Have a question about Lancaster County history?

Jack Loose has an answer.

Any time period, any subject.

And if he doesn't know the answer, he'll find out and get back to you.

"Jack's the county historian," says Tom Ryan, the executive director of the Lancaster Historical Society, where Loose can be found seven days a week digging into our past. "It isn't an official title, but it might as well be."

What's kept Loose, of Lancaster Township, so interested in Lancaster County history?

"I'm interested in what human beings do," Loose says. "Whatever people did, it was meat for my mill."

Indeed, John Ward Willson Loose has chronicled the history of Lancaster County and its people for most of his 82 years.

Ask him a question about a historical event and he'll soon be remembering the names of the people who made that event happen and telling stories about them. And it isn't just one small time period or location in the county. Loose seems to know it all.

"I'm a generalist," he explains. "I'm interested in all time, in all areas of the county. It bothers me that there's nobody to replace me, not because I am so important, but because these days most historians are specialists. I'm interested in putting the whole thing in one big ball of wax."

Yes, he can ramble, but in the best sense of the word.

"I trust Jack's guesses more than I do most people's facts," says Peter Seibert, president of the Heritage Center of Lancaster County, which Loose helped to found in the 1970s.

His mind is sharp, his memory amazing. And his life has always been full to overflowing. As much as he's reported on Lancaster County history, he's been a part of it, too.

"He's got his tentacles everywhere," Seibert says, smiling.

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  Lancaster's historian

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Loose has been involved in local Republican politics since the 1940s, joining the Young Republican Committee as soon as it got started around 1947-48. He was county prothonatary from 1956 to 1960.

And just last month, he was re-elected to a new term as Republican committeeman in the 3rd District of Lancaster Township.

He was the president of the Lancaster Historical Society from 1973 to 1992 and has been honored by a number of organizations for his community work, including the Hempfield and Sertoma Clubs, the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Millersville University, where he was named a distinguished alumni. (He earned his bachelor of science degree there in 1947 and his master's in history in 1967.)

He's active in numerous clubs and historical societies throughout the county and has written several books and hundreds of historical essays and papers, many of them for the Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society, a quarterly magazine he's been editor-in-chief of since 1956.

His subject matter has run the gamut, from the history of the Republican Party in the county, which he is working on now, to his book "Brewing in Lancaster Legal and Otherwise" (1966), that was a local bestseller and went through several printings.

He is perhaps proudest of his 37 years at Donegal High School, where he taught history, government and economics to thousands of students, most of whom he probably remembers by name.

And he goes out and speaks to schools, organizations and clubs such as the Lions Club and the Rotary on a regular basis, happy to spread the historical word.

Ryan notes that every week people call about something that might interest them, such as a map or a ledger or an old photograph.

"They know we are here because of Jack, because they heard him speak at the Rotary or at a school," Ryan says.

"He's set a certain standard," says Seibert. "Jack is like the conscience of Lancaster County facts."

Loose isn't interested in sugar coating Lancaster County history. He'll happily talk about the good, the bad and the ugly — the Ku Klux Klan presence here, the saloons that also served as polling places, the houses of ill repute.

"Lancaster was wild (back during Prohibition)," Loose says with a smile.

When people mourn the passing of the good old days, Loose has little patience.

"I'll ask them if they'd rather use an outhouse on a cold January night? Or would they like to have to hop on a horse to get into town? People say it's worse today and I say, 'Worse than what?'"

Seibert says: "I've never known him to shy away from anything.

"It's not to stir the pot, but to tell the truth."

And he's quick to correct mistakes, particularly some of the county's myths, such as the longstanding idea that we were the country's oldest inland city, which was stated on a number of historical markers around the county. Loose was integral in getting them taken down.

Growing up in Manheim, Loose remembers his grandfather pointing out businesses and buildings and explaining their history when they'd walk through town. He also remembers a distant cousin in Columbia he used to visit who piqued his interest in history.

"He was the unofficial historian of Columbia and he'd give me a bottle of Valley Forge beer and we'd sit and talk about the iron industry," Loose says, adding with a smile, "I was in junior high school and I liked the beer."

Loose then tells a story about being a sickly child and being prescribed four ounces of porter or ale before walking to school in the morning, after getting home from lunch, and then again when he got home after school. He was still in grade school.

It's a classic Loose story, filled with small details, names of people, and a raised eyebrow or two. Loose can always find the humanness and humor in a story.

He vividly remembers his first trip in the mid-1940s to the Lancaster County Historical Society, which was then on North Duke Street.

He was a student at McCaskey High School then and he was sent there for a class paper.

He remembers the jangling bell that announced him, the tall staircase and the elderly woman who ran the place and stood at the top of the stairs. She curtly asked him what he wanted.

That place and the new building at the corner of President and Marietta avenues, would be his homes away from home.

A lifelong bachelor, Loose says he never contemplated getting married.

"I'm fiercely independent," he says. "I like not having to ask permission of anybody."

He's been a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church on West Chestnut Street since 1952 and serves as the church's historian, of course.

"I've always been a thinking person," he says. "In the Unitarian Church, everything is open to question. It encourages skepticism."

At 82, Loose has had to slow down a bit because of emphysema.

"I never smoked, but both my parents were heavy smokers," he says. "I love to walk, but I get out of breath."

As for his mind, that hasn't slowed down a bit.

"Yea, my memory is all right," Loose says, adding with a laugh, "I shove the important stuff out of my brain to put more history stuff in."


Staff writer Jane Holahan can be reached at jholahan@LNPnews.com or 481-6016. blog comments powered by Disqus