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

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 then has been eclipsed by all the gentrifiers who— I mean, all the new people who move in. Like we were welcome wagoning people. We always took over baskets of flowers and coffee and a list of our phone numbers. You know, we weren’t all on cell phones back then, so there was a lot more cohesiveness in the neighborhood. Now everything is pretty, you know, people can come and go and you don’t even know they did. There’s a building behind my barn, literally, it’s 12ft from my house. And people move in and out within two years because they’re mostly medical residents, so they’re doing specialty training or something at any of the institutions. They go to, Metro, UH, and the Clinic even, because I make sure I’m friends with all the people that run those buildings, and we have good relationships, but even the people that run those buildings for the company go through. I’ve changed them out three times already in four years. So tell me the length of staying, of running, being the person that runs the building. So. But we’ve made sure to always know, you know, like, who’s on first, who’s on second, who’s on third so that you can get things done. But, you know, it’s- So in the city, there’s just 20 million things you have to really focus and pick. You can’t, like, get involved in everything.

Bali White 00:33:10] Right. There’s not enough hours in the day.

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:33:11] There is not, right? [crosstalk] No, there is not. So I got asked to be on boards and started working that way. Then I— And I had vowed just because my parents were very activists and everything, and I wasn’t the most organized, brilliant person I knew. I had always thought my motto for myself was that I was a very good worker bee. I’m really dedicated and I really hang in there. And you would want to be my friend. I would want a friend like me personally. But I am not like the leader of the pack and all that. Like, I know this, and I was never going to be a leader like my mother was. And lo and behold, what you find out is they don’t care who does it. They just want you to be the president because nobody else will. That line gets, you know, Kevin Kelly, I got him, who was head of city council. I got him to be on the May Dugan board. I pulled him out of church one day and said, Kevin, we need you on the board. He was just a Jesuit volunteer. So when he was just out of college a couple years, two years, I made him be on his first board. So we had very good training boards, and to this day, it still is a training board of how to do board stuff. But I got to be in the bigger boards in Cleveland. The most unsuccessful seven years of my whole life was working for the Council of Economic Opportunities, which is now called something like Front Porch or front. It’s got a new name. But I very quickly, you would have to be no, nothing and walk into their lunch. And I, as a dietician, knew it had flowers, it had linens, and it had food that could feed maybe 150 people, and it’s a board of maybe 14. And you’re looking at this, and their whole mission is federal dollars, Head Start, and other dollars funneled into neighborhoods for poverty. And their monthly lunch meeting, lunch of the board looked like could have been the owners of any of the ball teams. I’m like, what is this going? And Fannie Lewis had that going on, too, and she was a good egg, but she spent money sort of like that. And I just came back to our little place where you had to buy your little coffee out of the vending machine to go to your own board meeting on really bad old folding chairs. And I said, why is it they’re downtown in the Halle building, living like kings, having two to $3,000 lunches every month? What budget do these people have that they’re spending it on themselves? And that was the tip of the iceberg. So then I got appointed to be on their board to represent the west side. And the number of stinky fish you could uncover being dumb like, I got it really quick. I started listing issues that were way out of whack for federal dollars, like, there was something bad going on here. I didn’t know what, and these people were using Robert’s rules to get around in a bad way to get— They were hoping that you didn’t know them. So I had to take a course in Robert’s rules, get to know this sort of stuff, and, oh, and I’m the only White person on the board. And two or three of them really hated White people and made it known every meeting, Miss Fiala for her people, they would call me her people. I didn’t take umbrage, really, at that, because I just thought, well, whatever, you know, but these were some pretty bad actors. And we’d have city appointees who would sleep. You know, would sleep during the meetings. I mean, it was just like a circus. And we’re talking big money, large chunks of federal dollars. And I just knew there was something really bad at the bottom of all this. So I spent seven years. Oh, they would take us out for these out into Hudson and all these other areas, and for these, like, $700 a night rooms at some big country estate inn way out yonder and give us cases of wine for gifts for board members of a poverty agency. There is something real wrong with this picture. So I ended up doing as much research as I could. Didn’t get any help from the agency, of course, and then convincing other board members, which I got to convince. It came down to a minute where then they did some tricks I didn’t know you shouldn’t do. They got somebody to call in as they were driving around Cleveland, who wasn’t at the meeting, because they could see that we were going to oust the director. And, I mean, I had a list of grievances that were really more than true. More than I found out later were true, at any rate. Like, finally I had convinced enough people one by one, that this was going on and this is illegal and it’s not good, and we’re wasting federal dollars. And I said, I don’t know what else she’s doing, but this is what I can find. At any rate, I failed at what I was trying to do was get the director ousted, and she was onto this for a year and a half. So she was after me and got somebody to vote from a car, which is technically illegal. They weren’t at the meeting, but you couldn’t have done that. But I didn’t know you couldn’t. So I was outwitted by not knowing all the Robert’s rules. However, three years after that, she was convicted by trial and would have gone to jail. But her husband’s a big time lawyer and a big time player with the Forbes people and all that. So politically, I don’t think she- Jacqueline Middleton was her name, and she did actually get convicted of some. You know, she had a- Our finance director, as it turned out, was flown in every month from Chicago. We were paying a guy in Chicago to be our finance director. There was no reason for this. So it was a friend of hers. I mean, there’s just all kinds of stuff like this. But there was other things they did find in an audit. So the agency has changed greatly and has a different name and moved and all this stuff, but. So I call it the most correct seven unsuccessful years I ever spent. And it ate up chunks of my time to be that unsuccessful.

Bali White [00:38:58] You had also mentioned being a part of the May Dugan board. I’ve heard that name pop up quite a few times, actually. Could you kind of describe that or what it was?

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:39:12] It is a- May Dugan was a barkeeper, and she just kind of did social work out of the bar and finally her family got tired of it because she was always helping, getting the customers to pony up money for people. Joe shmoe can’t pay his rent. Can you help? So the family thought it was best to put May somewhere. They got her a little office. They made an office out of a house and said, you can do your stuff there. So it was named after May Dugan. And since the time when the federal dollars came down to give little community CAP, it’s called Community Action agencies were created. Lyndon Baines Johnson was the president that signed money for this to come down. That was that money from them. So we got to celebrate our 25th anniversary of that, the 1960s CAP agency funding. I was a board president at that point, and you remember my fondness for being president of zero, but I was president of May Dugan at that point. So I got Lucy Baines Johnson to come just to say. And so we did a variety of things. We rented the building out to others. The building used to be a Lourdes High School, and then the city built a multipurpose building and then leased it to May Dugan Center. When I was here, the building was already there with all of its associated mini problems. The roof was never fixed. The heating and cooling for its whole life was bad. Finally they got a new director in recent years that, you know, just did this humongous overhaul. So it’s now fixed, but I think- But so it’s a- It rents out to other agencies. So a Hispanics, you know, Head Start with- There’s all kinds of groups use it. And so we kind of- We are the anchor that got agencies into the neighborhood that we thought we needed to be here and then ran a raft of our own social workers. So we just, whatever program we wanted to fund ourselves, we would fund. And all Community Action agencies should function like that. But on the east side, they’re pretty bad because they were always run by this really nefarious and bad badass counsel from economic opportunities. They never saw us as one of them. So eventually, after I left, they actually kicked the position. There was no representation. They did not want May Dugan on that board, even though we got funding. And I had to go to Mayor Mike White and pound the table and say, [pounds table] you have to give, tell, tell your people over there on the east side to give us our fair share of federal funding. And back in those days, the thought was that the east side was poor and the west side had the money. And that was not true. So I had to point that out. And actually Mike White did it. I mean, I was shaking in my shoes, but, you know, because I did not feel like I had any agency to do anything, but I was a president, so I had to do it. So we went down there and said, you must give us better money. And this is why. And, you know, our fair share, we’re not getting it. And so it’s always about money. I mean, that’s what everything’s about. So May Dugan is a community action agency and it funnels money to things. And then also they’re the fiscal agent. When you want to do things in your neighborhood, they can choose to be the fiscal agent for that because they have federal— They have standing to do that kind of thing. So you start to learn what you could use an agency like that for, and you want one in your neighborhood.

Bali White [00:42:41] So I’m actually going to switch gears and ask you a little bit about your role with the Cleveland Catholic Worker movement. When or how did you get involved with this?

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:42:53] Oh, we were in the church that it was kind of a part of. They were living in the back, old convent, and people we knew our age were started it, and I didn’t know beans about it. And they were in need at one point of some more people supporting them and help and stuff like that. And so we got asked by friends to come by and have dinner. That didn’t sound so bad. And then, you know, I noticed that they were always eating out of date produce and, like, you know, old out of date food. And it turns out, you know, they were just given stuff and voluntary. I didn’t know Dorothy Day from the hole in the wall, so I had to learn all about that. And I was quite enamored of it. It seemed like the Catholic, you know, the Catholic active version of what my pretty serious radical other Christian people were doing, non denominational people were doing. And I thought, this is great. So, you know, I came up through a Catholic charismatic renewal. I didn’t talk about that, but I don’t need to. I came up through a very radical Catholic arm of the church back in those days. So there was a lot that I had packed into me that blossomed when this little group, it just happened to be at St. Patrick’s church. So. And I happen to know most of the people in the parish like that were there. So I thought, well, this would be my way, because I wasn’t really in a. I wasn’t in the Catholic parish to be doing PSR, you know, all the stuff Catholics do. I wasn’t into that. I wasn’t into the church for the church’s sake. I was into, hey, we’re either doing it or we’re not sake. It was kind of like, does the rubber meet the road or not? So I like that. And if people your own kind of age, you’re seeing yourself reflected back, so it was all good. And they were really different from me. So I like being stretched because being a dietician is a pretty, I don’t know, kind of like nursing kind of, you know, sort of a straight jacket, typical women’s role. And I never liked that role. I mean, the way my niche in it was pretty good. I found a niche that was outside of the traditional. So this fit the non traditional Catholic role. I thought it was great, and, you know, that’s how that started. And then I fell in love with Dorothy Day’s writings and all that stuff and started in the Depression. I didn’t, like I said, didn’t know a Catholic Worker from a hole in the wall, but, you know, Jesus was a radical I don’t think most Catholics would like. My mother was very polite and taught me lots of stuff, but, and always did the right thing. I mean, we adopted Vietnamese brothers. I was already living in Akron when. When I needed car insurance, and the insurance agent realized that my parents had no one at home, and he was in the Catholic church, so he got them to do. They said, hey, Dale, your daughter’s in Akron. I just signed up for car insurance, so could you take these Vietnamese kids coming into the country? And they didn’t know any English, and they took three. They asked them to take one. They took all three. They were related. So I had these Vietnamese brothers added into the family, you know, my parents always did what I considered to be great and the right things, but they were also very blind to the Catholic Church’s failings. They were blind to the country’s failings. My dad was in the Korean Conflict. No one told any of us, including my father, what that conflict was about. I only recently read about it. I mean, I recently actually couldn’t believe I’m reading a novel by Lisa See. About things, and I’m like, oh, my God. And the US was a badass actor. It was not a moment of glory for our country. My dad never said a word like that. You know, he was talking about, well, he was in Germany for it, but. And he was writing for a General because he was an english major. What do they do in a war? They write for the Generals. So my dad had a good job, and he was in Germany, so he was not affected in a negative way. But he never thought about, do we have any business in this? You know, it was Vietnam and not moral. So I was raised a Democrat. My dad was a really a Democrat. He thought like one. You know, he thought about others. I always say the big difference is Democrats think about others. Republicans want to know how their stocks are. Now, that’s a very bad, broad brush, but that is actually what I have found to be true. And so the- I burnt- But being in Cleveland, I burnt my Democrat card. All you’d have to do is work in Cleveland around all the Democrats and they’re just as stinky a fish as everybody else was. And in Lake County, I loved Steve LaTourette, a very good Republican, as it turns out.

Bali White [00:47:27] For the record, could you spell his last name?

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:47:29] LaTourette? Well, L-a, and then capital T-u-r-e-t-t-e or something. There’s two t’s in there, I think, or two r’s. He’s now deceased, but not too long ago he was probably deceased. And he quit being in Congress. I think he was a congressman. He was a good bipartisan egg, and he quit because he couldn’t stand the bickering, and he got a lot done with some Democrats back in the days when actually people tried to get along and do something. So for all the people I had to deal with in Lake County, he was one of the better eggs. But there aren’t ones like him now. So I did burn my Democrat card, and the lovely Democrats I know, I love the guy. I really have always loved Kevin Kelly personally. But once he got in city council, they all turn into these badass eggs you cannot believe, and forget- They’re not Tom Johnson’s, you know, that’s a mayor of Cleveland who did the right stuff. And he paid a high price. He had a mental breakdown. I mean, he actually did, but for other reasons, too. But he, he was a monopolist capitalist turned into a, somehow or other a Socialist on the, on the good side, he started trash pickup. So from a public health perspective, he’s my hero. But Tom L. Johnson, none of them are down there. And even the best people that get in, there’s people now in that I supported, and they all turn into these widgets. So that’s said by many people. That’s hardly an original thought, but it’s true. So I burnt my Democrat card on that one for being here. But yeah, so being on local, on local boards and things, you just learn how things go. Oh, my God, that CEO, GC, they were all Democrats. And it was enough to make you just want to pull every hair out. And I felt like I was a big failure. I felt like dumb, really dumb, because I didn’t know. I didn’t, I didn’t have enough people supporting me that could tell me how to rightly use the system. Right. You know, you use Robert’s rules. Rightly. So anyway, that was my big failure in life. But the Catholic Worker was doing all kinds of stuff. We, you know, as time goes on, people die and then you move up and then you’re in a position to say, you know, because it’s been over 40 years now for probably getting on to 40 years for the Catholic Worker, and we’ve probably been in it for 35 of those years and didn’t mean to, but there you are. So. And are there any Catholics in the Catholic Workers? Hardly. I mean, now I go to daily mass in a church, a Catholic church, but I’m not Catholic. I don’t say I am. The Catholic Church managed to boot out somebody like me. I mean, really, you have to try hard for that. But the Catholic churches really didn’t want the gifts that Mike and I both had to offer. And our faith was alive, and it’s only gotten better. And so I now find myself in a UCC church that hangs out with the disciples of Christ and Methodists, as it turns out. And we’re all fine with that. So there’s stuff changing, and a big social movement in America is in the midst of being at its peak or possibly on the way down. I mean, you know, we’re, we. I think all formal churchisms have probably closed or are closing. I mean, many of them. There’s still bastions of huge denominations out there. My cousin’s in a church of a couple thousand people down in the south, so, I mean, I do know huge churches still, like the big money ones. Joel Olsteen. And those people are still going.

Bali White [00:51:06] I did speak with Kathleen last week, and she had mentioned that a lot of the churches in this area are either combining with each other or shutting down entirely.

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:51:17] Yeah, that’s exactly. That’s exactly what’s happening. Well, I mean, all the kids that are raised with pastors for parents and all that, I mean, they’re this same thing. Like, they’re in this kind of, like, how do we nurture our spiritual life? I mean, the word God does not show up in anybody’s wedding that I’ve noticed in the past 20 years. Like, and weddings are rarely, they are still in churches, but not as often. You know, it’s always at some venue downtown in a warehouse. I think it’s interesting. The trend is a vacuous urban warehouse or conversely, a farm. It’s either a wedding farm or urban warehouse is how you have to- With no sink. We always end up with these weddings with no sinks. Like, you know, they all want to have things, but the venues have no sinks. What is up with that? It’s my fifth no-sink wedding.

Bali White [00:52:07] Oh, no. [laughs]

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:52:08] Yeah, well, maybe there’s a bathroom sink, but that doesn’t do for, you know, food.

Bali White [00:52:14] So I guess, what are some of the issues that Cleveland Catholic Worker has kind of addressed in this area?

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:52:21] Well, the Catholic Worker has a unique- There are non systems. It’s all personal. It’s all what you personally do. I like that kind of. It’s not a patronage system. I’m a pretty failed Catholic Worker because, like all my life, I knew that I want. I came from a very middle class background, went to upper-class, like all my upper-class, like the women in my little, 106 in my high school class Ursuline Academy. Put your nose up a notch when you say it. The nuns were great. They taught me well, and I liked them. Their personal example is fabulous. But the women that went there were pretty from well to do families, and I felt that difference as a kid going there. I did not go to Europe on vacations and stuff like that, but. And I worked all the way through college. I always worked. Not only was I not a bright student and going to a tough program, but I also had the work there was that. So I always think to myself, I was a lot harder on myself than I probably should have been because, you know, anybody else doing all that also would have struggled through school. But having said that, Catholic Worker really just believes in whatever you do personally, your personal relationships with people. So if you’re down doing, making dinner, offering hospitality, or, you know, just opening up so people can get off the street, you’re not supposed to be in the back washing the dishes. You should just be sitting down with them out front hanging. You could play cards, you could do anything, but they’re going to ask you for stuff. You could swap stuff, stories, but it’s all about personal stuff, and anybody can do that. People are afraid to do that, but anybody can do it. So it’s not doing unto others. But I really didn’t want to embrace poverty personally. That has never been my real goal. I never said it. I always knew that would be a lie. I wanted a secure. I grew up with a secure middle-class thing. You should always put aside. I mean, I was saving money from the time I was five. I had a checking account. My parents had me in that bank, you know, so they were, you know, teaching me the value of money. And we didn’t have apps for that. We just did it. You know, we just went to the bank with our little passbook and saw our money grow. So my nieces and nephews like, high schoolers own stocks in Tesla, but they’re real Catholic. And I keep saying Kristen to my niece, Kristen, don’t you wonder about the companies their stock is in? Not to say I have a real big opinion on Tesla, but I said maybe you should teach them to put stock in companies that are doing morally what you think is right. Now, my father never got that far. My very Catholic holy father never questioned the mixed portfolios people have nowadays. So even Thriving for Lutherans does not do their mission. I mean, they are the home business model, a little better version of it. All your profits you can plow back into the community. So I can give all the profits away. I don’t have to belong to AIG or Goldman Sachs to do my financial management. So there’s a better thing. But you know, how you do your money is really where the heck your faith is. And I have failed at that. However, having said that, being it’s been a long term goal to be voluntarily poor, even though I really don’t want to be for real. It’s happened without my trying. So my 25 year old car, 20 and 25 year old cars. I mean, all these things that I actually do, I’m having a hard. I have money to spend and I have a hard time spending it even though I can. I think that’s just interesting. So, you know, there’s just all these. It is really hard to want to be voluntarily poor. That’s a pool. I have not totally- I’ve been in- My feet have been in the water. I’ve waded in the water of it. I look like I’m in the water of it, but I’m really not. I am very secure.

Bali White [00:56:21] So you had mentioned just hospitality.

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:56:24] Yeah.

Bali White [00:56:25] So what is your role in providing hospitality to those in need?

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:56:28] I purchase stuff. You know, somebody has to buy the coffee. I go to Costco. [laughs] Costco’s a perverse- You could do a whole book on Costcoisms. I take outsiders to Costco from other countries and they just like flip their wigs because Germans and people think we’re nuts. And I say, this is the pinnacle of nuts, but it’s the best nuts. They have really good policy for workers. And you talk to their workers, you learn it’s the best of a bad system. I like to say, and I won’t do Amazon. I mean, there’s a lot of things I won’t do for, you know, we stand on a few moral grounds, but. So, yeah, so somebody. I’m like the pit crew, the support crew. And then I’m always stirring the pot, you know, saying how is what we do make us discomforted? How do we, you know, where. Where is that? Marching in our own personal, you know, because everybody who comes to the Slavic Ladies Guild brings wonderful steaks mixed up with noodles from Outback Steakhouse. And people love it, you know? And now, can you imagine the Slavic Ladies Guild at our really poor, I mean, our little storefront is really so low ball. We make- We make, you know, everything. Did you- Have you gone there?

Bali White [00:57:42] I have, yes.

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:57:43] Okay.

Bali White [00:57:43] I was actually inside the storefront.

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:57:45] Yes.

Bali White [00:57:46] It looks like it offers really nice amenities and services to people who need it.

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:57:50] Yeah.

Bali White [00:57:50] I think it’s very important.

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:57:52] It is. It is. And a lot of the people moving in the neighborhood would like us not to be there. And this has been said since I’ve moved in. You’re pulling in the poor people, and we want them to get services, but not here. Everybody’s NIMBY. Not in my side, front and backyard. Everybody in this neighborhood who comes in doesn’t want that in their neighborhood. They’re not here for that. They don’t get it.

Bali White [00:58:18] So it’s upsetting because, you know, a lot of the people that need this, they’ve been here for a while. You know, they were here before for some of the people that are saying, not in my backyard, who probably may have just moved here recently.

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:58:32] Oh, yeah. And people are still moving here to save the neighborhood. I mean, you hear that one all the time. It is too funny. But the other thing is, people don’t know each other, and that’s the other thing. Our street has Airbnbs, which I’m not against Airbnbs if you live in it or something. We have an Airbnb owner in California. We had, whoa. A famous Russian guy who ended up in the paper canned for something, I guess some bad financial stuff. He owned one of our Airbnbs on our street, I think that got sold, but we have way too many because when you have one, I think we had eight units, maybe six houses, but eight units of Airbnbs on our street, you don’t have neighbors, so they’re not a big problem, but they can be a problem. And the big ones, you know, they get all the wedding people who want to, you know, party hardy.

Bali White [00:59:21] And it’s, you know, looking at Airbnb myself, just scrolling on it, you know, this area is not referred to as the Near West side, but it’s referred to as Ohio City. So people are coming because they want to be in Ohio City, which is something that I’ve kind of focused on in some of my interviews, is like the differences between the naming of the two.

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [00:59:43] Or Cringetown, which is- [crosstalk] I call it Cringetown. Yeah. I think the people, all these artsy people who would, you know, normally I would not be against it, but they also, they had a big attitude of, we’re coming in to make the neighborhood better. They’ve done nothing but make it a nightmare, you know, and they don’t care because the Bidwells and all these people, you’ll see them written up and it’s nice if they want to share their fortune and their art. I mean, I’m not against it. The Cleveland Museum of Art is one of my favorites. It’s always been free, so I will always belong as a patron, as a paying member, I will always buy anything that’s free. If you’re free for the public, I’ll pay you. So that is my attitude. But they really come off to me. I don’t know them personally, so it isn’t personal. They come off as snoots and very condescending. And no, you have made this place is much worse. The amenities I have here are not. And they’re not making brewing coffee for street people, they’re brewing, you know, five dollar french press coffee, which nutritionally is inferior to drip. Just so you know. Just so you know, all these people who love their pour overs, you do not get the nutritional value of the coffee that you would if you had a traditional brew. Just want to say this.

Bali White [01:00:58] Actually, I’ll very much note that because I- [crosstalk]

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [01:01:00] and I can give you all the citations for backing that little piece of science up. Who knew? I mean, they think they’re doing a better cup of coffee and maybe it tastes better, better, which is fine. That’s the primary reason people drink it. It’s a really big health food. Coffee is if you do it right not with all the crap in it, but, you know, milk, milk and coffee. Nothing wrong with that. But, yeah, you don’t get the drip. The French press and the pour overs. Pour over in particular is what the studies have been done on. You don’t get the. There’s over 300, 400 compounds identified in coffee that are beneficial for humans. I mean, that’s just mind-boggling to me.

Bali White [01:01:37] Oh, yeah.

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [01:01:37] Yeah.

Bali White [01:01:39] So I guess, how has your dedication to hospitality and faith kind of shaped who you are today?

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [01:01:50] Mostly I find my biases and prejudices, I guess mostly it has some negative things. It shapes who I am because I’m not nicer. Like, and I do treat. I have to say this, it’s not a necessary good or bad thing, but like, if you’re up at my storefront, I’ll ask if you’ll sweep the front stoop, get the cigarette butts off and stuff like that. And now the people I’ve made friends with, because some of my friends are from our storefront, they tend to be people who like to do something and they’re happy you ask them. But there are other people who feel entitled. And I, you know, I do share that little peace with some of the gentrifiers in my neighborhood. I’m not real big on entitlements. I understand how they got there, at least in part, but I am not big on keeping that going. And, no, I am not here. You know, some of them really come in. Oh, you don’t have any eggs and sausage? And I said, no, that’s down the street at the Catholic Center. And I said, did you have that for breakfast? Yeah. I said, what are you asking for it here for? Cause I make oatmeal. And I’ll say, well, you can have it down there, and we’re not serving it here. And I said, what’d you bring me for breakfast? I just, you know, some guy asked me for water the other day. I said, I’d like some too. You want to go find some? He said, would you have a bottle? I said, I don’t do plastic, so, you know, I try to bring my own. So, you know, for me, I’m not as. I’m not. I’m understanding of people, but I’m not totally, like, I am really against enabling. And most people would say they are too. I’m not as nice as some, actually, Mike and some others have quietly gotten me to not be of service. I’m on the pit crew for that. And I should be there because, you know, I’m sort of. I’ll hang out and listen to you. I’ll talk to you. I’ll have a cup of coffee with you, you know, and I’ll ask you, why did you have to put ten teaspoons of sugar in your coffee? Because they do that. We go through more sugar and cream more than anybody. But I buy that. I actually go against my own principles, and I will buy Cremora, which I consider to be the dearth of American civilization. We created it, and it is a horrible product for you personally. But the street people love it. They do not like, you know, half and half as much. I mean, not everybody, but if you put the two together, people always pick Cremora. Do you know why? Because it’s got sugar in it. So people like Cremora. They’re used to the taste, and I have finally figured out that I’m not saving anybody’s nutritional status by making everybody use half and half, which I did for a few years. I finally gave up and said, they all love this. It’s their stupid street life. They’re smoking cigarettes and drinking or not. I also run into people who really are just hard luck stories. I just gave my backpack away from being my backpack days and this guy is running all around the Near West side with his bright yellow backpack and he texts me all the time, Tony the Tiger, he texts me and tells me what he’s up to. So I kind of like that. So I would say I think it just deepens my own faith and my understanding and money, money will save your hide. I mean, money is where it boils down for at least me and probably a lot of our civilization is we want to be secure and I’m no different. So money was, being a Catholic Worker is always going to be tugging at you to trust God in that. And we have some members of our community who do that really well and I’m glad to know them. They aren’t my best friends necessarily, but I have a high regard for it and I don’t see that modeled in churches as much. Churches kind of like, well, we’ll give you the extra few dollars I have in my savings, but I’m not gonna, I’m not really gonna be all in. And Catholic Workers are really all in and that has been the truth. We are all in.

Bali White [01:05:47] Could you share with us some of the lifelong bonds and friendships you’ve established in the community throughout the years?

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [01:05:54] Well, I’m really lucky. My good friend from college is still here, Kathleen, who you recognize. I mean, how many people can say that? Lots of people moved on the street. I really like, I don’t hang out with them a whole lot, but you know, but like we’re having a 50th anniversary for somebody, you know, some of the people are gone or dead. There is that, like, I count how many funerals I’m up to. I’m up to seven funerals I’ve attended this year and a few I didn’t because I didn’t either need to or they were not around here. But you know, it just makes all the things of your life like, I got to borrow people’s kids. We didn’t end up having kids because my mom was given a drug in the fifties that rendered offspring sterile. So I was one of those sterile offsprings and we were foster parents because of that, and people were very supportive. When I had foster kids, if I had to work late because I taught classes at night in diabetes group classes when people were after work. So I would have, you know, care for kids then. So it, you know, where do we start on that question? I’m sure- I think I’ll stop.

Bali White [01:07:03] Just like the friendships and bonds you’ve made.

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [01:07:05] Yeah. Yeah. You know, I would say there’s at any, you know, when I walk around the neighborhood, I’m not scared because almost on every street I know people. Not necessarily every single street, but close enough. So when I walk around here, my mental map is a map of events. It’s a map of who’s home and whose kids have grown up here. And there were always kids to borrow. There are still always kids to now there’s grandkids age for me to borrow. So my goddaughter, who is probably the shining star of my heart, has had twins and lives four doors away from me as God would have it. And so, I mean, I didn’t ask for that, but it just worked that way. And now her little twins, they’re like little sugar cubes and they see me and think I’m the best ever. And they can come in my house and do anything. I’m like the grandma’s grandma. So these kids like me, but I really love my goddaughter to pieces and to be around and kids anywhere in the twenties and thirties, middle aged life. And so the life, I would be really lonely if I was living in the suburbs. So I grew up in the suburb of Cincinnati, a very suburban suburb. Like, I don’t know, out there and there, all you did was shop. And you might know your neighbors, but all we did is shop. And I thought, there’s got to be more to life than shopping, you know? So American consumerism used to be what I bought into. And I don’t, I don’t even buy off Amazon. I don’t like them either, morally. And everybody seems to do that. But, I mean, even a person or two in the Catholic Worker did that. And I almost had a cow when I found out. I was like, do you realize? And I found out about Amazon accidentally reading other people’s books, stuff that accidentally got reported, facts, you know, that got reported about Amazon. And I thought, why are we all supporting this crazy system? Like, it’s taken over? It’s like a monster. So anyway, but you have to work at it to go around that. Fortunately, it works out pretty easy, actually.

Bali White [01:09:08] So I’m curious, how has the Near West Side changed since you first arrived? What have you seen?

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [01:09:17] A lot of the stuff I loved went away. You know, everything is high. You know, if you have money. It takes no talent to have fun with money. None whatsoever. A good city, you should be able to have a good time without any money. Hardly. I mean, hardly any money. I would say it that way. That’s my personal philosophy. So now, around here, you know, the restaurants, the cute little places I used to love, there’s a few of them left. Pupuseria so, you know, went in. There’s a few things that have come in, but mostly it’s, you know, high-end coffee, high-end this, high-end that. The diversity. Oh, my God, it’s all White people. Makes me itchy. We used to be, literally by the books, one third Hispanic, one third mixed or African American, and about one third White. And it was that way for many years. And now it’s almost all White and very transient. It’s the number one zip code for, like, the 20 to 37 age bracket. There’s a lot of moving in and moving out, so it doesn’t make for long-standing neighbors. We don’t need saving anymore. We need developers to go away. They’re really awful. There’s no parking. People take my spots all the time. They’re not mine. The street is not mine. I had to tell that to Mike this morning. He said something about it, and I said, we are not God, and that is not our spot. We just use it. But, you know, there has been a lot more worse things. It’s not diverse. It’s really crowded. You can kill yourself on your bike if you want nowadays because people are really [crosstalk] Yeah. And they take down the trees. And I even yelled at the bikers for not saying I’m a biker myself, but, like, I yelled at them, saying, you all aren’t talking about trees. Stop talking about bikes. Talk only about trees. So they’re redoing things and taking down trees. Go figure that one out. So. So those are the kind of changes, but it’s very unfriendly. And all these businesses are taking money, and they’re not putting— They’re not following the law. And all the developers got the money, and it’s just the developers, by and large, are pretty greedy and give back almost nothing which matches. May I say for this record, no one will ever listen this long. But if they did, the Cleveland Clinic, as a hospital system, gave back the least to its city. Cleveland of any system in the country, isn’t that sick? And they make boku bucks. I mean, they’re on the records for making tons of money, and they’re all over the universe, you know, in other countries and everything. And do they give to their host city the least of any hospital system? Why? Because there’s nobody policing it. There’s no standards. There’s no you have to’s, and there’s no penalties. So somebody, thank God, did a study. I don’t know what graduate student needed to, but somebody did, and about three years ago released it. That the Cleveland clinic, by their own measurements, does almost squat for Cleveland. And what little squat they do, they like to talk about. So. And I can say from my experience in other cities and here, that’s probably true. You know, I don’t doubt that data at all. But somebody published it once, and there’s, you know, but there’s no. What are you gonna do? Call up the head of the hospital and say, what are you doing? There’s nobody to enforce it. Nobody’s, you know, so that’s that. But that’s a sad little fact. So, yeah.

Bali White [01:12:45] So I guess now, what do you hope to see change for the better good of the community in the future?

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [01:12:53] Block clubs don’t seem to do that much, but they try, you know, it’s always been a problem, the Hispanics. You invite everybody. You know, we all are bad. I’ll tell you myself. I’ll keep it to myself. Whatever we do when we have music events, you don’t see all the different. They’re all free. There should be no barriers, right? They might even have hip hop or some other sort of black culture music. You do not see people from the projects mixing in. Hardly. To these groups, we don’t mix well. I would like to see somehow or other a better mix come in here. I’d like some of us White people to get out, though. The noise is really what I would say has changed. It’s always been bad in the city, but it’s, like, off the wall now because the police couldn’t care less about the kits that people put on their cars to make their mufflers loud. Used to be you’d get a ticket if you had a loud muffler. Quality of life rules. There’s no enforcement. In fact, it’s the opposite. People are just zooming, zooming, zooming. And the noise is really the pollution that’s pretty off the wall. So I would say Cleveland has a really bad quality of life, I think. And if I do have to move, which I do, because I’m nuts now, because I’ve been damaged by noise. I’m really sensitive to that. Cleveland has beaucoup, wonderful music opportunities. They’re great. But if your house lives with noise. See, I used to escape out to Willoughby in Lake county, so I wasn’t listening 24/7 now that I’m retired, I can’t imagine staying here. But I can’t leave my community, so I don’t know what I’m gonna do. So I’m praying. I say to God, you better tell me what to do, because this is a bad situation for me. So I personally can’t hack the noise. And my house is situated like that. I love my house. I stay. Stay in it, but I can’t. So I would like to see quality of life happen for Cleveland, that we would take sound really seriously and really go after all these cars with super loud mufflers and all that, and the boom. All those super boom boxes. You know, people turn their cars on super loud and go in restaurants and sit there. I had to walk two blocks and tell them my windows were shaking. I have to be on mute on a zoom because you’re in this restaurant listening to your car parked across the street, literally for half an hour, playing his music. And the Juneberry restaurant, that they were allowing that to happen. I walked in, and they were busy. They were serving their customers. But they should have been telling this guy I walked right in and could identify him immediately and said, I bet you that’s your car. Yeah. I love that music. And I said, yeah. And I don’t. And I said, I’m two blocks away, and I can’t even talk on a Zoom because my windows are shaking. It was just beyond absurdity. And other people noticed it, but nobody’s going to get out of their house because everybody says, you’ll get a gun pulled on you one of these days. Oh, well, that’s what I say. Oh, well, I just asked them, would you mind turning it off? And he did. He walked outside and did it with me. I said, I’m going to wait here until you do that. So we did. But I wish the owners of the. Of the restaurant and the. And the. They do that all the time. They pull in and go into the gas stations and talk to their friends at the gas station and leave their cars on for 40 minutes. Yeah. They’re not there to get gas every night at 10:00 every night this happens. So those are the kinds of things in the city that I wish would change. For me, that’s very street to street. That’s just my situation. But people do don’t like noise. I mean, people do talk about it, [crosstalk] And the poverty that is around it, it makes us a very ugly. The wealth and the poverty makes it ugly. We’re not. I can’t change that. I can’t change the developers. I can’t change that. We try to have community dining meetings and stuff like that. You know, there’s lots of good stuff, gardening and stuff happening. So you just hope that people can still stay being people and neighborly. But it’s harder.

Bali White [01:17:00] And even just meeting some of the people I’ve been interviewing, it seems like everybody is very tight-knit, there for one another, which is very admirable.

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [01:17:10] Well, we’re pretty welcoming. If you were moving in, if I find out who you are, we do welcome you. It usually is until you then the new person have a problem. Problem that you’re willing to know because you’re busy. And I was. I mean, Mike reminds me all the time you weren’t paying any attention to nothing until you were in your thirties and then you were all in. Then I dove in. So I lived here for seven years without really knowing who’s around me. So, I mean, there is a point in your life where you’re just busy surviving and now with everything being so personal all the time. But, you know, riding bikes helps and, I mean, people do look for ways to connect, so.

Bali White ’01:17:51] Which is very important, especially now just finding that connection. It seems like, you know, as a whole, we’re so glued to our phones and the Internet and what’s online opposed to the people that are actually right in front of you.

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala ’01:18:05] Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I mean, I think. I think my upbringing really lent me to be a community person. Like, I really believe in civics classes. I really like, I volunteer. I want to go back to volunteering for schools. I want to be a volunteer in an aquatics program. Swimming is my thing. I like all these things. And you need time. Being retired is worse than being working because you have all these options you can choose, and I’ve got way too many. So being here gives me lots of choices. But you only have so much time before you run out. I’m at the point where now you either do it or you give it up. You’re at the point where anything is possible now I’m like, you better focus or it’s off the charts. You know, you’re. You’re giving it away. So it’s the great giveaway, but, you know, I still hope this becomes a tight-knit community of sorts. Kind of like how you said something about Willoughby for you was a little bit like that. Where I can see that.

Bali White [01:19:06] Well, I guess we’re gonna kind of wrap up this interview. Do you have any last thoughts or any questions for me?

Maryellen Eickman-Fiala [01:19:16] Oh, I don’t know that I’ll ever listen to this. I’ve always wanted. No, you know what? I always wanted to be a voice author. You know, I wanted. I love books on tape. I love to read a book in my hand and have. And so I’m hoping to hear what this sounds like. But no, I mean, I feel really fortunate. I think. I wish neighborhoods were more like ours, at least how we try to be, you know? And to some degree, the mix of different incomes here made this a place that people wanted to come and live for the right reasons, even if we were snoots about it. And the new snoots we don’t like. I mean, we recognize snoots when we see them because we are them. So I get that. But probably the Catholic Worker hospitality, the thing, the whole thing about letting it change you and not doing the Catholic thing, you know, men for others. That motto, I mean, St. Ignatius as blind as a bat. Men for others is not biblical. It’s like, what are you people thinking? It’s more of the do unto. You know, the patronage system. And that’s not the gospel. The Bible I read does not say do unto others. It’s be one with. And that’s a much bigger challenge I haven’t mastered it, but at least here, this was a very good place to be around lots of people, religious and not, you know, both, and be very good friends with people not like yourself. So I think my prayer for this neighborhood is that it used to be integrated more, and it’s less. Money has done that and developers have done that. And I really- My hope is that we all learn that this world is big. I mean, that we need to, you know, for the safety of the planet. We need to start to understand how to live, how to live with people who are different from ourselves. Can’t say I’ve mastered it, but being a Catholic Worker gives you a chance. It gives you the opportunities. So I guess I’m grateful, even if I learned hard truths about myself that I’m not comfortable with to this minute. And I think, man, I’ve learned a lot. But if I went to my high school and said, my high school people run, you know, they run drug companies, and one runs an insurance company and, you know, they do these globally big things. And I want to just go in there and say, let me tell you what I’ve learned to fail at and how it’s okay. It’s okay to do it, and I’ve been a failure, but this is what I’ve learned in doing it. So being a Catholic Worker is not the failure. So, yeah, I have. You know, I have the hope that something bigger than us will save the planet. Maybe a UFO. I don’t know. They’re out there.

Bali White [01:21:51] Well, thank you. Thank you very much for being a part of this. I really do appreciate your time and your effort. So we’re going to close up this interview. I’m Bali White with the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project on June 25, 2024, with Maryellen Eickman- Fiala, thank you very much.

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