Mr. and Mrs. John C. Broadus

From the May, 1938 issue of Erie Railroad Magazine:
Veteran Recalls Earlier Days
JOHN COOKE BROADUS, chief clerk in the Erie's engineering department at Cleveland general offices, and Mrs. Broadus, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their wedding on April 11 (1938) at their home, 1431 Rosewood avenue, Lakewood, O. Mr. Broadus has been in railroad service 57 years, 35 years of which lie passed with the Erie. He was born at Lynchburg, Va., 76 years ago.

To help them commemorate their golden wedding a group of 20 friends and associates of Mr. Broadus in the different branches of the engineering department called at their home on the evening of the great day with tokens of remembrance. These included an onyx clock, a large gold dish, a floor lamp and half a dozen cut glass sherbet glasses.

It was natural that Mr. Broadus should take up railroading because his father had for 25 years been general passenger agent of the old Virginia Midland Railroad, now part of the Southern, at Alexandria, Va. So after graduation from St. John's Academy in 1879, young Broadus, anxious to augment the family fortunes, obtained his first railroad job as office boy with the Virginia Midland. After two years with the railroad during which he rose to messenger and clerk he joined the Associated Railroads of Virginia and Carolina as ticket clerk and stenographer at Richmond, Va., remaining three years.

In Nov., 1885, Mr. Broadus transferred to the Baltimore & Ohio as stenographer and chief clerk and remained seventeen years, one year at Baltimore and sixteen years at Newark, O. He joined the Erie in 1903, first as chief clerk in the mechanical department at Jersey City, then as traveling auditor at Galion, O., and finally as chief clerk in the engineering dept. J.G. Austin, now auditor of disbursements, succeeded him at Galion.

Getting married to Grace Sydnor of Richmond, Va., on April 11, 1888, is still the most pleasant and outstanding event in his life, according to the old gentleman. "Getting married," he said, "seemed something wonderful and sacred to me then and it still does. It seems so different with so many people today. There weren't so many divorces when we started. Ideas of the sanctity of marriage have changed.

"The young people of my time enjoyed the simple pleasures of the times as much as do youths today, but our ambitions were more modest. Of course, the young fellows took their 'best girls' to the beaches�sometimes for rides on 'bicycles built for two' but pleasure and recreation seemed to me to be more wholesome."

Mr. Broadus said he derived his chief recreation from reading. The Broadus' have three children, Mrs. Russel James of Chicago, Mrs. Francis Atkinson of Baton Rouge, Ga., and Sydnor Broadus of Monroe, Mich.