Abstract
In this 2025 interview, Dan Shields discusses his early life growing up in the Union-Miles neighborhood. He retells the story of his Polish and Irish family arriving in Cleveland in the 1800s, and discusses his parents’ and grandparents’ experiences living along Union Avenue and Broadway Avenue: his grandfather worked at the steel mill in the area. Shields describes his childhood in the neighborhood: specifically memories from Garfield Park and Calvary Cemetery. He talks fondly of his paper route and how it gave him a greater understanding of his community. Shields describes the racial changes that the area saw in the 1960s and how these changes impacted his life. He discusses the neighborhood in the present-day and his hopes for its future.
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Interviewee
Shields, Dan (interviewee)
Interviewer
Carubia, Ava (interviewer)
Project
Union-Miles
Date
10-10-2025
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
43 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Dan Shields interview, 10 October 2025" (2025). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 483028.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1421
Transcript
Ava Carubia [00:00:02] Today is October 15th, 2025. My name is Ava Carubia, and I’m here at the Earle B. Turner Rec center in Cleveland, Ohio. Interviewing Mr. Dan Shields for the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed today.
Dan Shields [00:00:16] Oh, you’re welcome. I’m excited to be here.
Ava Carubia [00:00:19] For the record, can you please state your name and the year you were born?
Dan Shields [00:00:23] Sure. I’m Dan Shields. S H I E L D S and I was born in 1960.
Ava Carubia [00:00:31] Perfect. And then where were you born?
Dan Shields [00:00:34] Well, we’re around 110th and Miles, so we originally lived farther down Miles off of like 100th. So I was born on Gaylord, which is just off 93rd and Miles.
Ava Carubia [00:00:51] Well, I want to start, I guess, even further back. Can you talk a little bit about how your family first got to Cleveland?
Dan Shields [00:00:57] Yeah, we are still trying to unpack that, and every couple years somebody gets on and starts doing it. We basically have Polish and Irish ancestry, and as far as I know, I mean, my father was born here and I believe my grandfather was born here. But I think that they came over with the potato famine from Ireland, so around 1850. [00:01:27] But I’m not sure, like, what the exact dates are who came over. And then on my mom’s side, the Polish side, it’s kind of the same thing, tragically, you know, sometimes Poland, you know, you don’t know if it’s Poland or Germany or what war it was. But they’ve determined that somebody came over, I believe, around 1880s from like the northeast area.
Ava Carubia [00:01:53] And then do you know what part of Cleveland your family first came to?
Dan Shields [00:01:59] Yeah, my father grew up or was born around 71st and Broadway, and he remembers living down there as a boy. And they also live, my father’s family, they also lived around, I think it was 108th or 106th and Miles, here. And then my mom, she lived near St. Catherine’s, which is over off of on 93rd beyond Union, because that’s where she went to school and church.
Ava Carubia [00:02:35] So what did your parents say about the area when they were spending time or growing up around here?
Dan Shields [00:02:41] Well, they both really liked it. I mean, my mom went to John Adams, which is over off 116th. And one of the things that she said that always stuck with me is that the neighborhood was very diverse. So she really liked the fact that there was Jews and Catholics and white and Black. [00:03:05] And it was very natural for her, she said, to have a real diverse school and school experience. So, you know, she liked that. And she worked over in Cleveland Heights a little bit. She did a year at Ursuline after graduating from John Adams, and then she was married.
Ava Carubia [00:03:29] And what did your father do?
Dan Shields [00:03:33] Well, my father, his father, which is, you know, part of the history, he was a steel worker. So, you know, one of the interesting things for those, you know, who know the history of the area is that I, if I’m correct, like, a lot of the Irish came over and settled around Fleet Avenue and that southeast side area. [00:03:55] And then, if I have it correctly, a lot of the Poles were brought over to break a strike. So, you know, that was. It’s kind of funny because that’s eventually what we became. So in that area where they would hate each other. Okay. You know, different ethnicities, we are a product of that, you know, happening, being both Polish and Irish. [00:04:22] So my father’s father worked in a steel mill. In fact, probably my favorite possession is a picture I have of him with his crew at the steel mill. And he’s got a big smile on his face, and I always ask people to point him out. And I think it was around 1913. And I just love that because I’m always inspired by that. [00:04:46] Here’s a guy who’s working in the steel mills, probably had a hard knock life, and yet there he was with a big grin on his face. And I guess my dad said he was a very nice guy, very strong man. Unfortunately, he passed when my father was a boy, so that’s like 1938. [00:05:04] So I think my father was only 12, 13 years old at that time. So then my father, he went to Holy Name High School here. And I think he may have gone right into the Navy in World War II, because he was born in ’25. So I think he may have gone right into the Navy. [00:05:26] He saw some, you know, not hardcore action, but he was a Navy engineer, so he was in the South Pacific. He came back, did the GI Bill, which he just would always go on and on about. You know, Uncle Sam sent me to school. Uncle Sam. And he was able to go to. [00:05:49] Oh, it’s John Carroll. It’s John Carroll now. And then he went to law school at Cleveland Marshall back in the 50s. So then he and my mother were married in 1948.
Ava Carubia [00:06:02] And then you said you were born in 1960.
Dan Shields [00:06:04] I was born in 1960. I was the fifth of nine children, so I was right in the middle.
Ava Carubia [00:06:10] So can you talk a little bit about your early life?
Dan Shields [00:06:16] What I remember from the very earliest was I may have remembered just a thing or two about this house on Gaylord. My parents owned two houses next to each other, and then we grew up. In 1962, my parents moved to a house on East Boulevard. It was East Boulevard at the time. Now it’s Martin Luther King. [00:06:39] So this house, it’s legendary in our family. I mean, it was a beautiful house. It was big. It was up on a hill. Big brick house. It was right next to the woods. And then Calvary Cemetery was in our backyard. So the house was very comfortable. I just remember, you know, being a kid there playing out back. [00:06:59] You know, my parents put up a pool. So it was. I mean, it was a really nice place to grow up. Lots of kids. Lots of kids in the neighborhood. We were Holy Namers, and a lot of the other kids went to Tim’s, which is up on 131st. So it was just a lot of playing outside, get outside, and, you know, we’d listen for my mom when it got dark. [00:07:24] So just a lot of, like, street games. Kickball, you know, baseball, you know, basketball, things like that. And what I tell people is it was. I call it the world’s greatest playground because we had the cemetery behind us. We had woods next to us where we played. We could go through the cemetery here to this building, which is the YMCA, where we would wrestle, swim. [00:07:51] The family, we would come here all the time. In fact, every Friday night as kids, mom would throw us in the pool, dad would play handball, and we’d just all run around and everything. Up at the top of the street toward 131st, we call it the Sand Pits. So it was part of the cemetery. [00:08:10] And I’m not sure what they used it for, you know, for graves in or out. But there were giant mounds of sand. And we, you know, we have 10, you know, 20 kids up there just running around, jumping around, jumping over caverns. So it’s just. It was just a great place to play. [00:08:30] And that was so fundamental. See, the. As we got a little bit older, like I said, we would come cut through the cemetery or 116th to come up to the YMCA where we would wrestle and had, you know, football, swimming, swim team, that sort of thing. Then the other way, we’d cut through the cemetery to go up to Garfield Park. [00:08:55] So from our house we’d have Calvary Cemetery, then Garfield park, which at the time was kind of abandoned because the city of Cleveland didn’t want it and the city of Garfield Heights didn’t want it. So it just kind of became no man. You know, it was our own private park. And there’s a lot that they’re redoing right now with the boathouse and whatnot. [00:09:18] But at the time, that was all falling apart. So we’d go up to Garfield Park to play soccer, football, baseball, you know, with the Holy Name teams.
Ava Carubia [00:09:31] Do you remember any businesses along Miles Avenue or any other streets that you would go to a lot when you were a kid?
Dan Shields [00:09:38] Well, the thing was, we all had paper routes, so we covered the whole area from, you know, Miles Avenue to 131st down to. I’ll just call it MLK, down to where we live, Thornhurst, Maple Row. So we covered all of those areas. And that was another very important part of my growing up because I got to see so many people in so many situations. [00:10:01] It really taught me a lot about just what life was like because I was peeking into other people’s homes when we went to collect. So the businesses that I remember on Miles, you know, even by Miles an 131st by those railroad tracks there, there weren’t a lot of buildings there. I think there might have been a Giant Eagle and even some of those auto, you know, junkyards that are there today were there back then. [00:10:34] You know, Giant Tiger, I think may have been the name of the store, which was a general store. But. But 131st and Miles, that was about as far as I went. And there was a lot of stores along there. Now. Now the stories that I remember were between St. Tim’s and 131st, and there was a fire station there. [00:10:53] I think there may be another fire station there before you go down 131st towards Broadway. So some of the buildings there were like the Lakewood buildings that I see now. They’re two or three stories, very old fashioned. I mean, I love architecture. So it was kind of this Cleveland brick, two or three story tall buildings. [00:11:16] Stores would be on the bottom, apartments would be up top. So there was a candy store right at. I think it was. Might have been Christine and 131st. There was a bakery right on 131st near. Might have been Maplerow. And there was like a general store there as well. And I think there’s some stores there still pretty much, you know, between Maplerow and the fire station that’s up there now. [00:11:50] So I remember the bakery, I remember the general store. I remember the candy store. And there was an ice cream store up there, too. The important stuff.
Ava Carubia [00:12:01] Well, you said that you were a Holy Namer and the other kids went to St. Tim’s. Can you talk a little bit about more about where holy name was? Where Saint Thames were just more about that?
Dan Shields [00:12:12] Holy Name was the Fighting Irish. So I think that was part of that whole Irish Southeast side thing. You know, green and white were the colors. My father went there, and so we kind of followed him there. My older brothers and sisters, we all went through Holy Name Grade School, which was one of the most beautiful, magnificent buildings I’ve ever seen. [00:12:34] And it was on Miles Avenue down by 71st, so maybe 68, 6700. And eventually it was torn down. And there was public housing that’s still there. So the grade school you can find pictures of, it was just this big, giant, beautiful gothic structure. We all went to that grade school, like kindergarten through eighth grade. [00:12:59] My older brothers and sisters then went to Holy Name High School. Now, we knew kids from Garfield Heights, Maple Heights, Bedford, and also Fleet Avenue. So we kind of made the rounds. And a lot of those kids went to Garfield Heights High, Maple Heights, Trinity. Oh, and my wife went to Trinity, and I can’t think of the original name of Trinity High School. [00:13:26] She went there. So the older brothers and sisters went to Holy Name. I went to Ignatius because we knew one of the priests who became president of Saint Ignatius. He grew up on the street where my parents were living, this Gaylord when they were first married. And my parents knew Father Rob Welch, who became the president of St. Ignatius High School. My parents knew him as he was a boy. So he later became the president of Saint Ignatius. And I made the switch to go to Ignatius because Holy name closed in 1978. That was the year I graduated. That was the last year the high school graduated class, and they’d been there from 1875. [00:14:17] And then Holy Name is moved out to Parma or Parma Heights, and it’s still there now. So we were, you know, big on Holy Name as well as Ignatius. But I, you know, knew a lot of people from, you know, Trinity, Garfield Heights High, Maple Heights, South High, knew a lot of people from South High. [00:14:41] So on the southeast side, there was an old South High School down on Broadway by Fleet Avenue. And then I even remember the newer South High, which I think was like 70, 1972, and even that one has since been torn down. And I don’t think South High exists anymore.
Ava Carubia [00:15:00] Not anymore.
Dan Shields [00:15:03] So for anybody who remembers, South High and Holy Name had a big rivalry. And then whoever won that football game each year got the pigskin trophy.
Ava Carubia [00:15:12] What does that mean?
Dan Shields [00:15:13] The pig skin was like a fake football. And then. Yeah. And so the pigskin, it would go from school to school, depending on which. Which team won that that rivalry game, because they were right down the street from each other.
Ava Carubia [00:15:28] So I’m curious, as you were growing up, how the neighborhood was changing, maybe.
Dan Shields [00:15:34] Sure. And, you know, I do have to back up just a little bit when I’m talking about the playground before we get to that. There was. There was one thing that we always, always played with, played in, and it was the tunnels. We call them the tunnels. And it was down. Down in the woods by our street. [00:15:53] It ran. The tunnel ran from East Boulevard all the way underneath the cemetery, probably for about a mile. And it came out on Broadway, and it was just like a trickle for a little creek that was there. But we would go through them all the time, back and forth, and you’d have a little bit of light from, you know, sewer grates coming down from the cemetery. [00:16:16] Yeah, it was kind of creepy, but it was round for a while, and we would run through there, and then it was square for a while, and we’d run through there. But it was. It was just a great adventure, you know, to do that. And then another thing is, originally in Garfield Heights and Garfield Park, there was a Garfield Pool, which was just a big concrete saucer. [00:16:38] And I remember that from when I was very young. But eventually that was torn down, I think it, you know, in the. Maybe the late 60s. And there was a pool that was built in Garfield Heights off Turney Road. That’s still there. So that was, you know, the. The. The Garfield Pool. I was there every summer from, you know, 10 to 15, 10 to 16, all summer long. [00:17:04] So swimming, hanging out, having a good time. So I had to tell you about that because that was a big, big part of my growing up.
Ava Carubia [00:17:13] Well, I have another question before we go to the last question I asked, which is you talked about your outside a lot in your childhood as a kid. What other kind of hobbies and interests did you have?
Dan Shields [00:17:26] Well, I think you mean younger kid or, like, from 15 on. I’m trying to think what level of kid.
Ava Carubia [00:17:35] Just however you want to answer the question.
Dan Shields [00:17:38] We. I mean, I loved to read. I did a lot of reading. I would bike around. I was very adventurous. So we would go, you know, just biking all day. We’d go up to Valley View. We’d go up around Garfield Heights. So, you know, when we got together with my friends, we would just go and hang out. [00:17:57] We’d hang out in the woods, hang out by the railroad tracks. You know, we were crazy. We used to hop trains down along Broadway where the. You know, they had a whole train track there. So we were just always out adventuring and being in the woods or being by the train tracks. [00:18:17] And if we were at somebody’s house, it was just, you know, sort of relaxing. Wasn’t, you know, TV or phones or anything, talking, you know, getting together. When I was a child, I played blocks all the time. All the time. I think that’s how I came to love architecture. I just. For hours and hours on end, I would build, you know, these. [00:18:41] They were old wooden blocks, but it was my favorite toy of all time. And I would build them as, you know, seven, eight feet tall and knock them down, do it again. We stayed. We stayed in our yard a lot because we had the pool. A lot of kids would come over, and we had cousins. [00:19:00] There were eight of them that still lived down on Gaylord. So we were back and forth with that family all the time. And it was just, you know, being together, playing games, playing in the yard, you know, that sort of thing. Nothing, you know, particular that I can think of, other than. Than just being around each other.
Ava Carubia [00:19:24] Well, I want to go to the question I asked before, which is, how do you. How did the neighborhood start to change throughout your childhood?
Dan Shields [00:19:31] Well, excuse me. As I said, I was born in 1960, and we had, you know, we had all these paper routes. And then our neighborhood, you know, this is very fundamental to who I am. Our neighborhood began to change. It was the classic white flight situation. There were, you know, in the area that we lived in, which was southeast Cleveland, there were Black families that were moving south from Warrensville, Harvard, into our neighborhood. [00:20:05] And our neighborhood was a great neighborhood and still is. Beautiful houses, beautiful lawns, lots of space. You know, when you. When you’re traveling around, like, Miles and Fleet and even 131st, it can seem a little claustrophobic, you know, with some of the old stores and cars and houses. But if you just go, you know, kind of into the Thornhurst, Maplerow area where we were, it’s just a lot of elbow room. [00:20:34] So, you know, I think it was a very desirable area, and there was kind of a natural progression in Cleveland that. And this is kind of an aside, but it’s also very important. Shaker Heights had really worked hard in the 60s to have positive integration. And I don’t remember exactly how the rules were, but it was very interesting. [00:20:59] Like, I think they would say, like, there were quotas, like, so many Black families could move in, so many white families. And I think it was a national model for how they did integration, which was happening at that time. And Garfield Heights, Cleveland border tried to do it as well, but it didn’t work. [00:21:18] So what was happening? And this is, again, my memory, is that families were moving in, and then all of a sudden we were losing everybody from our paper routes. Everybody was leaving. Years later, my father told me how they were having meetings, like at St. Tim’s I believe, and they were trying to say, okay, how are we going to do this? [00:21:42] Positive integration, it’s happening. How are we going to do this? And people were saying, well, look, we want to do this. We want to make this positive, and we want to have this work. But then he said they were leaving on their moving trucks in the middle of the night. And so what happened from about the late 60s, so I’m 8, 9 years old, to maybe ’72, ’73, is that I’d say 90% of the white families moved out, and it became 90% African American. [00:22:12] Now, what was fundamental to me and, you know, if I could only. Boy, you know, if I could only have one more conversation with my parents is that they said, look, we’re not going to run. We’re not going to move. We’re not going to leave. This is our neighborhood. And they were very strong and had strong values and. [00:22:32] And they said, this is what we’re going to do. So I tell people, I grew up in a white neighborhood and I grew up in a Black neighborhood. So keep going? So there’s two things that are very fundamental to me and get more important the older I get. One is to be able to take a stand, to do the right thing, even if it’s at cost, to have values and stick to them. [00:22:59] You know, have a. Have your belief set and stick to that. And I really respect my parents for having that. They were, you know, they were Democrats. They were very involved in the community. They volunteered, and they were very active in the community. And, you know, I learned a lot from that. But the other thing that was, you know, very fundamental. [00:23:23] Stick to your guns. I guess that’s the best way to put it. But the other thing that was very fundamental to me is, you know, like my father, of the nine, I’m the only one who became a lawyer. So I grew up here. I went to Ignatius. I went to Bowling Green State University, which is out west. [00:23:39] Then I came back and I went to Case Western Reserve Law School. And I mean, I could go on and on. I just had a great time in the 70s and 80s. I don’t know if, you know, Blossom Music center and, you know, the Agora. Lots and lots of concerts Lots of music, you know, lots of friends around town. [00:23:56] So, you know, I had a really good time. And that’s just. That’d be a whole other series of interviews. Just fun in Cleveland, you know, lakefront, little bit of boating. But after law school. So I’ve been practicing here for almost 40 years, and my life has been essentially with white and black. Okay? [00:24:17] So not only as how I grew up, but also my practice, because I did a lot of civil law and a lot of criminal law. And yes, in Cuyahoga County, most of the criminal law involved Black defendants. So I always felt that I had an edge in life and in my practice because I could communicate easily with Blacks. [00:24:42] And I say that, but again, the older I get, the less I can understand racism. That may sound counterintuitive, but the less I understand it. It’s like, what’s the matter, folks? You know, when we were growing up, we had, you know, Black friends, and we wrestled and we played football and, you know, we ran around the neighborhood. [00:25:03] So it was very natural. And my parents always said, look, if you want to have integration, don’t do busing. They said, send everybody to summer camp. And they were right. Because I think you have to have that kind of fundamental background when you’re children up to about age 15. Because after that, I think the racism sets in and the hatred sets in and the mistrust and the distrust sets in. [00:25:31] And you could do as much as you want in high school and college and beyond, which is good to work on integration and understanding and, you know, having a diverse country. But if you don’t have the kids playing when they’re kids, in my view, you know, they’re just not going to be able to develop together. [00:25:49] So for me, it was very natural. I didn’t have a lot of Hispanics in my life, but it was. It was all basically Black and white. And so as I’ve gone through my life, if I can pontificate a little bit, you know, I think the problem with. One of the problems with white and Black America and the thing that I learned is that they don’t live together. [00:26:13] So you’d have all these white lawyers and white judges who went to Catholic schools and grew up on the west side. And of course, now, again, there’s a lot more African American representation, which it’s a balance. But even in my life in the 80s and 90s, they just, you know, men and women, they just didn’t have the experience. [00:26:34] I’m like, how can you. And I saw people work so hard, okay, a lot of great judges, did a lot of great work, but they didn’t have a very fundamental understanding of what it’s just to be around and to talk to white and Black people. You know, my thing is it’s very easy because I believe the secret to white and Black relations, at least for white people, is this. [00:26:59] I think white people make one mistake. They’re either just racist, and the racism is just still so fundamental out there. It’s amazing to me, you know, what I’ve seen with. With, you know, white guys I knew and white people that I knew. So they’re just outright racist. So that’s dismissing the whole, you know, a whole people or there are two worried about, you know, hurting someone or hurting someone’s feelings. So they’re. They’re too cautious in their, you know, interactions with Black folks. [00:27:33] Okay? So I just barrel right through that, and I just treat them like anybody, meaning like my white friends. If I’m going to give you hell, I’ll just say something crazy, right? I don’t. I don’t worry about, you know, whether I’m hurting someone’s feelings or stepping on their toes, other than saying something to a white person that I know. [00:27:52] And then. So we’ll just. When you have that natural, like, hey, the Browns are terrible, let’s just throw something out there, you know. Ah, the Browns blew it again. You know. Yeah. You just have that discussion no matter what the race is. Okay. And a lot of. And unfortunately, a lot of white people can’t do that. [00:28:11] Just have whatever discussion is or. Sure. Throw in politics or Lake Erie or anything. And. And not, you know, being able to not worry one way or the other about my interactions with Black people, it’s just very easy for me. And that leads me to my final point, unfortunately. And it just breaks my heart. [00:28:36] It just breaks my heart. And now as things are sliding back. I’m sorry, back into the old racism. Okay. Of the 50s and 60s. Maybe I just get more liberal as I get older, But I scratch my head and I’m like, well, let’s see, you had slavery, and they hated them. And then if you’ve studied your history and I’ve learned a lot being older, because I was kind of like, yeah, you know, from about 2000. [00:29:04] Everything’s okay now. And it’s like, no, no, it’s not because of white privilege, like, through the 20th century. It is absolutely not okay. So not only were Black slaves, but then, unfortunately, they had society against them from, you know, 18, from reconstruction till today, you know, One thing that I like to say is we kind of all came together in the 70s and 80s. [00:29:29] Things just felt right, okay? But now I think that there’s a black, a backsliding. And my. What breaks my heart is, and this is my big theory, that white America is missing out on having Blacks in their lives, you know, as equals, as neighbors, as friends, as co-workers, you know. You know, that again, they say the most segregated time in America, Sunday morning, right? [00:30:03] Whites are in their white churches, Blacks are in their Black churches. And like I said earlier, it may be impossible forever for whites and Blacks to get together again socially on the nights out down in The Flats. I’m dating myself there. But hopefully being in the same neighborhood, being at the same stores, having the same conversations will happen or continue to happen. [00:30:35] You know, my fear is it’s going to take another 200 years just to have people talking to each other. And white America is really missing out. Now, I can’t categorize Blacks, but let me use an example. You might know an English person, okay, or an Australian. And you’re not exactly like the English, okay? [00:30:55] They have funny accents, they have funny habits. They like football rather than American football. They might have different foods and things like that. But would you want to just discount them all? Would you want to just say, well, they’re just different, so I don’t want to have any interactions with them? And just because of America historically and America now, I think that’s what is happening a lot, because I just think that white America is missing out on the fun sense of humor and the different things and the different food and the different colloquialisms and the different, you know, habits. [00:31:36] But just like in my paper route, okay, when there were white or Black families, it was still the car was in the driveway, the kids were in the yard, the house was there. It was a Black family living on Thornhurst. So there’s not a whole lot of difference. But, you know, I just fear that, you know, we’re, you know, as my mom said, there was so much diversity just because that’s the way everybody came together back then that now it’s kind of, you know, falling apart. [00:32:13] And I don’t want to see just Christian schools or Black neighborhoods or Jewish schools or Muslim schools. I do have a belief in the melting pot, and I really hope that it can happen.
Ava Carubia [00:32:30] Well, I have another question, which is, I guess outside of the racial changes of the neighborhood, what did you notice changing, I guess, throughout your childhood and as you were teenagers, just about, like, maybe the businesses or the houses or things like that in the neighborhood?
Dan Shields [00:32:49] Well, not really a lot. Okay. A lot of the buildings and a lot of the businesses were there are still there. You know, some of the, like the auto places, you know, businesses that I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. You know, were they doing welding? Were they doing automobiles? But a lot of the businesses, like at 55th and Broadway, 131st and Miles, Fleet Avenue, were there throughout most of my life. [00:33:24] You know, now Fleet Avenue has hit some real hard times, and some of those again, bakeries, restaurants, bicycle shop, real estate businesses were there almost until recently. But we live in Lakewood now, and I think that things have changed from 2000 on, so I didn’t. And the houses were always great. I mean, this is good housing stock here, 93rd and Miles, you know, our house that we grew up in, I think my parents sold it maybe for, I don’t know, $20,000, maybe $40,000. [00:34:06] And again, it’s this big, beautiful brick house up on a hill. But it may have sold. We’re trying to figure it out because we all watch what’s happening with that house may have sold for $180,000. So there’s this swinging back. But to answer your question, you know, a lot of the businesses, the bowling alley on 131st, the stores that were by 131st and Christine and were there for decades. [00:34:35] And I, as a lawyer, even with clients still coming through the neighborhood, they were all still there. You know, the fire station was a little one story fire station up on 131st. Well, there’s a new fire station across the street. So, you know, not a tremendous change.
Ava Carubia [00:34:58] And then how long did you live in that house? Until you left for college or.
Dan Shields [00:35:05] No, it was after my. It was 1980 or maybe 79, because I spent, you know, my entire life there, from 2 to 20. And then I helped my mom move. She moved to the other side of Garfield Heights. It was, I think, 1980. So I spent my whole life there. And then the four younger siblings lived off Turney Road, which is still southeast, but maybe a little bit out of what you’re working with, I don’t know.
Ava Carubia [00:35:38] It’s all nearby. So what year did you graduate high school?
Dan Shields [00:35:43] 1978.
Ava Carubia [00:35:45] Okay, and then you went straight to college or no?
Dan Shields [00:35:50] Yeah, then I went. I went straight through. I had a brother and a sister at Bowling Green. And, you know, at the time, you know, it’s a little snobby, but the St. Ignatius Jesuit education was phenomenal. You know, I was like, I don’t really. I don’t need to go to Yale. I don’t need to go to. I have such a fundamental amazing education that, you know, Bowling Green, I wanted something different than a smaller school. So. And like I said, I had a brother and a sister there, and it was, you know, really reasonable. So I went to bowling green from 78 to 82, and I went straight through and then went straight into law school after that.
Ava Carubia [00:36:39] And then, I guess when you came back for law school, did you notice that Cleveland as a whole had changed since you had been gone?
Dan Shields [00:36:47] Well, that’s a great point, because the Cleveland of my youth was already, you know, in distressed, you might say. You know, we used to play downtown. We would take the bus downtown. We would run around downtown because there was nothing there, you know, made company. Maybe most of the big stores and department stores had gone to the suburbs. [00:37:15] So, you know, it was, you know, suburban shopping malls and the suburban, you know, the outline going from the city to the suburbs. So like I said, in the 70s and 80s, there was nothing down there anyway in terms of, you know, stores, people walking around, that sort of thing. We had the place to ourselves. [00:37:38] So I guess it had already changed, you know, before we came along. Now, as I, you know, in law school, that’s when the Flats happened. The Flats was this famous party place with all the bars down on the east bank of the Flats. But that’s, you know, when people were coming back downtown again. [00:37:58] I mean, you always had The Agora that was very famous. Cleveland State had some bars. And then there was this big rush, this big party in the 80s and 90s. That’s when things started happening in downtown Cleveland where you were starting to get, you know, businesses, entertainment, the first, you know, apartment buildings, some of the old buildings being, you know, revamped into, like, condos and things like that. [00:38:31] So that was pretty much like in the. In the, like, 2000s. And still, I’d say for 40 years, I’d say from 1980. Well, no, 30 years to, like, 2010, there still wasn’t a whole lot going on down there. And then, you know, I’d say the last 10, 15 years, it’s just exploded. And one of the interesting things when you say about change that I did notice, I was like, how are these old office buildings becoming condos? [00:39:00] I’m like, who’s going to live here? I mean, what’s that all about? But that’s the younger generation. You know, a lot of kids, a lot of families, a lot of empty nesters are taking up all these old office buildings and they’ve been turned into condos. K and D is a big real estate place. [00:39:24] They’ve turned the Terminal Tower into condominiums and apartments. So that’s the big change for me is people living back downtown. But that’s really relatively recently, as in like 20 years.
Ava Carubia [00:39:41] I have a few more questions. One of them is how is being from Cleveland and this part of Cleveland in particular, how has that impacted you as a person?
Dan Shields [00:39:53] Well, you know, as I said, I think it gave me a really good fundamental background. I consider myself very lucky. I consider myself very fortunate to have grown up in southeast Cleveland. The people, the families, you know, that, that I knew, very loving, very old fashioned, you know, so many people I saw men and women and parents were such an example. [00:40:23] And in Cleveland overall, you know, I’ve lived and worked, you know, in a lot of big cities. New York, Washington, Chicago. Chicago. People are kind of the most that I’ve met that are like Clevelanders. But I think there is a very strong Midwestern ethos or attitude that I really like, that I really enjoy being a part of. [00:40:50] I think we’re down to earth. I think we’re not arrogant or nasty. I think we work to get along with others. We had the whole Cleveland is a joke thing. You know, Cleveland’s on, the river’s on fire. So some of it’s been, you know, it’s kind of been like you learn to tough it out, you know, and to push through and still have your own identity and your own strength and see that.
Ava Carubia [00:41:21] The last question I have is what message would you like to leave for future generations?
Dan Shields [00:41:34] I would say to care for Cleveland. I mean, if you’re going to listen to this 100 years from now, it’s a wonderful area. It has so much to offer. I think it’s still undiscovered and I think that people don’t realize. I think this is going to be a. I think Cleveland’s a great. One of the best kept secrets, you know, when the rest of the nation finds out that there’s affordable housing and the Metroparks and Cleveland, you know, coming together in the different neighborhoods, you know, we’re boaters. So the lake is just this magnificent resource. So my message would be to, you know, develop it, not over-develop it, and to care for what you’ve got because you’ve got so much. [00:42:27] You know, I just mentioned the Metroparks. That’s a whole ’nother, you know, a whole ’nother interview. But the Metroparks the lake, the park system, the neighborhoods are magnificent. It’s a great part of the country. So I’d say, you know, care for it, keep it up.
Ava Carubia [00:42:47] Well, those are all the questions I have. Is there anything that you’d like to add I didn’t ask you about?
Dan Shields [00:42:56] No, I don’t think so. We really covered a lot of ground, and I appreciate you letting me run with this.
Ava Carubia [00:43:03] Of course. Thank you so much.
Dan Shields [00:43:05] Okay. Thank you for having me, Ava.
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