Summer vacation stretched off into the horizon, a seemingly endless parade of picnics, carnivals, swimming pools, lemonade stands and ice cream trucks.
Two children without a care in the world vanished without a trace 50 years ago.
Thomas J. Sumerix, 15, of Green Township, and Ruth E. Guthrie, 12, of Tallmadge, were walking home when they disappeared one week apart in June 1963. Although the boy and girl didn’t know each other, their names were forever linked by the events that transpired.
Authorities organized massive searches, using airplanes, helicopters, bloodhounds, skin divers and hundreds of volunteers to check fields, woods and ponds within a 5-mile radius of the missing children’s homes. No one found anything.
Despite the circumstances, officers didn’t believe the two cases were related.
Tommy Sumerix had blue eyes and a blond crew cut. He was small for his age — 5 feet tall and 87 pounds — and had just finished his freshman year at Green High School. He was a good student who liked to build model airplanes and dismantle radios. Every evening, he led his younger siblings in prayer before bedtime.
Tommy left his home on Shikellamy Drive about 6:15 p.m. Wednesday, June 5, to walk to Arlington Plaza to buy shoes for a picnic the next day. He wore black shorts and a light-blue, short-sleeved shirt. A Nobil clerk recalled seeing him shopping about 7:30 p.m.
Tommy pulled out a $20 bill to buy gray suede shoes, tucked the change in his wallet and left the store with his purchase.
He headed toward South Arlington for the return trek, but never made it home.
As night fell, worried parents Marian and John J. Sumerix called neighbors to see if Tommy had stopped to visit. No one had seen him that evening. Truly alarmed, the Sumerix family phoned the Summit County Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies conducted an all-night search, tracing the boy’s path between the plaza and home, but found no sign of him. They interviewed more than 50 children over the next two days to see if anyone remembered seeing the boy. They asked his friends if he ever discussed running away.
“We don’t feel he’s running loose,” Marian Sumerix told the Beacon Journal. “He’s not that kind of a boy. We feel he was either hit by a car or picked up by someone in a car.”
Added father John Sumerix: “He hitchhiked his way home several times before.”
While officers hunted for clues in Green, a similar tale unfolded in Tallmadge.
Seventh-grader Ruth Guthrie didn’t come home.
One of four siblings, the daughter of Edna and Willis P. Guthrie helped her mother with chores so she could earn money to attend the Midwest Industrial Free Fair on June 12, 1963, at Tallmadge High School’s stadium.
Pocketing $2, she left her West Howe Road home about 2 p.m. Wednesday and walked a mile south to the fair. She spent the day twirling on amusement rides and playing carnival games, one of 30,000 people to enjoy the fair that day.
Ruth had brown hair and blue eyes, stood 5-feet-1 and weighed 90 pounds. She carried a purple purse and wore white slacks, a white sweatshirt and white sneakers.
She and two girlfriends left the fair at suppertime and took a short cut through a grassy field near Overdale School.
A half-mile from home, Ruth said goodbye to the girls on Bierce Street near Vinewood Avenue, which she planned to take north to West Howe Road.
“I’ll see you later,” she said.
The Guthrie family thought Ruth was tardy because she was having fun. When it grew late, though, something was wrong. Ruth’s father reported her missing at midnight.
Police questioned carnival workers, fairgoers and the girl’s friends. More than 100 searchers, including police, firefighters and Boy Scouts, fanned out across Tallmadge.
Police Chief Michael Dremak asked for the public’s aid. “We’re doing everything possible, but we do need help from anyone who may have seen the girl, or anyone who looks like her,” he said.
Sightings of Tommy and Ruth were reported all over town: waiting for a bus on Brown Street, renting a kayak at Portage Lakes, playing in Firestone Park, soliciting for a church on Hilbish Avenue.
Their parents distributed handbills and offered rewards for information leading to the children’s whereabouts.
As weeks turned to months, hope faded. The Sumerix and Guthrie families braced themselves for the worst news.
It arrived 11 months later.
A family was looking for mushrooms in a wooded area of Jackson Township on May 2, 1964, when an 11-year-old girl stumbled across skeletal remains at the base of an 80-foot tulip tree about 150 yards from Mudbrook Road Northwest between South Arlington Road and state Route 241.
The secluded site, three miles south of the Summit County line, was 1,000 yards west of Jackson High School.
A knotted clothesline was found around the neck. A cloth gag was found near the skull.
Dental records confirmed the identity as Tommy Sumerix, whose body was dumped eight miles from home. The Stark County coroner ruled the cause of death as strangulation.
Tommy’s parents identified the clothing in the woods as that worn by their son on the day he disappeared. However, his wallet was missing. So were the new shoes that he bought.
“I’ve had most of my cry out in the months that have passed,” a dazed Marian Sumerix told the Beacon Journal.
“At least we know now,” said her husband, John.
Before the month was over, the somber scene was repeated in Portage County.
A Palmyra Township farmer and his wife were surveying an orchard about 50 yards from McClintocksburg Road on May 28 when they saw a skull at the base of a hickory tree. They called deputies, who found a partially clothed skeleton with arms crossed and hands tied.
Dental records confirmed it was Ruth Guthrie, whose body was dumped 22 miles from home. She had been strangled.
“Ruthie, Ruthie, long have I searched, and then to find you like this,” Tallmadge police Sgt. Dave Williams sighed while assisting deputies.
The Guthries identified their daughter’s clothing in the woods. The only thing missing was Ruth’s purple purse.
“We always suspected it was going to end this way,” a grieving Edna Guthrie told a newspaper reporter.
Authorities sent evidence to the FBI and Smithsonian Institution. Despite earlier doubts, officers began to suspect the slayings were related.
They also wondered if the cases were related to the strangulation of Marion Brubaker, 12, of Coventry Township, who was ambushed on her bicycle Aug. 27, 1962, in woods at South Main Street and Killian Road. Her body was discovered about an hour after the killing.
Officers interviewed thousands of people and questioned dozens of suspects, but no one ever was convicted of killing Tommy, Ruth or Marion.
“We have exhausted all leads,” Portage County Sheriff’s Detective Joe Hegedus admitted in frustration. “We have absolutely nothing to go on.”
The cases still remain open.
Portage County Assistant Prosecutor Chester Enslow summed it up in 1964: “It may be several years, if ever, before they are solved. Sometime, someplace, someone may want to come clean and get it off his conscience.”
Fifty years have passed. Is that person still out there?
Copy editor Mark J. Price is author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.