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.
