1948: Kids Spend A Summer Night In The Park

They were in trouble and knew it. Raymond Kvaternik, 8, and Sandra Wojciak, 9, spent the night running around their St. Clair Superior neighborhood. The day before, The Cleveland Press reported, Wojciak prepared for the night by going to a store and purchasing bread, chocolate milk and bologna on her dad’s account.

She and Kvaternik loaded everything into a little red wagon and hit the trail. They wandered from their homes on Aberdeen Avenue into Wade, Gordon and Rockefeller parks, where they spent the night living out a Brothers Grimm tale.

Their panicked parents searched far and wide for the rapscallions. Police were called and joined the search. But the posse turned up nothing, despite hours of trying. Then, in the dawn hours, Mary Kvaternik spotted the pair in the yard at St. Francis Catholic School, a block north of Superior Avenue.

She rushed over. After a pursuit, Mrs. Kvaternik and her husband nabbed the little fugitives. They were brought home to their respective angry parents but not before a Press photographer captured the look of impending doom on the little ones’ faces.

“They were parted, each taken home, and each went through a half-hour’s experience not even remotely as peaceful as the woods had offered,” the Press reported.