Family ties strong after death

The murder was the first recorded in Wood County.
FOSTORIA, Ohio (AP) -- Imagine you are a child with eight siblings. Your parents work hard to provide for a large family. Then your father gets shot and dies the next day, leaving your mother to care for the whole family.
On his deathbed he asked your mother to not split the family up.
You grow up never knowing your dad, and eventually you cannot tell your children much about their own grandfather.
This is what life was like for Bradner resident Dan Roth and his siblings after their father, Gene, was gunned down near Fostoria at age 38 in 1946.
Dan, 61, was 8 months old at the time. His oldest sibling, Betty Gase, was 13. Oldest brother Leonard, or "Skip" as people called him, had to teach his brother Herb how to drive and to kiss girls.
Dottie eventually remarried, bringing two stepsisters into the Roth clan. She died of heart complications in 1985.
At a family gathering July 21 at the Wood County Historical Museum, several of the siblings said their mother usually had a hard time discussing Gene's death.
This made it difficult for them to learn about their father and tell their own children about his life.
Getting to know one another
So Dan decided to get everyone together to enjoy one another's company and discover more about Gene.
The museum has the plaid shirt Gene was wearing March 10, 1946, when Arthur Peebles, then 55, shot him with a .22 caliber rifle, which is also on display. Blood stains near the abdomen area on Gene's pink and blue shirt show where the bullet struck him.
"I remember the deep red that was on dad's shirt when we put him in the car to take him to the hospital," said Joan Gase-Herion, Roth's daughter who, along with Dottie, witnessed her father's murder.
His was the first recorded murder in Wood County history.
Gase-Herion reflected on that fateful day and the events leading up to it. She said her family had lived on the same farm near Fostoria for 13 years, and Peebles, who lived in Bloomdale, was their landlord.
Gene always had a good relationship with Peebles, Herion said.
But Herb said Peebles took advantage of the Roth children, having them do chores for him. Dan said Peebles once threatened to shoot his father if the family ever moved.
The shooting
Gene believed this was a joke. So the Roths moved, but on March 10, 1946, Gene brought Dottie and Herion along to get a gas tank he had put in the yard 13 years earlier.
According to a Review Times article published a day later, Peebles claimed this tank did not belong to Gene and was instead part of the farm.
Gase-Herion explained someone informed Peebles her father was on his way to retrieve the tank. Peebles arrived with his brother-in-law and three other men, but the Review Times article stated Gene did not pay attention to them until his landlord brought out the gun.
"He came over toward the vehicle and said, 'I told you if you ever moved I'd shoot you,'" she said.
Gase-Herion, Dottie and others on scene assisted Gene and drove him to Fostoria City Hospital, where he died March 11.
In his final moments, he told Dottie to keep their family together no matter what, Dan said.
Peebles turned himself in at the Wood County Sheriff's Office immediately. He was found guilty of second-degree murder three months later. Although Peebles received a life sentence, family members at Friday's gathering said one of their now-deceased relatives saw him in Fostoria in the late 1950s.
But even though Peebles took Gene's life, his wife and children have kept his dying wish alive and remained a close family.