In Memoriam...
Once again we are saddened to report the loss of one of
our long time members. John "Jack" Nethen of Claude Neon Signs passed away
Saturday, March 8, 2003. Jack was a MSA past president and board member.
An active MSA member and friend, he will be greatly missed. Copied below is the obituary from the Baltimore Sun.
By Jacques Kelly
Sun Staff
Originally published March 10,
2003
Jack Nethen, a sign company executive who lighted the Edmondson
Village Shopping Center for the holidays and kept the Gayety's neon dancers
kicking, died of cancer Saturday at Howard County General Hospital. The Glen
Burnie resident was 76.
The secretary-treasurer of Claude Neon Signs in Cherry Hill, he was the
second generation of his family to make and install well-known local theater
marquees, shopping center pylons and lighted advertising devices passed by
motorists daily.
Born John A. Nethen, but known as Jack, the Baltimore native was raised in
Pigtown. In a Sun story last year, he recalled pigs being unloaded from trains
and then herded along city streets to South Baltimore slaughterhouses. He said
he and his friends would hide in his family's coal bin and pilfer a pig as it
ran by.
"We'd have good eating for a while," he said in the article.
In a separate story, he recalled watching his father, Adolph Nethen, repair
the old metal Bromo-Seltzer bottle atop the Emerson Drug Co.'s tower at
Lombard and Eutaw streets. Mr. Nethen also saw his father remove the bottle in
1935.
After his 1944 graduation from Polytechnic Institute, Mr. Nethen enlisted
in the Navy and was trained as a turret-ball gunner on a torpedo bomber.
In 1946, he joined the family business, then located in the 800 block of S.
Hanover St. in what is now the Otterbein neighborhood. The shop was so crammed
that Mr. Nethen and his co-workers had to edge large signs and theater
marquees out the front door and stop Hanover Street traffic so they could turn
the metal panels to paint them.
In a 1989 Evening Sun story, he recalled having his workers thread
thousands of tiny white electric lights through the branches of sycamore trees
facing Edmondson Village Shopping Center. He and family members, each standing
at switches spread throughout the center's grounds and in store basements,
used stopwatches. At the set hour, the center's exterior display flashed on as
a unit, to the honks of assembled motorists who waited annually in the 1950s
and 1960s on Thanksgiving night for the light show to begin.
His firm made the signs for two shopping centers built in the 1950s,
Mondawmin and Harundale, as well as nearly all of Baltimore's downtown,
neighborhood and drive-in theaters. As a younger man, he serviced the neon
tubing on The Block's Gayety burlesque house's animated sign. He recently
worked on the paperwork for the removal of the Hamilton neighborhood's Arcade
marquee.
Mr. Nethen was the former president of the Advertising and Professional
Club of Baltimore, the Maryland Sign Contractors and the Eastern State Sign
Council.
"Jack joined many organizations and everybody who came in touch with
him soon liked him," said Gerald Kavanagh, a friend and retired American
National Savings Bank senior vice president. "He was dependable, honest
and loyal to his friends."
"He couldn't do enough for you," said Clarisse B. Mechanic, owner
of the Charles Center theater that bears the name of her late husband, Morris
A. Mechanic, who was a close friend. "Jack was very productive. He was
no-nonsense and always got a lot accomplished."
Mr. Nethen, a charter member of Milford Mill United Methodist Church in
Pikesville, was a volunteer at North Arundel Hospital and worked nights in the
emergency room, often soothing persons waiting for treatment or word of their
sick relatives.
"They had to throw him out at midnight -- he so liked being with
people," said his son, Jan F. Nethen of Whiteford.
A memorial service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Chapelgate
Presbyterian Church, 2600 Marriottsville Road, Marriottsville.
Other survivors include another son, Gary K. Nethen of Manchester; a
daughter, Claire Hetrick of Ellicott
City; two brothers, Robert Nethen of Ocean
City and Alan Nethen of Pasadena; two sisters, Anna Lee Fuller of
Wakefield, Kan., and Bonnie Howatt of Pasadena; five grandchildren; and three
great-grandchildren. His wife, the former Mary Ellen Gathercole, died in 2000.
His previous marriage to the former Lucille Kamka ended in divorce.
In Memoriam...
Our friend, colleague, and past MSA president, Harry Belsinger passed away
Thursday, Dec. 26, 2002. Copied below is the obituary from the Baltimore Sun.
Harry "Flair" Belsinger Jr., who created some of Baltimore's
best-known signs, died Thursday of congestive heart failure at Stella Maris
Rehabilitation Center in Timonium. The Severna Park resident was 80.
The president and chief executive officer of Belsinger Sign Works Inc. in
Southwest Baltimore from 1958 to 2000, he was working at the family business
in the 1950s when he and others created the stainless steel letters for the façade
of Memorial Stadium. He and his employees also made signs for Oriole
Park at Camden Yards and Ravens Stadium, and, most recently, Lexington
Market.
Born in Baltimore and raised on West Baltimore Street, he was a 1939
Polytechnic Institute graduate. He earned a degree from Fenn College of
Engineering in Cleveland, Ohio. His nickname "Flair" came from his
mother's maiden name, O'Flaherty.
During World War II, he served in the Army Air Forces. A B-17 pilot, he
flew 25 bombing missions over Europe, including a run over Dresden, Germany,
during which he was unaware that his plane had been hit and its landing gear
was down.
Friends said that when he arrived back at an English airfield, he realized
he was also out of fuel. Mr. Belsinger was awarded the Distinguished Flying
Cross. He attained the rank of colonel.
Friends said he was working on a sign on Pearl Harbor Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941,
when the business founded by his father in 1919 was then located at 2201 N.
Payson St. The next day he volunteered for military service -- without telling
his parents.
"His strength and ability was problem solving," said Harry
Connolly Jr., sales manager of Belsinger Signs, who lives in Catonsville.
"He could design, sell, build and obtain the permits. He always had time
to stop whatever he was doing to help."
Co-workers said that at the time of his death, Mr. Belsinger had the plans
on his desk for the exterior arched canopy for the Hippodrome Theatre on North
Eutaw Street. He had been working on the marquee's re-creation from old
photographs.
"He looked you directly in the eye, put his face in yours and told you
what he wanted," said Norman P. James, a colleague who lives in Riviera
Beach. "He was a good engineer, and there was always a lot of truth in
what he was telling you."
Jack A Nethen, secretary-treasurer of Claude Neon Signs, said he and Mr.
Belsinger were competitors and friends for 50 years.
"I admired him because he brought fairness and integrity to the
industry," said Mr. Nethen, who lives in Glen Burnie.
Friends said Mr. Belsinger was proud of a set of large neon letters he
designed and built for the Glenn L. Martin Co. aircraft plant in Middle River.
He also worked with developer James Rouse to create signs in 1958 for the
Harundale Mall and designed signs for Towson Plaza and Westview Mall.
Mr. Belsinger lent the Baltimore
Museum of Industry the sign from the old Ford's Theatre on West Fayette
Street. He removed the sign after attending its last musical comedy, A Funny
Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, in 1964.
He built signs for Hochschild Kohn department stores, Savings Bank of
Baltimore and Maryland National Bank, including a large set of letters, M and
N, that sat atop its roof at Baltimore and Light streets.
He was a past president of the Maryland Sign Association.
His wife of 30 years, Gertrude E. Link, died in 1979.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. tomorrow at the Ruck Towson
Funeral Home, 1050 York Road.
Survivors include a son, David L. Belsinger of Naples, Fla.; a daughter,
Judith C. Belsinger of Towson; a fiancée, Mary A. Forson of Severna Park; a
brother, Robert Belsinger of Ellicott
City; a sister, Claire B. Martielli of Ellicott
City; three grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter. A son, Ronald F.
Belsinger, died in March.
