14.11.2011

Lorain mausoleum vandalised

The Thew family mausoleum at the city of Lorain’s Elmwood Cemetery was stripped of its copper doors on Friday evening as thieves targeted six of the cemetery’s eight Mausoleums. The doors are said to be worth around $5,000 each.

Captain Richard Thew built one of the world’s first steam shovels in 1895 and founded the Thew Shovel Company in 1899. In 1918 the company’s crane superstructures were mounted to Mack trucks for the American Expeditionary Forces, becoming the first rapid travel rubber tyred mobile crane. In 1924 the company introduced the Lorain brand on its new range of cranes.
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The Thew mausoleum is boarded up

The famous Lorain Moto Crane name for its truck cranes along a little later, Thew shipped a large number of them to Europe in the 1940s to help with the war effort. The Moto Cranes played a part in clearing up the debris in London after the Blitz.
Thew /Lorain became part of Koehring in 1964, the company was then acquired by Northwest 1987 which was itself renamed Terex in the same year, (Northwest had acquired Terex the year before).