"At 4:15 p.m., the marshal of the marching group, a four piece band, flags and banners, and some wagons, followed by a group of 245 tired and bedraggled mortals, crossed Federal Hill and marched in a more or less soldierly fashion down Main Street into Frostburg," Harold Scott wrote in his book Incredible, Strange, Unusual...

Coxey's Army was a group of unemployed workers that had formed in Massillon, Ohio, under the direction of Jacob Coxey. The official name of the group was the Commonwealth of Christ, but most people referred to it then and still today as Coxey's Army. The group planned to march to Washington D.C. where Coxey would present his petition to Congress of his ideas for a national program of building and repairing...

To learn more about Coxey's Army and their monumental stay in Western Maryland, click here...

Don't Worry....Bee Happy

Can getting stung with a bee be actually good for you?

By SHANE RIGGS Managing Editor

Photography by Shane Riggs

Nearly 20 years ago, William Hand (who also happens to be Allegany Magazine's culinary contributor) was seriously injured in an automobile accident. The car, and his ankle bone, were totaled.

He then attempted several radical therapies, including the initial recommendation for surgery which would have removed half an inch to an inch of his ankle bone, requiring him to be fitted with special shoes for the rest of his life. Still a relatively young man, Hand said no.

"I really didn't want anyone carving an inch of bone out of my leg," he said.

While living out of state, a friend told him about a "new" therapy -- apitherapy -- a process by which it is believed that the potent sting from a mature and agitated honey bee can heal.

Since 1999, Hand has been engaging in the therapy. Each treatment, he gets up to 50 stings in his injured ankle. For the nearly nine years he has been seeking the therapy, he has been stung more than 3000 times.

"I saw a doctor recently and he wanted to know what all the scarring was around my ankle," Hand said. "I told him it was from 3000 bee stings and then I told him what I had done. He looked up at me and said 'whatever works."

While some physicians have told Hand he will eventually still need surgery, a local specialist told him as long as the pain in his leg remains bearable, the surgery can be delayed. Hand "buys time" with bee stings.

"If getting stung with a bee or 30 bees can relieve me of pain so I can hold off surgery for as long as I can, I am going to get the stings," he said. "Everytime I tell people that I get stung with bees to help with pain, they think I am nuts."

Before the bees began stinging him, Hand had no lateral motion at all in his right ankle. After receiving about three treatments, motion and flexibility returned.

"I was amazed the first time I got a bee sting in my ankle," he said. "I got movement where there was none before. It's nice to not have that pain there constantly."

Hand, however, does see a regular doctor who keeps the injury in his ankle in check. He sometimes wears a brace when the pain returns. But after a treatment of bee stings, he can maneuver without support for a long time.

"And for someone who is on his feet working all day, that is a big deal," he said. "There was about a period of four or five months where I stopped getting stung and I could really tell the difference. I was in the brace a lot more and I couldn't stay on my feet long without it hurting."

Locally, Hand has been getting his "propolis injections" from bee keeper and honey manufacturer Harry Mallow. Mallow, who founded the Allegheny Mountain Beekeepers in 1975 and has been its president several times over the last 33 years, said he has been performing apitherapy for about "five or six years."

"I started giving the bee stings to a woman who had heard about it," Mallow said. Mallow said he has seen results in people who are coming to him for anywhere from two or three well placed stings to up to 50 at one time.

To learn more about how this remarkable therapy reportedly works and to see photos of a treatment in process, click here..

Your roots are showing

Shaking up the family tree

How "filling in the blanks" became a new obsession

by HARRIET MOORE
Correspondent

All I wanted to do was fill in the blanks in the book that I received when I was pregnant with my daughter in 1977. That's all.

I thought I knew all there was to know about my Mother's family, so I was concentrating on my Dad's family before tackling the unknown - my husband Carl's family.

All of my grandparents were deceased, so I had to go to other sources for information - and, oh, what a mish-mash of data I received! Both sides of my Dad's family were giving me the same names - I decided no one knew what they were talking about, filed the book on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, and went on with my life.

It was early 1995 before I again resurrected the pile of papers that I'd begun years before. I'd seen an article in the Cumberland Times-News about a "genealogy library" in Cumberland - somewhere - and that sparked a renewed interest in those blanks.

On a Wednesday trip to Cumberland, a few months later, with some time to spare, Carl and I thought we'd locate this library. A visit to the Chamber of Commerce didn't give us precise directions, but a phone call to the library did. As chance would have it, it was cleaning day; the library at that time was open only on Tuesdays. So Carl and I sat amidst the smell of Mr. Clean and perused some of the many books upon their shelves, while the others continued to scrub away the winter's accumulation.

I found more information that I could assimilate in just a short period of time. Lucy Wagner invited me to come back on a Tuesday when she and Helen Wilson would be present. It was some weeks later before I would again venture to the library with my notebook and glean some more family information. By this time, Beverly Bittner, the third member of Tuesday's Three Musketeers, had returned from a medical leave. On my third visit, I took my lunch.

Thus began my association with the Genealogical Society of Allegany County...

To learn how you can conduct your own genealogical research in Western Maryland, click here...

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