My Life As a Muckracker As told to Dr. Freud (part seven)

Funny, Doc., how life goes on even in the worst of times. Like the 60’s, for example. I know, people listened to the news and read their papers, thank goodness! But for our generation who had emerged from the war, we looked ahead to a family, a home, ordinary stuff. Maybe we were in denial. 

DENIAL. Good word, Doc?

The Goff Estate, Bratenahl

For me, getting ahead in my chosen profession and getting married were my priorities, and of course, building a family. I rented a very nice three bedroom cottage on an estate on the shores of Lake Erie in Bratenahl. Our home was the gardener’s cottage of the Goff Estate on nine acres, with a beach and a barbeque.

Frederick Goff had been the president of Cleveland Trust, Mayor of Glenville, and helped to establish the Cleveland Foundation. When he and his wife died, it was directed that his estate be torn down, and the property sold. We lasted about six months in that little slice of paradise. We loved to show it off to baffled out of town friends and relatives. We tried to sell them on the idea that this was typical Cleveland living. It may have worked.

By 1960 it was clear that my wife Grace, was physically unable to bear children. After consulting some top docs in town we decided to adopt. We had purchased a lovely little 1917 house on Coleridge Rd. in Cleveland Heights. It was a wonderful tree lined street of older homes, that began at Lee Rd. and ended at Coventry at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

We went through the adoption process, applying to the Jewish Children’s Bureau. After we passed through the interview questions I met with the director.   

“I think we have the perfect child for you!” he whispered.

And he was right!  But “perfect” was an understatement. The moment we met, we stared into each other's eyes and knew we were soul mates. Our little girl, Susan. Our gift for the sixties.

We still joke today that she was so perfect, she could change her own diaper. If there was ever a poster child for the perfect adoption, Susan was it.

A moment or two about my professional life, Doc. After all, I had to make enough money to send Susan to best the journalism school. I fantasized her as the first female editor of the New York Times. I, of course, was well ahead of my time.

One of the joys of being a journalist in the prime moments of life, Doctor, is that you not only learn about history, but you live it, observe it up close, and write about it as best you can, without malice to one side or the other. It wasn’t easy to do that in those turbulent times.

We were expected to be impartial observers, and to the extent that my restraint allowed me, I kept the faith. That, in my mind, is journalism. In the midst of a war and later the nation and a world in turmoil, I think about that sometimes when I watch FOX or NBC news on TV today.

It was a turn-on, and almost every day was a new adventure. I was often in the right place at the right time. After I was married, I begged off the 5 a.m. shift at the Press, and turned my focus to covering education, cultural development and University Circle, Cleveland’s cultural hub.

Cleveland’s schools, colleges and universities were exploding, so to speak, both figuratively and literally. I had hit the news jackpot. 

The Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education (separate but equal is not equal) had set the stage for upheaval in urban education, first in the south, and then in Boston, and inevitably in Cleveland. The result was a five-year battle in federal court over what the Supreme Court language really meant, and what was going on in Cleveland. The school board, with them attorneys from Squire Sanders fought it every inch of the way, arguing that Cleveland had not intentionally segregated its schools. 

Eventually Federal Judge Frank Battisti, a really tough guy who I never quite figured out, ruled in favor of the NAACP’s claim that Cleveland had violated the edict of the court.

I had researched and prepared a series of articles attempting to explain as simply as I could, how and why the judge could order cross town bussing of thousands of students as a remedy, In hopes that it might calm the reaction. Much understandable frustration followed, but not the brutal battles that were waged in Boston where another judge, had rendered the same remedy. It was done peacefully and perhaps with some positive results. A plus for The Press.

The rape and murder of a Louise Winbigler near Wade Park Lagoon as she walked to Cleveland Orchestra chorus practice, set the stage for enormous change and the creation University Circle Inc. I was on the beat, and the Press led the way in calling for change in that scattered, disconnected array of cultural, musical, and educational organizations. Change that included creating a separate police force, improved lighting, and a plan that would make sense without destroying the surrounding residential areas.       

When students at the Sorbonne University erupted in revolt, in Paris in 1968 I was there. That’s a chapter in itself, Doc. Perhaps I will save for later. I think we are running out of time.

Forgot to mention my coverage of the killings of Kent State students by the National Guard..…the bizarre incidents at Case Western Reserve University, including head bashing on campus by Mayor Stokes’ mounted police. The bombing by student radicals of the Rodin Statue, The Thinker, in front of the art museum, the heavy guns mounted on top of the museum to prevent further incidents, the machine guns mounted on the railroad bridge at the entrance to Little Italy during the Hough and Glenville riots…

Oh yes, there was a war in Vietnam, and Richard Nixon was president.

It was a busy time, Doc. 

Hope you got it all down in your notes.

See ya next week, okay?

My Life As a Muckracker As told to Dr. Freud (part six)

I want to talk about life in the 60’s, Doc. 

It was a very tough time for the country. It was a kind of hell for many Americans, and yet life went on. For me it was a mixed bag. There must be a part of our brain that helps survive times like this.

The good doctor nodded but said nothing.

The very real threat of a nuclear war over Cuba with Russia. (Or “Cuber” as President Kennedy pronounced it.) We came very close. And a few months later he was dead. Some say because of how he dealt with Cuba. Several years later his brother Robert, a candidate for president hoping to continue his brother’s legacy, was murdered in a California hotel. Killed allegedly because of his support of Israel.

The racial uprising in the South, the March on Washington, the assassination in Nashville of Martin Luther King after his great speech in Washington. The riots in the core many of our cities, including Cleveland, that many of us really didn’t really understand. Why would anybody want to burn down their own neighborhoods, Doc? Never quite figured that out.

All punctuated, as the decade closed, with the National Guard killing four protestors on the Kent State campus, marking the end of the riots that flared on campuses across the country.

We lived it, Doc. We lived history, each in our own way. A love affair in New York City, and then three years later, the arrival of our wonderful daughter. For me the 60’s was the best of times, and the worst of times. Yes I was a still a newlywed at the turn of the decade. 

You don’t mind, Doctor, if a go back a couple of years to 1957?
You might find it interesting.

Grace and I were married in a small hotel on Park Ave. We had a wonderful quartet for dancing. Grace’s parents did all the right things, although it must have cost them an arm and a leg. Her mom was a school teacher, her dad, a pharmacist. It was important to them to impress my friends and relatives, and I believe they succeeded, although they may have spent their life savings on the betrothal of their only daughter.

We spent our first night at the Plaza Hotel, a big deal for a working news guy from Cleveland. Didn’t know quite what to expect, particularly when a bellboy burst into our den of love at one in the morning, without knocking. He was carrying a bottle of champagne and a bouquet of flowers. As you might imagine, the room was in disarray, and we were in the process of getting to know one other a little better.

You of all people should understand how “it” was in those days, in the 1950’s, most people waiting until they got married before they did ‘it,"  right, Doc? 

As I recall, we may still have been in the process of figuring “it” all out when the bellboy burst in. May have been a foreshadowing of things to come…that can affect a marriage, right Doc? It was a really a big deal in those first days right?

Of course that it all changed. Now “it” has a different meaning to the kids. They don’t wait get married to do “it”.

In the morning we boarded a flight from LaGuardia to Ft. Lauderdale for our honeymoon, which I had planned, but not as carefully as I should have.

The winter before, I had stayed at little one story motel right on the ocean beach between Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood, in place called Dania. It was recommended to me by one of my colleagues at the Press. Granted, it was no Hilton, not even a Holiday Inn, but it was less expensive and owned by a lovely Greek family. They had offered to let me use their car for most of the two weeks of our stay. They called it something like Knishes by the Sea. Not the kind of knishes we of the Hebrew persuasion understand, but a Greek word that I didn’t understand. 

We drove there from the airport, and the moment Grace laid eyes on the place I could tell she would trade one night a Hilton, for two weeks at Knishes by the Sea.

What did I know about the tastes of New York girls? As I recall she swallowed hard as we got out the car with our luggage and checked in.  

“Welcome to Kinishish by the Sea,” our hostess said, as she took us to our room.

Two single beds! We were stunned. She quickly pushed the beds together and put a spread over them making look like a double.

”I will give some money back,” said our Greek hostess.

“Mrs. Kinish, don’t you know that we are on our honeymoon? “

“I’ll see what I can do tomorrow.”  

It got worse. A storm had been brewing out in the Atlantic, off Dania beach, as we were getting ready for bed. It was windy. Brilliant lightning lit up the room.

 “Don’t worry Grace, it will pass,” I muttered, as I saw water seeping in under the front door. She had already curled up in bed with the blanket over her head.

I cleared my throat and watched the weather report on the TV. The forecast looked ominous. By the end of the night, nine inches of rain had fallen in Dania, and I had seriously considered evacuating the place.

Needless to say, it was a setback in the adventure into holy matrimony for the Weidenthals, but as promised, Mrs. Kineshes showed up bright and early the next day with a smile on her face.

“I found a bigger room for you. It has a real double bed and a couch to sit on."

The rest of Florida adventure into matrimony went relatively well. Do you think, Doc that our dicey encounters would be meaningful to our future relationship, Doc? Done any research?

By the way, in preparation for this document, I did a Google search trying to find my favorite love palace. There was no Kinishes by the Sea. 

Not in Dania, Ft Lauderdale, not in Hollywood, not anywhere.

Good riddance.

See ya next week Doc. There’s a lot to discuss.               

Remembering Kent State

Remembering That Day in May, 1970 
In Volatile Times Words Can be Lethal

 

On the morning of Monday, May 4, 1970 I had decided not to drive down to the Kent State campus to follow up on the continuing student unrest that had flared in recent days. It turned out to be a huge mistake.

I had been down over the weekend. Viewed the disruptions in downtown Kent Saturday night, saw the remains of the ROTC building that had allegedly been torched by students. On Sunday our flamboyant Governor Jim Rhodes, running for the Republican nomination for the Senate, was on campus demanding peace on all campuses in Ohio, and an end to student protests. He called the troublemakers, “worse than Brown shirts, communists and vigilantes.” In a sense lighting the fuse in already emotionally charged environment.