Abstract
In this 2025 interview, Myra Simmons discusses growing up off Kinsman Road in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood in the 1960s. She describes the long-standing businesses of her childhood, her childhood home, and her hobbies within and outside of school. She also talks about working at the steel mill for 42 years, her opinions of labor unions, and her later purchase of multiple homes in the neighborhood. The interview concludes with her hopes for the future and her advice for future generations.
Loading...
Interviewee
Simmons, Myra (interviewee)
Interviewer
Carubia, Ava (interviewer)
Project
Union-Miles
Date
3-11-2025
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
25 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Myra Simmons Interview, 28 February 2025" (2025). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 483020.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1367
Transcript
Ava Carubia [00:00:00] I’m going to start over. Today is March 11th. My name is Ava Carubia and I’m here at NuPoint Community Development Corporation interviewing Ms. Myra Simmons for the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed today. Can you please state your name, the year you were born and where you were born for the record.
Myra Simmons [00:00:19] Myra Simmons, Cleveland, Ohio…1958.
Ava Carubia [00:00:27] All right. Thank you. So can you talk a little bit about your early life? Were you born in Cleveland?
Myra Simmons [00:00:32] Yes, I was born in Cleveland, Ohio.
Ava Carubia [00:00:34] And can you talk about where in particular you grew up?
Myra Simmons [00:00:37] I was born on the east side, inner city on the east side. The streets I could remember was Ashbury, 120th and Ashbury, but I think we lived somewhere else before that. But I wasn’t familiar with that area. I think it was Cedar or something, but I don’t know about that. I remember 120th and Ashbury, Cleveland, Ohio. Then we moved from there and we moved on the other side of town. So I remember when we came across, we had to come back and forth to move, you know, move our stuff because we’re moving in cars. And we was came across, what is it we call it, it’s not Dead Man’s Curve, but coming across that Fairhill or whatever it was, we thought we was going a long way, you know, from that side of town to the other side of town. Then we moved over to Kinsman area, about 119th and Kinsman, 117th, 119th. Then we moved on 144th and Kinsman. Then we moved upstairs over an older couple. And she’s always complaining about us making noise over her head. So my mama said we was going to buy us a house so she don’t have to worry about nobody talking about her kids making too much noise. We couldn’t walk or nothing, you know. So we purchased our house down on 93rd and Kinsman area.
Ava Carubia [00:01:55] And what was the area like at that time?
Myra Simmons [00:01:58] Oh, wow, that was 1968, the drugstore on 93rd and Kins- had a drugstore and it was a doctor’s office there, too, upstairs. And I still have his card and stuff and his prescription papers, but I still have one of those. I looked at some of our papers. It was a doctor’s office upstairs and we had an Erma Lee’s beauty salon. It was a whole lots of stores around, storefronts and everything around there at that time, row houses, storefronts, laundromats. We had a hardware store. It was everything right there, walking distance. We had the A&P, a Pick-N-Pay and everything. Like they had a couple grocery stores in the neighborhood. It was beautiful. It was home, you know. Didn’t think I could live without it. Don’t want to live without it. But we don’t have it now.
Ava Carubia [00:02:52] And where did you go to elementary school?
Myra Simmons [00:02:54] Right there on 93rd and Carton. The name of the school was Boulevard Elementary School. Right in my community. Walking distance way right up the street. Yep. Stayed there until I went to Audubon Junior High School.
Ava Carubia [00:03:08] And where was that?
Myra Simmons [00:03:10] On East Boulevard. Right off East Boulevard. Next to Zelma George now. Yes.
Ava Carubia [00:03:18] And where’d you go to high school?
Myra Simmons [00:03:20] Well, I left Audubon and I went to Jane Addams all girls school because I was getting out of hand at Audubon. So I figured I’d need to make some moves because my mom said we had to graduate. So I went to Jane Addams all girls school. And then I found out it was going to take me longer to graduate there because I would have to go through the steps. So I took it up on my own and did the math and I found out I could have came out of school at 17. So I used my aunt’s address at that time and I went to John F. Kennedy. But Adams was my district school, so I went to John F. Kennedy. And I came out of John F. Kennedy in 1976. And I was 18, I mean 17. But the following week I turned 18. And the following week from that I went into my career job, which was a steel mill. So I came out of school at 17, turned 18 the following week, and on the 24th of June, I went into the steel mill, stayed there for 42 years.
Ava Carubia [00:04:19] And then throughout this whole time, like from your early childhood too, before you started working, how had the neighborhood changed?
Myra Simmons [00:04:26] Well, on my street, I live on Marshall Avenue. And on my street we had a Pile Six, [unclear]. It was really a big help for our community for what we was doing in the neighborhood. I mean, we had drill team. I was a captain of the drill team. We had the police officers there, we had a karate there. We had all kind of different events there, you know, right there in the neighborhood. We all. We was all. There was family, you know, it was like home. After we got out of school, we go to the Police Athletic League, which was real nice. That’s what made me the little bit I am today. That’s because of the community working with the officers and stuff. In our neighborhood. We had a community place right there. Really, it’s a big help. I would never forget that. It was a real big help for us.
Ava Carubia [00:05:09] And as a kid, what other things did you enjoy doing in the neighborhood?
Myra Simmons [00:05:15] We had. We still had our library there, I believe we had the library there. And we had a playground down the street from my house. We played at the playground. Neighbors, you know, going to neighbors. And we had the house that everybody came to, you know, the safe home. So we had lots of company in our house all the time. My mom worked at nights, so we couldn’t make too much noise around the house because she was sleeping while we was wanting to, you know, play and stuff. But my house always having, the connecting house. You know, people connect at our house because I have brothers and sisters and stuff, and I’m the youngest of my family.
Ava Carubia [00:05:53] Can you talk more about your house being a connecting house?
Myra Simmons [00:05:56] Yeah, my father was a. He was a. He was a character. He used to hang with younger guys. Used to like to hang with my dad because he was cool, you know, so. And my mom, she was real quiet. And like I said, I’m the youngest in the family and I got two brothers and one sister. So we all had our own friends and stuff. You know, like I said, we just felt like it was a safe house there, you know, did a lot of. My house. Brought everybody home, you know, come to my house, come to. Everybody knew my mother and father, you know, what’s up. We don’t know where they live at. Don’t know their last names or nothing. But our house was always a connecting house because there was so much love there.
Ava Carubia [00:06:36] And what did your father do?
Myra Simmons [00:06:38] He was a tow motor driver. Yeah. And then he worked at the steel. He worked at the steel mill too, for period of time. Then he became a tow motor driver. Then he got sick and then he wasn’t working for a while.
Ava Carubia [00:06:54] And I want to go back to what you said, talking about all the just community in the neighborhood and the events going on. When do you think that sort of went away? Because you brought that up when you were talking about the changes of the neighborhood.
Myra Simmons [00:07:06] You know it just happened one by one, and then again, like sitting there just wiped the whole street out. You know, people, I guess they were losing their. I still have a building on 93rd and St. Catherine. I purchased a building. You know, it’s two storefronts and two apartments upstairs. So it’s not that many buildings left from Union to Kinsman. It’s not that many buildings on. Probably just. Probably only two: mines and Mookie’s, you know, so the rest of them got torn out. They tore them all down. Yeah. And I go down other streets, not in my neighborhood, and they didn’t tear theirs down. You know why they didn’t? Ten years now, they just let them sit there. And then ours, they tore them all down.
Ava Carubia [00:07:49] So how many, have you moved far from 93rd and Kinsman throughout your life?
Myra Simmons [00:07:57] Like I said, I started working when I was. I started working before I was 18. I was. Had those summer jobs, snipe jobs and things like that. But when I got 18, I think. I don’t know how long it was before I moved out. I moved on two streets over on Eastern Avenue. Then I moved out on Rockside and Garfield, Rockside and Turney Road. And those apartments across the street from used to be Kmart’s at that time. Then I got tired of paying rent and I was just never there, you know, because I wanted to always come back down to where my mom was at, where my friends was at, you know. So I was there paying big rent and stuff like that. I’m never there. Just go home and go to bed and go to work. So I decided to come back into my community I felt comfortable with.
Ava Carubia [00:08:43] And you said you worked at the steel mill for 42 years?
Myra Simmons [00:08:46] Yes, ma’am.
Ava Carubia [00:08:47] What was that experience like?
Myra Simmons [00:08:50] I was harassed a lot and we used to get laid off sometimes. One time I got laid off one year and I trained for the firefighters. I always had looked at non-traditional jobs because they paid big money. So when, working in the steel mill, it was like I said, I was young, I didn’t know nothing. I told my mom I was working at the opportunity center on 93rd. We had an opportunity center, you know, it was real nice for the community, real nice. And I was working there and my mom called me and told me that Republic Steel at that time called me to come to work. So I think at this era of Opportunity Center, I was getting about a $1.60 an hour. So then I told my mom I was gonna go down there to the interview, you know, she said, you don’t know nothing about no steel mill. I said, mom, I ain’t trying to talk back to you or nothing, but you don’t know nothing about it either. I’m going down there and check it out, you know. So I went down there and got a couple of paychecks and looked good. So, yeah, it wasn’t. They wasn’t. We didn’t have lots of safety things there when I went in there. So we was doing some. Lots of unsafe jobs. Now we know better now since we older, you know, we know better than you know. The EPA came in and, you know, changed lots of things around, but it was real hard, real, real hard for me. And like I said, I didn’t know nobody. You know, sometimes people come in on their family members or something like that. I just came in on my own and I didn’t have no backup or nothing. But it was real bad for me. And thank God we had a union. I just speak about a union. Thank God I had a union because I wouldn’t have made it without a union. It would have been impossible to make it down there without a union. Somebody trying to help you a little bit. But that’s the only way I made it because of the union and I respect unions. It wasn’t easy. It was not easy at all. But I got laid off plenty of times. Went back to work one year I was laid off for about four years and they shut down. And I went through a bunch of names of the company was Republic Steel, ISG and another name, I bypassed that one. And then they came up with LTV and then LTV and J&L they merged together which made LTV. Then it came up to Arsenal. Arsenal Middle was a bunch of them. I don’t know what the name is. I think it’s called Cliffs. Cleveland Cliffs. Where they took the cliffs off Cleveland. Things might be called Cliffs or whatever, but it’s still the paycheck still kept coming in.
Ava Carubia [00:11:32] And what were your specific titles when you worked at the?
Myra Simmons [00:11:35] Well, when I first went down there When I was 18, I was a laborer. You know, I went in there as a laborer and then when I finished, I was an inspector leader. A leader, inspector, operator. So I moved up highest. I moved up real high after years go by. But I came in there sweeping the floor. Sweeping the floor.
Ava Carubia [00:11:55] And then. I know you’re really involved in the community. When did that work kind of start?
Myra Simmons [00:12:00] Well, I’m single, matter of fact, I don’t have no kids. I’ve never been married. So I moved back on 93rd for my Marshall Avenue and I purchased four houses on the same street. And like I said, I got the commercial building around the corner. So I seen. When I was laid off at that time, I looked around and seen there was a need for the things I was trying to do, you know. And I do the back to school safety fair every year too because I see there was a need, you know. Then I purchased the homes on the streets so I could put families in them, you know. So when I seen it was tearing down everything, I purchased condemned houses and tried to bring them, bring them back and put families in them.
Ava Carubia [00:12:39] And when would you say, when did you start buying these properties?
Myra Simmons [00:12:44] Oh, I don’t know exactly what year. I know. I think I did buy one in ’79. I started in ’76 in the mill, maybe ’79. I can’t really remember what year, but yeah, and my brother, he was doing that kind of work. He was buying houses and fixing them up. And one house he had bought up on Kinsman, 118th and Kinsman. And he was telling me and my mom that he was so proud of it. You know, it was his rental property he was doing. He was so proud of this little raggedy house. He was telling us, come on in. Look at this. We like. He said, come on. We just walk back. Then about six months later, he had her whole house fixed up. I said, wow. So that’s what made me want to start buying raggedy houses and fixing them up, because it could be done, and it didn’t take that much to do it. You know, it didn’t cost that much. So. I started purchasing homes.
Ava Carubia [00:13:41] Well, I want to go back a little bit, and I guess you could just think over your whole life. What’s one of your happiest memories from this part of Cleveland?
Myra Simmons [00:13:55] Happiest memories? Well, I miss my mom and my dad, that’s for sure. You know, there was some happy memories, you know, for all of us to be together, you know, and it’s not there no more. You know, we losing them one by one, our families, you know, we losing them now. And I’m glad we did have the household with my mom and dad there together. You know, that was a help. That’s why a lot of people came to our homes, too, because it was all. Everybody was there, just family in the neighborhood the way it was, you know, because like I said, it was a staple there. You know, it was real great. We had everything right there. Yeah, the neighborhood just being there, the neighborhood, the neighbors on the street, you know, it was all family. People been living there now. You know, they’ve been living there since the 60s, you know, and there’s still a couple of them still there. And then the grandkids got some of the houses and stuff now, but. And like I said, it was nice to be at the pile six. That was a big, big help. That was a real big help for us, having the community together. Lots of memories about the neighborhood. It was just. We had everything right there. Just family. Just a little nice community. Real nice community. Walking distance. Yeah. Real nice community.
Ava Carubia [00:15:16] You mentioned some of the businesses that were right there on Kinsman, but are there any others that you didn’t mention that you remember going to a lot when you were a kid or even into adulthood, too?
Myra Simmons [00:15:31] We had an ice cream place over there for 93rd also. Ice cream parlor. And I became an Eastern Star, too. And we had the little Eastern Star thing over there. Hall. And we had a VFW Hall. That’s right. And our mailman used to always go over there to the VFW. You need your mail, you go up there, get it from. You go up there to the VFW and get your mail. Because he’ll be up there most of the time. He ain’t doing the mail. He’ll have take his break and go up there. And it was really nice. We hit the McDonald’s on the corner. We knew the families that used to, you know, run the McDonald’s during that time. It was the Reds. Their whole generation used to work there, you know, so the bars and stuff on the corners, you know, food places, like I said, we had the doctor’s office upstairs over the drugstore. We had a nice drugstore and everything. It’s a nice thing. But now we don’t have anything. And they’re not even looking at it now. I guess they have a plan for it. But what it is, what they expect us to do in the meantime?
Ava Carubia [00:16:35] Well, I asked you about how things have changed. Is there anything that stayed the same in these neighborhoods while you’ve lived here?
Myra Simmons [00:16:46] I’m gonna have to really say, stay the same. I’m gonna really have to say no. I mean, it’s just pitiful. I mean, I hear about McDonald’s. They don’t have no cups for the coffee and stuff, you know, it’s pitiful. What we do have is not good out here, you know, I don’t go in there. I don’t go inside. I might go to the drive through, but it’s not being kept up the way it should. We got a playground down there. I keep the playground. The guy, he know me now. He keeps the playground good. But past the playground, there’s so much litter. Litter everywhere, like they don’t even care. The City of Cleveland’s supposed to be doing these things, and they don’t even come in our neighborhood to do anything unless you call them. But we got this new opportunity corridor. They keep it looking beautiful, you know. And how do they keep these other neighborhoods looking good? It’s not there ain’t nobody throwing nothing down, you know, but we still need stuff done in our neighborhood or we can’t get it done. It’s just a fight all the time, it’s a fight. Or you got to wait so long to get it done. And what I think is with the illegal dumping and stuff like that, we got a bunch of illegal dumping because there’s lots of empty lots. Now our garbage due on the Thursday. And a little bit of thing I think is that whatever this truck is, we got to wait on for 30 days to come pick up our illegal dumping. Why can’t it be right behind the garbage truck? So every week we know if you throw a mattress down every week, somebody gonna pick it up. We don’t have to wait no 50 days and keep riding past looking at that mess. That’s not fair. I don’t think that’s fair at all. I think what if that truck is. We got to wait on. I know there’s two different departments. I understand that. But it still should come on the same day, whatever it is. Once a week. If you do that. If I wash my clothes once a week, I ain’t got that money, clothes and watch next week. I don’t get it. I don’t understand it. To save my life. There’s some things could be much better if they just listen to the community, you know, it don’t take all that, you know, because all this waiting and waiting and waiting don’t make sense to me. It’s not fair. We taxpayers, it’s not fair. We all live here in Cleveland. It’s not fair. Unacceptable. In my job, they would say unacceptable.
Ava Carubia [00:18:47] What other things do you wish or what, when you envision what you’d like this neighborhood to be like, what. What is your. What are your thoughts?
Myra Simmons [00:18:56] Okay, let me tell you something that I don’t like. Years ago, they came to the wise idea to tear all these houses down, and they left them in the ground. And they put the house in the ground and left them there, put the dirt over top of it. Now they’re deteriorating. The dirt is just going down, down, down. They telling me ain’t nobody gonna address that issue again. They’re not gonna come back and look at that. But it’s not safe and it’s not right. And in my neighborhood, we got about five of them. That all the dirt is gone. Ain’t nothing but a big hole. And you can push somebody in there, won’t nobody know nothing. Nothing’s around, no fence around it or anything. But don’t nobody listening to me. And this need to be addressed. They tell me, who gonna go around filling up all these holes or whatever. I don’t care. It’s an issue in Cleveland. They have to do something about it. I’m gonna keep on working on that. It’s unsafe. You don’t know. Somebody could get in the [unclear] about to go straight on down.
Ava Carubia [00:19:59] Well, I have two more questions and then this will actually start wrapping up the interview. But one of them is, how do you think that being from this part of Cleveland has shaped you as a person?
Myra Simmons [00:20:15] Well, I know that we’re being overlooked. So I have to stay strong no matter what. You know, I have friends that come to my house, come down these old raggedy streets and stuff and come down seeing all this trash and stuff, and they want to know why is I’m still here? Well, Myra, the income you have, why are you still here? And like I said, I’m here by choice and I’m going to try to keep hope alive. If everybody. Then I meet people on my job or something, they’ll say, I used to live over there. My ask question is, why did you move? I said, what I want to hear: why did you move? I used to live over here on [unclear] and live over here. Why did you move? You know, that’s what I want to hear, the answers. And I pretty much know some of the answers, you know, but they ain’t gonna tell me the real answers. But I pretty much know, you know, why did you move? You know, But I’m not giving up. I’m gonna stay in Cleveland because I want to help the ones that’s coming in, the ones that’s still here, you know, I’m here by choice. Yeah. And I think it’s gonna be okay. But when. Why don’t they listen to a little bit? Because we always been a missing triangle. First was that we get the flip the flop around each ward. We’ll be in Ward 6. Then we go to Ward 5. Ward 6. Ward 5. Now we’re in Ward 6. But those peoples already got their own peoples, you know what I mean? We just coming in on the outside. So I understand how we, you know, how we being treated. But yet it’s still. It’s not our fault, you know. Now I don’t know what ward. I guess I’ll still be in Ward 6, now. So they doing this turnaround thing, but yet. And still not the same when he was really in the ward at the beginning or whatever, you know, it’s not the same. We don’t get the same things that other wards get. Who’s don’t get flipped around. I don’t think so. And I should know because I’m in there. I’m in there, and I mean, I’m there and I’m asking questions. And I mean, it’s not happening yet. But I’m in Cleveland because of choice. That’s why I’m not going anywhere. I’m gonna keep hope alive. And I think if they. If everybody do what they supposed to do, things should start looking better.
Ava Carubia [00:22:17] Well, this is my last question. Kind of goes off of that. What’s one message you’d like to leave for future generations?
Myra Simmons [00:22:29] Well, I want to say really be proud of your neighborhood and do all you can to keep it alive, you know? Cause the younger people are coming up and they watching us. And we don’t have to run, you know, just stand. Just keep just standing and believe in what you believe in. Cause it’s all, you know is wherever you move to is somebody’s neighborhood. It’s somebody’s neighborhood, you know, somebody’s corner store, somebody’s neighbor. I can move out here. But somebody was born there, raised there. That’s their neighbor, you know, that’s their corner store. So they want to probably move and I want to move there. They want to move somewhere else. But it’s always somebody’s. Always somebody’s corner store or somebody’s neighborhood. So I’m not going to leave this neighborhood. I’m just going to keep hope alive. I’m telling you to keep up alive and stand for what you believe in. And when we come together, we can get some of these things.
Ava Carubia [00:23:17] Well, thank you. And that’s the end of my questions. But is there anything I didn’t ask about that you’d like to add in this interview?
Myra Simmons [00:23:26] Yes. The CDCs in this neighborhood, I don’t know what they really are doing, but like I say, our area really needs some help. And it has been a missing triangle, and it’s known to be the missing triangle. You know, we’ve been lacking for a long time, but like I said, I’m sure they got a plan for it. But right now on 93rd, we got a police station, and now we got a fire station. But the fire station, they building it now. I hope I don’t never, ever have to use the police station. And I hope I’ll never, ever have to use the fire station. Can you give me something I can use every day, please? Something I could enjoy? Walk in and enjoy it, you know, Give us something we can use, you know, I mean, we could use that when we needed. As needed. But I want something we can, you know, bring a family to, you know, family and friends. And like I said, pile 6 was excellent. If we could get something like that again. And I understand Zelma George’s down the street and stuff, but that’s not ours, you know, we want something in our. We got plenty of land, green space, to put things.
Ava Carubia [00:24:38] Is there anything else that you want to add?
Myra Simmons [00:24:42] I’m gonna have to say no, but I wish people listened more to the people that know what they’re, you know, we. It’s the need for it. And I would like for you to come in my community. Let me show you my ward, my community. Because I’m a precinct committee person, too, and I’d like you to see my precinct and tell me what you think. Yeah, I want to show people, and I have showed them, and it’s unacceptable.
Ava Carubia [00:25:09] Well, thank you so much. I’m going to end the recording right now, if that’s okay.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
