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By Pauline Masson –
Readers of a certain age may remember one of Pacific’s favorite sons, Oliver Steinhaus. He was actually born in Washington, Missouri in 1893 but he almost grew up in Pacific.
Oliver Otto Steinhaus was the second child and oldest son of the vast Steinhaus clan. His father Charles Steinhaus, a telegraph lineman with the Missouri Pacific Railroad and Western Union Telegraph Company, and his first wife Anna had six children – Frances, Oliver, Charles, Wanda, Dewey and Anna.
After Mrs. Anna Steinhaus died in August 1900, Charles moved his family to Pacific. Oliver was seven. Charles married Stella Zitzman here and was blessed with three more daughters, Esther, Ruth and Naomi.
For fifty years, the local community was kept up to date on the lives of the active Steinhaus siblings. As was the custom of the day, their every graduation, marriage, new baby, party, home run, and out of town guest was reported in the local newspaper, the Meramec Valley Transcript.
But it was Oliver who captured the fancy of the Transcript editor like no other with his personality, work ethic and his affliction. He was deaf.
In 1906, when Oliver was thirteen, he was enrolled in the Missouri School for the Deaf in Fulton, Missouri, a residential public boarding school that taught hearing impaired and deaf students a wide range of subjects.
The front page of the Transcript reported, “We are glad to hear that our little friend Oliver Steinhaus, who is attending the Missouri School for the Deaf at Fulton, Missouri, has joined the ranks of typographers and is learning the printing trade.”
When young Oliver moved there, the 55-year-old gigantic campus occupied 87 acres and specialized in teaching farming and dairy – due to Missouri’s rural economy – but offered a wide range of subjects. Teachers urged Oliver to study farming, but for reasons not revealed he chose to study the Linotype – a fantastical contraption that set molten lead letters and words into rows of type for printing.
It is unclear how Oliver at age 13, knew about this arcane piece of machinery. Before the Linotype, typesetters set one letter at a time, upside down and backwards. It was a slow process. The 1880 invention of the Linotype sped things up dramatically.
A Linotype operator would type out the letters and spaces on a typewriter style keyboard to release a mold of each letter. The machine would pour hot liquid metal into the mold and cast brand new type that was all connected in a line – thus the name, line o type.
Oliver excelled at it. In 1912 the Transcript reported that Oliver was at the top of his class. In 1914 he graduated and the following year he was hired as an assistant typography teacher at his school.
In 1915, when the Transcript Linotype operator Harry Essman took time off for a trip to Nebraska, Oliver was was asked to come home and put out the paper.
He became not only a Linotype operator but a Linotype mechanic – which made him something of a celebrity in the Missouri newspaper field. Each machine has thousands of parts, and Oliver could oil, adjust or replace every one of them.
Pacific residents always knew when Oliver was home for a visit. The Transcript would note, usually on the front page, that Oliver was asked to take time from his to visit the Transcript and beef up on the Linotype machine.
In Weaubleau, Missouri, one of his first jobs at the Weaubleau Leader he won the heart of the editor of that paper.
“Mr. Steinhaus is a faithful worker and outside of his working hours some of the nicest young people of Weaubleau are learning his hand language and are already sharing and very much enjoying his cheerfulness and sociability. His intelligence and culture speaks very highly for the state school for the deaf in Fulton.
Over time Oliver worked at several Missouri newspapers – all within distance for holiday trips home to Pacific.
He earned a reputation of being energetic, hard working, kind, cheerful, sociable, peppy, and the best Linotype mechanic his publishers ever met.
He worked his entire adult life as a Linotype operator, setting type and repairing Linotype machines for newspapers, mostly in Missouri – the Washington Observer, Hancock Democrat, St. Louis County Watchman, Bunceton Eagle, Weaubleau Leader, and Bolivar Herald. And the Pacific Transcript took note of every phase of his life.
In May 1919, he came home to Pacific to meet his brother Dewey, on leave from the Navy. Dewey was assigned to the USS Plattsburg, which was credited with crossing the Atlantic eight times in bringing American GIs home from Europe. Oliver took time from the visit to work on the Transcript’s Linotype.
In July 1925 Oliver married Pearl Linton of Rutledge, Missouri, also a graduate of the Missouri School for the Deaf. The Transcript editor gushed his congratulations, “Oliver was raised in Pacific and has a host of friends here who wish him, and his bride much happiness as down the path of life they trot. He is in charge of the Linotype department of the Bolivar Harald a position he has held for the last eight years. And from the writeup the Herald gives him we think he is good for 80 more years. Oliver is the best man in his line of work we have ever met a find chap and a gentleman in every respect.”
Oliver and Pearl had one child, Oliver Otto Steinhaus Jr., who throughout his life in headlines and news articles, not as Oliver, but as Junior Steinhaus.
Oliver became an avid supporter of the deaf, a task that would later include Pearl. The couple attended every convention, picnic, and educational meeting of Missouri’s deaf citizens.
In 1937 when the deaf of the Monett District held their annual convention Oliver Steinhaus was vice president of the organization. The Bolivar Herald reported, “In his usual peppy way conducted the business. When he protested that he was re-elected vice-president too many times, one in the audience stood and handed him a cane saying the deaf would keep him presiding until he could use the cane.”
In August 1940, when the Missouri School for the Deaf Alumni held a reunion picnic in Clinton, Missouri Oliver, who had a birthday that month, was showered with small packages. Junior, who also. had an August birthday, was presented a cake with eleven candles.
Never missing an opportunity to laud Oliver, during the 1942 election cycle, the Transcript editor noted that he had read about the political setup in the Bolivar Herald, adding “The spark plug of the Bolivar Herald is Oliver Steinhaus, a son of Charles Steinhaus of Pacific.
Oliver’s work for the deaf community never faltered. In 1946 he was appointed general chairman of Missouri Association of the Deaf triennial convention in Springfield, Missouri. He publicized the event in newspapers across the State urging readers to show the notice to their deaf friends who did not subscribe to a newspaper.
Pearl was equally active in events of the deaf community. She often sang and accompanied her song with sign language. It was Pearl the Missouri School for the Deaf asked to introduce the upcoming construction of the new $250,000 Missouri School for the Deaf infirmary. In later years she was active in a fundraising campaign to build a home for the aging and infirm deaf of the state. In 1960 the was elected president of the Missouri Association of the Deaf.
Oliver and Pearl moved to St. Louis in their later years but continued to visit Pacific and host visitors from Pacific in their home. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s family visits in St. Louis and Pacific continued to be reported in the Transcript.
Oliver Steinhaus died in 1965 at age and 72. He is buried beside his wife Pearl, who died in 1970, in Pacific City Cemetery.
