Sunday, September 12, 2010

The Dash Between: Sue Kerchmar, Elyria bartender, daughter of Slovak immigrants

Sue Kerchmar adopted the motto and rallying cry "Push and Pray" in her later years to express her determination to use her walker-on-wheels to get from one room to another and to continue to live in her own home despite physical limitations.

The same phrase could be used to describe her lifelong philosophy. Throughout her life, the Elyria great-grandmother took matters into her own hands to achieve positive outcomes. She devised plans, took actions toward making things happen, then prayed that she would achieve her goals.


In 1942, the former Sue Sklenar traveled to Colorado, where John Kerchmar Jr. was stationed with the Army Air Forces, before John was sent overseas for service in World War II.

When she found out that her visually impaired son, John III, could learn to read Braille in the city of Lorain, Sue called a radio program seeking a listener who would give her son a ride to the classes. She later enrolled him in a school for the blind in Columbus. She wanted him to be self-sufficient.

Click here to read about The Dash Between June 5, 1923, when Sue was born Susan Sklenar in Elyria, Ohio, and August 10, 2010, when the former Kerchmar’s West Side CafĂ© bartender died at age 87, in the Sept. 12, 2010, edition of the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram.

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