Sunday, August 16, 2015
By Bob Jackson
YOUNGSTOWN
Kathy Carnahan will never forget the day she lost her necklace at Idora Park.
Well, she didn’t actually lose it. She kind of gave it away. But just the same, she went home with out it, and it was a memorable day.
She had gone to the park to see a concert by recording artist Bobby Sherman, who performed in the park’s storied ballroom in the 1970s.
“I was sitting in the sixth row,” Carnahan said with a wide smile. “I remember I took off my necklace and tossed it up on the stage to him, and he picked it up and kept it.”
Carnahan, 57, of Struthers, was among those who attended Idora Day at Lanterman’s Mill in Mill Creek Park on Saturday. The event was dedicated to rekindling memories of the park, once known as Youngstown’s Million-Dollar Playground, on the city’s South Side.
Idora Park opened May 30, 1899, and enjoyed a successful run until its closure was forced after a devastating fire in 1984.
Carnahan also recalled going to see teen heart-throb David Cassidy, who performed a concert on the park’s baseball field in the 1970s.
“It was really awesome because you could ride the Jack Rabbit and look over and see David Cassidy performing,” she said. “I rode the Jack Rabbit a lot that day.”
She said a trip to Idora, especially for concerts, was a great entertainment bargain.
“You paid $5 to get in, you got to see David Cassidy, and then you got to ride the rides all day,” Carnahan said.
The Jack Rabbit was one of the park’s main-attraction roller coasters, along with the Wildcat. Visitors at Idora Day nearly unanimously recalled those two rides among their favorite memories of the park.
“Everything about it was great,” said 63-year-old Rick Mashiska of Youngstown, who grew up on the city’s East Side and used to walk the 6 miles to Idora with his friends. “The fries, the airplanes, the Wildcat, the Jack Rabbit. It was all great.”
Mashiska said he’ll never forget the first time he and his friends were on the Jack Rabbit, and the coaster started going down a hill backward.
“Every other time, that’s what they’d do - they’d convert it into the Back Rabbit,” he said, while laughing. “All of a sudden the thing’s going backward down the hill. That was a wild ride. It was strange at first, but it was a good time.”
Among the memorabilia on display was a car from the Wildcat, which had been saved from the fire. Robert Karzmer of Lowellville owns it and had it set up on a platform, with a huge backdrop of the coaster in the background. For $10, visitors could sit in the car and have their picture taken, creating the image of actually being on the coaster.
“It’s nostalgia,” Karzmer said. “Young people don’t really remember Idora Park, but there are a lot of people who grew up around here who remember and want to relive it.”
Bob Barko Jr., owner of Steel Town Studios, has a large collection of Idora memorabilia and had most of it on display Saturday inside the mill. He said it was the first time he’s been able to put so many artifacts on display at once.
“When the park approached me about doing an Idora Day, I was all for it,” Barko said.
He also had items of Youngstown’s yesteryear from such iconic landmarks as McKelvey’s department store and Isaly’s dairy store.
“This is a great opportunity for me to get to share these things with a lot of people,” Barko said.
Debra Kostelic, 63, of Poland, said she started going to Idora while she was a student at Mohawk High School in Bessemer, Pa.
“On the last day of school, Mohawk took us to Idora every year,” she said. She became so enamored with the park that she wrote a poem about it 20 years ago and called it, “Idora Park Will Live Forever In My Heart,” since that’s how she feels about it.
Like Mashiska, Kostelic said the french fries at Idora Park were the best she’s ever tasted.
“I don’t know what they did to them, but they were great,” Mashiska said.
Carnahan said she saved her ticket stubs from the David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman concerts, as well as other Idora memorabilia over the years, and recently donated them to the Idora Park Experience, a museum on Canfield Road dedicated to preserving memories of the park.