18 Brandywine Ski Area/Dover Lake Park Photos & Stories Including 2 (Two) UFO Sightings. Song: “Land of a Thousand Dances-Medley”

This is the story of my memories of my father’s ski area in Ohio called Brandywine. Our family moved from Michigan onto state park land in rural Ohio, and we lived in the work trailer behind the ski lodge through the first and second ski seasons while I finished high school, andmy older brother moved to Ann Arbor for college. Our father had been Director of Public Relations during WWII in UN Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Our father was the Manager of Communication for General Electric (Nela Park, New York). He moved our family from NY to Detroit in 1963 to be the Director of Corporate Communication for Chrysler. His achievements are listed in “Who’s Who in America”, and on page 50 of this website.

Brandywine ski area comprised the missing link of Ohio’s green belt with miles of undisturbed uninhabited land connected to the other Ohio state-owned park lands. During the last half of the 1960’s, when problems began looming at Chrysler, my dad decided on a shared Ohio business venture with Harold Stoneman building a ski area called Mt. Chalet. Then, after purchasing two-hundred and thirty four acres of state land from the Hunt family in Summit County, Ohio, he started building his own ski area called Brandywine, all while “moonlighting” on the weekends. We moved into the work trailer behind the Brandywine ski lodge, and rented two huge air compressors for snow making, and two earth moving pans, which were eventually purchased. We started out with two bulldozers, a front end loader, dump truck, and an army truck, as well as a tractor with a grass cutting brush hog. Eventually, a back hoe, and grader were added, while more ski lifts were being built, and a first aid hut, a ski instructors shed, and a separate lodge with another ski shop/office, and VIP second floor teacher’s lounge, an employee dorm, a second bar, a longer higher ski run, and a stand alone ski barn, newer better snow makers, wider chairlifts, a water park with slides and a wave pool, newer snow grooming equipment, campgrounds with an outdoor pavilion, and much more.

I started driving back and forth from MI to Cleveland OH with my father on the weekends ever since I turned 14, but while I was a 15 year old still living in Grosse Pointe, MI, I happened to walk into our living room at the precise instance that I saw my father throw a frosted plastic glass full of Tab at my mother. It barely missed her head with the icy liquid splattering all over. I impulsively uttered the “A” word under my breath, which made my dad lunge at me, then race toward me around our living room table like a madman in a menacing rage. He ran full speed out of the house, and down the street chasing after me. He barely reached me, and pushed me screaming, ”You get out of here, and don’t ever let me see your face back here again”. Filled with terror and fear, which later turned to stubborn anger, I ran around the corner of Moross Place, just happening to reach the Moross Rd bus stop exactly on time to step onto the bus. With at least forty five cents which my father, for some reason, had earlier that same day asked, to make sure that I had in my pocket, I paid the bus fare, and left what I remember our father described was our house in the lily white suburbs of Detroit. I rode that bus clear to the end of the line to downtown Detroit, determined to never go home again. While roaming around in the freezing November nights getting mono, tonsillitis, and pneumonia all at the same time, I ended up spending a full week in a hospital. My mother visited me knowing that I would be discharged on the next day, and she was determined to come back on the next morning to take me home, but I told her I wouldn’t ever return, as long as my father was there. Instead, I left the hospital, and hitchhiked to Ann Arbor, where I got a job washing dishes at the Brown Jug restaurant.

My father eventually invited me to visit him where he had an apartment that I was never aware he ever had. I learned that it was where he had been keeping his third leased cars, of which he had been occasionally driving some of them home starting with a 1963 Chrysler Imperial (with the interior lights that auto faded up, and auto faded out when you open the door)! He brought home Chysler’s experimental Turbine Car, too, and drove me to school in his Dodge 440 Super Bee. His apartment was at Detroit’s Lafayette Towers, and it had two breathtakingly corner views – one of Detroit, and one looking over the bridge overlooking Windsor, Ontario. He leased two new cars per month, and one each year for our mother. He explained that it was for showcasing Chysler’s newest models for neighbors, friends,(and/or anyone), and they were always fully “loaded”. He also explained, after we moved to OH, and lived at his ski area, that because of a “golden parachute retirement package” for his job as Dir. of Communication, he could continue leasing new Chrysler cars of his choice at a very reduced rate, well after he left Chrysler.

After we moved to Ohio, my father explained a little bit more to me about how I wouldn’t ever be cashing, or keeping, immediately, any of my Brandywine paychecks because he was putting all of what I earned at Brandywine into interest bearing accounts while explaining the reason was so that I would never be both old, and indigent. That was how he got me to agree to sign over Power of Attorney to him, but I had no idea that my joint accounts with each parent, along with all of my years of earnings working ten years full time hours in FL, ever could/would all be stolen in entirety by my siblings. My Brandywine paychecks, and my interest accounts which were started with the sum total of all my Brandywine paychecks, was all stolen (see documents and proof on pages 46-49).

At the point just before we moved to Ohio, when I needed the security of a good family situation, a good school, and a place I could call home, our house in MI (in the photo below) had been put on the market, and sold. I had to leave Grosse

Pointe MI., and move to rural Ohio into the trailer (below), where my little sister and I started attending our small rural schools. Family life became both parents working 24/7 getting the ski business started, while both my sister and I each had our own seperate problems adjusting to our small rural schools being known as the new ski area owner’s children when Brandywine was, at that time, in direct competition with the already established local ski area called Boston Mills. Now, Vail Resorts owns both areas.

I loved doing errands in my father’s 425 hp GTX Hemi Road Runner, 383 Dodge Charger, & 4 barrel Barracuda, or in any of my father’s numerous new leased cars. But, I had no idea, then, that he sent me on “errands”(?) more specifically in order to get me away from him, and Brandywine, whenever he wanted me gone. Sending me on errands was his simplest way, at first, to get rid of me. While I worked at the lodge, most of the quarrel between my parents over me had to do with my father (who never gave up on demanding that I be required doing only one specific job, and stick to doing that job only), and my mother (who insisted that I be permitted to help her whenever, or wherever she deemed help was needed most).

Decades later, I learned that when my father needed the money to build a new chairlift, he took out three life insurance policies on me, and my driving was often time sensitive. Whenever I was permitted to visit my friends in Akron on the weekend nights, I was always reminded to be back no later than one minute past 1AM, so many times I’d have to drive dangerously fast on the Ohio back roads to be back on time, or risk having my dad take away my driving privileges. I soon learned the thrill of earning the kinds of checks which I could cash, and keep, myself, after I got another job, like my father said he wanted me to get, “in addition” to my working at Brandywine. I didn’t understand how that was possible, but I didn’t care, if it meant that I could drive his awesome fast cars more often. Plus, THOSE pay checks I could actually cash when received, and keep. So, I quickly found a job at a can packing plant. Unfortunately, I had an accident nearly whacking off the end of my thumb with a gallon-sized-pancake-shaped-heavy-duty-can-packer-hammer!

I wasn’t permitted to cash any of my Brandywine paychecks, but being a teenager permitted to drive my father’s fast cars on the clock while looking for other jobs, in addition to working at Brandywine, I found another job. It was driving a forklift loading trucks at American National Vending. I especially liked that job because it too, involved driving, and I did get good at it, but an incident happened there, too. For some reason, a large box of gum balls on the very top of a load had been loosened, and on a turn, it slid right off the top of the forklift, and landed hard on its corner. It broke open spilling hundreds of brightly colored gum balls which instantly rolled everywhere on the highly polished smooth painted warehouse floor. I wasn’t fired, but on my way back after my lunch break from right across the street at McDonald’s, a semi-truck in front of me, also arriving on the entrance service road, slowed down almost to a stop, and pulled all of the way off the road over to the right side, which made me think that he was either stopping, or turning right. Only because I was In a hurry to be back exactly on time, I gunned it to pass around him on the left. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that he was turning left, when his giant front steel chrome bumper scraped the entire passenger’s side of my father’s previously awesome looking leased Valiant. The truck driver got out, walked over to my dad’s car, and when I rolled down the window, he nonchalantly tossed my door handle past me onto the passenger seat, and sarcastically stated, “Here’s your door handle”.

I was learning a lot about the real world long before Brandywine had opened for the first ski season, and among the things I was quickly learning while a 16 year old, was how trucks go wide the other way, before negotiating turns, and my dad’s Valiant disappeared immediately. Before my dad replaced the Valiant with the four barrel 383 horse power Plymouth Barracuda, there was, temporarily, no third car lease available for me to drive for errands, so I was at the lodge more often, which obviously inconvenienced my dad. He was firecracker- mad when I wrecked the Valiant, and almost overnight he made my mother drop me off in another room somewhere, again. While I accompanied my mother on a errand, she drove me inside the grounds of the Northfield race track, and dropped me outside of one of the horse stalls where she explained (as positively as possible) that my father had arranged a job for me working, staying, and living, at the racetrack. In a flash, my life changed into getting up at dawn to shovel horse manure, and ended with sleeping on a cot in a stable, where I didn’t feel like a captive confined to a work trailer whenever I wasn’t clocked in, teaching, or skiing. I liked working with, and learning about horses. I stayed focussed on my job, and imagined wearing horse eye blinders, myself, while cleaning stalls, anticipating the fun things that I was informed that I would soon be doing associated with the horses, and earning those kinds of work privileges. Working at the race track was before Brandywine’s first ski season, and my mother showed up at that stall briefly each week to say a quick hello, and to make sure that I was adapting okay. However, on one of her visits, I mentioned that I had lost all of my first weeks of paychecks, playing poker in the stables. On her next visit, she ordered me to grab my shaving kit, and get in the car. After getting to the lodge, I realized that I was coming back to work at Brandywine full time, again, and living in the trailer behind the lodge with my parents, and little sister. I think that my mother had made my father honor some kind of a deal about me working at Brandywine, in order for her not to divorce him or something, but I was never told so, nor was never told how badly that my father wanted to keep me away from him, and Brandywine. I learned all that from osmosis. However, I was told by fellow employees who were close friends, that I missed out on being at the first big Brandywine employee meeting while I was working at the race track. No wonder he made me work there. That was when there was no third car to send me out on an errand in order to miss the employee meetings. My dad mentioned that I had to learn work ethic, but I had already learned work ethic when he sent me away against my will to work all summer at a dairy farm when I was eight or nine, and I had always been, and remained a willing, able, courteous, and hard worker, including at the Northfield racetrack where I learned about horses, and to never play cards for money, and at Brandywine. My father once expressed to me that I wouldn’t be living at home past age 18, but I never thought that meant not living and/or working at Brandywine. It was all so confusing to both me, and my mother.

I went from living and working at the racetrack, to going back to live and work at Brandywine, thanks to my mother. However, my father continued putting his foot down insisting that I learn total self sufficiency, and it became obvious that he did not want me at Brandywine each time he relocated me, kicked me out, or made my mom put me into rooms. Then, the time came when he owned 51% of Brandywine’s stock, and none of the other stockholders had a vote, or any say any longer. That was when he, very noticeably, went overboard acting like a total prima donna, even with his own wife and family. He weirdly blurted out loud to me out of the blue that before he would consider me working at Brandywine again, I must, first, become self sufficient. He said that he would consider me as a “candidate to work there, again, only after I learned a trade, elsewhere“. Then he held up his index finger, adding, “But, I’m not making any promises”. I thought that I had the choice to work at Brandywine, and I had already learned about numerous trades which went on all around me the whole time while worked through the first three winter seasons at Brandywine. And, I never stopped wanting to help everyone there, in anyway that I could. But, my ultra authoritarian father expected me to “stay out the lodge” in the winters which was almost impossible, especially when my mother would need me to help her. Then, during the times that she would send me to help in the busy kitchen, it would often result in my father’s wrath. He would catch me working in the lodge like I was breaking the rules, and would even yell at my mother which made me hate him. Even when I’d get done teaching, or take a break from free skiing til the 11PM closing, just for coming inside for a quick hot chocolate, he would often just point, and I would disappear back outside. But, many other times, he would shout, “Douglas, OUT OF THE LODGE”.

The Plymouth Valiant was replaced with a 383hp 4 barrel 2 door Plymouth Barracuda which my dad let me drive on weekend nights. I often drove it to visit my friends in Fairlawn, close to Akron, until they tricked me into putting my coat inside a bedroom on a bed with all of their own coats, specifically so that they could take my keys, sneak out of the party, and take it for a joy ride in the snow, slightly damaging the alignment, and bending the frame. Because of that, I lost my driving privileges again, even though I had no idea how it got out of alignment with a bent frame, or who damaged it. I found out a year after the Barracuda disappeared that my dad gave it to a Brandywine employee while I still hadn’t owned a car of my own. My father took away my driving privileges for the entire winter, resulting in me doing nothing except working 7 day work weeks glued to the rope tow hut, which was strictly followed by cleaning the lodge public toilets. I’m not complaining about working, I’m complaining because I never got paid! Plus, my father refused to let me off work in time to get to Cleveland’s recording studio for my one chance in a lifetime to record my original song called Misty Reflections which band manager Otto paid for, for me to record.

Otto Nuberg was a Brandywine stockholder who had put me his band called Paper Sun, which became Freeport. However, after the Barracuda damage, because my dad had taken away my driving privileges, I suddenly couldn’t get to band practices. But, my mother came to the rescue, and started driving me to my weekly band practices. While my father angrily missed her working at Brandywine, she patiently waited upstairs talking with drummer Bill Stalling’s mother. That was the first time that I ever realized that my parents were in a serious battle over me… My mother, who knew that I was trustworthy, and my father who thought that I lied, like some people can do, naturally as a way of life, their whole lives. While I was strictly not allowed to drive, I was strictly working in the rope tow hut where no other employee would stay working. And, whenever there happened to be a time that I needed to be somewhere other than at Brandywine, my dad started ordering my friends to drive me, instead of me driving (giving my friends authority over me). I had only realized, at that time, that he was the kind of control freak who was using his cars as carrots, for even my friends.

My mother suggested that I write a book about the things that happened to me in my life, and by doing so, I figured out why my father was so mean. Besides whatever happened to him in his youth, he was mad about the bond that I had developed with my mother ever since I was a child. My father became so controlling at the Brandywine lodge, that he moved my mother, sister, and me out from the trailer behind the ski lodge, and into a rented house in town while he stayed at the lodge nearly 24/7. Then, for no apparent reason other than him not wanting me being in a new band with some nearby musician neighbors I told him about, he moved us out, again, and into a second rented house on the other side of town, further away from school, and Brandywine. That way, since I had no wheels, there was no way I could even think about continuing being in a band. I repressed what he did to me as a child, until after he died, so I had nothing which I could use to control his anger toward me, or to soften his firecracker mad hair-trigger-like rage. However, I think that both my brother and my mother used what they each knew he did to me as a child, against him, and that was both my brother’s, and my mother’s only way to keep him from directing his anger toward them. I wish that I could just forget all of it, but I can’t, and I can’t forget about all that I worked toward having, which was stolen. It was obvious that my father hated that I had a long life unbreakable bond with my mother, and as obvious that was what made my father‘s anger exacerbated. I think that he, too, was abused as a child, but only know that he was dragged around by his mother while she was selling Fuller Brushes. Rather than include a closeup photo of my father screaming at me which one of my ski instructor friends took during my Brandywine years, and gave to me, I’d rather remember my father as honestly believing that he was trying to be the best parent that he could be after never having any experience of knowing a father of his own. Although our father often exploded with anger, I consider myself very lucky, and very thankful for having both parents.

Unfortunately, whenever I asked my father about me or my band playing gigs at Brandywine, he cited no favoritism as the reason I couldn’t, and explained that the success percentages for musicians were terrible. Whenever I asked, he just pointed his index finger up, and reminded me sternly by firmly stating, “NO FAVORITISM” which made it final, and authoritatively clear that he would never allow me to play in the bar when we were open, or my band, to perform in the lodge for any of the Brandywine weekend dances. However, at the very beginning before Brandywine ever opened, he let me practice in the lodge with my electric guitar and Fender amp, and then let my band use the lodge for band practices only because my mother insisted that we should be reciprocating with the other band member’s parents who were letting us practice at their houses, which only lasted until our first ski season started, and when the lodge gate was locked (or dummy locked), and closed to the public. After our band began playing at the Boston Mill’s weekend dances, and all over Ohio, then I played on weekends as a solo performer, too, but my father continued insisting on “no favoritism” and never letting me, or either band that I was in perform in his bar, or in the lodge, despite having told me that the prerequisite for me playing at Brandywine was to prove myself somewhere else, first (which both my bands did, and I did, too, as a single performer)! I had no idea how my father may have thought about me being in a band, but I only wanted to play my music, period. I can definitely understand, now, how very strongly he would have hated me thinking that I was cool being in a band, just like the way that he probably thought about me thinking that I was cool being associated with Brandywine. While he felt whatever it was he felt, I felt that he hated me enough to permanently want to be rid of me, at any cost, and I remained confused.

As I look back, and realize ways in which my father/employer used me for his own needs,I can understand how I took jobs for my own needs. like musical needs. Other employers were like that with me, too. For example, I got an advertised job working 40 hour work weeks as a maintenence manager at a very popular old hotel in Blowing Rock NC, mainly because they had a huge old grand piano which anyone could play on their trek through their wooden floored room with no chairs, on their way to the hotel’s dining room. I saw it as my opportunity for the perfect 40 hour work week job while I had permission to visit my cousin for my mother’s sister’s funeral. After the funeral, I got the advertised job. Unfortunately, as soon as I finished my job removing, and switching out the hotels many decades old 8 (eight) public restaurant toilets, Ifor new ones, I discovered that the only reason that the job was advertised in the first place, was because the former maintenence manager had obviously quit because he wanted no part in doing that dirty hard job. That became obvious as soon as I finished installing all of the new toilets, because he reappeared, and took his old job back. I learned that even my own father only kept me working until he didn’t need me teaching groups of skiers, and/or doing the jobs which he couldn’t keep any other Brandywine employee doing without quitting (such as cleaning toilets, and working in the carbon monoxide contaminated rope tow hut). I still feel lucky to have had both parents, plus to have been able to choose to work for both parents’ twice. And, I’m glad that my parents stayed together, and one of the most important things that I learned the best in my life, was that money does not buy happiness.

My father was adamant against me pursuing my music, and so angry that I had to be in Cleveland to record my original songs after Brandywine stockholder Otto Newber enabled me to record them with our band in Cleveland, that instead of relieving me in time from working in the rope tow hut, he made it so that I was late getting there. Because he had suspended my driving privileges since the Barracuda frame damage, I stayed glued to that rope tow hut, and by the time that my mom convinced him to let me drive that one time, it was during a snow blizzard which also helped to make me late, and prevented me from professionally recording my original songs, including “The Purple Palisades” “Misty Reflections”, and “Bury Me On Top of the ‘T’ ”. (‘T’ stands for a T-bar ski lift). I believe that my father purposely, also, made it so that it was possible for me to not got paid for my working the equivalent of 23 years on the clock.

A year or so later, while I was driving on my way to Buckeye Sports Center in Cuyahoga Falls, I saw another UFO! This time, it was in broad daylight! I was driving on Route 8 going toward Akron, and it was only visible for a second as It whisked over the Cuyahoga River Bridge (see bridge photos, below). It wavered, paused, and corrected its trajectory all in an instant right in front of me as I drove in traffic over the bridge, then went speeding off downward disappearing from my sight over the other side of the bridge. I saw it good, but only because it had paused! It was rounded like a saucer (just like the much larger one I previously saw at night outside above the slopes at Brandywine) but this was only as big as a fat short canoe. It had a crumpled tin foil-like-looking sitting compartment in the middle which was about the size, and shape of an upside down old-fashioned sized garbage can. I was driving in a 45 MPH zone with heavy traffic going both ways across the bridge when It came over over at high speed at an upward angle and I think that the only way I saw it at all, was because it paused for an instant in midair. It was a real phenomenon to see a flying saucer pause so close-by. ALL OF THE CARS TRAVELING BOTH WAYS PAUSED IN THE SAME WAY, AT THE SAME TIME, AND ALL AT ONCE! Then, all the cars sped up again all at the same time, and it was gone.

The small flying saucer I saw fly over the above bridge was metallic-looking, and it looked different in daylight, than the large gel-like saucer with the lights which my whole family saw after dark at Brandywine (the verified one). This one looked all crumpled tin-like, and the garbage can middle part was the right size, and shape, as the square colored pulsating lights (like the large saucer’s windows we all saw from the ski lodge, at night, from inside at Brandywine a year earlier). Maybe the one I saw flying over the bridge in daylight, was just one of what were several at night which were the window-like pulsating lights emanating from the gel like saucer we all saw at Brandywine at night. Maybe what we saw. was a few small ones, parked, and lined up horizontally either inside, or outside, the large gel-like saucer? Maybe they were docked alongside the larger one, when the larger one was recharging them! They all remained stationary long enough to have it verified by the Summit County Ohio Sherrif.

The Cuyahoga river below the bridge, happens to flow right through the Brandywine property, and It would be about a 20 minute car ride from the bridge, to Brandywine, but only a few moments away as thee crow flies, if one could drive to the bridge going straight, via the river route. This protected government-owned uninhabited forestry known as Ohio’s “Green Belt” is still linked statewide, and that UFO could have easily flown, undetected, up and down the Cuyahoga river and area anytime, without any chance of being seen by anyone. It was only visible from the road for an instant. What were the chances that I happened to be on that bridge as it flew over. It abruptly reduced speed and wavered, during the second it passed over the bridge in front of me, mistakingly, then correcting its course, it instantly sped off out of view below the bridge line. After remembering about this, I think that it had wavered because of narrowly missed hitting one of the many cement bridge arches below the bridge… (was he texting?), instead of continuing on its way underneath, perhaps in order to avoid a collision! Whenever I think back on this, I wish someone had been with me on that day to verify what I saw.

The photo (below) is where I found a summer gig playing, and staying, at the Williamsburg Ramada Inn, wishing I was back home in beautiful Ohio, working at Brandywine. Immediately after my mother died in 2003, I recorded singing the Lord’s Prayer while playing it on piano (shown in the following video)…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8612XJcCs2o