IRELAND, THOMAS SAXTON, JR. (16 Dec. 1895-26 Mar. 1969), politician and writer, was born in Cleveland to Lucretia (Bailey) and Paul Francis Ireland, a manager of GRASSELLI CHEMICAL CO. He attended Princeton and Harvard, graduated from Harvard Law School in 1927, and returned to Cleveland after passing the Ohio bar. Following service in the Army, he began a weekly column for the Cleveland Italian newspaper Corriere di Ohio. He worked for a time as a laborer at the Republic Steel Corp., becoming an active member of Bridge, Structural, & Iron Workers Local 468. By the 1930s he was a municipal court judge, and in the mid-1930s ran unsuccessfully for the Ohio general assembly. He became a correspondent for the Cleveland PLAIN DEALER in 1948 and also wrote for papers in Columbus and the Pacific Northwest. In 1959, Ireland ran for mayor in one of Cleveland's most flamboyant political campaigns. One of his great campaign issues was the transit system's inadequacies, and he garnered tremendous publicity by personally chartering transit buses and providing service to underserved areas at off-peak times. Despite his flair for public relations, he lost the election. Ireland wrote books on the St. Lawrence Seaway (1934), the politics of the Far East (War Clouds in the Skies of the Far East, 1935), Ireland (Ireland, Past and Present, 1942), and industrial relations (Child Labor as a Relic of the Dark Ages, 1937). In Aug. 1932 Ireland married Mildred Locke and had 7 children: Patricia, Ruth, Thos. S. III, William, John, Fred and Pauline. He died in Hawaii and was buried in LAKE VIEW CEMETERY.
Thomas S. Ireland Papers, WRHS.