John A Hrones, Jr.

So sorry for your loss, Jeff.

Cheryl Kushner (Lane)

Jeff, I am so sorry.  May her memory be for a blessing.

Alaina Weisman (Zachary)

Sounds like an extordinary woman. Blessings, dear Jeff.

Shirley Ann Kimball (Carpenter)

What a beautiful tribute, Jeff. Mary lives on in the hearts of so many. May you and yours cherish your memories. Blessings to you. 

Dick Margulis (Margulis)

My sincere condolences, Jeff.

Joseph G Blake

I have otherwise mentioned this book on here but it comes out August 22.  

It is called Dreamtown, Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equality.

The author is Laura Meckler who is a writer at the Washington Post. She graduated from the high school mid 1980s. She has written about Shaker in her WP column in 2019.  I was lucky enough to help her with research about Shaker Heights and its development under the Vans and some related topics.

For those living in Cleveland there will be several events about the book in late August. 

• Mark your calendars for an upcoming event:

     -Aug. 22: Launch event at Loganberry Books, Shaker Heights, in conversation with Mark Joseph, 7 p.m. 

     -Aug. 26: Book talk at the Shaker Heights Public Library, in conversation with Paul Mason, 2 p.m. This event can be watched on line. You can register at the library web site after July 29. 

     -Aug. 30: Book talk at Politics and Prose, Connecticut Avenue location in DC, 7 p.m. 

     -Sept. 13: NPC Headliners Book Event, National Press Club, Washington, 6:30 p.m.

Here is a book review.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/laura-meckler/dream-town-shaker-heights/

The Publisher Henry Holt, describes DREAM TOWN:



In this searing and intimate examination of the ideals and realities of racial integration, award-winning Washington Post journalist Laura Meckler tells the story of a decades-long pursuit in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and uncovers the roadblocks that have threatened progress time and again—in housing, in education, and in the promise of shared community.

In the late 1950s, Shaker Heights began groundbreaking work that would make it a national model for housing integration. And beginning in the seventies, it was known as a crown jewel in the national move to racially integrate schools. The school district built a reputation for academic excellence and diversity, serving as a model for how white and Black Americans can thrive together. Meckler—herself a product of Shaker Heights—takes a deeper look into the place that shaped her, investigating its complicated history and its ongoing challenges in order to untangle myth from truth. She confronts an enduring, and troubling, question—if Shaker Heights has worked so hard at racial equity, why does a racial academic achievement gap persist? In telling the stories of the Shakerites who have built and lived in this community, Meckler asks: What will it take to fulfill the promise of racial integration in America? What compromises are people of all races willing to make? What does success look like, and has Shaker achieved it?

The result is a complex and masterfully reported portrait of a place that, while never perfect, has achieved more than most and a road map for communities that seek to do the same.

Read it and we can disucss it here and at the reunuion next year. Maybe we can get Laura to come and tell us more about it.

Thanks

Joe

Joseph G Blake

I just learned about this great exhibit at the Jewish Musuem in NYC.

https://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/the-sassoons

It is an exhibit about the Sassoon family whose heritage begins in Iraq and then to India and finally the UK. 

The exhibit includes artwork and paintings of them by John Singer Sargent. It is there until August 13.

If you are in the NY area please see it. I cannot.

Circa 1999 the museum featured a group of Sargent paintings of the family of Asher Wertheimer. He was an art dealer in London circa 1900 and represented Sargent as his agent. The collection was superb and was then on loan from the Tate. 

It is also worth learning more about the Sassoons if you have an interest in British history. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Sassoon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aline_Caroline_de_Rothschild

All the best,

Joe

Larry L Nudelman

Greetings to my fellow Shaker Classmates. Hope you all have a safe and fun summer wherever you are.

Having over the past few years hearing about the various books or articles written about the diversity of Shaker Heights, it brought back my Memories of my growing up in shaker that were a little different of those that I heard of in our message forum. From the time I was about 10 years old I had a Paper route. Remember them?   First I had a Sun Press route. After a couple of years I also had a Clevend Press route for the daily news, and then also a Cleveland Plain Dealer Route for the morning news.  All three routes were including about 130 or so customers that took one or more of the 3 papers.  I did this till I was about 17 years old.  All in there were about eight or nine streets from VanAken to Lomond from Sussex to Gridley.  There was such a diversity of people that lived there That as a child, I thought nothing of it.  I would help one elderly oriental woman (as I child that is how I would describe her) take her groceries to he second floor Kitchen.  She was a newspaper customer.  She would tip me with 50 cents worth of empty pop bottles to return to the store.  I had a negro family I would help with cutting their lawn because the husband was disabled. 

After I was 14,  I also worked at Lynnfield Drug Store, at Lynnfield and Chagrin Blvd as a Soda Jerk.  Now that was a dream job for 75 cents and hour, and all the Malted Shakes I could get.  Half of my pay check went to Mounds candy bars.  Working there,  people so diverse would come in there for what ever they needed and  just talk like they might in a corner Bar, but this was a place that there was a Pharmacist that maybe new more about them,  than anyone else.  Back then people would talk to the Pharmacist a then consult a Doctor.  The Pharmacist would always tell me, "what you hear here never leaves here", and I under stood.  I would deliver their Prescriptions and maybe some groceries from the Bordonaro's grocery next door.  I was invited into so many peoples homes and never thought twice about it,

I realize it was a different time in the 50's and 60's , where most people never locked ther doors, and didn't carry a key to there house unless it was on with their car keys.  SUCH FOND MEMORIES.

Joseph G Blake

Thanks Larry. I never did any of that. But I do recall Miller Drug at Avalon and Chagrin and the pharmcist there and the lunch counter. One of my sisters circa 1950 had a crush on the soda jerk as they were called. She was much older than I was at the time.

What you say about the drug stores of that era is very true. They knew their customers very well. 

Thanks for sharing. I admire your enterprise. I will never be able to think Cleveland Press and recall Louis Seltzer and the Shepherd case. When the Shepherd conviction was reversed by the Supreme Court (recall F Lee Bailey) Seltzer was summoned to the NYC offices of Scripps Howard Newspapers and fired. 

Joe

Betsy Dennis (Frank)

When Bordonaro's closed I did miss it when I would visit my mom. Family run grocery stores are few and far between. We are lucky to have one here in Terre Haute. 

Dana Shepard (Treister)

Larry~

I do hope you are recording these priceless memories for your children and your grandchildren - we were coming of age in a world so different from the world we all know today!

My Shaker Heights childhood jobs were limited to babysitting - mostly families right on my block of Avalon between Lomond and Scottsdale - and then summers with Shaker Recreation Day Camp as a kinderarten counselor at Lomond, and eventually as the Arts and Crafts director at Sussex.  Although I didn't have the breadth of interpersonal interactions in my yourthful vocations as you did as a "paper boy" and "soda jerk", I can relate to the kinder and gentler times of "our day".  In some ways it seems like ancient history, doesn't it?!

Regarding my memories triggered by Joe's reflections on what you posted, Larry: 

>  The drugstore at the corner of Avalon and Chagrin (aka 'Kinsman') -- it was Avalon Drug back in my day!  I would stop on my way home from school for a 5 cent coke - or maybe the 5 cents was the surcharge for making it a cherry coke?

>Dr. Sam Sheppard (not Shepherd) murdered his wife in 1954, when I we would have been in 2nd or 3rd grade.  The trial generated so much publicity...  As my maiden name was "Shepard", I was constantly being asked if we were related, which was just mortifying to me as a little girl.  Much as I tried to point out that my name had only one "p", the questions persisted...  Funny thing is, I had totally forgotten about the Suprem Court reversal!  By the time that happened, I was in college, and I guess my Wash U classmates could spell better than my Lomond School 2nd grade classmates...

Thanks again, Larry, for sharing your reflections of life in Shaker... 7 decades ago!

Craig Miller

Hello Larry,

I also had a Plain Dealer route which, to me, was the cat's meow. It was all residential, meaning lots of walking or on a bicycle with baskets. Early rise and shine. If I didn't get up, I didn't get paid. That was good incentive. And it was time to myself, with no interference.  Saturday was collect paper-route-money day. Lots of friendly conversations, with the occasional cookie or pastry thrown in. And later, it was tea or coffee.

This next paragrah is for Dana too, if she's reading. I had a debate with a girlfriend in high school. More of a dare on her part, really. Could boys babysit as good as girls. I tested it out on the neighborhood kids. I would showup with a ball and insist that sneakers and dungarees were the proper attire. The strategy was to rum 'em into the ground. Dodge ball; soccer; tag; hide and seek. And where possible, tree climbing. Dirty clothes into the laundry, bath and bed. No complaints. My prize was a Big Boy at Manners. Remember that place?

Are kids even allowed to climb trees anymore? Anyway. Fond memories of days gone by in a galaxy far, far, away.

(:raig

Joseph G Blake

Joseph G Blake

Craig,

I was a terrible baby sitter both in high school and as a parent. I lacked your imagination for how to wear them out. I could take the chidlren to the movies or a museum. That worked but cooking was never my strong characteristic. Also laundry.

But somehow Jane never divorced or murdered me.

Joe

Betsy Dennis (Frank)

I used to walk to Avalon Drug all the time as I lived on Gridley. I also remember when the house on the corner of Chagrin and Palmerston was literally moved there from somewhere else. 

Arthur Charles Scott

My mother's family, the Petersons, lived in Shaker in a big house on Glengary.  Swedish immigrants - he was a successful building contractor - 5 daughters.  My mother, the eldest, would often mention that "Joe Heinen used to deliver our groceries".  One time I was with her, shopping at the Heinens on Chagrin near Avalon and she recognized Joe, introduced herself and reminisced about his being the family delivery boy.  I imagine he got that a lot, and "of course" he remembered the Petersons (whether he did or not).  But in any case they had a nice conversation.

Joseph G Blake

My parents moved to Shaker as newlyweds in 1928.  My mother had similar conversations with Joe Heinen. They had a store on Chagrin in 1928. We had a charge account there and they delivered to our house on Dorchester.  That all changed when they opened a much larger store on Chagrin in 1953. What was the  address on Glengary? I always enjoy seeing the building card for houses.

A few years ago his grandson told me he was happy not to compete with Wegman's in the east.

I understand that Chicago was an attractive place to build new Heinen stores based on size, relative affluence in Barrington where they opened the first store in Chicago, and it could be supported from Cleveland. 

Dana Shepard (Treister)

Craig~

Yes, I am indeed still following this delightful nostalgia thread.  Love the babysitting story -- my boyfriend sometimes joined me on my babysitting gigs, but I think it was always after my charges were asleep - he was clearly not as pro-active as you.  And of course I remember Manner's - the battered and friend mushrooms and the strawberry pie - I can almost still conjure up the smells and flavors.

Arthur + Joe - thanks for the Joe Heinen anecdotes-- I knew nothing of the family but loved shopping at the one on Chagrin (back when it was Kinsman...) between Avalon + Lee.

Betsy Dennis (Frank)

On Fresh Air (NPR) today, Terry Gross will be interviewing the author of Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equality by Laura Meckler. 

Lesley Dormen

Betsy, thank you so much for the Fresh Air alert. I'm going to listen right now.

Joseph G Blake

Thanks Betsy. I heard it and its so well done. Laura has written a great story. Please listent to the interview. Its A+

William A Sokol

I try to stay out of this wonderful stuff, though it is great fun to read. But I just want to correct a misimpression in an earlier post that Dr. Sam murdered his wife, Marilyn. Actually, it's fairly clear he did NOT. In his second trial, he was fully acquitted after a brilliant dissection of the prosecution's totally crap case. And perhaps more important, his son, Chip, was one of my favorite guests on my old radio talk show out here in the Bay Area, as he built a very impressive case, based not least of all on DNA proof derived from a third person's blood in the house. He showed fairly conclusively that a handyman who knew Dr Sam's house well, and eventually went to prison for life for beating another woman to death, was the person who actually broke into the house and killed her...not to mention that he was an accomplished burglar whose stash included two of Marilyn's rings....one of the great miscarriages of justice because of a prosecutor and judge and newspaper editor determined to take down Dr. Sam. And Dr. Sam ended up totally broken - after 10 years in prison, ended up as a professional wrestler who drank himself to death....

Joseph G Blake

Your recollection of the events post the first trial are the same as mine. I offer no opinion about Sam's guilt or innocence. We will never know the full story now. But the case has always made me appreciate the strict control of press information in the UK after an indictment is made. Before the indictment, the press may say what it pleases. After the indictment or charging of the accused, the media may only publish what is revealed in court testimony. There is no conjecture or editiorials offering opinions or alternative theoriues for the case. 

Thanks for the input. Where is the son now? His second wife was from Germany. She was Magda Goebbel's half sister. 

Joe

William A Sokol

Joe - no need to express an opinion on his innocence but if you read Chip's book or read the transcript of the trial when he tried to get Dr Sam totally exonerated, I don't think there is much doubt at all....

As to Goebbel's wife's half sister, Dr Sam married her, not Chip....and it did not last....arghhhh. As for Chip, he still lives in Oakland Ca, 75 years old, just keeps on truckin...this is where he grew up, in the family of a cousin, who is the mom to one of my son's friends...which is how this all followed me out here....life is a real adventure!

Keep on doing all that wonderful Shaker history! As Harry Truman is reputed to have said, 'nothibng new under the sun except the history you haven't read".....

Joseph G Blake

Thanks Bill. Yes I expressed that poorly. I meant Dr Sam married Magda's half sister. 

I hope Chip found some happiness given the dark shadows around his youth.  Hope to see you at our reunion in just under a year. 

Joe