The Pilot News - Cummins is eyewitness to nearly 100 years of Culver excitement

“I was born in South Bend and we moved here…July 3, 1920. On July 5, I went to work shampooing hair!”
In fact, Cummins worked in a wide array of Culver’s businesses before she was married in 1926, the same year she graduated from Culver High School. One of these jobs was F.G. Solomon’s in downtown Culver, a popular clothier in its day. As a teen, Cummins worked the shop, which often brought local farmers in on Saturday evenings to do their shopping; one of those evenings brought two unusual visitors. “Charlie Cowen and I were working…these two men (came in and) spent most of their time looking at the coveralls. They were keeping us open. They’re the ones that broke in…I worked there late Saturday, and early Sunday the boss — Fred Solomon — called and said we were robbed.”
That didn’t end Cummins’ brushes with crime. When concerns for his own safety motivated her father, Milton Ewald, to sell his market in South Bend and move to Culver. He opened Ewald’s meat market on Main Street, just south of today’s Gladie’s Deli, in a now-defunct building that would house Gretter’s grocery store for years after Ewald’s closed its doors. It was from this close vantage point that Milt Ewald watched the 1933 State Exchange Bank robbery and grabbed his gun to assist in its prevention. “The driver of the getaway car heard my dad cock the rifle,” recalls Cummins with a laugh, “and he shot right through the meat market window. Jack Harris was there and old Jack threw the pork chops up in the air and the pork chops went everywhere!”
Cummins’ adventures picked up again years later, when Bob McKinnis – who had purchased the building on the east side of North Main Street formerly occupied by Rector’s drug store – moved his pharmacy to State Road 10.
“I was there for the robbery of F.G. Solomon’s, and then by golly (I worked) out there on State Road 10 (at McKinnis’)…and these men came in about closing time. One stayed by the door, one had a revolver. I can still see that shiny silver thing. The other one had a rifle. He said, ‘Ma’am, lay down by the back of the counter’…I said he’d better lock that door because someone is liable to come in. Finally he and Bob came up (from downstairs, where the men were stealing drugs) and they put Bob in the bathroom. They put me in there, and I had to sit with my face over the stool! (Bob) kept saying, ‘have they gone yet?’…they took money; Bob had over $1,000 stretched out across that counter, since it was closing time, and they took all the drugs. This was the late 1960s to early 1970s.”
Most of her work experience, however, was more mundane, and reads like a listing of Culver’s historic downtown businesses of yesteryear. “I worked at the A&P store, Bob Taylor’s five and dime (in the building occupied today by Michelle’s Headquarters), Conklin’s grocery store on Main Street, Wickizer’s general store, for Bill Taber at the newsstand, at Culver Academy’s officer’s club…I had a lot of bosses.”
Cummins was also employed as a pianist for the silent movies shown in the theater on Lake Shore Drive that is today the Uptown Cinema, starting around 1926. “Until they started having sound in the movies around 1931, whenever they had silent movies, I was there to do that…if there was a war (on the screen), you had blood and thunder (musically). You improvised; I never had any trouble. I just looked at the screen and played. The boss was from Argos.”
While still working at Solomon’s, in 1924 during the height of the Ku Klux Klan’s power in Indiana, Cummins recalls, “there was a KKK parade in Culver. Everybody’s mouths dropped open. My gosh, I guess they were surprised! It wasn’t something that a lot of people supported. They paraded down Main Street. I think they were pretty well ignored. Everybody was so disgusted.”
To escape the downtown chaos, Cummins and friend Bea Fisher sought sustenance elsewhere, and Katie met her husband-to-be, Cary. “We decided to go up to Mickle and Mack’s restaurant on the north side of Lake Shore Drive. It was a combination restaurant and dancehall. Cary waited on us. I said to Bea, ‘I’m going to marry him.’”
Katie Ewald did indeed marry Cary Cummins in 1926, when the couple eloped on a rambling car trip from Culver to Winamac and beyond. “We didn’t know where we were going. We’d come to a town and he’d say, ‘do you want to get married here?’ I’d say, ‘no, not here.’ We ended up in Kirkland, Indiana, and he went and found a minister.”

The couple had two daughters, one of whom – Bobbie Ruhnow – is a well-known member of the Culver community today.
“(Cary) was a patient son of a gun to put up with me. He passed away in October of 1969. He was called ‘clerk of the works’ up at the (present high school, constructed at that time). He saw to it that they were building it according to the (code). He was so proud of that school…he was a painter by trade mostly; he did all the new houses in town.”
“Cary never knew where to come home to. If I decided to move, we just packed up the furniture and moved down the sidewalk!”
And move she did. “We moved more than anyone…always in Culver except a short period of time I lived above the Reese Theater in Plymouth. I just got bored to death and I’d wake up and say, ‘I’m moving.’ We lived in 15 or 16 different houses.”
Through the years, Cummins was involved in a number of activities and organizations. Besides her membership in anything and everything pertaining to music in high school – including an award-winning choral group – she is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Wesley United Methodist Church, and Culver’s VFW.
She has also been a firsthand witness to a plethora of historic events in Culver, including the fire that claimed the historic Lakeview hotel (formerly located where the Indian trails near Lake Shore Drive sit today) in 1929 (“They had an observation deck and you could sit and watch the boats,” she recalls. “They had beautiful oak chairs.”), and a massive train wreck that deposited tons of coal into the town park. “I heard an awful racket one night and looked out the window the next morning, and there railroad cars piled up in the town park. I could not believe my eyes. I thought I’d had it when I heard the wreck!”

Cummins continued working in Culver until her 90th year, when she retired from Mr. T’s pharmacy on Academy Road. “I can’t remember what year I was honored (as grand marshal) in the Lakefest parade,” she says, but she was one of a handful of Culverites so honored.

Today, looking at least 20 years her junior, Katie Cummins lives, on her own, in Culver, a place from which she has never strayed for long. “I graduated in Culver and I suppose it was just home, that’s all,” she muses. And, as has been the case for so many others, that’s reason enough for her.