Category: 1980’s – 1990’s

Cleveland Reacts to Call For Unity (Philadelphia Inquirer 10/26/89)

Excellent article from Philadelphia Inquirer than ran on October 26, 1989 just after the Democratic primary that summarizes the results of the election

The link is here

 

Cleveland Reacts To Call For Unity

 

By Andrew Cassel, Inquirer Staff Writer

POSTED: October 26, 1989

 

 

 

 

 

CLEVELAND — Union jackets and white faces filled the hall in the old 15th Ward last week, but the guy they were cheering wore neither. Instead, standing 5-foot-7 in his suit, round glasses and goatee, Mike White looked more than anything like a well-dressed Spike Lee.

“People of all backgrounds are saying, ‘Enough of the fighting, enough of the bickering,’ ” he told the applauding group of campaign volunteers. ”Let’s put this town together.”

Here on Cleveland’s West Side, land of pierogis and parochial schools, where “Stop Forced Busing” signs share lawn space with stone birdbaths, White is an unlikely hero. The 38-year-old black state senator is from the other side of a town that even boosters concede is one of the nation’s most segregated.

But White won a quarter of the vote here in a five-way mayoral primary Oct. 3, enough to make him the surprise contender in the Nov. 7 runoff and, according to most observers, the likely next mayor of Cleveland.

His second-place finish behind City Council President George Forbes in the nonpartisan primary made history in this gritty town, and not just because it guarantees that Cleveland will elect its second black mayor ever. In a city where politicians have traded on racial divisions for more than two decades, White appears to be succeeding with a message and style that transcend race.

A mid-October poll by the Cleveland Plain Dealer showed White leading Forbes, the tough-talking, iron-fisted boss of Cleveland’s predominantly black East Side, 46 percent to 27 percent. If White wins, it will be because enough voters on both sides of town see themselves as united rather than divided by their city’s agonizing problems, from drugs to bad schools to a declining middle class.

“It’s that appeal that (mayoral candidate David) Dinkins had in New York: Everybody’s not a racist; let’s get together. . . . His message was one of hope, and that’s all,” Roldo Bartimole, editor of a Cleveland political newsletter, said of White’s surprising primary campaign.

“We’ve had leaders whose stock in trade has been to maintain their own power by dividing the community,” White said after a recent day of campaigning. “White politicians who go to the white community and say, ‘Your enemies are black folks’; black politicians who go to the black community and say, ‘Your enemies are white folks’; then those two leaders go in the back room and make a deal while we’re fighting each other.”

His best example is Forbes, Cleveland City Council president for 16 years and a man considered at least equal in power to outgoing Mayor George V. Voinovich.

Known both for roughhousing his opponents – he threw a chair at a fellow councilman once and called one of his mayoral rivals a pimp – and for his ability to negotiate big deals for downtown development, Forbes has the backing of most of Cleveland’s major business and labor groups. But his base is on Cleveland’s East Side, whose voters he has courted for a quarter-century via a popular radio talk show, freely labeling white opponents bigots and black ones as Uncle Toms.

“He’s been a macho pol who’s yelled race whenever it’s been convenient,” said Bartimole. “If he were white,” added City Councilman Jay Westbrook, ”he’d be Frank Rizzo.”

Even Forbes himself admits that he’s been “projected as being a black racist,” though he calls that perception “not adequate.” He was the easy favorite in the primary and was expected to face one of three established white politicians in the runoff. White, a little-known state senator, was a long shot at best.

“Nobody anticipated that 25 percent of the white West Side would bypass a white county commissioner, the white clerk of courts and the white head of the school board to vote for Mike White,” said Carl Stokes, who was elected Cleveland’s first black mayor (the first in a major U.S. city) in 1967.

So far, the campaign has consisted of nasty charges that White beat his former wives and that he maintains slum property in black neighborhoods. A newsletter circulating on the East Side also labeled White a “beast among us” and called him the handpicked candidate of the white power structure.

Forbes has tried to soften his own blustery image, appearing in commercials with his family and arguing that his experience qualifies him to continue Cleveland’s struggling renaissance. Endorsements have also come from prominent black leaders, including Jesse Jackson – a move that White says belies Jackson’s populist image.

White said Jackson is “becoming nothing more than another rank black politician who cares more about his own political base than about black people in general.”

More articulate than Forbes, White has played on Forbes’ reputation for racial antagonism to paint himself as primarily an advocate for the city, rather than for blacks.

But taking that message to black voters challenges not only Forbes but also a political style rooted in the civil rights era, observers say.

“The phase of black politics that was launched here with Carl Stokes (was) a kind of patronage system which was kind of basic: Get blacks into jobs and get contracts moving toward black business people, without much thought to performance,” said Tom Bier, an urban studies professor at Cleveland State University.

“The next phase has to do with effectiveness. The aches and pains produced by poor performance are so strong that it just isn’t good enough to have a black person in the job. They’ve got to perform.”

Cleveland lost 175,000 people during the 1970s, after ghetto riots and court-ordered school busing prompted many middle-class whites to flee. In the ’80s, they were joined by thousands of middle-class blacks, leaving a city that has dropped from eighth-largest in the nation to about 25th. Its remaining population is about half white and half black.

Although its downtown has recently seen an influx of new office buildings, its schools are in desperate shape, public housing is miserable and neighborhood services on both sides of town have declined.

While even some of White’s supporters say his policies might not differ drastically from Forbes’ once in office, they argue that the city’s condition gives him a powerful set of issues with which to campaign. “Can anybody turn around an aging Midwestern industrial city that’s lost its middle class overnight? No,” said Jim Rokakis, who represents the 15th Ward on City Council. “But (White) will have a chance, more than George Forbes, to bring blacks and whites together.”

Mr. Ohio

From the Columbus Dispatch, December 12, 2010

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Mr. Ohio

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George V. Voinovich’s dedication to faith, family and state set the foundation for his unprecedented 43-year run in public office, including as a mayor, governor and senator

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2010  03:02 AM

BY JOE HALLETT, JACK TORRY AND JONATHAN RISKIND

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

George V. Voinovich is a devout Roman Catholic, a strict believer in fiscal responsibility and the most prolific vote-getter in Ohio history.

OCTAVIAN CANTILLIDISPATCH
George V. Voinovich is a devout Roman Catholic, a strict believer in fiscal responsibility and the most prolific vote-getter in Ohio history.

George V. Voinovich says a big factor in his decision to retire from the U.S. Senate is his family: He wants to be there for his wife, Janet, as they age and spend more time with his children and grandchildren.

OCTAVIAN CANTILLIDISPATCH
George V. Voinovich says a big factor in his decision to retire from the U.S. Senate is his family: He wants to be there for his wife, Janet, as they age and spend more time with his children and grandchildren.

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CLEVELAND – The modest two-story beige house with green shutters on a quiet street a half-block from Lake Erie holds little evidence of the life George Victor Voinovich is about to leave.

Amid the clutter of his study, there are no photographs of him with presidents, fellow senators, governors or mayors. There are no plaques on the wall to commemorate Voinovich’s historic 43-year run in public office, no proclamations about his accomplishments.

Instead, the house where George and Janet Voinovich have lived for all but 10 of their 48 years of marriage is a shrine to their family. A painting depicts a church atop a Slovenian hill where Voinovich’s great-grandfather played the organ. Photographs of the Voinoviches’ three surviving children and eight grandchildren abound. On a table next to their love seat is a photo of George and Janet with daughter Molly, taken a few days before she was struck by a van and killed while walking to school in 1979. Molly would be 40 now.

This house, along with a one-bedroom condo in Florida, is where the 74-year-old Republican plans to spend the rest of his days. On Jan. 1, for the first time in more than four decades, Voinovich will have no office in a government edifice, no affairs of state to manage or legislate. How will it be for Janet to have him around the house?

“That’s yet to be determined,” she said, smiling. “The good news is that we like each other a lot.”

On Thursday, Voinovich’s unprecedented career in Ohio politics will be honored at a reception in the Statehouse. Invited friends and former staff members will attest to his effectiveness and rightfully place him among the most popular political leaders in state history, alongside the likes of former Gov. James A. Rhodes and Frank J. Lausche, Voinovich’s boyhood idol from the Collinwood neighborhood. Lausche was a fellow Eastern European who was the only other Clevelander to serve as mayor, governor and U.S. senator.

Voinovich is the most prolific vote-getter in Ohio history. No gubernatorial candidate ever received a higher percentage of the vote than he did in 1994, almost 72percent, and no Senate candidate ever received more raw votes than the nearly 3.5 million he won in 2004.

“If Jim Rhodes was the Babe Ruth of Ohio politics, then George Voin-

ovich is the Henry Aaron,” said Curt Steiner, communication director and chief of staff during Voinovich’s first term as governor.

“It is hard to imagine that his record of service will ever be matched inside the borders of Ohio. This was somebody you knew you could count on year after year after year.”

On Friday, after the Statehouse celebration of his life and times, Voinovich will go home to his new reality – retirement.

“My No. 1 priority in retirement is to take care of my physical, mental and spiritual health,” he said. “I want to do that so I can take care of my wife. And then, there are my children and grandchildren. Those are my priorities.”

Voinovich wants to write a book. He will fish Lake Erie earnestly for walleye, and he and Janet will take long walks along the lake, up to Wildwood Park, whose expansion and improvement are Voinovich’s doing, and they will gaze at sunsets.

“We live where you can see a painting by the Master and it changes every night.”

Voinovich contemplated running for a third term in the Senate, but he thought better about being there when he will be 80, knowing that he and Janet are of ages – she’s now 77 – requiring them to stay close by each other. Besides, a frustrated Voinovich said, the politics of Washington have become so polarized and poisonous that it’s difficult to forge progress on what he views as the nation’s biggest problem: the budget deficit and national debt.

“Somehow, we have got to get people to understand that you’ve got to work together,” Voinovich said. “Right now, the country is as fragile as I’ve ever seen it. I could cry right now, that’s how worried I am about our future.”

Crying would not be out of character for Voinovich. Throughout his career, his emotions have been on public display. As governor in 1992, he wept before TV cameras as he announced amid a budget crisis that he was cutting a welfare safety net for 100,000 chronically unemployed Ohioans.

And he flashed his famous temper in 1995 when his gubernatorial plane was grounded on the tarmac by President Bill Clinton’s visit to Columbus. Grabbing the cockpit mike, Voinovich yelled to an air traffic controller that the Secret Service “can go screw themselves.”

Yet, Ohioans seemed to like the genuineness of the devoutly Catholic Voinovich, who often said that his service to the public was guided by the Holy Spirit. Famously frugal personally and a devotee of fiscal responsibility in government, Voinovich advocated tax or fee increases or opposed tax cuts more than two dozen times since 1971, and he was never punished by voters. He handily won his first race for Senate in 1998, even after 80 percent of Ohio voters turned down his request that year for a penny-per-dollar increase in the sales tax to help schools.

Voinovich’s fondest and most productive years in office were as mayor and governor. “Always in his heart he was a Clevelander, but he loved being governor as much as anybody who’s ever served in the job,” said former Ohio Senate President Stanley J. Aronoff, a Republican.

Voinovich’s eight years as governor were wrought from economic chaos, but they ended in prosperity. At the end of his first two years, he had cut $711 million from the state budget and raised taxes, largely on the rich, by more than $400 million to usher forth fiscal soundness in state government. Voinovich was anything but a caretaker governor: He implemented welfare and workers’ compensation reform, spent massively on children’s programs and for new schools, and allocated $600 million extra to poor school districts after the Ohio Supreme Court declared the school-funding system unconstitutional in 1997.

Perhaps his greatest challenge came on Easter Sunday in 1993 when a riot erupted at the maximum-security prison in Lucasville. Inmates controlled the prison for 11 days, the longest state prison riot in U.S. history, resulting in the death of a guard and 10 inmates. Under enormous pressure to go to the prison himself and, ultimately, to storm it with troops, Voinovich listened to the counsel of experts to stay away. The inmates relented, avoiding more bloodshed.

“If anybody wanted to study how a governor handles a crisis, they ought to look at what George Voin-

ovich did during Lucasville,” said Attorney General-elect Mike DeWine, then the lieutenant governor.

Election to the Senate in 1998 fulfilled one of Voinovich’s chief ambitions. Throughout his career, he often had signaled he was more interested in becoming a senator than in being governor.

In 1986, when he was still mayor of Cleveland, he rejected pleas from Republicans to challenge Gov. Richard F. Celeste, preferring instead to run for the U.S. Senate two years later against Democrat Howard M. Metzenbaum. When Voinovich lost to Metzenbaum in 1988, his only option left was running for governor in 1990.

Yet after becoming a senator in 1999, Voinovich quickly found the job frustrating. The institution often seemed paralyzed by intense partisan divisions; his very first major vote was whether to convict Clinton of impeachment charges approved by the House.

Gone were the heady days of Cleveland and Columbus, where he forged alliances with powerful Democrats, including Cleveland City Council President George Forbes and Vernal G. Riffe Jr., the legendary Ohio House speaker, who, Voinovich said, “became one of my best friends.”

The Senate, Voinovich discovered, was different. Because Senate rules allowed 41 senators to block any bill, passing laws was difficult. He once acknowledged to another senator, “It’s much more stressful being governor, but much more frustrating being a senator.”

“He is much more willing to make compromises than his colleagues” are, said Ted Hollingsworth, Voinovich’s chief of staff in the Senate. “Partisan politics in Washington particularly frustrated him. He was the guy wanting to work out deals, and partisanship makes that very difficult.”

Just before last month’s congressional elections, Senate Republicans urged Voinovich to oppose a necessary measure to increase the national debt ceiling. Without an increase, the government would have shut down.

Instead, Voinovich provided the 60th vote needed to break a Republican filibuster and allow Congress to approve the measure. He complained, “A lot of my (GOP) colleagues didn’t want the president to have a victory before the election.”

He acknowledges that he liked being mayor and governor much more than being a senator: “I’m a leader. You come down here (to Washington) and you are not the orchestra leader, you are a member of the orchestra.”

Throughout his two terms, Voin-

ovich and his staff boasted that he was the No. 1 deficit hawk in the Senate. He reinforced that in his first term during the Clinton presidency when he opposed Republican efforts to cut taxes without cutting spending.

But in 2001, President George W. Bush assumed office and pushed Congress for a major tax cut. The federal government had run a $236billion surplus in the 2000 fiscal year and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting that the government would have a staggering $3.4 trillion surplus in the next decade.

Conservatives were eager to cut income-tax rates across the board, and the House and Senate appeared to rally around a 10-year tax reduction of $1.35 trillion.

The administration badly wanted Voinovich’s vote. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill invited Voinovich over for a breakfast meeting while White House budget chief Mitch Daniels visited Voinovich at his office. Both, Hollingsworth said, insisted that the Bush administration would restrain federal spending in the future.

In addition, Voinovich was meeting privately with Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Over breakfast in the Senate dining room, Greenspan warned that the surplus was so large that some tax reductions would help the economy. Greenspan insisted there was a risk to the economy in paying down the national debt too rapidly.

Voinovich relented and joined 45 other Republicans and 12 Democrats in approving the tax cut. Two years later, with the economy struggling from a recession, Bush once again called on Congress to cut taxes. This time, the administration wanted to reduce investment taxes – primarily taxes on capital gains and dividends – by about $700billion over 10 years.

Once again, the administration needed Voinovich’s vote. By the spring of 2003, the combination of the 2001 tax cuts, the 9/11 terrorist attack, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the accounting scandal highlighted by Enron’s collapse had transformed projected surpluses into frighteningly large deficits.

In addition, the Bush administration had shown no inclination to curb federal spending and wanted Congress to approve an expensive bill that would provide prescription drugs to Medicare beneficiaries. The administration’s spending plans worried Voinovich.

Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and White House chief of staff Andy Card invited Voinovich and Republican Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine to the White House, where they pleaded for their votes.

Voinovich refused. “I stuck to my guns,” he said. Faced with opposition from Voinovich and a handful of lawmakers, the administration reduced the size of the tax cut to $350 billion and scheduled it to expire at the end of 2010. With these concessions, Voinovich voted for it.

Today, with the federal government’s annual deficit exceeding $1trillion, Voinovich acknowledges that the 2003 tax cut made the deficit worse. “If you asked me, ‘Did that contribute to that,’ the answer would be yes,” he said.

Historians likely will judge Voin-

ovich’s 10 years as Cleveland mayor as the most important of his career. A year after Cleveland became the first American city to default since the Great Depression, Voinovich defeated Mayor Dennis J. Kucinich, a Democrat, in 1979 and restored financial stability with help from city banks and new taxes.

“His time as mayor of Cleveland will stand out for most people,” said John Green, a University of Akron political scientist. “He helped save Cleveland from bankruptcy and turn it into a city with a future.”

Showing off Cleveland to a visitor the day before Thanksgiving this year, Voinovich barely contained his affection for the city. Memories bled from his skin as he pointed out his Serbian grandfather Victor Bernot’s old meat market at 160th and Holmes streets, passed by Collinwood High School where he and his Slovenian mother are enshrined in the hall of fame, and perused the skyline from the downtown lakefront park named in his honor.

As mayor, Voinovich presided over a $2 billion building boom downtown. It is fair to ask whether new stadiums for the Indians and Browns, the basketball arena for the Cavaliers, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Great Lakes Science Center would have been built if he had not nurtured government-corporation partnerships.

“It was a public-private partnership that did it,” Voinovich said, referring to the transformed skyline. “It was a symbiotic relationship between all these various entities who said this is important to the city. … People tell me they like the architecture on the Rock and Roll Hall, but I say the real interesting thing to me is the civic architecture – how did it get built?”

Asked what Voinovich has meant to Cleveland, Terry Stewart, president and CEO of the rock hall, responded: “Everything … What many people say about him being Ohio’s greatest politician is true.”

Voinovich demurred when asked to characterize his political legacy.

“Are you really ready to quit?” Janet asked, perhaps one last time.

“You go as far as you can and then it’s someone else’s time,” her husband said.

jhallett@dispatch.com

jtorry@dispatch.com

jriskind@dispatch.com

 

Howard Metzenbaum from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

The link is here

METZENBAUM, HOWARD MORTON (4 June 1917 – 12 March 2008), a staunchly liberal U.S. Senator during an era of conservative political ascendency associated with the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Born in Cleveland to Anna and Charles Metzenbaum, Howard balanced school work with business by fetching his neighbors’ groceries for tips. After graduating from Glenville High School, Metzenbaum attended The Ohio State University, where he would earn both bachelors (1939) and law degree (1941). Metzenbaum was able to pay his way through college by selling flowers outside of Ohio Stadium and along High Street, the University’s main thoroughfare. He would use his time off school in the summers to travel the state selling personal hygiene goods.

Although he received his law degree in 1941, Metzenbaum found his Jewish faith prevented potential law firms from hiring him. Facing bitter anti-Semitism, Metzenbaum returned to Cleveland and found employment representing more open minded labor union. Metzenbaum represented and filed tax returns for the Communications Workers of America and the International Association of Machinists before entering politics in 1943 by winning a seat in the Ohio House as a Democrat. Metzenbaum married Shirley Turoff on August 8, 1946. Metzenbaum used his success to catapult him into the Ohio Senate in 1947, but left politics in 1950 to pursue wealth in private enterprise.

Metzenbaum and lifelong friend Alva T. (Ted) Bonda founded Airport Parking Company of America (APCOA) in 1949. In 1951 they secured a contract to operate at CLEVELAND-HOPKINS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, inaugurating the airport parking industry. Metzenbaum earned his fortune through APCOA, eventually selling the business to International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) in 1966. His business success allowed Mezenbaum to settle in the Shaker Heights suburban community with his wife. Shirley gave birth to four daughters during these years: Barbara, Susan, Shelley, and Amy.

The world of politics, however, always beckoned. In 1958, Metzenbaum earned political capital as the campaign manager for Stephen M. Young’s successful challenge to Republican Senator and former Vice-Presidential candidate (1944) John Bricker. Metzenbaum returned as Young’s campaign manager, successfully earning his candidate re-election in 1964. When Young announced he would not seek a third term, Metzenbaum readied his own candidacy for the 1970 election. Metzenbaum, however, faced a stiff challenge in the Democratic primary when astronaut John H. Glenn, Jr. announced his desire to seek the office as a Democrat. Although he narrowly defeated Glenn in the primary (49%-51%), Metzenbaum lost the general election to Republican candidate Robert Taft, Jr., heir to the Taft political family.

Undaunted, Metzenbaum returned to private business in Cleveland, where he and David Skylar purchased the suburban Cleveland chainSUN NEWSPAPERS. Fate handed Metzenbaum a US Senate seat in 1974, when Ohio’s Democratic Governor, Jack Gilligan, appointed Metzenbaum to fill the seat vacated by Senator William B. Saxbe, who had accepted Richard Nixon’s offer to serve as US Attorney General. The turn of events proved a mixed blessing, for Metzenbaum was forced to immediately defend the expiring seat in the 1974 Democratic primary. Again he faced John Glenn, but after a grueling campaign that lead to a permanent rift between the two men Glenn prevailed and went on to win the general election.

Two years later Metzenbaum successfully challenged Robert Taft in a rematch of the close 1970 campaign, winning the general election. Although three decades removed from his first stint in politics, Metzenbaum championed issues familiar to aging New Deal Democrats. Metzenbaum played a prominent role in the passage of legislation requiring advance notice of plant closing, known as the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, various gun control laws, pension protection, safety standards for infant formula, and nutrition labels on food products. Metzenbaum’s staunchly liberal agenda attracted the ire of Republicans and even some fellow Democrats, but his fierce opposition to conservative legislation earned him a reputation as “Senator No.”

Metzenbaum was a master of the filibuster, often employing it to disrupt legislation he dubbed “Christmas tree bills,” decorated with pet projects or corporate loopholes. When his filibusters failed, Metzenbaum invented a new stalling tactic. When a two week filibuster against a bill to lift price controls on natural gas was broken, Metzenbaum loaded the bill with hundreds of amendments and demanded a roll-call vote on each one, effectively killing the legislation. Metzenbaum’s tactics earned him both respect and scorn from his colleagues on the Hill. While Senator Bob Dole referred to Metzenbaum as “the commissioner,” Senator Ted Stevens called him a “pain in the ass.”

Metzenbaum also attempted to bring a measure of culture to Washington, D.C. during his years in the Senate. His office was decorated with modern art and he often held mixers there where artists such as painter Robert Rauschenberg and folk singer Mary Travis were guests of honor for assembled lawmakers, lobbyists, and reporters. His frayed relationship with John Glenn soon thawed, too, when in 1983 Metzenbaum endorsed Glenn in his unsuccessful run for the Presidency. Glenn returned the favor, publicly defending Metzenbaum after Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich accused the Senator of being soft on child pornography during the 1988 election.

Metzenbaum continued to endure anti-Semitic remarks throughout his career. Metzenbaum?s fierce opposition to newly-elected President Regan’s nominees raised tensions on the Capital. Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina called Metzenbaum the “senator from B’nai Brith” on the Senate floor during the 1981 session, an astonishing insult in the otherwise sober , chamber. This and other events pushed Metzenbaum to advocate for anti-discrimination policy, such as the Howard M. Metzenbaum Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994, which prohibits federally-funded adoption agencies from delaying or denying child placement on the grounds of race or ethnicity.

Metzenbaum announced he would not seek a fourth term, making way for a run by his son-in-law, Joel Hyatt, who lost the general election to Republican Mike DeWine. Metzenbaum remained active during his retirement from elected office, serving as a part-time president of the non-profit Consumer Federation of America. He also served as a board member of the American Cancer Society, Northern Ohio Children’s Performing Music Foundation, Inc., and acted as a fellow at Brandeis University. He also spent much of his retirement with his family playing tennis, swimming, and travelling. He and his wife Shirley celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 2006, before his health began to decline.

He died at his family home in Aventury, Florida, on March 12, 2008. He was interred in Mayfield Cemetery in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Diemer, Tom, Fighting the Unbeatable Foe: Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, the Washington Years (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2008)

 

Last Modified: 24 Jul 2012 10:40:15 AM

Playhouse Square Documentaries

Documentary #1

More Than Just a Show – a Playhouse Square story

A mini-documentary about the history and community impact of the not-for-profit PlayhouseSquare, plus a glimpse behind the scenes at its places and people.

The link is here

 

Documentary #2

Playhouse Square Documentary

A short charming documentary made by Cleveland State students about the Playhouse Square theaters

The link is here

 

 

Interview with George Forbes by Mike Roberts Inside Business July 2007 Issue

Interview with George Forbes by Mike Roberts Inside Business  July 2007 Issue

The link is here

Back to the Future

By Michael D. Roberts

Issue: July 2007 Issue

Former longtime city council president George L. Forbes describes the fate of the city as mirroring the 1960s era when the powerful political personality reigned over Cleveland. 
It wasn’t many years ago that George L. Forbes, as president of Cleveland City Council, was arguably the most powerful man in Cleveland. He maintained his power base for 17 years, from 1972 to 1989, the longest such tenure in the history of the city.  
Forbes, a native of Tennessee, graduated from Baldwin-Wallace College in 1957 and earned his J.D. in 1962 from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. As founding partner of Forbes, Fields & Associates Co. LPA, he practices law from his offices in the Rockefeller Building downtown. He also is president of the Cleveland Chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).
During his time at City Hall, Forbes was a controversial figure in the business community, which in general thought well of him as a pragmatist and negotiator, but was well aware of his top priority: the advancement of Cleveland’s black community. 
 Indeed, there was no one better than Forbes at balancing the city’s economic needs with the advancement of blacks during the 1970s and ‘80s. Drama was high because those were make-it-or-break-it years for Cleveland. A lot of fences needed mending after the racial turmoil of the ‘60s, and history will remember Forbes as one of the menders. 
 Because there are so many similarities between that era and Cleveland’s current politico-economic plight, Inside Business thought it would be enlightening to talk with Forbes about the current state of the city and the ins and outs of economic development. Despite his public reputation as a hard-nosed firebrand, Forbes always was witty, irascible and insightful. He still is today.
 
IB: What do you hear about the city these days?
Forbes: Nobody is saying anything. It is like all the air has been sucked out of the city. Our education system is in turmoil, we have a dwindling tax base and the government can’t even collect taxes. Everyone knows we have poverty in this city. The newspaper writes about it, editorials anguish over it, but they never ask the key question. Tell me who is doing anything about it? 
This is a tough town. It’s a roller coaster: It’s up for a while and then down. People make a town work. We don’t have those wealthy industrialists that we had a hundred years ago who could create thousands of jobs by themselves. We have to look at reality, and I think we have lost our ability to do that.
IB: Do you think there is a growing separation between the black and white communities?
Forbes: Look, we are in this together. White people cannot just leave the city’s problems to the black community. If the two communities separate and think they can go their own ways,  that will be the moment we are done. 
IB: How do you feel about Mayor Frank Jackson?
Forbes: Black people will generally not criticize a black in a leadership position. They want to give them a chance to succeed. Whether you are black or white, running something like a city is among the most difficult things you could do.
But there is a difference when you are a black official. You have concerns that go beyond the routine of running a city. You are thinking about feeding the homeless, the poverty, the police killing young black people.
I’m concerned about the safety in the black community. A generation of black men are killing each other needlessly because of the availability of handguns. We are fast approaching the point where the culture of violence is taking us over.  
IB: You spent a lot of time in public life. What were the highlights?
Forbes: If you look back in my time the city made progress when you had a strong figure both as mayor and as City Council president — Jim Stanton and Carl Stokes and George Voinovich and myself. Ideas were being generated on both sides of City Hall. Business people notice that. It gives them confidence to invest in the city.
Voinovich got a lot of stuff done. It started when Dick Jacobs wanted to build the Galleria. He talked to me and I suggested he talk to the mayor. When the mayor was finished, he told Jacobs to talk to me. That way there were no misunderstandings, no grandstanding, no politics.
IB: So you see City Hall as an economic driver?
Forbes: City Hall can create the atmosphere that will attract jobs. A lot of people complain about tax abatement. Show me a business that is going to lose money in a civic venture. Even if you give some tax abatement, there still is the income tax and in 15 years the property tax will kick in. Otherwise, you have nothing.
You have to be creative to make a lot of things work. For instance, in order to build the BP Building (now 200 Public Square) we had to declare the area blighted. Compared to other cities, it was not a blighted area. But we never would have gotten a new building and retained the jobs for downtown had we not done that. In my view, that is the role of government in economic development.
IB: How would you characterize the city today?
Forbes: Don’t forget, I saw this city go through some rough times — The Hough riot; the damned river burning; the Glenville riot; default; and Mayor Perk’s hair on fire. You want to talk about bad headlines and a town being looked upon as an urban disaster? Man, we went through that and came out of it as an All-American City. The national perception of Cleveland was bad, but the reality was that the city was a lot better than most people thought. Including the media here.  
With the right leadership in place the town will turn around again. We have to realize we are competing with the rest of the country, the rest of the world. We educate our young people and they leave because there is no opportunity here.
IB: Do you see the city coming back?
Forbes: You know, the late Bob Hughes, the county Republican chairman, used to tell me that politics is all about perception. Sometimes, either for the good or the bad, that perception becomes reality. We can come back, but all cities evolve. We need to recognize the need to change.
IB: What is your feeling about changing the way the county is governed?
Forbes:  A few years ago when the Cleveland Bar Association was looking at this issue, I met with them. I basically feel the we-need-to-embrace-a-regional-approach to solving our problems. Having said that, I think it has to be worked out among elected officials. I’m not sure I’m ready to support change simply for change’s sake.
IB: How many mayors did you serve with?
Forbes: Let’s see. Ralph Locher, Carl Stokes, Ralph Perk, Dennis Kucinich and George Voinovich. I enjoyed working with Ralph Perk. He surrounded himself with bright young people. But the business community was not big on Ralph so they worked through City Council. Things got done. Voinovich made the most progress in the city because he got things done instead of simply enjoying the benefits of power.
IB: You once ran for Congress.  
Forbes: Lou Stokes whipped me and 14 others. After that I was through with higher office. Jack Russell (the late City Council president) once told me that you have to make a decision in politics, whether to be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a bigger one. It is hard to make a difference in Washington. The City Council president has the power to do things, things that you can see. In City Council you could help the city make deals with the Jacobses, the Ratners, the Wolsteins. To me, there was no better job than helping a city to work. I didn’t even want to be mayor, even though I ran for the job once. 
In all those years, I never accumulated stuff in my office. No pictures,  no proclamations on the wall — just a few pencils. I knew that when I left, I did not want to have a lot of things to pack, and I knew I could leave at any time.
IB: You had a stormy relationship with the media. Do you think you were unfairly treated?
Forbes: Public officials and the media are not apple pie and ice cream. That takes a while to understand, but you don’t have to like it. The media were tougher on us than on City Hall in recent years. I blame some in the media for looking the other way in a lot of the relationships being exposed today between City Hall and businesses. If there were businesses at the airport that had not paid taxes in 15 years when I was president of council, the newspapers would have been all over me. I forgot to pay my water bill once and it was the lead story on the evening news.
IB: Things have changed in the inner city since the 1960s with drug, crime and education problems. How do you see this change?
Forbes: A whole generation of young blacks is being killed. Of those black men who die between the ages of 16 and  20, 80 percent are homicides. They are overwhelmed by their environment and, in some cases, do not know what acceptable standards of behavior are in our society. Tell me how television can cynically bombard the airwaves with drugs and violence and it not affect our society? You did not have this in the 1960s. We’d be better off if people did not watch television.
IB: And the problems in the schools?
Forbes: When it becomes acceptable and even preferable to reject the idea of education, you have the problem we are struggling with today. We have seen an increase in unmarried pregnancies, drugs and crime. I tell you that we are seeing television’s perception of society being made into reality on the streets.
My fear is that white people think this is just a black problem. It cannot be solved by blacks alone, but the black people have to be responsible. This is a problem that requires the attention of the whole community.
Unless there is a demand for change in the black community nothing will happen. There needs to be an outcry on the part of civic, business and political leaders over these kids carrying all these guns. Criminal defense lawyers tell me there is a difference in their clients compared to 10 years ago. The kids they are defending are younger, meaner and more dangerous.
This cannot go on. You see the Asians and the Hispanics making strides as minorities. Their very numbers will challenge blacks politically. That is a reality. Blacks have to understand that they will have competition in everything they do and hip-hop is not going to work.
IB: What do you mean by competition?
Forbes: Well, they have a black college football game here every year. I was told that a major U.S. company, which had been one of the sponsors of the game, pulled out. The reason was research showed it was better to invest in their Hispanic customers because they got more economic bang for their buck.
IB: Speaking of reality, where are we with the new school superintendent, Eugene Sanders?
Forbes: I like some of the things he is talking about, like getting those kids out of baggy pants. Bringing discipline back into the educational process has to be done. If his plans do not make the school system work more effectively, it will set us back generations. The grim truth is that if this man fails we might have to forget about Cleveland. We could be doomed. This might be our last hope before all is lost.

 

 

 

Interview With George Forbes 2011 – Benjamin Rose Foundation

Interview with George Forbes done in 2011 by the Benjamin Rose Foundation

The link is here

CIVIC LEADER

Interview Date: June 2011

Printable Version

On a sunny late spring afternoon, in the living room of his University Circle home, George Forbes, fit and trim as he enters his ninth decade, shared his thoughts and feelings about what it was like growing up in the South before the Civil Rights Movement, and how his childhood experiences shaped his world view and political career; what working as a Cleveland teacher and postal worker taught him about politics before he was elected to Cleveland City Council in 1964; and what life has been like — busy, challenging, rewarding — since he left City Hall more than 20 years ago.

When and where were you born and where are you in the sibling line-up?

I was born April 4, 1931 in Memphis, Tennessee. My parents had nine children. The youngest child died when she was two years old and I was the next in line, so I virtually grew up as the youngest child.

What did your parents do?

My father worked for a Proctor and Gamble Company in Memphis, the Buckeye Cotton and Oil Company. They took cotton seeds and reduced them to oil, making linseed oil. On the side, he farmed. And since there were 8 of us children, we farmed, too.

We planted cotton and corn and in the fall we never went back to school when it started in September. We never went until November, when all the crops were laid by…and none of us ever failed a grade. The teachers made sure that we made up the time and the lessons that we had missed.

My mother raised eight children and worked as a domestic in the homes of wealthy Southern Whites, sometimes, too. When she’d come home, with eight kids we ate out of tin plates, but she insisted that we use the right utensils and cut our food properly and know the social graces.

You grew up — came of age — during World War II. How do you think it shaped the person you are today? Or did it?

During the war, my brother went into the service and my sisters’ husbands went into the service, but it really didn’t affect me. I was affected the same way most teens were: We knew who Hitler was and we knew he was bad and we had to win the war.

My real coming of age came from what I was seeing and experiencing in the Black community.

The darker you were, the lower on the totem pole you were, which led to inequities and disparities within the community itself, and I didn’t want to be a part of that.

When I was 13, I worked as a short-order cook at one of the hotels in Memphis. I’d go to work at two o’clock and work till 11, a full shift. And then I’d take the last streetcar home. When it stopped at the corner where the jail was, all these people with bandages on their heads and arms come out and get on the streetcar. That was what I was seeing and experiencing, too. And it was also something I didn’t want to be part of.

When you rode the bus, you never thought about the fact that you paid the same fare, but that you walked to the back for a seat. When a Black woman went to a department store, she couldn’t try on a hat, she just bought it. At restaurants there was a counter for Black people and White people. If there wasn’t a seat in the Black section, you just had to stand around and wait till one came up.

When I was in high school, I wanted to be a lawyer, and there was a case being tried of a young Black man who’d been charged with murder, and I went to the courthouse to the trial. I was the only Black there, and I sat in the section for Blacks during the trial. When I had to go to the bathroom I went into the [Black’s] bathroom and while I was standing at the urinal the sheriff came in — I knew him — and he asked me: ‘What are you doing here?’ And when I told him I’d come to hear and see the trial he told me to leave. He ran me out of the bathroom.

But what I want to make clear here is that at that time, those things weren’t considered indignities, they were considered normal, par for the course. That’s the reason the teachers at my high school, which was segregated, were always telling us: ‘When you finish school, go North.’ And that’s exactly what I did.

When did you move to Cleveland, then?

I moved here when I finished high school in 1949, but I’d come up to Cleveland to live with a brother and work the summer of 1948. I worked at a place in the Flats called Cleaners’ Hangers. They made clothes hangers and my job was to take the wire hangers off the line and put them in an oven to bake on the finish line. That was the first time I’d ever worked in a factory.

Where did you go to high school, then?

I went to Manassas High School, one of the two Black high school’s in Memphis. I didn’t know anything about mixing with White people until I went into the service. And I was never in a class with a White person until I went to Baldwin-Wallace College in 1954.

In school, what were you good at…and not so good at?

I was in a group of young Black men, called the Speaker’s and Writers’ Club. At school our teachers encouraged us to do our best. No, they demanded it. And they didn’t allow any foolishness. You buckled down and did what you were supposed to and were capable of…so that you’d be prepared for the world.

Even then, I knew I wanted to be a lawyer, even though there were no Black lawyers in Memphis at that time, so I was doing a lot of writing and acting and oral presentations. I really liked things like history and English and the arts. I was OK in math, but I dodged chemistry and physics, even in college.

You went into the Marines after high school, serving during the Korean War. Where were you stationed and what did you do in the Marines?

I was in Cleveland when I was drafted into the Marines, so I had to go back to Memphis for the induction and processing. I did basic training at Paris Island, South Carolina, and that was the first time I really felt like a man. The instructors were tough — very tough. They knocked you down and they didn’t discriminate: they were equally tough on Whites and Blacks, and I’d never seen Whites get the same kind of treatment Blacks got. Now I realize that they were tough on all of us because they wanted to turn us into Marines, so in combat we’d survive.

When I left Paris Island, I went to the Third Marine Air Base in Opa Locka near Miami. I’d cooked in hotels and I went to the chaplain and told him that I knew how to cook, and he called the commander and pretty soon I was a cook. And that’s what I did the whole time I was in the Marines. Later I was transferred to Quantico [Virginia] and was there till I was discharged.

When you got out of the Marines, you went to Baldwin-Wallace on the GI Bill. Were you still planning on being a lawyer?

No. I got out of the Marines in 1953 and started there in 1954. And when I started I was thinking about being a minister. And Baldwin-Wallace was a good choice for that: It was founded by Methodists.

But my first year I had an Old Testament teacher who was a racist: there really is no other way to describe him. To me there was an inconsistency in his teaching of the Bible and his personal actions and I shied away from the ministry. And, since being a lawyer had always been in the back of my mind, that’s when I decided to become a lawyer.

There was an instructor there, Themistocles Rodis, who taught history and political science, and since I was one of the older students there — going on the GI Bill — we became more than just teacher and student, we became friends. He’s one of the people responsible for me becoming a lawyer.

When I read in the paper — maybe three years ago — that he’d died, I went to his funeral. His wife and kids remembered me.

While you were going to law school, you taught in Cleveland. What did you teach and where did you teach?

When I graduated from college in 1957, I started at Cleveland-Marshall Law School at Cleveland State. I was married and we had a child, so I needed to make a living while I was going to law school, so I got my teaching certificate in social studies and became a substitute teacher in Cleveland, but my real job security was at the post office. They arranged my schedule so that I was able to work 40 hours a week — days and weekends — and go to law school nights.

[Laughs] Don’t ask me how I did it — subbing, going to school and the full-time job at the post office. It was a juggle.

What did you learn teaching and at the post office that you took with you into the political arena?

From teaching, I realized that the system had to be more responsive to the needs of kids, and Black kids in particular, and the communities, too. The problems were starting to germinate when I was working in the system and I could see them first hand, not just because I was substitute teaching, but on a personal level, too. My oldest daughter, when she started school, went to school only half a day and she had to go to school in the basement of a church. I knew there had to be a change in the system.

From the post office, I learned about job discrimination. Educated Black men couldn’t get jobs in the corporate sector in Cleveland — at Lincoln Electric, Thompson Products, places like that — so they ended up at the post office…[S]ome of the smartest guys in Cleveland, educated at some of the best schools in the US, ended up driving trucks and sorting mail at the post office because there was no place for them — for us — in the corporate sector. I never forgot that.

You were elected to City Council in 1963. How did that come about? In other words, who were you running against, why did you run, what were you running ‘for’, and what were you running ‘against’?

You are taking me back almost 50 years. And I’m going to answer you in a roundabout way.

In Memphis, Blacks could always vote, and my parents always voted, but they voted for whom they were told to vote. Boss Crump’s machine ran Memphis. You’d see him, in his white straw hat, walking the streets.

When I was at college, I was president of the Young Dems, and I’d been politically active, for years. When I was in law school and my wife and I moved to the 27 th Ward [now part of Ward 9], I and my brother became active in the Ward Club. That was when Bill Sweeney was the councilman.

When the ward’s demographics began to change, Bill, who was White, decided not to run, so I said I’d run because it was a chance to become actively involved in the affairs of the City of Cleveland. There were seven or eight other people running, but the strongest candidate was Anna Brown, a very qualified lady who was a Republican and later, under Ralph Perk, became head of Cleveland’s Department on Aging. But she was a Republican, running in a predominantly Democratic ward. I won and went down to City Hall.

What were you running ‘for’ and ‘against’ in that first election?

I was running ‘for’ the chance to make a difference and to preserve the neighborhood, which at that time was a very middle-class neighborhood. I was young and enthusiastic and married and had a child. Their vote was my opportunity to go out and serve.

Most politicians have a mentor, someone who saw their abilities and their passion and nurtured them along. Who was your mentor?

That’s something I’m seldom asked, and there were two.

When I went into City Hall, Charlie Carr was the Majority Leader in Council and a very wise man. He came from Texas and just hated discrimination and he guided me in when to talk and when to keep my mouth closed. He was a really good strategist.

The other was James Davis, a firm Republican who came from Iowa. He was the President of the Growth Association and also managing partner at Squire, Sanders and Dempsey…For some reason we hit it off and he showed me the other side of [Republicanism]. We’d have lunch once or twice a month — me, this young, Black lawyer-politician out of the South — and he showed me that politics doesn’t create jobs, that politicians create opportunity and the atmosphere for jobs. He’d listen to me and ideas that I had and then he’d tell me — he was much older than I —what would work and what wouldn’t.

In my years in Council, I combined philosophies about economic growth with the practical political astuteness of Charlie Carr. [Sighs] Both have been gone a long time.

In 1971, you founded Cleveland’s first Black-owned law firm. What led you to do that?

Up till then, Blacks were mostly practicing out in the neighborhoods — I had an office at 123 rd and St. Clair — as one-or-two person offices. Clarence Gaines, a councilman along with me, and Clarence Rodgers, who was a federal prosecutor, and Earl Horton, another lawyer, got together one day and, because we were friends, we got to talking about starting a law firm. We decided to take the office furniture, and the staff we had, and rent offices downtown and see if we could make it work. Our first office was in the Marion Building, at 1276 W. 3 rd , right across from the Justice Center. And we did alright.

Eventually my daughter [Helen Fields] came into the firm with me and Earl, that was at least 25 years ago, and later on, so did her husband, a bond lawyer. Now we are Forbes, Fields, and Associates. I’d say that half the work we do now is bond related.

In your 20s and 30s, you were incredibly busy, and involved in a lot of things that didn’t leave you much time for socializing. So when did you meet your wife, Mary, and when did you marry?

We met when I was in college at Baldwin-Wallace. She’d finished school already and was a social worker working with children. In my last year, we married — that was 1957 — and we’ve been married for 54 years. We had three girls: two are lawyers and one is a social worker, like her mother.

Having a social worker for a wife is a tremendous advantage for a politician, in terms of knowing the social issues impacting the community. Did your wife every get interested in politics?

Not really. We kept things separate. I didn’t mix the family and politics. And that was partly due to my wife’s personality. She’s a very low-key lady.

And, when I came home from work, I left the work at the door. We never talked about politics or work-related things at home…And I think that’s part of my mental success, that I didn’t bring the frustrations of City Hall home with me, that when I came home I was husband and dad and we’d do family things, go out to eat, go to the circus.

You spent almost 30 years immersed in Cleveland politics — from the early 1960s till you lost the election for mayor in 1989— then you pretty much dropped out of election-based politics. Looking back, what are the accomplishments you are most proud of during your years on Cleveland’s City Council?

In anticipation of this interview, I asked myself, did I make a difference?

And the answer is yes, I did. And that’s the thing I think about when I tally the sheets and get all the crazy stuff —the throwing books and all — out of the way. When you boil things down to their essence, that’s it: I made a difference.

I was reading the [ Plain Dealer ] one Sunday morning and there was an article in it about the 50 most important people in the history of the City of Cleveland. And there was my name.

It wasn’t a list compiled by reporters; it was compiled by civic leaders and city historians. And I could not believe my name was there, but when I saw it, I knew I’d made a difference, that I hadn’t neglected the things that I’d set out to do: to make sure that the poor and the Black were included in the progress of the City of Cleveland.

I know I’ve done other things, but with regard to making a difference — a positive difference — I accomplished what was always the foremost thing in my mind.

You have always been a controversial figure. How do you thing that helped your career and how do you think it hurt it?

Go back to what you just asked me. Was what I did unorthodox a lot of the time? Yes. But I don’t think, over-all that I was penalized because of the controversy.

In those times it was necessary if you were going to move things off-center, if you were going to move things forward, if you were going to move [the city] in the direction we needed to go…forward, not backward into the past.

With regard to your political career, what’s the one thing you’d do differently if you could have a do-over?

[Laughs] We like to think we haven’t done anything that needs a do-over…but, I probably could have toned down the language I’ve used. It was offensive to some people. But it was offensive because I wanted to be effective.

Today, I probably wouldn’t use that kind of forceful language — as much. But I realized, from my days substitute teaching, that you can’t get through to people unless they are listening to you. You have to have their attention. And a lot of the language I used was to get peoples’ attention. But, as I look back, I probably could have done that — or most of it — another way.

In 2007, The Plain Dealer published that article saying you were one of the 50 most influential people in Cleveland’s history. Yet few people realize the huge impact you have had on Cleveland. Why do you think that is?

I think part of it is that things happened over time, the impact was cumulative, year-to-year, term-to-term, working with different mayors. And the media coverage of things changed, too. When I came to Cleveland, there were three papers in Cleveland: The Plain Dealer, The Cleveland Press and The Cleveland News. Now there is just one, and fewer people are reading it. But the main reason, I think, is that people don’t live in the past. And I don’t either. I’ve probably been to City Hall three times since I left.

You effectively “retired” from Cleveland politics after the 1989 mayoral race, which you lost to Michael White. However, I suspect that without missing a beat, you became involved in other “civic” activities. So, what have you been doing for the City of Cleveland since you left “politics?”

One of the things, obviously, is that I became involved in NAACP. And making sure that minority rights are protected has kept me busy. And when I left City Hall, I taught at Baldwin-Wallace for 10 years. That was, frankly, one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.

And I’m still actively involved in putting people together to discuss the social and economic issues that are impacting the city. Last year the Speaker of the [Ohio] House asked me to arrange a meeting with Black leaders, so I helped set up a meeting with about 50 local leaders at Karamu.

[Laughs] But, you know, I just turned 80, so I’m not as active at it as I used to be.

And speaking of being 80, and all the things you are doing, where does the energy come from?

Well, one place it comes from is that I’m no longer full-time at the office. About two years ago, I went into the office one day and I told my daughter: I don’t want to do this anymore. And I really didn’t.

Since then, while I’ve been doing some advising at the office, I’ve been focusing on NAACP and community-related things. [Pointing at the nearby phone that had rung constantly during our interview] I’m busy doing things that matter, that count, that keep me going.

But the question is still, where does the energy come from?

[Laughs] Good genes! Both my parents passed away in their 80s.

But that’s just part of it. There’s attitude, too. I’ve always wanted be up and doing and going and participating in what’s going on around me. I’ve always wanted to be on the train, not watching it pass by.

You have been, and still are, in good physical shape. What did you do in the past, and what are you doing now, to stay physically, and mentally, fit?

Well, there are those good genes. But, I’ve always been a walker especially around the neighborhood and I like doing the treadmill at the health club, too — but I’ve come down with vertigo and I fell a couple of times last winter. With medication’s I’m controlling the problem, and I’ve made some adaptations in how I do things, so I’m still walking.

When we were in Florida I walked two miles every day, and not playing golf. I’d go up to the supermarket, buy the New York Times and I’d take my walking stick and walk a mile one way and then turn around and come back. I used the walking stick for balance. Now that I’m home, I’ll be starting back at the health club.

What about diet?

For me, food’s never really been an issue, but I also have a wife and three daughters who raise a ruckus if I even mention fried chicken, so, if I stay off the cookies and ice cream, I’m in good shape there.

MythBusters is all about successful aging. But everyone’s definition of what that is differs, so what’s your definition of successful aging?

I’ve never thought about aging, much less successful aging, till recently. But I’ve come to realize that it’s a process. And I’ve also realized that the “aging club” is a “club” that a lot of people don’t get to join. At 80, I’m fortunate to be a member of a very select group of people. So, to me, successful aging means that I am not just “busy,” it means I’m engaged and continuing my life’s work and that I’m accomplishing things. And one thing I’ve come to realized as I’ve thought about this is that helping others is part of the process of successful aging. That’s why, when the phone rings here, I pick it up.

Getting older is what it is and I don’t try to act 60 or 70 because I don’t view aging as a disadvantage, I view it as an advantage because of the experience it brings with it. That is an asset, another state and stage of life for me to take advantage of. Oh, I recognize that I’m not as mentally sharp or as physically robust as I once was, but I also recognize that I’m aging successfully — because I’m adaptable — and I’m making it work for me.

What do you think people who read this profile should be doing, on a daily basis, to age successfully?

Don’t resist aging. Don’t fight it, embrace where and who you are at this stage of life…and enjoy the beauty of it.

Remembering Ray Shepardson: Playhouse Square savior hailed as a visionary (Plain Dealer 6/24/14)

The link is here

By Andrea Simakis, The Plain Dealer
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on June 24, 2014 at 9:09 PM, updated June 26, 2014 at 8:01 PM

CLEVELAND, Ohio — That a man who devoted himself to bringing life to dilapidated theaters and forgotten corners of American cities took his own life in April at the age of 70 is a tragic irony worthy of the stage.

But the memorial for preservationist and visionary Ray Shepardson at the State Theatre was hardly a tragic affair. It had the joy, passion and emotional realness of a truly great performance. A nutshell review? On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, Playhouse Square put on a helluva show for a great showman.

Before the program began, some 300 people hugged and reminisced in the State lobby, the very spot where Shepardson and a group of “urban warriors” — as Oliver “Pudge” Henkel, one of the architects of the revitalization of Playhouse Square dubbed them — made history by putting on a play.

“Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,” a musical revue featuring songs by Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel, opened in 1973. It was Shepardson’s brainchild, a scheme to keep the wrecking ball at bay, the one that was scheduled to turn the State and the Ohio, glorious theatrical “temples,” as he called them, into a parking lot.

Shepardson hoped the cabaret would last a few weeks; it did that and more, clocking a remarkable 522 performances over two and a half years, the longest-running musical in Cleveland history.

Suddenly audiences were flooding downtown, a place people boasted they hadn’t visited in 15 to 20 years, recalled Elaine “Lainie” Hadden, then the incoming president of the Junior League of Cleveland and an early convert to Shepardson’s impossible dream: to save the State, the Ohio and other grand theaters in Playhouse Square from demolition and rescue a once-bustling part of the city from rats and ruin.

“There is a story here,” said Art Falco, president and CEO of Playhouse Square. “And the story is, one person can make a difference. And that person is Ray.”

On the State Theatre stage, Falco and other speakers sat at red-draped cabaret tables — an homage to the ones Shepardson jammed into the lobby to accommodate crowds of up to 400 clamoring to see that little revue. They took the podium one by one to share memories of Shepardson, a farm kid from Seattle who came to Northeast Ohio to work as an administrator for Cleveland schools. Looking for a venue for a meeting, he stumbled onto the showplaces gone to seed.

Henkel, then a young Jones Day lawyer who convinced Cleveland city officials to forestall demolition plans, remembered his old friend as a master of ingenuity. To cool actors dissolving in pools of sweat in the un-air-conditioned State lobby in the summer of ’73, Shepardson strategically positioned buckets of dry ice in the cavernous space and hit them with fans to create a chilly, do-it-yourself breeze.

In raucous, heartfelt tale after tale, friends and colleagues used words like “genius,” “colossus” and “giant” to describe Shepardson and the legacy he left Cleveland and other towns.

Without formal training in the arts, architecture or urban planning, he carved out a specialty, becoming “the world expert on theater restoration,” said close friend and theater director Joe Garry, traveling the country “like Johnny Appleseed,” rescuing 40 theaters across the United States.

“He really was teaching himself as he went along,” said Garry, the former Cleveland State University professor whom Shepardson tapped to direct “Jacques Brel.”

“Ray,” he added, gave up a good job at Cleveland schools to pursue his quixotic vision, “living off the popcorn sales in the lobby.”

He wasn’t a Byronic dreamer but a hands-on doer, shoving pots and pans under leaks in the State Theatre roof to preserve the plaster.

Others recalling the audacious and unstoppable Sherpardson were former Plain Dealer columnist Dick Feagler — “he isn’t gone, and he ain’t never gonna be gone, unless they turn this place into a parking lot,” a shooting offense quipped the newspaper legend — and Dennis Kucinich, via video.

“Though he’s stepped off the stage of life,” Kucinich said, “the applause for him will continue for years to come.”

Though the speeches were moving, none was more poignant than the last, delivered by Bill Shepardson, Ray’s son.

He fought tears and struggled to talk as family pictures flashed behind him on a massive screen: Bill as a boy on his father’s lap; Bill, all grown up and sitting at a bar, Ray beside him, pursing his lips in an exaggerated kiss, about to lay a smacker on his son.

Ray didn’t just bring the magic of theater to Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and a host of other metropolises where he salvaged old vaudeville halls and grand movie palaces. He took his boy to shows at the places he saved. Bill hung out backstage with Bill Cosby. Marie Osmond once serenaded him in front of a sold-out house.

“I thought every kid got to explore abandoned theaters and climb scaffolding 100 feet in the air.”

He asked that those gathered remember his father not with a moment of silence but with cheers. As he left the lights of the podium, the crowd leaped to its feet and roared.

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