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Akron policewoman never had to use gun
Published on Monday, Mar 24, 2008
It was an unusual journey from PTA president to vice squad officer, but Kruse served both posts with distinction.
''Any public service job is simply the art of getting along with people,'' she once told the Beacon Journal. ''And I enjoy it — always have.''
Mabel Lena Cramer, the youngest of four children, was born Aug. 12, 1887, to Melancthon and Zadia Cramer in Ashtabula County. She grew up in East Plymouth, attended local schools and trained as a nurse at Lakeside Hospital in Cleveland.
In the early 20th century, her parents moved to a dairy farm off Wyoga Lake Road in Northampton Township.
Mabel met her future husband, Arthur Kruse (pronounced KRU-zee), at Springfield Lake Park where she sold tickets in the dance pavilion. He was a violinist and orchestra leader who performed at the resort for 15 summers.
After marrying in 1908, the couple settled on Parkwood Avenue in Akron and welcomed four children: Carl, Robert, Arthur and Irma.
While her husband taught music lessons, Mabel Kruse juggled domestic life with a busy schedule. She joined the Home and School League, served as president of the Henry School PTA and Chi Theta Tau Mothers' Club, and counseled parent-teacher groups in Akron.
She also was active in politics, serving as president of the Ohio Women's Republican Club.
When her husband took ill during the Great Depression, Mabel accepted a job in 1935 as assistant matron at the city workhouse, a facility that housed misdemeanor offenders.
Kruse was a strong, stocky woman who stood about 5-foot-8. She was tough when necessary, but she earned respect through kindness and fairness.
In March 1937, Akron Mayor Lee D. Schroy appointed her to be the city's only policewoman. The rookie cop was 50 years old.
The gray-haired Kruse wore silver glasses, a dark dress and a stylish hat. She practiced marksmanship at the police range and kept her pistol in a handbag.
Her assignment was to ''save girls from wayward paths.'' She patrolled seedy hangouts in an effort to deter juveniles from vice and crime.
''Mrs. Kruse visits places that many men wouldn't enter alone,'' Beacon Journal reporter Marjorie McNab wrote in a 1939 profile. ''She enters questionable nightspots where three-fourths or more of the lounging characters have appeared in police court. She keeps a watchful eye on 'dine and dance' places in search of wrongdoing beneath an outward air of innocence.''
The motherly figure searched for teens in honky-tonk bars with blaring music and cheap booze. McNab described one such bar where ''frowsy women with unkempt hair'' flirted with ''sparse-haired men'' in ''frayed, wrinkled suits.''
The officer recognized many of the customers as women who had appeared before the health board for cure of social diseases.
''So many of these people are here because of wrecked homes, and because their childhoods went unguarded by careless parents,'' Kruse said. ''Most of the children I find in these places
are here for the same reason. They're seeking diversion from constant unhappiness at home.''
Kruse wanted to break the terrible cycle. She advocated a system where social workers checked up on prostitutes after their jail sentences ended.
''As it is now, many girls have no place to go after they get out, and just sink back into a life of crime again,'' she said.
The officer's job was to reach the ''erring girls'' before they toughened up and got used to life on the town. ''We do all we can for them but after they're picked up a certain number of times, arrest doesn't mean much to them,'' she said.
After two years of riding in vice squad cars and doing general police work, Kruse had to defend her title. The city required her to take a civil service exam and fitness test in March 1939.
Kruse competed with police candidates Catherine McGee, Virginia Stoffer, Violet Cash Weisberg and Lillian Wargo. The women met at the YWCA gym to run laps, skip ropes, do push-ups, vault a pommel horse and toss a 50-pound sandbag to prove that they could ''cope with mashers.''
Names of the top three were forwarded to Mayor Schroy.
Officer Kruse easily retained her job, the first Akron policewoman hired under civil service.
The force added five women in the next decade. Kruse was featured with two other officers — Jo Bowland and Jessie Melnik — in a 1946 pictorial that appeared in the Beacon Journal.
The women demonstrated a ''lost pocketbook swindle'' as a warning to readers. Bowland and Melnik portrayed con artists who conspired to bilk Kruse out of bank money after pretending to find a purse stuffed with cash.
In real life, Kruse was no dupe.
She handled court cases for five years, appearing with female defendants. She ducked a few punches in her time, but she never had to use her gun on duty.
One day, a woman tried to run away from Akron Municipal Court. Too bad for her.
There were no escapes on Kruse's watch.
''I had to grab her hair and hold,'' she later recalled. ''Nearly pulled it out.''
Mabel and her husband moved from Akron to the Wyoga Lake farm that her parents had owned. Arthur Kruse's health continued to deteriorate. He died of stomach cancer in 1947.
In 1948, Mabel Kruse partnered with Officer Lillian Kirkpatrick, a WAC during World War II. The white-haired Kruse and dark-haired Kirkpatrick stood out on patrol. ''Officer Lil'' learned the beat from Kruse and remained with the department for 26 years.
Kruse finished her career with the detective bureau, retiring in 1952 when she turned 65.
''I thought it was time to quit,'' she explained. ''I've got a big family, lots of things to do. I'll get down to the station occasionally, though — you couldn't keep me away.''
Mabel Kruse was 85 when she died July 7, 1973. She was buried next to her husband in Oakwood Cemetery in Cuyahoga Falls.
Akron native Bobbi Harmon, 66, of Tucson, Ariz., recalls her grandmother as a feisty woman with a great sense of humor.
''She was a character,'' Harmon said. ''I loved her dearly.''
Kruse was proud of her police career and liked to regale her wide-eyed granddaughter with gritty tales from the vice squad — sometimes to the chagrin of Harmon's mother.
Harmon still recalls some of those anecdotes.
''None that you can print,'' she said with a laugh.
Mark J. Price is a Beacon Journal copy editor. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or send e-mail to mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
It was an unusual journey from PTA president to vice squad officer, but Kruse served both posts with distinction.
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