Clarence Yarmen, inventor of the toe knuckle razor, the electric door knocker, and countless other niche devices, passed away at his home on Saturday following an accident in his garage.
Shortly after high school Yarmen spent some time in the US Navy. Friends called him a man with an independent mind and a true freethinker.
"He dug through garbage. That's how I met him so many years ago," neighbor Seth Greenburg said. "I looked out the window to see him pulling apart my old Eureka vacuum cleaner. Strange sight, but we got used to it."
His neighbors had mixed emotions about the ever-changing display of noisy robots on his front lawn. Most of Yarmen's robots were constructed of steel drums and metal ductwork, but some of the more elaborate "females" had loud speakers and could move their arms and shoot fireworks into the street.
Yarmen wrote and performed plays with the robots, which were linked to microphones and controls inside his living room. The neighborhood broadcast of his Christmas play, "Fistfight at the Manger," caused some outrage in the community several years ago.
Nancy Slade led a failed campaign to evict the robots. "That play, it was something else. No reason to make robots cuss during Christmastime. And those wrestling girl robots looked obscene. Pure trash. The end was the worst part.
"Oh, he calmed down for a while," Slade said. "He dressed robots like farmers and smashed up mailboxes that he dressed like chickens, but he didn't fool me."
Clarence Yarmen willed his robot ranch to Clayville Community College. Kevin Martin, head of the Department of Natural and Applied Sciences at the college said, "I never dreamed we would have a robotics lab at Clayville. I am very excited for the students and for Clayville. It appears that Yarmen laid some very important groundwork, and we will build upon it. That is a promise."
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