Ruth Franklin Sommerlad

Ruth Franklin Sommerlad was the first director of the Crawford Auto Aviation Museum, as well as one of the first female automotive museum directors in the United States.  Born Ruth Swihart in Byesville Ohio in 1912, she graduated from Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio with a Master of Arts degree in 1932.  In 1942, she joined the personnel department of Cleveland¹s Thompson Products Company, and did work for the insurance department and the public relations office.  It was that work that led her to join the Thompson Products Auto Album, one of the first automotive museums in the world, when it opened in 1943.  In 1945, she became the museum's curator.  At that time, there were very few public automobile museums in the world, and none of them had women curators.  The Thompson Product Auto Album proved to be very popular, averaging hundreds of visitors on weekend days, and attracting visitors from around the world who were in Cleveland on business.

Ruth Frankllin lecturing students in the Thompson Products Auto Album, 1950s

Ruth Franklin assisted Thompson Products president Fred Crawford in expanding and defining the collection through the 1940s and 1950s.  By the early 1960s, the collection was over 100 cars, a number of aircraft, and a variety of other vehicles and artifacts.  When the collection was donated to the Western Reserve Historical Society in 1963, Mrs. Franklin began planning for the move of the collection to a new building that would be constructed at the Historical Society¹s Cleveland headquarters.  The new building, complete with new restoration shops, a library, and display areas, was built in 1965.  Mrs. Sommerlad and her staff moved the cars in, and the museum opened to the public, with Mrs. Sommerlad as director of the new museum, named the Frederick C. Crawford Auto Aviation Museum.

Fred Crawford, Ruth Franklin Sommerlad, and Meredith Colket (WRHS Director) look over a 1970 Chevrolet Monte Carlo display donated to the Crawford Museum in 1971

By this time Ruth Franklin Sommerlad had become renowned through America because of her antique car expertise.  She had participated in nation-wide Glidden Tours of antique cars since 1946, and gotten to know thousands of collectors throughout the country.  She was in such esteem that she became the first woman on the board of trustees of the National Antique Automobile Club of America, and was also included in Who¹s Who in America.  Mrs. Sommerlad retired from the Western Reserve Historical Society in 1971, and relocated to Florida with her husband in 1972.  She passed away in 2003.

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