The Merry-Go-Round (As told to Dr. Freud)

Doc, you probably don't remember when Euclid Beach closed in the fall of '69. It was an amusement park loved by kids and grown-ups alike. Something like that marvelous park you had in Grinzing, with that great ferris wheel. Remember that movie "The Third Man"? It was filmed there.

One of my favorite rides at Euclid Beach was called the American Racing

Derby, a very fast merry-go-round. The horses really raced each other.

We loved it, but as I recall, when it stopped we all came out a little dizzy.

Which takes me to my story.

Leading the Public Affairs team at Tri-C was like that merry-go-round.

You have great fun, Doc, going round and round, but it also had its ups and

downs. Looking back I would say there were more ups than downs. But when the music stopped, it was a real downer.

Some of the most inspiring moments for me were our Monday staff

meetings. The team loved them. Each member had an opportunity to describe their project; be it a celebration, a fund raising campaign, the catalog, television advertising, what have you.

It was an amazing group, including Sandy and Leslie, who I found deep in the bowels of the Tri-C Metro Campus. I had known Sandy from her winning reputation as journalism instructor. Leslie was like her unindentical twin. We found Marcia, of all places, at Mt. Sinai Hospital. I knew she was right for the team when she withstood a withering cross-examination by Ellison in his office.
"We got a gem!" I told Sandy.

Joyce was already on board as fundraiser and levy expert, and her expertise was invaluable. Audrey was rock solid as our administrative assistant, bringing order out of chaos, and Dolores and Joanne were assigned to cover our outposts at the Western and Eastern campuses.

It may sound corny, but we, and others not mentioned, almost instinctively made beautiful music together, and I saw myself as sort of a concert master. Our work brought us great rewards, even at the top, where President Ellison loved parties, making speeches, and raising money touting tax levies. We did that all with great creativity and teamwork. 

We won fifty-two national awards for excellence in nine years, including the national award for best education marketing and public relations project of the year from CASE. (The Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) With the help of the $500 prize, I took members of the team to San Diego to be on hand for the awards ceremony.

Teamwork. Here's one for the books. When the U.S Maritime Academy approached the college for a partnership, Ellison asked us to get the word out. It was a creative challenge. Somehow we thought of one of those huge ore ships that docked on the Cuyahoga. Why not, we asked one another.

“I know the PR guy at the Mather Steamship,” sandy said. And we

were off and running.

At the next staff meeting we mentioned this far out idea. Leslie immediately said, “I'll do the party on the dock.”

“I'll get the NCJW to manage the hosting and the food,” said Joyce. Audrey, bless her heart reminded us that this might cost considerable money. “We'll get it from Ellison,” I promised.

And so the bizarre encounter with the flats, a huge ore carrier, police boats, and balking labor unions, fell into place. It wasn't easy but it worked. Except it turned out to be a freezing day with snow coming in off the lake. A highlight was the dedication of the tech center, where ground was broken by a robot.

I must tip my hat to that team, who still gather annually for a reunion these last 26 years. Love those folks. Geniuses all.

But the downside was grim. The boss had a giant electric temper that belied his sweet smile and gentleness. He would fire people on the spot for being late to a meeting, and the hire them back. He literally got into a fist fight in his office with the superintendent of the Cleveland schools, which we managed to cover up. When someone tipped off the Plain Dealer, they sent a reporter. The operative answer was "what fight"? (today they would say what collusion?) And not a word saw the light of day in the paper.

When Ellison and the president of CSU, had a disagreement in a meeting at CSU, he stripped off his suit coat and his glasses and went after President Waetjen, a one time college football player, he responded in kind. It took the entire group at the meeting to pull them apart. Again, the word was "what fight?" and nobody leaked. Nobody. I thought myself, "A hell of a story.”

I must say, Ellison was a master at playing the good guy. And he truly believed believed that I was doing my job of polishing his image and the image of the college.

That was, until an unpleasant young reporter from the Plain Dealer, don't recall her name, Doctor, started asking some hard questions in a meeting I attended. I could see Ellison’s his face turning red.

“Are you investigating me?” he snarled. “Get out of my office. I don't ever want to see you again!”

He lunged at her as she left. I was stunned. I knew this woman. She was the kind who would do anything for a story; anything to destroy someone's image.

I met with her the next day and got the gist of her story. Ellison had hired the former President of the University of the District of Columbia to come to work at Tri-C full time with a lofty salary, for a special urban studies project. What had been leaked to the PD was that the new hire had been fired in DC, and then charged by a grand jury for stealing valuable property from the president's house. (Also and he came without a job description or a signed application.)

There was no way I could stop the publishing of the story the next morning. Ellison raged.

I did all I could to diminish the flames. The personnel office produced an after-the-fact signed job application and job description, not really kosher, to soften the blow. I arranged a meeting between Ellision and Tom Vail, the publisher and editor of the Plain Dealer. We went to Vail's office. I tried to calm Ellison down by talking about my experiences in WW II with General Patton, telling him how scared I was, but how I pulled myself together and survived. (At that moment I wished I was back in Germany instead of in this hot seat in Cleveland.) But my guy calmed down and walked into Vail's office, sweet as a pussy cat. After a number of exchanges, Vail attempted to assure him that the Plain Dealer has been leading the fight for racial equality. Vail promised to look into the matter of this young reporter. Ellison seemed satisfied and thought he had seen the last of the reporter, but of course he was wrong.

I saw danger down the road.

The next morning at the top of the editorial page was a sizeable editorial: "Seeing Red About Green.” (Green was the DC guy's name.) The boss went into a rage again. It was a fairly mild editorial in my mind, but there was no way of calming the boss.

“Racist bastards!,” he howled.

Dr. Green was a reasonable guy and things settled down when the Grand Jury in Washington found him not guilty on all six counts. This soft spoken academic had gotten himself embroiled in ugly DC politics, and had paid the price. But he survived.

But the PD wasn't through. One more scandal brought us very close to a parting of the ways. It involved the president of the Eastern Campus. She was a bit arrogant and not liked by much the faculty. One day word came downtown that she was in a brawl with the faculty over her thoughtless and stupid habit of parking her Mercedes in a garage built for ambulances and vans dropping off handicapped students. As news guy I saw this as a potential disaster, and I told Ellison at a meeting in his office on a Saturday, that it would probably appear on page one the next morning.

“What should we do? What should we say?”

“Don't do anything,” Ellison said, as we walked out.

"It will give her some humility".

“Yes sir,” I said, and left.

“This is it,” I said to myself.

I called the Eastern Campus pres. at her Gold Coast home in Lakewood, and told her not to say anything to reporters. I learned later that she had spilled the beans herself, calling the Tri-C faculty "a bunch of children."

The next morning, there it was across the bottom of page one: A photo of her and the Mercedes in the handicapped garage. And a side story about a disabled young student in a wheel chair, describing how they had to push him through the snow to get into the building from his parent's van.

It was awful. But I did nothing.

What she did was indefensible. I knew that after nine mostly rewarding years my time was about up. And I was the fall guy.

Or was I?

Tell you next time.

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 Muckraker (part two) As Told To Dr. Freud (Sending a boy to do a man's job.)

I'm sorry I missed my session last week, Doctor, but I had a bad cold and I didn't want to give it to you. Your wife said it was your policy that I had to pay for missed sessions. I gave her my card. (He nodded at me looking not at all embarrassed. I was annoyed, but I didn't say anything.)

Just to sum up from last time Doc, you recall that I was hired by the Press right out of college, spent a few days in Toledo, then hopped the Mercury Streamliner to begin my career as a journalist.

You might expect that at my moment of triumph, I would have jumped off the train at the terminal, grabbed a bus, and headed to Ninth St. and the Press to report for work. Instead took a deep breath, and took the Cedar Hill trolley up to the Heights for home. I had to find a white shirt, a narrow tie, and get a haircut and shave.

The Cedar Hill trolley

Maurice Weidenthal, my grandfather

A few days later, with dreams of becoming some kind of hot shot editor, I walked into Norman Shaw's office and presented myself for the coronation, so to speak. After all, he did call my home asking about me, right Doc?!

Shaw was a fine looking, cool type with graying hair and a straight serious face. He was an Oberlin man, the son of a Plain Dealer editor. He was much the antithesis of Press editor Louis B.Seltzer, who left school after junior high to find his way in journalism. Kind of a balance at the top, which as it turned out, worked very well.

It wasn't long into our conversation when Shaw noted that his father, Archer Shaw, and my grandfather, Maurice, had worked together at the Plain Dealer at the turn of the century. He as associate editor, my grandad as politics writer and theater critic. I said to myself, it’s my name he wants, not me or my great talents. My ego sank. I was hurt inside. Yes, Doc, it hurt.

It sank even deeper when I was told that there weren't any real reporter or editing jobs open at the moment; that I would have to start as a copy boy. Oh my God, I thought to myself, how much can my fragile manhood take?

Enough of this “boy” stuff!

But I sucked it up, Doctor, and took the job, still at $35 a week. I forgot to tell you that part of the job was to clean and fill paste pots. Each writer had a coffee cup filled with paste, necessary to clip and paste copy after proof reading or edits. It was a messy job, especially when you consider how easy it is to cut and paste on the computer these days.

My plan was to do a first class job, even with the paste pots. (Which I became very good at, by the way.) I’d get to know the territory and become friendly with some of the big guys that I admired. One of them was Dick Peters, a genuine Yalie, who looked the part. Like Shaw, he was tall, with silvering, thinning, graying hair, in his early 40's and straight as an arrow. I learned that he’d been General Douglas MacArthur’s PR guy during the war in the Pacific. I fantasized that he was there when MacArthur made his famous return to the Philippines. Maybe he even wrote the line.

Peters lived on Princeton Rd. in Cleveland Heights with his father, who was the headmaster at University School. For some reason, Peters and I hit it off. After a few months of "boy" work, Peters approached me one day saying,

"We’re going to try an experiment in our department. We need young blood and we want you to join us.”

 I was stunned. Flattered.

“You start on Monday.”

I didn't quite know how to act. I had to buy more shirts and ties for my transition from filling paste pots, to being an editorial writer. It was a real coup. There were four men in the department. I would become the fifth. My job was to deal with letters to the editor, pick out the best, and confirm their authenticity.

I would also help in the back room laying out the page, proofreading, and making the morning deadline. It was cool. And I tried to act normal among my comrades who worked in the chaotic City Room.

After awhile I was given the latitude to crank out editorials on fairly non controversial subjects. One of my first ventures into the world of editorial writing, was a full page editorial I wrote for the Saturday page, calling for a rebuilding of the Cleveland Airport, which was, at that time, nothing more than a backwater pre war facility with no concourses or jet ways. We ran three rather large aerial photos of the three area regional airports; Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit. The other two were already in the construction stage. As usual, Cleveland was slow to catch up. We were entering a new era of jet travel, and Cleveland was falling behind, being dragged down by the small mindedness at City Hall, while Detroit and Pittsburgh were taking a regional approach.

Cleveland Hopkins Airport 1956

We did get some action, when the city announced it was tacking on two concourses to the existing building, but the basic small mindedness continues to this very day.

I learned a lot about the inside of the big city paper while working “up front”, as they called it. There was always this behind-the-scene tension between the local editors and the Scripps Howard owners. Scripps was conservative, and owned a chain of papers across the country. It also owned Cleveland's first television station, WEWS. (Remember Dorothy Fuldheim?)

Dorothy Fuldheim

The Press was populist liberal. Scripps didn't worry about the local stuff. It sold papers. But on major national matters, we were being watched.

Roy Cohn and Jospeh McCarthy

Those were the days of that evil man, Joe McCarthy. The editorial writers wanted to tee off on this man and the witch hunt. He was no Trump, but in those days, many felt he was a threat to the nation. He had destroyed the lives of many good people in his so-called Communist Crusade. His side kick was nasty New York lawyer, Roy Cohn, who in later years turned up advising Trump. 

Finally, aggressive lawyer Jack Welch, from Massachusetts stood up, as he defended members of the Armed services. 

He looked McCarthy in the eyes and declared,

“You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"

McCarthy eventually faded into obscurity, done in by growing opposition, good journalism, his own nastiness and alcoholism.

A lesson from history. 

The truth does matter.

Next: (My Life as a Cop Watcher )

My Life as a Wolverine with PTSD As Told to Dr. Freud

Frankly Doctor, the end of the war may have solved the world's problems, but not all of mine. Let me explain.

Yes. I was home, alive, a hero of sorts, clutching a four year free ride at the University of Michigan, thanks to the GI Bill.

Yes, the home of the Victors Valiant, where athletes were students, where winning was a tradition. Where campus life is everything that a battle weary soldier might desire. I wanted to become one of them. A victor, a winner.

A man.

But it really didn't work out that simply.

First my girlfriend Rita and I broke up. Once I shed my ribbon draped uniform the glamour was gone. That hurt, Doctor. It really did! Was I less handsome? Less masculine? Inside I felt okay. My hormones were raging. Perhaps hers weren't. You know what they say about Jewish girls.

Dr. Freud looked up at me through his squinting eyes.

"Son, you should know that is a myth," he said with a knowing smile.

("That little old guy was a fount of wisdom," I remember telling myself a couple of years later.)

Rita moved with her family to Waukegan, Illinois and attended the University of Illinois. (More on that later.)

I told myself that campus life in the coveted Ann Arbor, would heal the wounds of my fragile sense of self, as I made the transition into civilian life.

The first psychological blow was my assignment to live in Willow Run Village, a make-shift development built by the government to house laborers in Henry Ford’s Willow Run Bomber Plant, where they built the B-24 Liberator bombers that helped win the war. Now it was empty and the university, desperate for housing, grabbed it.

When I arrived in Ann Arbor I found the town and university swarming with ex Gl's, most on the GI Bill. I was one of them; just another number at the very overcrowded university.

The "village" looked very much like the barracks back at Indiantown Gap where I did my basic training. It was in Ypsilanti, an ugly town, 12 miles from Ann Arbor. 

Can you imagine Doctor, my dream of campus life, relegated to a barracks and riding a school bus to and from campus? Maybe that was it, Doctor. Was that it? There weren't many women at Willow Run Village.

He grunted. Put down his pipe and and picked up his pencil.

"Ya" he said. “Tell me some more."

What I saw of the campus was through the window of a rattling school bus. The high point of the barracks life was listening on my radio to the Cleveland Indians play the Boston Red Sox in the World Series.

Even that didn't rock my soul.

I wound up the session by telling the doctor, of my difficult experience with class registration. We gathered in huge, impersonal classrooms (lecture halls) where professors, some well known, read from their so called scholarly books.

For example, our European History class with Professor Reichenbach was held in the lobby of the University museum. There were, perhaps, 500 folding chairs in this cavernous space. Since the bus from Ypsilanti was usually late, I always sat near the back. I could barely understand or hear what he was saying as he read from his book, which I am sure was a great literary document. I rarely took notes. It was uninspiring, to say the least.

I knew that something unsavory was happening. I couldn't concentrate. I was depressed.

Finally, I went to the University Health Service to see a "counselor". There was what he called a “Worry Bird" on his desk.

"Give your problems to the bird. Maybe you will feel better".

I scoffed.

Can you imagine that, Doctor? A worry bird!

Instead I headed back to Cleveland for a serious mid semester rest and visit to a real therapist, who I had known. That, and the change of scenery helped and I soon made it back to Ann Arbor, just in time to finish the semester with acceptable grades.

There was hope.

Next: My major campus achievements in Ann Arbor...