Abstract
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala details her early life growing up in Forest Park, an early planned suburb of Cincinnati. Eickman-Fiala recollects her college experience at Case Western Reserve University. She highlights her work in dietetics and as a diabetes instructor. Eickman-Fiala shares her experience living in the Near West Side and discusses its continued gentrification since her arrival. She shares her involvement in various community boards. Eickman-Fiala recollects her experience with extending hospitality to unhoused people in the Catholic Worker movement and how it has shaped the person she is today.
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Interviewee
Eickman-Fiala, Maryellen (interviewee)
Interviewer
White, Bali (interviewer)
Project
Near West Side Housing Activism
Date
6-25-2024
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
82 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Maryellen Eickman-Fiala interview, 25 June 2024" (2024). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 544004.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1281
Transcript
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:00:00] I won’t make any noise.
Bali White 00:00:02] And we’re live. Hello, everybody. I am Bali White with the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project with Maryellen Eickman-Fiala. Today we are in the Bridge Room at Carnegie West. It is June 25, 2024. First and foremost, how are you?
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:00:22] Happy to be here.
Bali White 00:00:23] Good, good, I’m glad. So, could you introduce yourself, when and where you were born? You can share as little or as much about your early, early life in terms of growing up, family background, religious background, any factors that kind of shape who you are.
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:00:39] Okay, that’s easy. Thought about that. So I am from Cincinnati, was born there in June. So this month, a really hot day. My father likes to tell the story about very, very high heat. And of course, back then, in 1957, it was- I was told many times that ’57 was the height of births of the Baby Boom generation. And I never looked that fact up, but it probably was close. If it wasn’t the height, it was probably very close to the most. And in this neighborhood I’ve lived in most of my life, 40 some years, there’s at least 30 some odd people I know with the same birth year as me. So everything that I know about seems to say, yeah, ’57 in the United States was a very high birth year for Baby Boom generation. So I was born there. And the year I was born, in this interesting town, I always thought, it is called Forest Park. It’s known as the only first planned non-government suburb of Cincinnati. And recently I got to read a book that had been written about it accidentally. The guy did a little research from UC for a historical thing, club out of Forest Park and decided it was interesting enough to do a book, which probably is very common. And this book would kill anybody else to read. But I find it like reading, like finding the fish finding out who was in the tank. And it’s all these names I know. And my mother was a pretty big player in that little suburb, and she was pregnant with me in 1957 when they started the women’s club. So I had parents who were pretty active in everything. They were either chairman or president of stuff you know, whether it was St. Vincent de Paul in the Catholic Church or Holy Name Society, that was my dad, or my mother was, you know, president of the women’s club at one point, usually in its mid range years, she wasn’t the starter, but she was definitely. And she always had a— She always had an office in that organization. Even when she moved 30 miles across town, they kept her, you know, in the loop. So I’ve had parents who believed in citizenship, and they were driven by their faith. So I was raised in a Catholic ghetto, is how we put it. So it was like these little World War Two bungalows, much like, say, Parma is around here, or maybe even like, Eastlake, that kind of thing. And or like Willowick, and Willowick is just like it, too. So I was raised in that kind of neighborhood where nobody had air conditioning, really, and when the fire, the volunteer fire department, three of the guys that founded it lived right around my house. So we heard the Plectrons going off all the time. I felt like I lived inside of a firehouse. And the guys had to watch out. They didn’t back into each other, coming out their little driveways, get into the- You know, they were all backing, and they had to make sure they didn’t crash into their other guy. And so they named- Even the fire house is now named after one of the fellows who’s now gone. But it was a very, very close, tight-knit- You know, we thought Protestants were really oddballs, but I was friends, one of them was in my friend group. So we allowed Bonnie to play with us Catholic girls, but it was very Catholic ghettoish. And we all went to the same school, St. Gabriel, there seems to be one in every town. It’s a franchise. [laughs] It’s an archangel franchise. There’s one up here, or at least two. So, yeah. And that certainly did, you know, going to these little Catholic schools certainly did frame my thinking. I mean, how could it not? And so that was really- I was drenched in that, and I had very devout. My grandmother was a founding member of a Catholic church who. She was, like, the second year they started the organist, until she died, like, in 1980. So she, you know, and she was a smoker. She wouldn’t have been dead, except she smoked and she did die of lung cancer, etcetera. But. So my grandmother didn’t live close by. She lived across to the other side of town, so driving over there was kind of fun. They didn’t have all the highways, like they renamed one Ronald Reagan Highway. Ohio Route 126 got renamed, or 226, into Ronald Reagan. In the stealth of the night, nobody knew about it. All of a sudden, the signs went up. So my grandparents were very, very Catholic, obviously a church organist, and then my parents certainly were, that they met at Catholic colleges, so you could not escape at all. So that is pretty formative. And anyway, the one loud thing I heard in my Catholic education that has bearing on what’s blossomed through my life was that if you were really reading the Gospel and following Jesus, you would probably be way out of step with your culture. Oddly enough, most Catholics were trying to be in the culture and of the culture. And what I see in most churches, but Catholics in particular, since I can talk about them, is that they are kind of the defining culture in the best and worst sense. You know, both. I mean, I could point to really good things, and now our culture is certainly on the decline with churches major. I mean, we’re into the major ashes of the burndown of formal churchism. I don’t know who in society is going to pick up what role churches have, because Americans liked to say – now, I never subscribed to this theory, but the theory I didn’t like, people would say – is, well we believe in individual choices and people should help people if they—that we should help people, but we should just do it ourselves, and we don’t need a church to do it. And I’m thinking, righto. If you didn’t have groups like churches this would be a sunk ship up here in Cleveland. I mean, Cleveland would really be dust and ashes a lot sooner. But now that we’re on the decline, we’re seeing who is picking up helping people. And the answer is, hmm, that’s the answer. There aren’t organizations sprouting up all over to take responsibility for how unfair the system is. So I learned at an early age, somehow was inspired not to say the Pledge of Allegiance in class. Michael always finds that very interesting for me. I don’t know why I did, but I figured out that I could not pledge allegiance to God and to the flag at the same time. They seemed to conflict, even though at that point, Vietnam hadn’t really blossomed. It was coming, it was looming. But this was, you know, in the 1960s, right when it was kind of starting. And I wasn’t the height of that. I sort of missed- I missed, like, the draft went out of existence during my life, you know, during my early teen years. So it was less of a deal. I mean, my brother was- I think, the last group drafted or something, he did get a draft number and would have had to go, but right then and there, they ended it. So I kind of had the relief sense of it. But we all thought back in the day that the Vietnam War was wrong. But I wasn’t in the Kent State, you know, May 4th cohort. I was just the people that followed it up and certainly knew about it in a great deal and cared about it deeply. But that was just a wee bit before my time. So when I ended up, I went to a Catholic- I didn’t graduate from my Catholic all girls high school. I figured out I could leave early, and I got into my mom’s college in Minnesota, a Catholic all-women’s college. And, you know, it was fine. I liked it well enough, but it really wasn’t exactly what I wanted. I also was sick of the all-girls mentality, school mentality. I needed to get into a mixed- So the program in Cleveland, at Case Western- And you have to realize that Cincinnatians back in the day really thought anything north of Columbus should be annexed off the state. Like, we have no need for Cleveland, for sure. And Cincinnatians to this day have never been here, but they have opinions about Cleveland. We knew stuff that we didn’t know and just had these opinions about Cleveland, and Clevelanders do have an accent. I mean, there is this, you know, we could tell. I worked at Kings island when it first opened, and we used to have Cleveland alerts. Oh, listen to these people. You know. [Laughs]
Bali White [00:09:12] The Cleveland A.
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:09:13] Yeah, the famous Cleveland A. Right. [with an accent] “Park your car in Parma.” So, yeah, so, you know, I sort of, I was a middle- I wasn’t an ever star pupil. I didn’t, like, go to college early because I was so smart. That was not true. I was decent enough. I didn’t have the study skills I needed, I found out along the way. And then I transferred a Case, which almost killed me. But I was in a very specialized program that, too, almost killed me. So I worked really, really, really hard at Case, although I was always involved in nondenominational Christian activities. And they also had a very active and really good, well-functioning, high-thinking Newman Center, which they haven’t had in Cleveland for years, where people actually could think. And, you know, I was raised in a good high school with comparative religions. We had to visit ten churches and write up, do write ups. I mean, visit them. Now, you go into somebody else’s- You go into a temple, or you go into a Buddhist, you know, place, or you go into a Jain – there was a Jain church. I mean, just all these different religions. So my Catholic high school forced me to be present physically in a building of somebody else and answer maybe twelve questions or something and turn in these papers. That was my religion class. That was very smart. My little all-girls high school was really smart people. I was well educated in terms of thinking for them. Not organization, but thinking. So I go early. I wasn’t exactly the student to do that, but I did it and I made it work. And Case almost killed me. It was really hard, but I made that work. And I also worked all the way through college because I was just middle-class or upper middle-class by that time. So my parents moved along the way and the culture was big-time drugs. I mean, I used to go, I’d be the only Catholic kid on a bus going to high school in my little uniform with so much smoke and marijuana in the bus, even the bus driver, everybody. You just got high getting in the bus. It was just too funny. But I would have gone to the equivalent of Mentor High School. It was called Princeton. It still is called Princeton High School. It was the biggest, and it had just integrated with an all-Black high school back in those days. So there was all this integration stuff. And that happened in Cleveland, too, so that I didn’t pay attention to too much. I got my degree in nutrition and sciences, a Bachelor’s in Science, and graduated in a year of recession where we stood up and said at Severance Hall very proudly, we have jobs. We have jobs. Because all the Bachelors of Arts didn’t. So Bachelor’s of Science people did have jobs, so little snots that we were. And I started working right away and ended up working in Akron, my first job. And no one from Cincinnati thought I should stay in Akron. I mean, like, Cleveland was bad, but like, Akron, are you joking? You know, all that people imagined was dark rubber city or something. Well, by that time, all that manufacturing had left. So I found Akron to be just a wonderful place for people, met lots of wonderful people, worked in home healthcare in a very cutting-edge job. No one in my field of dietetics. I passed my exam, to my great relief, passed my exam on the first try, to my great relief. And I was not a good test taker, but I did pass, and so I managed to squeak all through all these things I should not have been able to do, but somehow got to do and always stayed involved in my faith life but nondenominationally. College really did do mind-expanding things for me, as well as going to Catholic church. So I was still Catholic, but I also went to Bible studies. And I lost a boyfriend who was Baptist from Cleveland and did not know I was Catholic. And he was gonna carry his Bible to church just to show me. He said, I’m going to go to church with you, but now I know you’re Catholic. I’m bringing my Bible, and I said, have at it. [laughs] You know, like, what do I care? So anyway, so that’s shaped my, shaped my thinking that I would be a little different from our culture. That was what I really got out of all that, and I kept that up during college. I had- I was given resources to keep expanding, and then I got my roots into Cleveland that way, because I got to know all of Cleveland doing nondenominational Intervarsity things. So my faith life was really burgeoning, and I had a personal relationship. I had found my connection, so my faith connection was alive. Somebody had turned the switch on. It wasn’t just through my parents who really had their own faith, but it wouldn’t have been mine. I would have been just like, what everything else is out there, like, okay, I was raised this. Goodbye.
Bali White [00:13:54] So after graduating from Case, you went to Akron. About what year, and how long were you there for?
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:14:01] It was ’79 through about ’82 or ’83.
Bali White [00:14:06] Awesome. And then, so you worked right after college, you said a home health aide?
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:14:16] Yeah, worked in home health care. So then I got to know all these counties down that way. So this is really fun. I was having a blast. And then I got called up by Geauga Hospital, this little bitty place that I had serviced. Oh, hospices were starting. USA did not have hospices. They were just starting. And a friend of mine was sent to England. She’s a nurse. So all my friends are nurses, right? Because there’s only two dieticians and a couple hundred nurses in this agency. So, you know, we’re the resource people. And so, you know, I had a great time teaching nurses and being a guinea pig, and I used to let them put feeding tubes down me and all kinds of fun stuff, lots of hands on stuff. But. So then I also got to go out on hospice calls, and it was just starting. And this person went for six months and got trained in England and came back and started the Hospice of Stark County, which was Canton area. And so, you know, and then they wanted a dietician on the team, so I started that. Now, it’s ironic. Everything we used to think we knew is completely, radically different today, which I think is hysterically- It’s about right. But, you know, it was a really- It was really good training to be in people’s homes and to be around people who didn’t speak English. And, you know, being on, things were new and different, so that was kind of exciting. And then a hospital that knew me, this little bitty bitty bitty hospital, community hospital in Chardon, you know, said, hey, we need a clinical director. Would you consider coming? And I hadn’t done that ever, so I thought I would try that. So I went there and, you know, I was being a big fish in a small pond. So I ended up working in a hospital setting, but doing outpatient programs and stuff. Yeah, that was not my, I mean, managing people, that was a management job. Administrative- I was called the administrative clinical dietician. It was not a good fit for me. And everybody made sure I knew that. So when the technology came along in diabetes to prick one’s finger and see what their own blood sugar was, I was really interested in that. I hated diabetes. As a dietician, that was just a really horrible thing. You could just look at people and say, ick, ick, ick. You know, half a cup of everything and nothing you like. It was a horrible thing to teach. So it turns out that the technology got my interest to go into a field because it put the patient in control. All the glucose monitors were just coming in and there was no specialty. So now there’s this huge specialty in it. But we started it. So again, I got to, really fun part, be the first group cutting edge. I was the 303rd person out of maybe 3,000 across the country to take an exam that was being written just for us. So we got to retake it and beta test it and do all that good stuff. And there was a lot of excitement in diabetes. And so I started to specialize as a dietician. I sort of left dietetics and specialized because the physicians took the same exam we did. And I think nurse practitioners, we all took the same. It was a specialty that all the three areas could do. And in endocrinology, you had to take that exam too. So we had to really study a lot. We weren’t ENDOs, obviously, but it was exciting. So then I specialized and then from then on, the rest of my life I was just that. So. And that’s how I got to Lake. Then I was asked to come up to Lake Health, which was a bigger fish hospital, even though it was a community hospital. Bigger fish to fry and, you know. So meantime, I’m living here the whole time. I’m commuting 30 miles out of my county against traffic. It was always good into the snowbelt. And I still to this day, don’t have an all wheel drive car. Wanna point this out. Yeah. I made it out there all the time, on time. Never missed a day of work in every kind of condition. I can drive an ice with just regular front wheel drive.
Bali White [00:18:13] Oh yeah. It’s a talent you have to acquire to live in northeast Ohio.
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:18:17] Yes. Yeah. I worked in Geauga and Lake counties my whole life. So yeah, I was pretty impressed that I could do that. So.
Bali White [00:18:24] So I guess I’m curious, is, when exactly you moved to the Near West side?
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:18:31] So what got me here? I was on my way to University of Cincinnati to get a master’s of community health when I met Mike Fiala at his now bomb shelter house. My good friend was leaving town that I had gone to college with, and she was going off to Chicago to school, and we had a farewell party. I ended up going to Heck’s, which is still in business in this neighborhood, and we ended up going to Mike Fiala’s house, and it had nothing but speakers and, you know, it was just awful looking. And, you know, I was just like, what the hell? Who is this person that, like, is best friends with my friend? You know, like, I did not like this. I knew of him. I had met him here and there in some prayer groups that he was in, but I, you know, he had girlfriends, and I was not paying any attention to him. So because he was throwing this party from my closest friend in Cleveland still, I was paying big attention, and that didn’t amount to anything until I needed somebody to go with me to— My brother had moved to St. Louis, and I had a new nephew. I was in my early twenties, and I wanted to know my new nephew. So this baby was born in March, and I said, I want to go sometime this summer to St. Louis to visit the new baby. Do you have any reason to go back? I know you went to school there, and he did. By the time we got back to Cleveland from all that, it was a pretty good deal. You know, we were on a track of sorts, so that’s how we met up, was at a common party for my good friend. And, you know, we were both pretty, pretty intense people. So that was a fun. That was a fun relationship. And lots of people that should know better, like the head of the Catholic Diocese divorce tribunal, told us to wait and that we weren’t compatible. They used psych tests to measure this stuff, and we met with these guys for a year. It was a priest who was the head of all the divorces that happened in Cleveland, and that they want to talk to people, and they said, you two should not be marrying. And we heard this. People who knew— A lot of people said this, and we were different classes. I was, like, one class up. Mike was working-class. I was probably middle- to upper middle-class, probably right in there. I was a little more than middle. By that time my dad made his money in GE, you know, aircraft engines in Cincinnati, so. My mom worked. She was unusual. She was the start of the working moms. But she wanted— She was college educated, so she wanted to do something. So she did when I was in third grade, and that was kind of new back then, not pervasive at all, but so all of that sort of happened in the sixties, Women’s Lib. So that all was in part of my thinking. So we got married. You know, it worked because we were- We had a two-hour wedding service and two weddings. Two weddings, one in Cleveland, one Cincinnati, just to make sure we stuck together. I said that was the gorilla glue for our relationship. I’m sure we would be divorced if there wasn’t something bigger than ourselves in the relationship. So that kind of was the marriage thing. And that’s why I moved into this house that I’m still in. Strange to say. My mother remembers that I always said I was moving to Chardon. That’s what she said. She said, you always said you were going to do that. So my parents, to their credit, just accepted whatever I was doing, and I was the only daughter. I had a brother and myself, so I was the only daughter. And so there I am working. Oh, and I got to work. Here’s the other good part. I didn’t work full-time. I got at some point to work part-time. I got a master’s out of Kent State. I finally made it, my most proud moment of my educational career. I finally made it into a state school and the public school, which is— I’ve always put up my Kent State. You know, people say, why don’t you put up your Case thing? And I said, anybody can go to a private school. You just have to have money. But I was really happy with Kent State, and the education I got there was just wonderful. And I took a long time. As fast as the hospitals would pay is as fast as I took the classes. So it took me six years, but I enjoyed it. And my salary never went up one dime because of it. But I got a Master’s of Community Health Ed, which I loved, so I loved Kent State. It was really cool. And the department was just great, so it was all good and- Yeah, so I was working part-time as the hours I chose are that they would let me work like I always wanted to work less. They needed me more than I, you know, so we worked that out. But I was working, you know, we were a self-run department. We started a program. It was all good. And I liked Lake County. What was not to like, you know? And I went against traffic, so it was all good. So meantime, that was one little life. And then the big life was here with all the people that were doing all the activism. Turns out, this community, it took me a couple years as my little life was taken off work life, till I was in my thirties. And all of a sudden, there was a birthday party for me in the neighborhood. And I really— Mike points to that as the moment I really was, like, on line. That’s what really flipped me into being in the neighborhood, was when people really, like, about 40 people. I said I wanted a lot of gifts, but not high quality. I wanted quantity, not quality gifts. So people gave me rubber tree plants and a piece of the rock off the steeple of the church that was struck by lightning and stuff like that. Really stupid things. And so there was a big party, and that was a nice moment. And then my husband had called up my friends from all over the country, and at least five of them came in from different states. That was kind of fun. So turning 30 was kind of a point. And we never did fix the house up while we lived elsewhere. We lived a little while at his mom’s house in a suburb, but we ended up just moving back in and getting a loan and fixing up what we could, you know. So that ended up that.
Bali White [00:24:27] Could you describe what this area, the Near West Side, looked like when you first arrived?
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:24:34] Oh, it was super- When I first- For my first coming over here, my good friend Kathleen was living here and working on, you know, desegregation and other stuff. And she— I mean, she would tell me, you can’t get— You cannot come in my house. We have too many roaches. You’ll get them. And I’m driving over in my un-air conditioned, big old boat of a car, Delta 88, some big old car, and it’s hot as Hades, and it’s summer in Cleveland. And I got my windows up or something, so I put the windows down, and I’m thinking, oh, my God, I can’t even get out of the car, but I thought this was like a ghetto. Like, the Near West Side was really bad. Really, really bad. And people were really fleeing it. Although these activists had moved in, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know these people, but there was a church there, St. Patrick’s. There was really an activist bunch of people there. It was kind of like a little rebirth in the city of people who really wanted to come together. And they believed in communal housing, stuff like that. And then they were all getting married and starting their own families, but staying in the neighborhood. So there kind of was a recreation of what I grew up with in Forest Park. The first planned community without a government. It did get a government. It only lasted ten years without a government. And then they had to- They figured that out real quick. But so Forest Park that my parents were really active in, well, that was exactly what I found up here. People who are really active in the neighborhood and people would say, I mean, our group, now I can say this, said obnoxious things like, yes, we came here to live, you know, to live in this neighborhood, to sort of help fix and change it, which is- I hear this still to this moment. Makes me want to vomit. But I’m thinking, well, you did say or think things like that yourself, so don’t go judging. But I did. We sort of thought we were, I don’t know, somehow or other doing some good. It’s a very middle-class thought that we’re here to make your life better. And the locals probably didn’t need to hear that. I would say, then I was asked to be on some boards of which I did not know how to do, you know, 31, 32 years old. What did I know? You start doing that stuff and that because everybody needs you. It’s not because you’re smart or that you’re good. And it wasn’t because I had money. We didn’t. So it was really, we need able-bodied working people who can think. And they mistakenly asked me, so somebody, your friends, would trick you into coming and then they would trick you into being a board member, and then they would trick you into taking some position. And you quickly realized there was no- This is really not- You would sit on your own hard chairs through these meetings and buy your own stupid coffee out of a vending machine. Or, I mean, there weren’t coffees. Nobody could go to a coffee shop and bring in coffee and the place was too poor to have a coffee pot, so May Dugan Center. So. And then I ended up going up against Mayor Mike White and Fannie Lewis for our fair share of funds for the west side, because they always wanted to give everything to the east side, which it needed, but it was not fair. And I had to tell Fannie Lewis, who I loved. She’s a very famous Black activist in Cleveland. And Fannie, I sat down in her office and I said, Fannie, there are Black people on the west side, as you well know. So I had to sort of pound my fist and say, blah, blah, blah. And she actually agreed and took me aside. Later she goes, I have to save face, so I’m going to do what you want, but I’m not going to let it look like that. I’m going to talk to you different in the meeting as my first little round of politics. Although I forgot to say this in this interview, I have to say this. I’m going to backtrack. When I was in high school, the first political campaign I worked on, Jerry Springer. For real.
Bali White [00:28:14] Jerry Springer!
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:28:15] Jerry Springer, the guy from the TV show? He was running for office and before this was known, he ended up being famous for being, or infamous, for paying for a prostitute in Newport, Kentucky, with a check, a personal check with his name on it.
Bali White [00:28:28] Oh, wow.
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:28:29] Yeah. So when he entered politics, the person who he paid pulled out the check, you know, saying, I’ve got Jerry’s check, you know, which made him quite- They said he actually resigned, but actually that’s published. But it’s not true. You look that up on Wikipedia. It isn’t true. He stayed in politics and he got some really nice positions just to say. But then he went on to do the show. I mean, then he started the TV show and, you know, the rest was history. But yes, and Burger King was just a brand-new franchise. And Jerry took us in the little van we were canvassing for him. What did we know? He was just a progressive. He sounded great and he was young and cute. So for some reason I got involved in his campaign and he took us to Burger King and I had my first Burger King Whopper.
Bali White [00:29:12] Wow.
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:29:13] And that was the first year they had come out. So as a dietician, I marked that date in my book. So anyway, that’s a diversion.
Bali White [00:29:20] That’s amazing.
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:29:21] It was funny. It is funny.
Bali White [00:29:24] I actually did not know that Jerry Springer had any political career whatsoever.
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:29:28] He did. I think he might have run for mayor or something when they decided that the check with the- I mean, nowadays, think about it. I mean, Donald Trump can do everything and kill somebody. He’s not kidding. And nobody cares. I mean, nobody cares that he’s with prostitutes and he was a president. Think about how things have changed. But back then, a divorce was a big bad thing. If you were divorced, you still in the Catholic ghetto, you know, that was like a horrible, horrible, horrible thing. But that has so changed, everything. Social mores have changed so much.
Bali White [00:29:59] Absolutely.
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:30:00] Yeah. So Jerry was canned. I guess something did happen as a result of that. But he did actually do a little bit of politics. Then he mostly went into TV and got known for that. So. But I always like to say I worked on Jerry Springer’s first campaign. [laughs] What did we know? So back to Cleveland. So, yeah, so the Near West Side. So I would go to work and I would relax. Work was great. And then I would come back here and there was always issues because the neighborhood was gentrifying, even at that time. And the local people could see the handwriting on the wall that they wouldn’t be able to afford to live here. And they were right. So.
Bali White [00:30:36] What areas of the Near West side were gentrifying the most?
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:30:43] Well, it was here and there. It wasn’t like the, you know, it wasn’t like the big buildings going up with luxury loft apartments everywhere. It was mostly like, house flipping was really big. People were always wanting to flip houses and stuff, but it was just picking up steam. Like when Mike, I mean, Mike paid very little for our house, I think in like 25,000 or something back in ’81. He did sign for the house on my birthday in 1981. He didn’t even know me then, but he got possession of the house on my birthday. Think about that. I always say we were meant to be.
Bali White [00:31:13] That was the day he threw that party?
Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:31:16] Well, he threw a- No, he did throw a party on that, on the day we were engaged. But the party for Kathleen was the December before that. He was in that house already. [crosstalk] So, yeah, maybe the dates are awful little bit, but he threw her party and I didn’t- He was in that house already, so it was before I even knew him. He signed for that house. But of all the days of the year, it happened to be my birthday, so I always think I was meant to be here. Yeah. So. And then I didn’t know many people on the street, but then we did start to know. And then a lot of our friends moved to my street. And then Mike got to be called the Mayor of West 38th, which was at the time true. But since the
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