Remembering Uncle Leo Weidenthal,The Lion of Willowdale

  Sitting across the dinner table from him, as I often did, one would be hard pressed to recognize that this quiet, scholarly man had been the hard hitting, investigative City Hall reporter for the Plain Dealer. Revered and sometimes feared by the town’s leading politicos.  City fathers dubbed him Leo the Lion of Willowdale for his journalistic tenacity. (“Willowdale”—the English translation of Weidenthal).   When he got on to a story or a cause, he never let go.  Among the more esoteric were the Shakespeare Cultural Garden which he campaigned for in 1916, the Hebrew Gardens, and the Cleveland Cultural Gardens which came eleven years later.  He and his brother (my grandfather Maurice who later founded the Jewish Independent) successfully campaigned for the creation of the Mall surrounded by stately public buildings, from Public square to the lake. 

  Brothers Leo and Maurice were avid Zionists in the late 19th and early 20th century, long before it was a popular American Jewish cause.  When he retired as a reporter in 1917 to become editor of the Jewish Independent following the death of Maurice, City Council unanimously voted to name a street in the west side in his honor. They called it Willowdale Ave., perhaps because the Weidenthal family first settled on the west bank of the Cuyahoga in what is now Tremont in the 1840’s and 50’s.
 
  Leo Weidenthal, who shared his birthday (April 23rd) each year with William Shakespeare,  compiled and catalogued an important Shakespeare and theater collection which now resides in the Cleveland Public Library in his honor. As a reporter in 1916 he convinced city leaders to create the Shakespeare gardens in Rockefeller Park marking the 300th anniversary of the death of the Bard. World famous actresses Julia Marlowe and Ethel Barrymore came to plant trees at its opening. It was in May of 1927, the Cultural Gardens Federation, with Weidenthal as the founder and honorary chairman, was able to convince the City Council to establish the Cleveland Cultural Gardens. The Hebrew Garden was first. (Chaim Weitzman was there for the opening.).  
  Later came a chain of ethnic gardens along the winding park and Doan brook on that is now MLK Blvd. The 80th anniversary of this event was celebrated last year with festive events at most of the gnever married and lived most of his adult life in an apartment on Sterns Rd. near University Circle. He prophetically bemoaned in print about the widening of Sterns Rd. through University Circle. “It may make it easier to get into the city,” he wrote, “but it also makes it easier to get out.”

  In 1962 Louis Seltzer, editor of The Cleveland Press, wrote a column dedicated to him:  “You, Leo,” he wrote, “are a great citizen of your home city, and in your lifetime have helped as much or more than any other in your generation to keep it great.”

  Weidenthal died in 1967 at age 89, still living within the city of Cleveland, where he was born and lived his entire life. He would have it no other way.


Leo Weidenthal is inducted posthumously into the Cleveland Cultural Gardens International Hall of Fame. I accept on his behalf: