Dr. Robert and Helen Johnson Hosler
12321 Lake Shore Boulevard and Two Bratenahl Place
Helen Burgess Johnson was born on October 20, 1912, to Helen and George Johnson. From age two on, she lived at 13405 Lake Shore Boulevard and attended Bratenahl School and Laurel School, then graduated from Smith College.
A twenty-year-old Helen married Gordon Dunn on June 24, 1932. Gordon Bruce Dunn was born in 1909 in Massachusetts. They lived in Aurora, Ohio. They had two sons: E. Bruce Dunn, born March 24, 1934, and George Johnson Dunn, born April 29, 1935.
Helen next married Robert Hosler in 1948. Robert Marshall Hosler Sr. was born on October 26, 1906. Ancestors on both sides of his family had been colonial settlers in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
When Robert was a child, his family vacationed on Stag Island on the St. Clair River. He developed a love for the water and Great Lake ships. In 1925, he spent part of the summer as a deckhand on the William Edenborn, one of the freighters buried under 39-feet of dredging from the Cuyahoga River that formed Dyke 14 in Gordon Park.
Dr. Robert Hosler attended the University of Michigan and Western Reserve University Medical School.
Hosler’s first wife, Eleanor, was born on June 8, 1908. They had two children: Robert Marshall Jr., born on January 3, 1942, and Martha (Durey).
Dr. Robert Hosler was an expert on resuscitation. As a University Hospitals Surgeon, he helped create the first course in cardiac resuscitation for physicians. He traveled to other cities and to Europe and South America to explain the techniques. He published “A Manual on Cardiac Resuscitation,” a basic text that was translated into many languages. He was one of the first American doctors to visit Soviet Union medical facilities after the onset of the Cold War.
He maintained an office at the Carnegie Medical Building at East 105th Street and Carnegie Avenue but was called upon to practice surgery at hospitals throughout Cuyahoga and surrounding counties.
Hosler served on Bratenahl Village Council from 1960 until he resigned in 1969.
Dr. Hosler belonged to the American Board of Surgery and the American College of Surgeons. He was a member of the Great Lakes Historical Society Board of Trustees, Sons of the American Revolution, and First Cleveland Cavalry Association.
Helen was active in many of Cleveland’s charitable agencies including the Sunbeam Shop at Vocational Guidance Services and the Western Reserve Historical Society.
Social clubs included Cheshire Cheese, Cleveland Yachting, Clifton, Mayfield Golf, and Union clubs plus the Seigniory Club of Canada.
Robert and Helen moved to Two Bratenahl Place. Robert Hosler died on September 20, 1994, in the Judson Park community. Helen was perhaps Bratenahl’s oldest resident when she died on January 13, 2007, at age 94. Both Robert and Helen are buried in Lake View Cemetery.