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.

Chagrin Falls is Chagrin Falls Again

      I drove into Chagrin Falls the other day without once hitting a man made chuck hole in the road, clanking over a metal plate, dodging an orange barrel, or evading a front-end loader. It struck me that Chagrin Falls’ downtown renovation is complete.   No more jumping over moats or sloshing in the mud to get into shops. Now there are real sidewalks and curbs, new old-fashioned streetlights, and the rest. It was all pristine and like its old self, but a bit upgraded. Chagrin Falls is Chagrin Falls again.

Halloween

  The other day we got this very official looking, serious sounding letter signed by the police chief, the mayor and the Superintendent of Schools in  telling us exactly when, how and under what circumstances Halloween would be celebrated this year in our tony top-ranked suburb. A little spooky I thought to myself, having grown up in a Cleveland suburb not far away, but a long time ago. How times have changed, I thought to myself, as I tucked the letter away in a file, just in case. You never know.

The Other Sam Sheppard

  In the first week of my first year at Heights High back in the 40’s we had “orientation” in the auditorium.  In the front of the room were these big good- looking guys. They all were wearing Heights letter sweaters indicating their athletic prowess.

   As an aspiring sports writer, I immediately idolized each one of them.  Including Sam Sheppard, who was president of the senior class and gave us a welcoming speech talking about how great life can be at our new high school.  Mr. Morley, the bald headed principal, spoke too.
But I was really awed by Sam.

Resurrecting Memorial Day

  

Why Not Numero UNO in our Metroplex?

  Given the positive changes in the higher education establishment Columbus these days, and the newly emerged focus on regional development, the time may be right to consider the creation of a truly great regional state university in our part of Ohio: our Northeast Ohio “Metroplex”. 

  We could call it the University of Northeastern Ohio -UNO. Potentially a first rate public university on a par with the best in undergraduate, graduate and research-related education.

And although UNO would not single handedly solve all our Metro area’s problems, it could be another piece in the complex struggle to create, or perhaps recreate, our region (the Cleveland, Akron-Canton, Youngstown triangle) into something with a heart and a soul.

Welcome to My Shtetl—or is it a Shtot?

  If I do a Google satellite search to my house in the very heart of Beachwood, then pull back perhaps a mile in each direction, I will have, in the camera’s eye, what is perhaps the most impressive aggregation of Jewish institutions in the Western world.

  Welcome to my shtetl, or, to be more technically and historically correct, my shtot. 

  There is something enormously impressive, yet curious, about, what has become of this very small area of the Greater Cleveland Metropolitan area in a relatively few short years. Not long ago this same community found itself angry and deeply divided over what seemed to be happening. The New York Times included us in a major Jew vs. Jew Sunday Magazine special. Perhaps the time has come for that gray lady and the story’s author to re-visit my shtetl.

Watching King Kong At Paul Newman's

Robert & Jane Newman

  I was talking on the phone with Jane Newman in Stamford Conn. the other day. We talk more frequently these days now that her husband, Robert, my first cousin, died late last year at age 91. Jane is very lonely and misses the love of her life.

  And well she might.

  It had been a magnificent marriage, and Jane who married Robert later in life found the perfect mate. Robert, a renaissance man for his time, a retired vice president for finance and product development at General Electric, and Jane a retired librarian. He collected rare ancient coins, traveled the world, made magnificently produced films of almost every country in the world.  On his 80th birthday he and Jane traveled around the world, Europe, Siberia, Mongolia, China. (They never missed their traditional two Martinis before dinner, even on the Siberian Express.) It is all recorded and meticulously narrated on film.

A Passionate Pursuit of Paradise

It Might As Well Be Spring, Be Spring, Be Spring

  When I was a little boy a very long time ago I got sick with a cold that settled in my ear.  An infection developed and a doctor, who I really hated, came to the house sat on me and lanced the infection.

  And if that weren’t bad enough he told me that I couldn’t go outside for two weeks.  It was the middle of April; I had already begun a life-long love affair with spring.

  I knew that by May first most of the trees, the huge Dutch elms and oaks in our Cleveland Heights neighborhood would begin to burst into leaf. (You could almost hear it happening)