Minerd.com Biography of Loren W. and Olive (Minerd) Lashbrook of Mt. Lebanon and Sharon, PA

Olive (Minerd) Lashbrook
(1892-1964)

St. Peters Lutheran Cemetery

Olive (Minerd) Lashbrook was born in October 1892 in Dunbar, Fayette County, PA, the daughter of Andrew R. and Annie (Rhodes) Minerd.

Olive's parents separated when she was a teenager. She and her mother and sisters moved to Pittsburgh, residing with her grandmother at 814 Aiken Avenue. Tragedy struck in 1913, when her father was killed falling down a stairway at a hotel in Dunbar.

At the age of 25, Olive worked as a clerk for the Frick & Lindsey Company in Pittsburgh, circa 1917, and lived at 747 Chislett Street.

On June 22, 1917, at age 25, Olive married 23-year-old Loren Wesley Lashbrook Sr. (1894-1939), the son of James L. and Ada (Logan) Lashbrook of Oxford, NE and Kansas City, KS. Rev. Thomas Charlesworth, minister of the Smithfield Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, performed the ceremony. Olive was two years older than her husband.

They together produced a family of at least three children -- Loren Wesley Lashbrook Jr., Elaine Eichleay and William Patterson Lashbrook.

Later in the year they were married, Loren registered for the military draft during World War I. On his registration card, he was listed as medium height and slender build, with hazel eyes and light brown hair. He listed his address as 747 Chislett Street in Pittsburgh. On the card, Loren also disclosed that he previously had served as a private in the Pennsylvania National Guard for a period of three months.

When the federal census was taken in 1930, the Lashbrooks resided on Longvue Drive in Mt. Lebanon, a fashionable suburb of Pittsburgh. In their home that year was servant Elizabeth Douglas, a native of England.

Downtown Pittsburgh and the famed "point" where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers converge to form the mighty Ohio River. Photo by Aero Service Corporation.

Loren was employed was a sales manager with the Frick-Reed Supply Corporation, a steel company. In November 1933, he was admitted to membership of the Propeller Club of Pittsburgh.

Owning a Ford V8 sedan automobile, Loren was involved in an accident in September 1936 which a woman passenger suffered "serious personal injuries." The injured woman sued the Lashbrooks in late February 1938. Loren in turn hired the respected Pittsburgh firm of Dickie McCamey to represent their interests. In March 1938, Loren swore in an affidavit that he would prove his case at trial. The outcome of the case is not known.

Fort Pitt Hotel, where Loren died

In late 1938 or early 1939, Loren left his longtime employer and joined the Mercer Tube and Manufacturing Company as assistant general sales manager. He relocated Olive and the children at that time to Sharon, Mercer County. During that same period, he complained to his family and in-laws about a lingering lung ailment.

For reasons unknown, and apparently deeply depressed at age 45, Loren checked into the Fort Pitt Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh in the second week of the new year of 1939. He paid his bill in advance. Nine days later, on Jan. 23, 1939, while in his hotel room, he took his own life. A curious maid tried to open the door, and called a house detective to help. They found Loren's lifeless body and a new .22 caliber rifle on the floor. Two notes were found -- the first asking that his brother in law John McClements be notified; and the second to his wife, reading:

Olive: I am trying to do a good job and get this gun angled right. I suggest you send the kids away to school for a year or two, then you can get yourself adjusted better. Sorry it all turned out this way. (signed) Loren.

St. Peters Lutheran Cemetery

Loren's tragic death made headlines in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Later that year, Olive returned from Sharon to Pittsburgh, where she rented an apartment at 5460 Penn Avenue.

Within a few years, likely to move to a warmer climate but also possibly to leave behind unpleasant memories, Olive relocated to Miami, Dade County, FL. Circa 1951, she also kept a home in Chicago.

She passed away there in February, 1964, at the age of 72. Her remains were returned to Pittsburgh, and were laid to rest beside her husband's at St. Peters Lutheran Cemetery in Highland Park, near Pittsburgh.

Ironically, the Lashbrooks' burial site is within 50 yards of the grave of Rev. Isaac Herschel Minerd, who founded the Minerd-Miner Reunion in Fayette County in 1913, and who served with Olive's uncle, Rev. David Ewing Minerd, in planning later reunions.

Son Loren Wesley Lashbrook Jr. (1920-1987) was born on May 15, 1920. He was age 19 when his father died.

As an adult, he resided in Nashville, Davidson County, TN; Texas; and Tucson, Pima County, AZ.

Then in 1952, at age 32, he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and "spent about eight years in various institutions because of the problem," according to Arizona court records.

On Nov. 12, 1973, he was set up for a "roll job" -- a robbery by a husband-wife team outside of a bar in downtown Tucson -- while he was waiting for a bus to take him to a veteran's hospital in California. The couple was found guilty, and the court's findings became case law in Arizona regarding the inability of victims to remember details of the crime. (State v. Kevil, 111 Ar4iz. 240 (1974)

After a move to Florida, Elaine studied at the University of Miami. She was married and divorced by 1950, a year in which she and her bachelor brother William dwelled together in Chicago and she earned a living as a bookkeeper for a beauty culture school.

On Feb. 17, 1951, in nuptials held in Miami, the 29-year-old Elaine entered into marriage with her second spouse, William Albert Eichleay (1918-1984). News of the happy event was published along with Elaine's photo portrait in the Miami Herald. After a reception at the Pelican Harbor Yacht Club, they honeymooned in Havana, Cuba.

William had attended the University of Pittsburgh and University of Colorado and at the time of marriage was employed as a captain with Pan American Airways. Their first address together was 731 Southeast Fourth Place, Miami. Then in 1957, they dwelled at 8720 Northwest 16th Avenue, Miami.

On a flight from Berlin to West Germany in 1957, William's aircraft was struck by lightning. The Miami Herald reported that "no one was injured, although passengers were in a state of near-panic until calmed by the plane's crew... [The] plane elevator was slightly damaged but the aircraft landed safely at Wahn airport near Bonn."

The couple's home in 1964 was in Miami. He made news in 1963 when flying hurricane relief foodstuffs and medicine to Cuba valued at $30,000 and provided by American Quakers.

After about two decades in the marriage, the couple separated, with him remaining in Miami and her moving to Fort Lauderdale. William sued for divorce, and his plea was granted in Miami in September 1971. He retired from PanAm and died at the age of 66 on July 15, 1984. In his Miami News obituary, it said that he was "Survived by his wife Elaine."

Elaine remained in the Miami area for the balance of her life. She surrendered to the angel of death in Miami on May 21, 2003.

He stood 6 feet tall, weighed 185 lbs. and carried a birthmark on his right thigh.

William appears to have served in the U.S. Naval Reserves during World War II. He and his mother made a home together in Miami in 1946 at 89 Northeast 107th Street. Still unmarried as of 1950, he and his divorced sister Elaine shared a residence in Chicago, with him working as an insurance adjuster for a casualty company.

On Jan. 19, 1952, he tied the marital cord with Audrey Ann Decker ( ? - ? ), daughter of Ben W. Ebert of Janesville, WI. The pair did not reproduce, and they separated on Sept. 15, 1953 after 20 months together. Audrey supported herself as a bookkeeper in her hometown, while William moved to Levittown, Long Island, NY and worked as a bartender. Citing "cruel and inhuman treatment, intoxication, failure to support and physical violence," she sued for divorce in 1955.

Circa 1964, when he was about 38 years of age, he made a home in Los Angeles. Nothing more about him is known.