Michael Dirda, 1966 Admiral King
Author
After graduation Michael went to Oberlin College, he graduated with the highest possible form of honors in English which granted him a scholarship to teach in France. He then went on to attend Cornell University and obtained his master's and Ph.D. He won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
In his 2003 book titled An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland, Dirda said:
Even now, when I haven’t lived in Lorain, Ohio for more than 30 years, I still think of it not only as home, but also as a strangely magical place. I see the puffing smoke stacks of National Tube, those ponderous lake freighters cautiously docking near the jackknife bridge and, of course, Lakeview Park, with its anti-aircraft guns, rose garden and giant Easter Basket, all on the eroding shores of the blue and polluted Erie. Even now, I can feel the bumpy B & O railroad tracks crossing Oberlin Avenue, taste the cherry vanilla at the long-gone Home Dairy Ice Cream Company. So many places there linger in my memory.