Local History Collections

(Description ID: 609870)

Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums  

Rosa N. Sberna  

LH-460 

Introduction
Biographical Sketch
Scope and Content
Inventory 

Introduction
This collection was donated to the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums in 2023.    

Biographical Sketch
Rosa Natole Sberna was born in 1909 in Bellevue, Ohio, to Ben and Rosalea (Miletti) Natole.  She attended Bellevue High School, graduating in 1927, and later graduated from Oberlin College in 1945.  She married Charles L. Sberna in 1930.  From 1950-1975 Rosa was the head librarian at the Hayes Presidential Library and Museums (referred to then as the Hayes Memorial).  She also worked for 18 years as the office manager at Klein Steel in Bellevue, Ohio.  A member of the Bellevue Professional Women's Association and the Fremont Federation of Women, Rosa worked to help Italian immigrants achieve U.S. citizenship.  She was a member of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Fremont, Ohio, and served as a lector there for a number of years.

Rosa trained musically on the violin in her youth, but achieved renown in Ohio’s Sandusky County as an operatic mezzo-soprano. Rosa was active in the Northern Ohio music community throughout her adult life, providing solo vocal performances in many weddings, church meetings, and social organizations from the 1930s to the 1970s.  Beginning in the 1940s she hosted and performed on the “Time for Rosa” radio show on stations WFRO (Fremont, Ohio) and WFIN (Findlay, Ohio).  Rosa passed away August 9, 2009 at the age of 100. 

Scope and Content
This collection documents Rosa N. Sberna’s participation in music activities, including her training, performances (both those she presented and those she attended), and membership in professional musician organizations.  The bulk of the materials date from the 1930s-1960s, when Rosa was most active as a performer, in addition to a scrapbook of clippings, concert programs, school work and memories from her grade school years.  Some of her notable correspondents included Cleveland, Ohio vocal teacher Marcel Salzinger, who coordinated musical and operatic performances for the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression; and Eunice L. Kettering, a composer and music instructor at Ashland College in Ashland, Ohio. Rosa kept news clippings related to local and national entertainment news as well as musical events in which she was personally involved. 

Inventory
Ac. 6123 

Box 1

Folder 1: Correspondence (52 items)
Folder 2: Newspaper clippings (25 items)
Folder 3: Concert programs (26 items)
Folder 4: Ephemera (18 items)

Scrapbook           

[See Presidents’ Collection (SP-5) for single item pertaining to Abraham Lincoln]