Bygone Muncie: The lusty Muncie Casket Co. tenor

Don’t laugh, but I recently got lost in Muncie. After 41 years living here, I assumed I knew my way around the place. But alas, part of the city seems especially disorienting for me. The location of my discombobulation was the old industrial area in the northeast corner of Thomas Park/Avondale.

I was looking for the remnants of Cleveland Street; a former city thoroughfare that ran parallel to and just south of the CSX tracks between Council and Elliott, just north of Willard. I eventually found my bearings and discovered what I believe to be the street’s old entrance along Council.

The city vacated Cleveland Street in the 1960s, returning it to private property. The road was laid during the gas boom to access three factories: the Ball Washing Machine, Muncie Underwear and Muncie Casket companies.

Ball Washing Machine was founded in 1888 by Robert Ball (no relation to the Ball Brothers). The company produced the old-style mechanical wooden washing tubs here until the firm moved in 1927. Across Cleveland Street was Muncie Underwear Co., which existed at that location from 1894-1901.

From 1889-1924, Muncie Casket Co. operated at the end of the street. In addition to offering customers a variety of caskets, the company also produced funeral clothing, steel vaults and embalming fluid.

In Muncie Casket’s early years, John Shoemaker served as president, Milton Gray as secretary and treasurer and Elizabeth Kusick as forewoman. However, the most famous Muncie Casket employee at the time was the delivery driver, Orville Harrold. He’s largely forgotten now, but Orville would go on from Muncie Casket to become a world-famous opera singer.

Orville Harrold was born on a small farm near Medford in 1877. At an early age, Orville’s parents recognized their son's remarkable ability to sing, act, and play the violin. When Orville was 9, the Harrolds moved to Kansas. In the Sunflower State, the musical wunderkind studied under Elizabeth Boyd, the director of music for Newton Schools. Boyd immediately understood Orville’s gifts and shepherded him on a multiyear singing tour, which concluded with a concert at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Orville so impressed the audience that he received a medal for his performance and was labeled in the press as “the boy wonder of Muncie.”

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A year later, the Harrolds returned to Delaware County, resettling with Orville’s grandparents on their farm in Cowan. Then in 1898, Orville moved to Muncie and married Evelyn Kiger. The couple had three children. Around this time, the young tenor mastered the violin and gave frequent concerts, even serving as the First Church of Christ’s chorister. Orville also briefly studied music at Eastern Indiana Normal University (a Ball State precursor). He supported his family with several jobs, including as a delivery driver for Muncie Casket.

Orville was known to sing majestically or play his fiddle as he dispatched coffins about town. Years later, The Muncie Evening Press reminisced that Orville “and his casket delivery wagon were familiar sights on Muncie streets. Townspeople, hearing his lusty voice, would turn to watch the horses trot by.”

The Muncie Morning News even wrote a humorous little rhyme about the singer’s growing celebrity (and job performance) in 1899: “Orville Harrold the fiddle prodigy, dwells on quarter notes at his work at times, until the foreman reminds him that to be living is sublime, and to be working means to be on time, minus any minor chords or discords.”

Orville was also a prominent member of Muncie’s Apollo Club. Directed by Alexander Ernestinoff, the musical society performed concerts during the gas boom. On May 16, 1904, the club hosted a performance at a Wysor Grand Theatre that forever changed Orville’s life. The marquee singer of the event was Ernestine Schumann-Heink, an Austrian operatic contralto known widely for her range. After she belted out an epic aria from Schubert’s “Wanderer Fantasy,” the prima donna was treated to a matinee performance by Apollo Club members, including Orville, who sang Wagner’s “Rienzi.”

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Frau Schumann-Heink was so blown away by Orville that she offered the tenor an all-expense paid trip to Europe for study and “ample financial support for the young man’s wife and three children.” Orville declined the offer, but two years later, he moved to New York City and began acting and singing on stage with Schumann-Heink’s help. Harrold spent the next several years working in vaudeville shows and operettas around the city.

During one of these performances, Harrold’s voice caught the ear of Oscar Hammerstein, the famous lyricist and stage producer. The result of the encounter led Harrold to star in Hammerstein’s production of “Pagliacci” at the Manhattan Opera House in 1910. After the season, he left New York to perform in Europe, spending time first in Paris. Harrold then traveled to London, where on one occasion, he even sang for King George V and Queen Mary!

At the end of the 1911-12 London season, Harrold planned a return trip to New York. He booked a ticket on the ill-fated maiden voyage of the Titanic, but thankfully canceled it at the last minute. He made it home on a different liner and, later that year, performed in Chicago during the 1912-13 opera season. For the next six years, Harrold continued in opera, musical theater and vaudeville productions around the United States.

Then in 1919, Harrold began singing at the Metropolitan Opera, debuting as Leopold in “La Juive.” The former Muncie Casket deliverer became one of the Met’s leading tenors through 1924. In that year, Harrold returned to theater performances because, according to his son Paul, vaudeville was “lighter, not always so tragic.”

After retiring in the late 1920s, Harold taught voice lessons for a few years at New York City’s Steinway Hall. But sadly on Oct. 23, 1933, he died of an intracerebral hemorrhage on his farm in Darien, Connecticut. Like many true Munsonians, Orville was returned home and buried at Beech Grove Cemetery.

Much like Cleveland Street and Muncie Casket Co., there’s little left in Muncie to remember Orville Harrold, save for the great tenor’s tombstone. But perhaps Orville’s story may yet still convey a valuable lesson for us: true success comes only from the pursuit of passions with our natural talents. Or as Orville lived it, he achieved what he did because, in the words of a contemporary, “he was just made that way. He had to sing.”

To hear his voice, search for Orville Harrold on YouTube. Several kind people have posted digitized versions of his Edison and Columbia recordings. The Library of Congress also has several recordings on their website.

Chris Flook is a board member of the Delaware County Historical Society and is the author of  "Lost Towns of Delaware County, Indiana" and "Native Americans of East-Central Indiana." For more information about the Delaware County Historical Society, visit delawarecountyhistory.org.