Abstract
Robert Gries was born in Cleveland. For fifty years he was a minority owner of the Cleveland Browns and is a former venture capitalist. Gries is a tireless philanthropist supporting many civic organizations. He served as the finance chair for Carl Stokes’ 1967 mayoral campaign. This 2017 interview was collected as part of a yearlong, community-wide commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Carl Stokes' election as mayor of Cleveland.
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Interviewee
Gries, Robert (interviewee)
Interviewer
Perry, Dee (interviewer)
Project
Stokes: Honoring the Past, Inspiring the Future
Date
1-9-2017
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
76 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Robert Gries interview, 09 January 2017" (2017). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 501005.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1218
Transcript
Dee Perry [00:00:04] So I want to start by asking about to have you describe the surroundings in which you grew up.
Robert Gries [00:00:12] Well, I grew up in a house in the middle of Shaker Heights that my father had built in the early days of Shaker Heights. 1927, he built a new house. I was born there two years later, and actually I live on the other corner of the block now, 87 years later. I've been in the same house for 56 years.
Dee Perry [00:00:38] When you were growing up, what were you taught about how wealth and social position should be used?
Robert Gries [00:00:47] Well, you know, there was a lot of, you might say, noblesse oblige in those days. If you were well off and all that you were taught to give back. And of course, my religion is Jewish. And there's one old prophet that I've always gone by who said, if you're not for yourself, who will be? But if you're only for yourself, what am I? And I've always, and I think my family before me, has always believed in that. You know, I was taught philanthropy a little different than what a lot of people think. Some people think that philanthropy is what you do at the end of the year when you've paid all your expenses and you've done everything else and you see what you got left. That's not how I was taught. I was taught you figure it as one of your basic things you're gonna do, and you set it aside right then. And I know at the beginning of every year exactly what I can and will give away. So that's just the way I was raised. And I guess you might almost call it a tithing of one sort or another.
Dee Perry [00:02:15] I'm sorry, could I get you? Oh, sorry. Okay.
Robert Gries [00:02:21] Thank you. Thank you.
Dee Perry [00:02:26] And you mentioned your family is Jewish. What do you know about elect? And what did you personally face in terms of discrimination against Jewish people in Northeast Ohio?
Robert Gries [00:02:41] Well, you know, I can tell you all about the history of discrimination. Did I face any really terrible, serious things? No. But was there discrimination? Of course there was housing discrimination. In the late '40s, when I was a teenager, a Jewish person couldn't even live east of Warrensville Center Road. Now that's Beachwood, which I think today is probably 90% Jewish. But the Van Sweringens had restrictions in their deeds. They weren't broken down in the courts until the late '90s. And those restrictions said, if you want to sell your house, you have to get the approval of the neighbor on your left, the neighbor on your right, and one of the two catty-cornered across the street. That's how they did things in those days. That was broken down in the courts, I think, in the late '40s. But there was certainly housing discrimination. There was also lots of other discrimination in schools that you went to. Some of them had quotas, and that was all proven in subsequent years. I went to Yale. They had a 10% quota. They never admitted it, but sometime in the 1980s, somebody dug out the old minutes from their library and found it actually established they were quotas. There were restrictions on where you could work. A Jewish person in those days wanted to go to work. If you wanted to go for a big company, you could certainly be a lawyer, you could certainly be an accountant. There were a few other jobs you could do. Salesman, very unlikely, because the feeling was that a lot of people just won't accept a Jewish salesman. That's crazy, because there are a lot of good ones, very good ones. But that's the way things were then. There were so many different restrictions of different types that existed in those days, which fortunately are almost all past history. And when, when you talk about discrimination, when I went to Hawken School, which is a school we're very involved with, because I went there and kids and a lot of my grandchildren have gone there. And today it's a very, very diversified school. When I went there, in third grade I entered, I was the only Jewish person in the school. Now there's one Jewish boy had been there before but wasn't there anymore. I mean, he was out, but I was the only one. When I left five years later, there were, I think, five. And all of them were people who I knew and whose parents were like friends of my family. So, you know, they were just starting to break the barriers, but that's the way things were.
Dee Perry [00:06:02] Speaking of breaking barriers, what were some of the ways that you saw your family use their assets, their position to affect social change in their community?
Robert Gries [00:06:18] Well, my father, as I was later, was on many, many nonprofit organizations. Now you have to realize when you talk about discrimination, even nonprofits take- There were a lot of nonprofits that wouldn't take Jewish board members in those days. That's all gone by the boards, because now they know that now Jewish people are not only accepted, but they're also sought after because they give a lot of time and a lot of money. But in those days, I could tell you, many organizations, nonprofit organizations in this town, that would not take Jewish members. Some of them had one token Jew on it and some had none. But those were the conditions we lived in. And slowly, that's all changed over the years. My parents served on many, many boards and felt very strongly about giving back to the community. But you, you know, it was a different atmosphere than today because there were these restrictions and there were differences. And your acceptance in the community was limited, even if you were a major, major player like my grandfather, who was one of the top businessmen in the city of Cleveland and one of the top philanthropists. But, you know, conditions 75 years ago were a lot different than they are today, thank God.
Dee Perry [00:08:03] And inside the family business, which was the May Company for your grandfather and for you after you graduated from Yale, you made changes that affected the racial climate inside the building. Talk about how the May Company changed.
Robert Gries [00:08:26] You know, May Company was the largest. We had six department stores in the city of Cleveland, and May Company was the largest one. And as such, May Company was expected to be in the forefront of change. And any pressure that was coming from people to change was always directed first at the May Company, as it should have been, because they were by far the biggest. But you'd be amazed how difficult it was to make those changes. My first job, for instance, I was an assistant buyer in housewares when I started there. And African American people had almost no jobs in those days. The wonderful gentleman that stood outside the store, his name was Mason, everybody in the town knew him. But that's about the only job that was open to it. They just, you know, certain ethnic groups had had a lock on certain departments and certain things, and that's the way it was. We decided at one point we were going to try to make a change. And I'll never forget what we did in housewares. You took the packages, you sold something, and you took the packages to a central desk to have them wrapped. So, at one point we decided to try to put an African American lady behind that desk. Now, all she was doing was taking the package from one of the salespeople and wrapping it, and then the customer would pick it up. When we did that, three of our salespeople absolutely refused to hand the package to him. That's the way things were then. Of course, I told them to all go home. And interestingly enough, one of them came back two days later and asked for a job back. The other two, we never saw again. But they wouldn't even, you know, a simple thing like that, just handing it to a person. Now, at one point, a while later, we decided to try to break down the sales group and introduce an African American person to the sales force. Where do you think that would be? In the notion department, because that was the safest, needles and threads and thimbles and all that kind of stuff. And that's the place where we first put a person. Now you say, well, why didn't you have the guts to put somebody in the ladies ready-to-wear? If you'd done that, the customers would not have accepted merchandise from them. That's the way things were in the 1940s. You know, we had just finished a war, and the Army was still segregated in those days. But that's the conditions we dealt with. And the idea that you could introduce somebody into a department where they handled clothing and handed it to customers, that was not even possible. So we had to start with these little tiny efforts in a notions department or something and try to, you know, get people to accept that and go take another step. And it was very frustrating, but it was all you could do. Those were the conditions we lived in. You know, there was still super segregation in the South in those days. There were still lynchings going on of veterans who had come home from the, and fought in the second war and things. So you had to deal with the times as they existed. But we were always the forerunner, and we did make sincere efforts, although I'm not sure that everybody appreciated what we were trying to do. But we did make sincere efforts to try to move things along.
Dee Perry [00:12:54] Some Years later, in 1963, you participated in a mass march in Cleveland that rallied tens of thousands of people. And I wanted to have you talk about what the point of that march was and why you were there?
Robert Gries [00:13:09] Well, it was the Civil Rights March for Cleveland. And, you know, these kind of things were happening around the country. That was the Civil Rights era. Things were just starting off, and every city was having their own marches. Why was I part of it? Well, first of all, I was brought up in a very interesting way. My parents, my grandparents, and the generations even before them, because I'm the fifth generation in Cleveland, were always very philanthropic. But for instance, my grandfather, as I was growing up, he was, I would say, quite conservative. That doesn't mean he was against these things, but he was two generations older than I am. And when I marched in that parade, I almost got disinherited because, not that he was against the principle of it, but he didn't believe in going out there and demonstrating something yourself. My father, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. He carried a union card with him. He was the store manager of the night company, and he carried a union card with him. And he was very, very progressive in wanting to see change and do things to further things along. I had gone to Yale University and I had majored in History. That was my passion. And I had very, very strong beliefs that people should have the opportunities, you know, that all people should have equal opportunities. Now, you got to remember back what happened in the Civil Rights movement. Originally, it was the idea that everybody would have a fair chance to run the race. And I was 100% down the line for that. Eventually, after a short time, people realized that, yes, you can let people run the race, but they've been so disadvantaged they haven't got a chance to do well. That's when you started to get remedial attention and give people and come up with special things, things to help people. I was all for that. But then it went a step further. If you know your history of Civil Rights. People got frustrated because the results at the end of the race weren't coming out the way they wanted. So then people started to suggest we ought to have quotas. In other words, it's not- You can run the race does not help you running the race. We want the results at the finish line to be the same. Well, that's a whole different theory. That is not the way Civil Rights started off. And of course, when that happened, that's part of what brought the Civil Rights momentum to an end and why it had made lots of progress and then stopped. Because when you start talking quotas and that kind of thing, you're talking a whole different concept and a whole different theory. But I was very passionate about everybody having a fair chance. That's the way I had been brought up. That's the way I had studied and learned about American democracy. And that's what I wanted to see achieved. So I think there were only about maybe 10% of the people marching were white, but I wanted to be part of it. So I was. And we marched down to the stadium. I remember on a day that wasn't the best weather, if I remember, but I felt very happy about participating. As I said, my grandfather wasn't exactly pleased with me because at the age of 90, at the time, he just didn't think you should be, you know, out there wearing it on your sleeve, you know, your feelings. But I did anyway.
Dee Perry [00:17:34] And it also occurred to me that during that period of time in the early '60s, Carl Stokes had won his first elected office as an Ohio legislator. Was your family involved at all in the Stokes as a legislator?
Robert Gries [00:17:52] No. I knew Carl because I was part of the, you know, part of the action, you might say, of people who were quite progressive about Civil Rights. So I had met him, but I wasn't involved in state elections and that kind of thing at that time.
Dee Perry [00:18:20] How did you first become involved with Carl and or Louis Stokes?
Robert Gries [00:18:26] Well, you first became involved with Carl because Carl preceded Louis by a couple of years on the scene. I became involved because of a man named Arnold Pinckney. Arnold was the political guru of the African American group. He knew more about how to run a campaign and how to get things done in this town and he was a very effective guy. I had met Arnold along the way just by being active in various events and various things going on in Cleveland. And Arnold. When Carl decided to run in '67, Arnold came to me and asked me if I would be treasurer of his campaign for mayor, which I agreed to do.
Dee Perry [00:19:25] And what did that mean? What were your duties for the, for the campaign?
Robert Gries [00:19:29] Well, you sent out all the letters asking for money. Obviously that's what a treasurer does. You had long lists of people and all that and you letters were written and you sent them all out and then you got checks in and they all came through my office and we raised money by the campaign and I wanted to.
Dee Perry [00:19:57] If you had anything to compare it to, I mean, was, were people investing in the Stokes campaign in a way that you had seen other politicians invested in?
Robert Gries [00:20:12] Well, I think Carl did quite well. It was estimated at the time. I remember that for Carl to win he was going to have to get 20% of the white vote. And that's about what he got because he didn't win by much, if you remember. So he had the gutsy campaign on the west side. This wasn't just east side stuff by any means, because the white voters on the west side, and he was out there campaigning all the time and, and working hard. And Carl was a, he was a very charismatic guy. I mean, he was a good looking man and he talked well and all that and he waged a very good campaign, I think, and we raised a significant amount of money for him. Now, you know, what do you compare it to? You know, I'm not the expert on that, but we certainly made great efforts in every direction we could to send out letters, tell the story and obviously we achieved enough to get him elected.
Dee Perry [00:21:29] Was his campaign the only one that you worked on in that capacity as a treasurer?
Robert Gries [00:21:32] Yes, yes.
Dee Perry [00:21:37] And that was important to you because Arnold Pinckney asked or because of something about Carl Stokes?
Robert Gries [00:21:44] Well, let me tell you my feeling at the time and it isn't only now. I've seen this in politics. As you go along, you know, people had the feeling that if there was going to be an African American, male, African American mayor, some people thought that was going to be Valhalla. And some people thought it was going to be Armageddon. I mean, and really people had these strong feelings that all of a sudden he was going to come in and everything was going to change and everything was going to be wonderful for the African American community. And they were going to all be, you know, having everything great. And other people thought, oh, my God, he's going to ruin everything, and it's going to. To be just the worst thing ever happened. I, having been majored in history and been a student of history, I knew neither of them were going to happen. And that's what usually happens. The effect of these things is much less than people think. You make some inroads, you change some things, but by no means does everything get resolved or everything fall apart. And, you know, it's no different than what we've seen in the last eight years. You get an African American prison. And some people thought, oh, my God, that's gonna change everything. Well, it didn't. It changed a few things and all that, but until that happens, people don't face up to it. So I believe, maybe because I was a student of history or whatever, that it's time to do it and let people understand, you know, this is just part of the progress that you go through and happenings that happen in our political sphere. It's not going to wildly change everything one way or the other, but it's important. The sooner it happens, the sooner we put that one behind us and move onward. That was my, I think, feeling and motivation.
Dee Perry [00:24:00] Once Carl won the election, were you involved in any way with the administration that went forward well with the administration per se?
Robert Gries [00:24:07] No. I didn't have a job in the cabinet like Ben Stefanski took, you know, or something like that, because that's not me. I had my own things to do. Did I stay in touch? Of course. And, you know, at that time, Carl had- There were some loose organizations of business people that he sort of would meet with periodically that would advise him. In fact, I remember one thing about those days that amused me because Carl complained to me at one time, oh, this is maybe six, nine months after he was elected. And he said, Bob, he says, when I call a meeting or ask people to come to a meeting, I only get half of them there. Why don't they come? And it was sort of the- Carl did not quite understand yet that other people have other jobs that a lot of the people he wanted at these meetings were people running big billion-dollar corporations and they had jobs to do, and they were traveling and all kinds of things. And, you know, it was sort of like he thought at one point, well, I'm mayor of the city of Cleveland. If I want them at a meeting, why don't they just drop everything and be there? Well, that wasn't the real world. And it did take Carl a little bit of time to understand that and realize that, you know, mayor's an important job, but all these guys running, you know, the huge Republic Steel companies and things like that aren't just going to be at his beck and call every time he wants them. But he understood that after a while. But there were a lot of informal things that went on where he wanted informal committees to sort of help him get people in the private sector to help with certain efforts and all that. So I stayed involved in the informal way, which is all I wanted. I didn't want any official, you know, job at all. But, you know, he did the best he could. He had such a short time. Because the riots came soon after the Glenville riots. Yes. And once the Glenville Riots came, it was all over. I mean, as far as being able to accomplish a lot in the city, because the hatreds, the feelings that came out at that time were pretty venomous. I remember- I can remember driving downtown to work every day, and it was like coming down Chester Avenue. It was like an armed camp, you know, when the Glenville riots happened. And there were riots happening around the country, too, so it wasn't just Cleveland. And once that started, Carl did the best he could, but, boy, his hands were tied on an awful lot of things. And then, you know, he didn't have that long in office. So did he accomplish some things? Of course. But as much as people would have liked to see, not nearly as much.
Dee Perry [00:27:55] And you say his hands were tied? In what way did people? Could he not get people to support his initiatives or?
Robert Gries [00:28:08] Well, you know, after the riots, there were different ways of thinking. So some people thought that- I thought he did a good job of trying to quell them and keep a lot worse bloodshed and all that stuff. But a lot of people didn't trust what he had done there. And there was- Well, just like you have the friction with the police now, you know, and you have to deal with this, it was pretty major then at the time. And, you know, the businessmen in the city of Cleveland at that time didn't have a clue how you were going to get past this and stop because nobody had experienced this kind of thing before. And some people thought the whole city was going to blow up and other cities, too. And, you know, some people were more hopeful, but it was very tense times. And so I would say that, you know, Carl had a couple of years at best, and that's not a lot of time when you're inexperienced in the job to come in and, you know, move a lot of things. He did move some things, but he didn't really have a long period to do it like his brother did.
Dee Perry [00:29:41] And let's talk about some of the things that he did move or try to move. Housing was one thing that he wanted to focus on getting rid of, clearing out some of the bad housing and trying to bring new housing and bringing more diversity in terms of hiring into City Hall and different departments. What did you see on that front?
Robert Gries [00:30:14] Well, there was some effect. I remember the Housing Administration at the time was run by a guy named Ernie Bohn. My father was on his committee and all that, and they made some considerable efforts. But those things are hard to change. They're very slow. And, you know, you talk about getting rid of bad housing. We got the same problems right now. You know how many terrible houses are out there that are just left derelict, and somebody owns them. You don't even know who, and they don't take care of them. And this goes on right now. And we say, well, why can't you just go and issue an order to somebody and if they don't fix it up, tear it down? Well, that's not the way the law works. And even today, that's a real blight on a lot of neighborhoods. So, yeah, they made little inroads, but these things are so bureaucratic that they're hard to get a hold of and really get things done. So, you know, he tried to do some things about clean water, and he tried to do some things, and he had some modest successes. But you can't change the world a year or two years.
Dee Perry [00:31:39] Do you think that if he had stayed for a third term or longer, he could have, or after the riots?
Robert Gries [00:31:49] I doubt it, because the feelings were just so hardened, and people just didn't know how they were going to deal with things. There were major changes, and Cleveland at the time, the whole. I could tell you stories of how the Cleveland foundation and the Associated foundation merged at the time, which nobody thought could happen, only because the businessmen of Cleveland didn't have a clue what to do in this situation. And nobody knew because we hadn't had riots and in the cities in a long, long time. So, you know, it wasn't just Carl's frustration. It was frustration all over in how to deal with problems in those days. And many changes took place in Cleveland. Could he? If he had another? No, I don't think another year would have meant much. That door shut. You heard.
Dee Perry [00:32:56] Oh, thanks.
Robert Gries [00:32:57] Thank you. Okay. Awesome. Thank you.
Dee Perry [00:33:16] Thank you. I wanted to ask about Louis Stokes, on the other hand, because we're talking about not Carl not having much time to make change. Louis Stokes had 30 years in Congress. Could you see the effect of his longevity?
Robert Gries [00:33:38] Oh, my gosh, yes. Lou was one of the most effective people in the city of Cleveland, what he did for the city of Cleveland. But you got to understand these were- These two were so different in every respect, Carl and Lou. You know, when Carl first came on the scene and he was like a shooting star from somewhere. I mean, all this charisma and all that, Lou was the total opposite. Lou stayed in the background when Carl was mayor. Lou, Louis, Lou would always be like behind him. He would never be out there in front. He wouldn't try to get his picture in there equally. He was always in the background. Lou didn't have an ego. And that's one of the great things about him. You know, if you don't have a super strong ego and you don't care who gets the credit for things, boy, you can accomplish an awful lot. And I can tell you some other leaders in Cleveland who are like that, and that's why they're good because of that. Now, that's the way Lew was total opposite of his brother. Now, when he then got a chance to move in and become a congressman, you know, he didn't come out blaring and fighting and all that. He was the kind of guy that could work across the aisle, he could work with other people. And that's why he was so effective on a 30 year basis. And he did so many things for Cleveland, I mean, over three decades, because of the type of person he was. And that's why I can't tell you how much I admire the guy. Because a guy with an ego, a guy who wanted to be front and center, get a lot of publicity and all that stuff, wouldn't have accomplished half as much. But Lou was the perfect person for it. Took up the mantle when he had the chance. And, you know, Carl sort of disappeared from the scene. He went to New York. He was a TV reporter, I think, for a while, and then he was ambassador to Some unknown place like Seychelles Islands, I think, and all that, which was just a nice, you know, nice place to vacation for a short time. And his career after being mayor was not a distinguished one. Lou, on the other hand, just slowly and all that got the confidence of all kinds of people. And he got more power, as you do in Congress, after a long time. And I can't tell you how much I admire the job he did, because he was the perfect type of person for it.
Dee Perry [00:36:43] Can you point to things around town now that you could say that's a legacy of Carl Stokes or that's a legacy of Louis Stokes?
Robert Gries [00:36:55] Oh, I think I can't off the top of my head right now because I haven't looked at this in a long time. But, yeah, the legacy of all the things that Lou was involved with, that he got money coming back to the town and that he helped with and got going. Oh, they're legend. But the person that should tell you the answer to that is one of these professors at the colleges who study that kind of thing. But there was no end to what he did in getting money back to the city for various projects. And he was just terrific. And right up until the time he passed on, I mean, Lou was a superb man.
Dee Perry [00:37:47] What do you feel still needs to be done to advance the kind of vision that the Stokes brothers had?
Robert Gries [00:38:00] You mean, what does Cleveland need today?
Dee Perry [00:38:02] Yeah.
Robert Gries [00:38:04] Well, I don't think it has anything to do with the vision the Stokes brothers have. It's what Cleveland needs. If you want to say, what does Cleveland need now the most? To straighten out the school system. Absolutely. You know, Cleveland- I have seen Cleveland now for 87 years that I've lived here. I've seen the ups and downs, and we are now on an up, which should be sustainable for the next few decades. I say should be, why are we- What happened to Cleveland? If you want to look at a very quick history of it, a lot of people don't realize what built Cleveland. A lot of entrepreneurial families. Do you know that Euclid Avenue at one time was the richest street in the world? In the entire world? That was just back in the late 1800s and right over into the first part of the 1900s. Cleveland was a dynamic, dynamic city, and we were so wealthy. Now, what happened to Cleveland? Well, I'll tell you my take on it by about the- We were a great manufacturing town right up through the second war. And after the second war, manufacturing started to, you know, drop some. But what happened in Cleveland? And I want to try to say this the right way because I don't want you to get the wrong impression. Cleveland had been run and built by all these great entrepreneurial people who had started all these fabulous businesses in town from which Cleveland prospered. By the end of the second war, Cleveland's leadership were lawyers, accountants, and the people running the billion-dollar companies who were not the entrepreneurs who built them, they were the managers. And managers are not entrepreneurs. Now, I don't want to say this the wrong way because, you know, lawyers can be very smart people and some of them were very good people. I could name a number of them who were. And accountants, although not usually considered the most creative people in the world, we had some good accounting firms because that was one of the key things here. But that's not entrepreneurial. And by the '50s, that was our leadership: lawyers, accountants, and mostly managers. There were companies being built, smaller ones, but they weren't the billion-dollar companies. And so they weren't the people in the leadership of Cleveland. Now when that happened, that's when Cleveland started on its roller-coaster ride up and down. And we would do something and it would be a good thing. But there was no follow through. You couldn't build. You build Erieview and all that, that's fine. You build a Rock Hall, that's fine. But there wasn't follow through. There was no master plan. And the worst thing Cleveland had at the time was they never had a serious plan. Here's what Cleveland should be in 30 years, and now we're going to commit to making it happen. Oh, they had, I remember they had some Greek named [Constantine] Doxiadis who came here. And all the businessmen were enamored with him. And, you know, he had this great vision. Well, you know, his was the vision when they built the Coliseum out there. You know, from here to Akron was going to be just masses of people and all that kind of stuff. Of course, none of it happened, but the businessmen were sold on him at the time. There was just no great vision for Cleveland at that time. That's why we went up and down. Now where are we today? We now have 14,000 people living downtown, which is the most we've had. Apartments, you have to go on a waiting list. I mean, like 98% rented. And why are people moving here from the kids from New York and California and Chicago, $2.50 housing in New York, it's $10. These kids come in, they've been living in these tiny little cramped quarters, and all of a sudden they got a suite in Cleveland. And now that we have jobs for them. They love it because they come in, there's action, there's excitement downtown. As long as we keep the jobs for them, Cleveland is going to do just fine. But we've got to have a decent school system so when they start having their kids, they don't just all up and move to the suburbs. That's why straightening out the school system, which we're trying to do, is, I think, number one on the agenda. Now, are you ever going to have a school system where every kid gets a wonderful education? No, that's dreaming. And we can dream, but we've got to provide a good enough system. And what we're doing with these charters, some of these new charters that they're building, Cleveland foundation is behind a lot of this. That's super important, I think, because if you can get enough good charter schools in teaching science, teaching STEM and all that kind of stuff, we can solve the problem. Problem. So I think this is sustainable as long as we keep our eye on the school system and we can get it fixed. Now, there are some impediments you got to watch out for. You know, this business of a group wanting to come in and raise the wage in Cleveland only to $15 an hour would kill your business. I'm not against higher wages, but you can't do it in a small area where the people right on the outskirts of it don't have to do that because they just move, they close up. I mean, if that passed a $15 wage in Cleveland with nothing on a broader basis or statewise, it would do incredible harm to downtown Cleveland, which includes University Circle, you know, in all those areas. So that's a serious problem that has to be addressed. But the mayor and everybody else are aware of that. But fix that school system, and I think Cleveland will be good for decades. Even our sports teams.
Dee Perry [00:46:34] What contribution do you see young people being able to make to that vision of the future?
Robert Gries [00:46:43] Well, you know, in all the work I've done in my life in philanthropy on a national basis, et cetera, young people are much more philanthropic than you think. I don't worry about the young people doing their share. What I worry about is a mechanism that gets young people at the table. You know, that was one of the problems that I was talking about years ago. Your town was being run by a small group of very powerful people in law and accounting and billion-dollar businesses and the people developing smaller businesses, and I don't mean small ones. I'm talking about businesses worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but they weren't the billion-dollar ones. They weren't at the table. And, you know, those are busy people trying to build those. Those were the entrepreneurial people trying to build things. And if you don't find a mechanism to bring them to the table, they're not there because they're too busy to come there if they're not going to be listened to or have a place. So what's important is to get, you know, there's an awful lot of good young people who are building things and have great enterprise, but they're not going to come and sit in interminable meetings. They're not going to come and sit and listen to the people who think they're the power brokers of Cleveland tell them what to do. If you develop a mechanism where they have a voice and they can really contribute something, they will be there. I'm not worried about that. Now, millennials are different, as we're finding out. And I don't have all the answers for that because, believe me, at 87 years old, I don't begin to understand Millennials, but their work habits, their work objectives are quite different. And the idea that somebody gets a job and, you know, is going to stay there and build a career, you know, a lot of them are going to move every few years. And I got seven grandchildren who are Millennials, so I see that, too. So I can't give you all the answers to how you deal with Millennials, but I will tell you that they are philanthropic, they are charitable, they do care about things. But they're different. They want to be heard. They don't want to be shunted off there and not be important. And they're too used to, with their social media, getting their viewpoints across that you've got to find ways to include them in the mix. And that's the thing. We never got the younger folks that were building things into the picture in the past. And so we've got to find it out. But somebody younger than I am is going to have to figure out the key to the Millennials. But they're good people. They've got enough energy, they can do things. And Cleveland has to have a vision. And the vision is, what do we want this city to be 30 years from now?
Dee Perry [00:50:47] So do you think we still don't have that master plan?
Robert Gries [00:50:52] Not to the total extent that we should. There's more we could do. And, you know, the other part of that is, and some of my older friends have not liked hearing me say this for the last 15, 20 years, but I maintain that not only does the city have to have a vision of 20, 30 years, but the city has to then have the people to carry out the vision who are going to be around to do it for 20, 30 years. The city shouldn't be run by people who are about to retire. They're good people. I mean, listen, they're my friends, a lot of them, but they're old and they can, you know, people in their 80s, 70s, 60s, they've got something to offer, but they're not the ones that can lead a vision for the next 30 years because they don't have the time. And what you have to do is turn over the leadership to people who are going to be around to carry out that vision. I mean, the older people have a lot to offer. They can tell you where not to go and things not to do and they've done their share. But you've got to turn over the thing to people at the age range when they can be responsible for carrying out divisions. That's my feeling. Older people my age don't like to hear me say that, but I believe that very strongly that's where the future of a city should be.
Dee Perry [00:52:48] I was thinking about what you said.
Robert Gries [00:52:49] About?
Dee Perry [00:52:53] The city as it declined, being run by managers and accountants and people who were mainly interested in keeping the status quo, keeping things as they were. What do you see, or I guess who do you see in charge now, that is, who's running the city? What kind of forward thinking do you see in place or not at this point at the present day?
Robert Gries [00:53:26] Well, I think it's sort of a mixed bag right now. You know, we've lost a lot of the big, big billionaires, dollar companies. Over the course of time. And we're starting to get a lot of people in the lower rank but who have great companies involved. So I see some of that happening. And that's not to say that the people running the big companies are not good people. I mean, we've had some exceptional ones. Sandy Cutler, who ran Eaton, has just retired, I think, has been a very excellent executive for this city. And Chris Connor, who just retired from as the head of Sherwin-Williams, marvelous guy. And you know why? Because if you met Chris Connor and you asked him what he does, he'd say I'm a paint salesman. He doesn't have the ego of some CEOs you know that you see, I mean, he's a down-to-earth guy and he's done a great job for the city and for his company. And there are good people. But I'm not convinced yet that we have the total mechanism of how to bring everybody around the table of different ages. We're trying in some respects, but it's a work in progress.
Dee Perry [00:55:10] Speaking of a work in progress, I was reading your book Five Generations, and you write about a lot of different things and organizations that you've gotten involved with. One that interested me in particular was your work on the board of something called the Cuyahoga Plan, because I wanted to have you talk about what its mission was and why it ultimately didn't have the same success that you hoped it would.
Robert Gries [00:55:45] Well, the Cuyahoga Plan was an effort. It was one of those things that the Cleveland Foundation, after I'd served on it 10 years, that I was working with Steve Minter at the time to do some new things and all that. And they wanted to make an effort in the field of housing because the discrimination in housing was terrible. But we knew going in that it was not a soluble problem. Now, why isn't it soluble? Very simple. If you look at the history of housing and, you know, it isn't just the African American community, we have brought in immigrant groups. Cleveland's one of the biggest immigrant cities, and that's part of what built Cleveland. And we've had- You can look at the immigration patterns of Italians and Polish and all the big ethnic groups in this town, and there's a pattern to the whole thing. What does the pattern show? It shows that there are very few pioneers. The pioneer is a person that will go out there where nobody like them is. That's the Winston Ritchie who went to Shaker Heights as the first African American to live there. Very few people will do that. That takes a really gutsy spirit. Then there's a group that will go and follow. If there's some people there that are willing to do it. They wouldn't go alone. They wouldn't be the first, but they would go. If there's a handful of people like themselves, the vast majority of people are not going to go unless there's a real comfort level, which means not a majority necessarily, but a big minority. And then they would move into that area. Now, what did we do as Cuyahoga Plan? Fine. We nibbled around the edges. We brought some discrimination lawsuits. We stopped some rather egregious things that were going on in preventing people from getting apartments, preventing people from buying houses in certain locations. And so we had some success. But trying to solve the problem of housing discrimination today, much less back in the '70s and '80s, it's an attitudinal change. And that doesn't happen fast. You can see that in the United States today, people are more comfortable, you know, among at least a preponderance or a good number of their own. And that's true no matter what ethnic group it is. So we knew going into it we were only going to be able to nibble around the edges, stop a few of the worst cases, you know, of things going on in the neighborhoods. But no way were we going to just solve the problem. And the problem isn't solvable today because it's an attitudinal change. Maybe someday it will be. It's going to be beyond my time though.
Dee Perry [00:59:33] I'm wondering what you see, as we've talked about, the biggest challenges. Education is one. What are some of the things that you see being done right presently and that you hope continue in the future? What's a positive outlook?
Robert Gries [01:00:01] Well, you know, I give this talk every year to a group that the diversity center pulls together and it's a year long course. And I teach one of the early sessions to the group. It's a group about usually 45, 50, 55 people from all different businesses around. And my job is to explain to them all the things that have happened and the progress we've made. Because too many people look around and they see, oh my God, the problems we have are enormous. Why didn't anybody do anything about it? You know, as if we've all been sitting on our hands and getting nothing done. When I explained to them the conditions that existed, for instance, when I was a kid, they start to realize the change that has taken place. And it's been major, very major. I think, you know, what are the good things? There is progress, definitely. The discrimination in a lot of areas is either much, much less or behind us. No question about it. When I was growing up in this community, there were loads of organizations you could not be part of if you were Jewish, certainly if you were African American. And some of them you couldn't. If you were Italian or Polish or had strong ethnicity, that's all behind us. When I joined University Hospitals, I was the only Jewish person on the board. Time. Yeah, 1977. I mean, for, I'd say 10, 20 years. We had a couple more. It was sort of tokenism. And then that all changed dramatically about the 90s. So it's a much better world we're dealing with in those areas. However, the one thing worries me now is civility in this country. We have let the genie out of the bottle. I grew up in the best of times when it was not considered proper to use certain words to insult people, to, you know, say bad things. And, boy, I'll tell you, that's all been coming out. It's not just the recent election. It's been happening for the last 10, 15 years. It bothers me because I. I don't think you can have a civil society if people do not act civilly. And is it going to affect me? No, I'm too old. I've lived most of my life. But my grandchildren are going to live. I don't want to see them live in a thing where everybody goes around insulting everybody else and saying bad things. And they see it on social media right now. Oh, I'm not on social media. You know, I know how to do emails and things like that, but I'm not on that. And I'm almost thankful I'm not because I don't like the direction that's going. How do you change that? I don't know, but I. A civil society means people being decent toward one another. And I think we have moved somewhat away from that in recent decade or so, and that's not a good thing.
Dee Perry [01:04:37] Before we close, is there anything you want to share? Any stories that come to mind that you feel like capture something about the '60s, when the Stokes brothers were on the rise and it was a different day and time?
Robert Gries [01:05:00] Well, yes, I could tell you a few stories about that. I remember one very clearly, you know, one of the magazines, and I can't remember whether it was Time or Life, but it was one of the big ones. I think it was Life. They were running an expose on four different mayors that they were going to expose. And I can even tell you who two of them were. And they did run it. The first mayor was Mayor Alioto of San Francisco. And they ran a tremendous exposure about all the terrible things out there. And the next month it was, I think, a guy named Cervantes from St. Louis, and they ran that one and then they ran a third one. And don't ask me, you know, this is 50 years ago. I can't remember the name of the third mayor, but they ran a third one, and Carl Stokes was supposed to be the fourth one. And we all knew this. We were all set up. It was all set up for this. They never ran it. They never got the material. And, you know, I can tell you because even though I was quite progressive and quite liberal in my thinking, I have friends of all type and all that. And people would tell me at that time, oh, you know, Stokes, he's dishonest, he's taking money, blah. You know, they just dream these things up out of thin air. You know, like, you hear about all kinds of politicians now. People just make these things up. Maybe they believe them. They never found enough to run the story, which I think was very, very interesting, because it's sort of what you go through in politics today. Everybody's got these very negative or positive opinions about something, and not much of it is based on facts. I could tell you also that the efforts to get things on Carl when I was running his. As treasurer of his campaign, one day, two FBI guys appear in my office, pulled out their badges, were from the FBI and all that stuff. They were just on a fishing expedition. I said, well, what do you want? They said, well, we want to see everybody you sent letters to. And I looked at them and I said, wait a minute. I said, everybody who contributes to the campaign, we have to make a public record of it. So, I mean, the end of the month, or whatever the time frame was, the end of the month, we will issue this. Oh, no, we want to see everybody who asked for money. Of course, that's ridiculous, because, you know, we had lists that were just collected from everyone. Some people probably hated Carl and were on those lists. I mean, they were just lists compiled, and you send them out and hope some people give. They were just fishing around for anything they could get. And I said, well, I don't think that's appropriate. They said, well, we can get a subpoena. I said, fine, bring it in if you do, and I'll answer it. Of course, they left, and I never got a subpoena, but that's the kind of thing that was going on. I could tell you one other story that always amused me. I was working with the SBA, Small Business Administration, at the time, because I was in the venture capital business, and I was working in Washington, not down there, but I mean, going down there to help this committee that I'd been asked to help. It was just a voluntary thing. You went on your own dollar and you spent a day down there going over policies and all that to help them out. And at the end of a year's effort, the man I was working with there said, bob, would you be willing to chair this committee next year? I said, okay, I will. About a month went by, and all of a sudden I got a letter in the mail. It was sort of like a Dear John letter. Dear Mr. Gries, thank you very much for your service. You know, like that I'm no longer on the committee. Well, I wonder what the devil happened. So I called a man down in Washington and he says to me, he said, Bob, all I can tell you is that there's a couple of guys appointed by the administration, which by then was the Nixon administration, who vet everybody. Thousands and thousands of people for any little job, even voluntary jobs you're trying to do to help somebody. And they have to vet everybody that serves on any kind of a thing. You didn't pass the vet. I said, well, do you know why? He said, no, I can't tell you. They don't tell us those things. So I happened at the time to know a very powerful lawyer who was the Republican boss of New York, and that's because he happened to be a lawyer for the Browns. So I knew him through that, and I called him up and I said, jack, can you find out what the heck is this all about? He said, well, I don't know if I can, but I can try. He calls me up about three weeks later. He says, bob, he says, did you ever have anything to do with Carl Stokes? I said, yes, I was treasurer of his campaign. He says, that's your answer. Anybody who had anything to do with Carl Stokes. Shows cannot get by these guys who vet. That's Nixon's order. So I think I wrote in my book somewhere that I was. One of my proudest moments was being on the Nixon shit list. But those were the kind of things that went on and all that you dealt with. So, I mean, the, You know, the prejudices, the feelings that exist, you know, they aren't that much different today in some respects in politics and all that, but we just have to face it. That's the world we live in. But I do hope we get over the ins of civility about how we do it, because that would make for a better world.
Dee Perry [01:12:33] Thank you so much. One more quick one. Okay. Can you maybe talk about election night? You know, no one was quite sure what was going to happen, you know, being part of that campaign, and then when you won? Talk about that experience of being part of election night?
Robert Gries [01:12:35] Oh, Carl's election. Yeah. And look at them. And look at D1. When you're answering that again. Oh, well, that was a very exciting. That was a very exciting night because it was a ceiling shattered. It was something very new. It had never happened anywhere in this country. It was the first time. We were all very excited and proud. Now, you know, the guy he was running against was a very, very decent guy, Seth Taft. And Seth was a personal friend of mine because Seth was a very, very fine guy, but it was not his time. It was time for this to happen. Conditions in cities were exploding. It was time to have an African American. And we were quite elated and happy to see this happen because a lot of people didn't think there was much chance. And we'd had very conservative governors. The preceding governor was Ralph Locher, if you remember. Mayor, I mean, the preceding mayor was Ralph Locher. A decent man, but not the most progressive guy around, but a decent man. But this was earth-changing, and this was going to make a difference. So we were riding pretty high at the time. There was also what happened after that, we've already talked about somewhat, but it was momentous. And it was not just for Cleveland, but for the country.
Dee Perry [01:14:48] On that night, on election night, was there a point where it seemed like Taft might win and then the tide changed?
Robert Gries [01:15:01] You know, I don't remember the details of that because things didn't come in quite like they do today. Things came in from precincts, and unless you understood the precinct, you didn't know how to evaluate it. I mean, somebody could be ahead or you could get a block of votes coming in from the east side or the west side or the south side or something like that. And it could seem to mean something. But only the experts, the pros really understood what that really meant at that time. And it wasn't. You know, nowadays the computers would take you in an instant, but in those days it wasn't quite that sophisticated. But the experts, the Arnold Pinckneys, knew. He knew exactly how many you had to get from this area and that area to make it. But I don't think it's not quite like it is today. And it was slower. The procedure was much slower. So. But it was. It was a fun night.
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