Abstract
Sherril Paul Witt moved to Cleveland at an early age and as she grew up began to volunteer leading walking tours around Cleveland's Playhouse Square theaters. In 1982 she bought Best Conventions, a company that did walking tours and bus tours around Cleveland. She raised money to buy Lolly the Trolley's and in 1985 Trolley Tours of Cleveland began. In this 2005 interview she describes the process of starting the company and what they do for the city now. She also recounts some of her favorite experiences running the tours. She also mentions the changes in the city and how that has affected the tours.
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Interviewee
Paul Witt, Sherril (interviewee)
Interviewer
Kiehl, Nicole (interviewer); Souther, Mark (facilitator)
Project
History 311
Date
11-21-2005
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
58 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Sherril Paul Witt Interview, 2005" (2005). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 311011.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/192
Transcript
Nicole Kiehl [00:00:02] Okay, can you please state your name for the record?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:00:05] My name is Sherril Paul.
Nicole Kiehl [00:00:06] Alright. And can you tell me a little bit about yourself, like where you’re from and your childhood and stuff like that.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:00:14] I was born in Montreal, Canada and I came down to the United States when I was quite young. I was six. So I’ve really lived the greatest portion of my life in the US and actually in the Cleveland Akron area. I grew up in the Cleveland Akron area, went to Brecksville High School, went to Ohio Wesleyan University. I was a journalism major there. And then out of college I got into a series of sales jobs, some retailing, some other things, personnel. And really like a lot of entrepreneurial spirits, couldn’t hold a job. So I, in probably 1980, I lost my. Lost my last job or was fired. And in ’81 I began to work for the phone company. [00:00:57] And that was my last big company that I worked for. I was terribly unhappy, of course, working for the largest corporation in the world. And I had been doing volunteer work as a guide here at the Playhouse Square Theaters. That was my volunteer fund job. And I had always wished that I could turn that into something full time. I met a lady one night who did walking tours and bus tours of Cleveland. She asked me if I wanted to come work for her company and I said no, I have a fabulous high paying job with the phone company. Couldn’t do it. And about probably six months later I could see that I was not going to be able to stand staying at the phone company. [00:01:33] And I went to a meeting and found out that this lady, due to personal problems, was selling her company. So I took my best friend, we went to talk to her. My stupidity saved me because she really wasn’t making much of anything in the way of money. And I bought her company. So I bought a company that did walking tours and bus tours of Cleveland called Best Conventions. We took over at that time and it was In February of 1982, I believe all of her employees quit and I had to find new employees within just a few weeks. And we just went on for the next couple of years. I did walking tours and bus tours of Cleveland using other people’s vehicles. [00:02:12] And in 1983 I went up to Boston, Massachusetts, where I’d lived in the early 70s and went to a wedding up there, my husband and I. My husband at the time and I road Lolly the Trolley in Boston. And I said, wouldn’t this be a great thing to have one of these in Cleveland? [00:02:26] Because not everybody wants to do a walking Tour. So I said, maybe if we could just get one of these, we could keep it busy. So I came back to Cleveland and I began to look into trying to get these vehicles. And I found out who made them. Called the gentleman, told him I wanted to do it in Cleveland. And he said, you know, I don’t really know that this is a smart idea. Cleveland, Ohio. Who wants to take a tour? So I also talked to some people in Key West, Florida. And the guy down there, he goes, honey, he says, if you don’t have four, you can’t be in business. I said, four? I said, I could never have four trolleys in Cleveland, Ohio. So began a long process of trying to raise money. I called on over 300 people to try and find funding for the company that I was starting, called Trolley Tours of Cleveland. I mortgaged my. My husband and I mortgaged our house and put everything we had down as a down payment for two trolleys that we had ordered. And we thought we could get the company up and running. About six months after we’d gotten back and almost two and a half years later, in 1985, in April of 1985, 20 years ago, we opened the doors to Trolley Tours of Cleveland with one trolley. And there are all kinds of stories that go along with it, but we started, and it has been a wonderful adventure.
Nicole Kiehl [00:03:44] Great. What do you like most about the trolley itself?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:03:50] I think that we have changed hundreds of thousands of people’s opinions about our city, including those of Clevelanders. Some people will say, well, I know everything there is to know about Cleveland. I don’t need to go on your tour. And I always promise them that there’ll be at least two things that they’ll learn on the tour that they didn’t know. And it always happens. I like the fact that we impact young people. And I’ve been in business long enough now that I meet adults like you who say, oh, I was on the trolley when I was in third grade, and they’re adults. And it’s really. It makes me feel very, very old. And we’ve been part of people’s weddings. We’ve married over 3,000 brides since we’ve been in business. We have just been part of the fabric of Cleveland’s population.
Nicole Kiehl [00:04:38] I remember I went to my senior prom on Lolly, the trolley.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:04:44] What high school?
Nicole Kiehl [00:04:45] Padua.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:04:46] Yes. Okay.
Nicole Kiehl [00:04:47] Back in 1999.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:04:49] Very good.
Nicole Kiehl [00:04:51] What other besides, you know, proms and weddings, what other type of events has the trolley gone to?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:05:00] We. Let’s see. I opened I-480. We went through a barrier, crashed a barrier for the governor then. And I think that was Celeste in 1985 or 1986. We’ve been part of the Republican National Convention meetings. We’ve been part of the Democratic National Convention meetings when they’ve had, you know, caucuses here in Cleveland. We were part of the last election. We were part of Project Act to get people to go vote. And it was very interesting. I drove part of the time and we picked up homeless men from the shelters and took them out. And they were paid $75 a day to go into neighborhoods. And it was really something because you got to meet and talk to homeless people. And they’re all. Many of them are very well educated and you just wonder what happened in their lives. The other things we do, I work with a Cuyahoga County Planning Authority and we take people on tours to show them about Cleveland. We don’t do the tours, the Planning Authority does, but they’re fascinating. It’s all about what’s going to be happening or what is happening in Cleveland. We are part of the third grade curriculum for the State of Ohio. And when kids study my community, they come down to the trolley to learn about the city. So we’re making future, hopefully future passengers out of them. We do community events. We’ve been to Columbus for Labor Day events. We have gone down to West Virginia for parades. We really. We do everything. We do this is your life parties. When someone has an older person in their family. We came up with this many years ago. You can call us and rent the trolley and we’ll take you out. And then you have to work with your family and you have to find all the places that mom and dad or somebody lived and worked and where they went to school. And we drive by those places and sometimes the neighborhoods aren’t the nicest, but we had one instance that I can recall, and I’m sure it’s happened more than once. We were in, I think it was Glenville or Hough, and we stopped the trolley in front of a house because this man had grown up there. And the people came out and said, why are you here? And they said, well, we’re here because my dad grew up in this house. So they asked everybody off the trolley, they took them in the house, they showed them around. It was a wonderful experience. So we really, you know, we create memories for people. We do corporate transportation. We do Christmas parties. We do anything that requires transportation. The thing that we won’t do. And this is one of my personal philosophies. I don’t allow any alcohol on the trolley because I just don’t approve of people being on moving vehicles and being drunk, especially people in wedding parties. You shouldn’t show up to your wedding drunk and you know, you really shouldn’t even show up to your reception drunk. So we, if somebody wants to do that, they go somewhere else. We also kind of, as part of our philosophy is, you know, mom, apple pie and the flag. So that’s who we are.
Nicole Kiehl [00:08:00] Wow, that’s very nice. There are special tours like for specific reasons that have to do with different parts of history.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:08:11] Right, like that.
Nicole Kiehl [00:08:13] Can you tell me a little bit about those special tours that you have that focus on one specific event or person or.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:08:21] We do. And it all comes about because people ask. And that’s how a tour gets, you know, gets to be. We, we do a tour that is Lakeview Cemetery in Little Italy. And that was because a lady out at Lakeview, Kathryn Cole, who is no longer working there as community relations, came to me many, many years ago, probably the first or second year we were in business. She said, we want to expand the community’s attitude about Lakeview Cemetery, that it’s not just a place for the people to die and be buried. And Lakeview is a fabulous, fabulous resource if you’ve never been there. So we developed and taught our people how to do Lakeview Cemetery tour. And the people there are fabulous, really surprising people. The only player to be killed during a major league baseball game is buried at Lakeview. And people leave mitts and gloves and bats by his grave and old baseballs and baseball cards and hats and it’s kind of a tribute to him. Elliot Ness, of course, is buried or sprinkled, shall we say, at Lakeview. President Garfield is there, John D. Rockefeller, of course, and his family are there. And the Rockefellers do come on a very low key basis to Lakeview Cemetery to visit the, the grave site. So it’s a wonderful resource. We do an Elliot Ness tour that came about in probably 2000, I think, or 1999, when the Cleveland Playhouse did a new play which wasn’t terribly successful, called Elliot Ness in Cleveland. And it was about his time in Cleveland when he was our safety director. And they came to us and we developed a tour so that people would take our tour, go to dinner and then go to the play. And I think we took eight or nine hundred people on in a six week Spanish on these Elliot Ness tours, which we still do. [00:09:59] Let’s see, we do an ethnic markets tour and people just love to go shopping. So we came up with an ethnic markets tour of Cleveland. And then that has dropped down to the grade school level. And sixth, seventh and eighth graders are brought on our ethnic markets tour because they need to learn about diversity. Not every grocery store is Topp’s and they’re not all clean and they don’t all smell nice and they don’t all have the same food. So we take kids on diversity tours and it really is an eye opener for them. We do church tours. Those are probably the most difficult tours to do because it’s hard to get access to the churches and you know, people get married so you can’t go on Saturdays. And there are funerals and other sorts of things that prevent us from getting in. But it’s still a very interesting thing. So we’ll do a tour of anything. We did design an African American tour many years ago and I had people working on it a long time and we put a lot of money into it and it didn’t turn out to be at all successful for us because. It’s very interesting. African American people were uncomfortable having African American history given to them by a white person. And my white drivers were uncomfortable doing a little bit uncomfortable doing the tour because there was a little bit of resentment. So it was an unusual situation. And unfortunately, the qualifications that you need to work for us as a tour guide are the very qualifications that if any, you know, if an African American has those qualifications, they can get a much better paying, full time job somewhere else. So it’s very, you know, it’s very hard. We have several African Americans working for us on a part time basis. And so that’s another tour. But we have other tours that we’re working on. A movie tour, movie sites tour, because many movies and TV shows have been shot in Cleveland. So we’re working on that. I’d like to do a women’s history tour of Cleveland, keying in on all the famous women who are from our city or what they’ve contributed to our city. So we have lots of things yet to come. And also a Tremont, Ohio City tour, which I think I can throw together for the spring, hopefully.
Nicole Kiehl [00:12:10] Who writes the scripts?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:12:12] Me.
Nicole Kiehl [00:12:12] You do?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:12:13] Yes, yes. And my background is writing. It always has been since I was a tiny child. And I’ve won little writing contests and that sort of thing. And being a journalism major kind of honed my skills a little bit. But I am very, very particular. Many cities that you go to in the United States, they simply give A book of facts to the tour guides and then tell them to kind of do their own thing. And it’s obvious in the quality of the tour that you often get. We have been told by journalists, because most journalists who come to Cleveland take our tour and by people who travel the world, that our tour is one of the best that they’ve ever taken. And I am very, very picky about who works for me and how they do the tour. They have to follow the script. They have to memorize 60 pages of script. The other tours I’m a little more relaxed on because it’s not quite as particular. But if you don’t do the script in the correct order, the places don’t show up on time and you don’t want to go. And I’m sure you’ve been on tours too. They go over there or back down the block or over there. You. You just don’t do that as a tour guide. So we are very professional and we are known for it.
Nicole Kiehl [00:13:21] So what makes the script kind of unique compared to.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:13:25] It’s well written and it uses good English. That’s more than most people I think are capable of these days. Our script has facts that people don’t know about Cleveland. It reaffirms good things about the city. We try to never have a negative viewpoint. And it’s odd, whenever I get a phone call with a complaint, it’s because somebody has varied from the script and thrown in something they want to talk about, and it’s usually either offensive or wrong. So, you know, stick to the script people.
Nicole Kiehl [00:14:00] Right. So every tour that they do, every specific tour you do.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:14:04] Every city tour, the one hour and two hour tours we do are scripted, and that’s a quality control issue for us.
Nicole Kiehl [00:14:18] So how far, like with the city tours, how far does the trolley actually go?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:14:23] Where? The vicinity around Cleveland.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:14:25] On a normal two hour public sightseeing tour, we cover 20 miles and probably maybe 100 to 200 points of interest. We go as far west as Ohio City, as far east as University Circle.
Nicole Kiehl [00:14:40] Okay. And you go down Euclid and everything.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:14:43] We try desperately these days to go down Euclid Avenue. It’s a horrid experience, it really is. But our tour basically covers the Flats downtown, the Warehouse District, Ohio City, Gateway, Playhouse Square, anything between Playhouse Square and University Circle, be it the Clinic, Dunham Tavern, whatever, and then University Circle, the upper level of the Cultural Gardens, heading out to the City Greenhouse. We stop at the City Greenhouse for about 10 minutes and then move in along the Shoreway coming in through North Coast Harbor.
Nicole Kiehl [00:15:17] Can you comment on the Playhouse Square as a tourist attraction for people?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:15:23] Playhouse Square is an essential tourist attraction in Cleveland. When it started out and when I was doing tours, all the theaters were in shambles and they had the all night strut basically to keep it going for Jacques Brell. So there was really nothing here. The Hanna was an operating theater at that point in time. And it was really the only, you know, good operating theater. Playhouse Square is our jewel. It is the second largest performing arts center in the United States outside of Lincoln Center in New York. I believe it is. And it is just. It is a jewel. The stories that go with the theaters are just wonderful. The theater restoration work, of course, is superb. And it is, it is one of the little heartbeats of Cleveland. There are places that are just part of Cleveland’s soul and its spirit, and Playhouse Square is certainly one of those areas.
Nicole Kiehl [00:16:16] As a child, do you have any memories of the Playhouse Square area going to any of the theaters or anything like that?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:16:23] I remember going there for a movie. I never, you know, never went to live theater that I can recall. I would go to the Hanna more often than I would go to the Playhouse Square theaters. I haunted Playhouse Square as a young adult going to the bars. And none of the bars that were there when I was, you know, a young adult in my 20s are still, are there now. They’re all gone. So it was. That was really what we would do, you know, that. That was in my 20s, very bad date in high school. I had to go to, I think. Was it. What was the ice cream place? I want to say Mary Coyle, but I think that’s down an Akron. There’s an ice cream place on the south side of Euclid Avenue where Hickerson’s was and where. But anyway, bad high school date went there, yuck yuck.
Nicole Kiehl [00:17:14] Okay. Do you remember the specific bars that you used to go to?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:17:16] Oh, sure. We went to the Elegant Hog. We went to the Pewter Mug. We went to the Last Moving Picture Company. We went to the Sweetwater Cafe, which is where I found my husband, my first husband. And those are really the primary bars that we went to that were in Playhouse Square. There was one that Pat Daley used to play at that is. Was in the standalone building that was on the south side of Euclid Avenue too. And I think the building might still be there. I also remember going into what was the old WJW, I think it was, or WEWS. There was a TV station on the south side of Euclid Avenue. And somehow I made some contacts with some people and they had to go clean out the building. So I went in and we just went through just tons of junk. It was amazing, all the things that were in there. I think maybe it was the Phoenix Theater Company, something like that. But I found a chair, and it had to have been Channel 5, because I found a chair, which I have at home, and I’ll probably put it up for the WVIZ auction next year. That had a piece of paper that had been glued on the back said Dorothy. And I’m quite sure it was one of Dorothy Fuldheim’s chairs when she was there. So that was. That was fun. And I would say mostly my twenties was when I haunted Playhouse Square, and then of course, later when I was doing the tours.
Nicole Kiehl [00:18:39] So you spent a lot of time in that area in your 20s?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:18:43] Fridays and Saturdays, sure.
Nicole Kiehl [00:18:44] Every Friday and Saturday.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:18:46] Pretty much. Pretty much.
Nicole Kiehl [00:18:51] Back to the trolley. How many are there?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:18:55] Right now I have nine trolleys and Gus the Bus.
Nicole Kiehl [00:19:02] Is there any significance with the color?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:19:05] Well, the trolleys when they first came, were green and red. The top half was green, the bottom half was red, and they were made out of metal. And Cleveland has a lot of salt and a lot of corrosive materials on its streets. So over the years, we learned how to rebuild our own vehicles. And in doing the rebuilding, it was just easier to have the man who did all the castings and moldings in fiberglass just to do red. So he did trolley red. And so we just made them all red. And that was how they got to be that way. But they were red and green when they first came.
Nicole Kiehl [00:19:35] Now, how did Gus the Bus come about?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:19:39] Lolly needed a boyfriend. And so we. We bought Gus the Bus because we felt that there was a need for a non trolley vehicle for corporate use.
Nicole Kiehl [00:19:50] So how many, does that do tours as well?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:19:52] It can. Most people prefer to be on the trolley.
Nicole Kiehl [00:19:57] Now. The trolley can be in use all year round, too.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:20:00] Mm. It is heated in and closed. And we’re going into what we call the holiday light season. And so we take people out for holiday lights rides, but there are no holiday lights to see anymore. When we started out in 1985, we started in April. And about September of ’85, we knew we were going to run out of money in the winter. And so someone came to me and said, so what are you going to do for Christmas this year? And I went, well, what do you want to do for Christmas? Because we had nothing in mind, they said, well, you can take people out to see the. The Christmas lights, can’t you? And I went, yeah. I said, how much you’ll be willing to pay? So person gave me a figure and I went back to the office. I said, we’ve got a gig, you know. I said, let’s find some Christmas lights and figure out what’s going to be going on. Well, that was the first year that they totally redid Public Square and they had the Care Bears and the whole big thing. [00:20:50] And there were thousands and thousands of people coming downtown to do this. So we took our trolleys and advertised holiday lights and we had, I think, two trolleys, maybe, maybe four by that time. We had two used ones that we got in that summer and they didn’t have any heat in them. So these poor sweet people would get on the trolleys and my very brave, intrepid drivers would go out and we’d drive to. We’d drive to Shaker Square and we’d drive to Nela Park and we’d drive around downtown. And of course, if you breathe in a vehicle that is not heated, your breath goes on the windows and then it freezes. And it was a very cold winter, so we’d get somewhere and then we’d tell everybody to take out their least used credit card and they’d have to chip the ice off the windows and have to wipe it off and look out and see what was out there. And then we’d go to the next place and they’d chip off the ice. And it was really. It was something. It really was. And there are people who will tell me I was on that first year, you know, and they remembered being on the first year with us. So we just took what the public asked for and gave it to them and we built it up. Because there were lots of things from 1985 through about 1992, 93, things were rocking and the lights were good. Downtown, they do all the trees, they do up and down ninth street in Superior, we had the skating rink in Public Square. It really. It looked good. And there was a man in Cuyahoga Heights about 15 minutes down 77, who would do his entire house up with over 200,000 lights. And it was a huge attraction. So that was part of our lights ride. And then the zoo began to let us drive through to do holiday lights. Well, about three years ago, the gentleman with the house in Cuyahoga Heights, you know, said 20 Christmases was enough. He was done. So he closed down, sold his stuff. The zoo bought part of it and we started, you know, we’ve been doing zoo lights probably six years maybe the zoo closed down and they’re not doing lights anymore. So that’s gone. We did Malley’s for a couple of years. Malley’s had their little thing you could go see out at the Malley’s factory with some windows. They closed down. There’s nothing to see. And we don’t want to drive out to Nela park because Nela Park’s like two minutes of lights. And so, I mean, there’s nothing to see. And it’s really quite grim. And people keep coming back anyway, not in the droves that they used to. I mean, we used to do thousands of people. It used to be December was one of my biggest months, and it used to give us the money to get through the winter. This is going to be the worst December probably in 20 years. So it’s going to be terrible, just awful. Nobody wants to do any lights.
Nicole Kiehl [00:23:27] What would you describe as, you know, your average passenger on Lolly the Trolley?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:23:32] Birth to death. I am all ages, all kinds of people, all nationalities. We really are. We appeal to everyone. I mean, if you don’t smile when you see a trolley go by, there’s really. There’s definitely something wrong with you. So we. My average. There is no average passenger when I’m doing, you know, eight or nine thousand school kids during May and early June. Then it’s school kids when I’m doing my average weekend customer who is, you know, coming in for whatever reason is usually a suburbanite between maybe around 45 probably and 75, and they’ve got somebody visiting and so they bring them down. Some people have been on the trolley 10 times because every time someone comes in, they come down and ride. So our average customer could be a corporation with international visitors. Our average customer could be. We do all the orientation. Well, we do an awful lot for Cleveland State, I think we do most of the freshman orientation. We do all of the student orientation for the parents at Case and at John Carroll. So we do a lot.
Nicole Kiehl [00:24:49] Anything else for Cleveland State besides the orientation?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:24:52] We do the education department teacher training. And then we fortunately get those ladies back and gentlemen back when they’re teaching and they have to come up with a field trip and they call us. So we’re breeding, you know, future business that way. We do the international students here, both the English as a Second Language international plus the regular international students. [00:25:18] So that’s Pradnya Sakpal, I think, and her folks. So we do a lot.
Nicole Kiehl [00:25:25] Do you ever drive the Trolley yourself.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:25:29] Usually in the spring when we’re short drivers for the school tours because we might have eight or nine trolleys out, people bring us 200 kids at a time. So if I’m short people, I’ll hop on, do a one hour tour for the kids. Or if somebody doesn’t show up on time, which rarely happens. The profile of my average driver is 55 to 75 years old. Most of my drivers are over 60 and most of them have been with me for probably anywhere from 10 to 20 years. The whole time. They’re all experienced and they’re all very loyal and they love what they do. They really love what they do. [00:26:09] How many people clap for you when you’re done? They don’t clap. They probably don’t clap for you at the end of class. But it’s a very interesting job. And there’s a philosophy that some people have said that, you know, that I hire birds with broken wings. And it’s adults who are going through some trying times in their lives, perhaps a divorce, perhaps the death of a parent, whatever it would be. And somehow they find their way to trolley tours and we enable them to have a little transformation by becoming a different person and by doing something that really empowers them and we create differences in their lives. So it’s a good thing.
Nicole Kiehl [00:26:52] So you’re located in the Flats?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:26:55] We’re in the Flats. Our public boarding station is at the Powerhouse at Nautica, but we are not there day in, day out. Our actual trolley administrative center is on Columbus Road in the Flats in an industrial area between the Columbus Road bridge and the Flatiron Cafe.
Nicole Kiehl [00:27:13] So do you have a garage there where you store the stuff?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:27:14] We used to have a garage and the man who owned the building wanted his garage back. So we store the trolleys outside now and we have a garage where we can pull in and do work on them.
Nicole Kiehl [00:27:28] Now as a business owner, can you offer any words of advice for an aspiring entrepreneur?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:27:35] For an aspiring entrepreneur, you just really have to have your dream. You really have to believe in it. You can’t surround yourself with people who are negative because they would love to see you fail. You have to keep going no matter what. And you have to understand that if you’re an entrepreneur, you will pay an enormous price for your success. In my case, it cost me my marriage. My ex-husband is my business partner and I see him every day and we are both remarried. But it’s still a very sad and very kind of. I guess there’s an unhappy part of me that that had to happen. But my theory was that we had always put so much time into the business that we didn’t really put much time into our marriage. And that being the case, when the time came and things began to get rocky, we decided to save the business instead of our marriage. And it’s hard. It’s very hard. Even though we’re both married again, it’s still hard to see each other every day. On a bad day. On the good days it’s just fine. But on a bad day it’s particularly difficult. But for an entrepreneur, if you’re going to start a business, it’ll always take twice as long and cost twice as much money as you think. You always have to have the correct legal and accounting help. If you ignore those two factors. A lot of businesses try and use the money they should be paying for taxes or unemployment or workers comp. They use that to run the business and the government will close you down before you can even blink. So you can’t screw with the government. You really have to be out there. If you’re not a salesman, you really shouldn’t be an entrepreneur. There are a lot of people who are technically capable at what they do. People who can bake pies or people who are good scientists and they think they can start a business and they can’t. You have to read a book called the E Myth and it’s the myth of the entrepreneur. People who think they can do something well think that they can also start a business. If you do something well, you need people to sell it for you. Most people who do something well, technical are terrible salespeople. And if you can’t sell, you, you just can’t be in business because that’s all you’re doing from morning to night is you’re telling people who you are, why you’re in business, why they should buy from you. And you have to give absolutely incredible customer service. And that’s a dying art.
Nicole Kiehl [00:30:06] With Lolly the Trolley. What is your most memorable experience like the one that just sticks out.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:30:13] Good or bad? I’ve got good and bad. The good experiences I think are probably, I think just the things that we’ve done, I mean just a little odd stuff. You’re making people really happy. People telling you that you’ve made a difference for them. We took a group of Alzheimer’s people out one time and it really meant a lot to them to hear about old time things and it helped them because that’s the memory you have. The long term memory is the one that stays with you when you have Alzheimer’s. And it helped a lot of them. It made them feel good because here was something they could see, they could grasp onto. They did know what it was. And when you’re in Alzheimer’s, you’re constantly juggling, trying to remember who you are, where you are and what’s going on. So to see something that, you know, is really critical. We did a, when we were first in business. We did a transvestite convention. And it was really incredible. I mean, we did these huge men dressed as women coming on the trolley. And of course, transvestites aren’t gay. They just like to dress in women’s clothes. So they had their wives with them and all kinds of things. Like, it was really. It was a hoot. We’ve done a lot of gay things. A lot of. We did a gay commitment ceremony that was just delightful. The guys were wonderful. And we’ve done female commitment ceremonies. We’ve done, you know, religious things. We’ve done Boy Scout dedications. We’ve done lots of things to be the fabric of Cleveland. And we have become kind of generic, like Kleenex. Almost all kids know Lolly the Trolley. And so if you say that, you know, they know it. The worst experience probably in our entire history was 1989, when one of our vehicles stalled going up the Ontario ramp and onto the Innerbelt bridge. And a semi tractor trailer carrying, I think it was 50 tons of rolled steel, hit our trolley from behind and threw it 400 feet down the. This is with people on board. 400 feet down the Inner Belt Bridge. And somehow the woman who was driving managed to hold onto the wheel, and it kind of went from side to side and ended up against the edge of the bridge, but did not go over. And it was the most awful experience that one could ever imagine. Nobody was killed. One lady had her leg shattered a bit, but, you know, it wasn’t. She was able to walk on it. I think they put a steel rod in or something. And it was just. It was an awful experience. My partner still has. You know, he gets very emotional. He’ll have a nightmare occasionally from it because he was up there. He was up there probably within 10 minutes of the accident helping to get people off. And I was up there probably 20 minutes after handling the media, and it was horrendous. And then we had to sit through a trial sometime later for two weeks, and it was just, t was awful. And so that was one of the toughest things I ever lived through.
Mark Souther [00:33:20] We’re at 33 minutes.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:33:21] Okay. And counting. All right.
Nicole Kiehl [00:33:24] So the story behind the name of Lolly, the trolley that came from Boston.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:33:31] No, real simple. The man who designed and built the trolleys was a gentleman out of Florida. And his business partner had a mother in law whose name was Loretta and they called her Lolly. So he named the trolleys Lolly after his mother in law. So it came with a trolley, but we numbered the trolleys starting with 820, my partner and I, because that was our wedding anniversary. So unfortunately, we’re reminded of that from time to time.
Nicole Kiehl [00:34:10] Is there any specific event that you have found most memorable that the trolley has been to?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:34:17] Hmm, we’ve done. You know, I think one of our favorite things to do is the St. Patrick’s Day parade. It sells out a year in advance. All of our vehicles go in the parade. And there was one year when they banned trolleys from the parade. I have no idea why somebody was in charge and they just didn’t want trolleys in the parade, so we weren’t in it. But for 20 years, I’d say 19 out of 20, we’ve been there and people battle to get a trolley. I mean, they call palace on March 18 to book for the next year, and somebody’s already booked for 2007 because they couldn’t get 2006. We’re already sold out for 2006. So the parades are huge. And we did a funeral. I think we did the polka king. We shuttled people for his funeral. That was interesting.
Nicole Kiehl [00:35:03] Can you tell me more about that?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:35:04] Well, it was just, you know, they hired us to move people between the funeral home and. And the parking area for Tony whoever, the big polka guy in Cleveland. I can’t remember what his name was. Frankie Yankovic. That’s what it was. So for his funeral. So we did that. For me personally, one of the most memorable, because I’m kind of a theater freak, was when George Abbott had his 100th birthday. I think they had something here in Cleveland. And I had a small trolley and we were using it for this particular event. And I had people like Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who were fabulous people in Broadway’s history, and Eddie Albert and George Abbott himself, who was just an incredible theater person and just a whole bunch of stars of Broadway on my trolley. And we had them autograph, the interior wood. Unfortunately, one of my detailers did not know that that was supposed to stay and that we were going to. And she washed it all off. And I just died. I just died. It’s like some of those famous names in Broadway history, and she got rid of it.
Nicole Kiehl [00:36:22] So, anyway, any other celebrities that have been.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:36:26] Oh, I think Estelle Parsons. And oh God, who? I mean, when stars come on, it’s very low key. Michael Feldman of What Do You Know? did a show. He lambasted us because they made him go on the very first time he was in Cleveland years and years and years ago. And I didn’t. I wasn’t really a big NPR fan at the time. I am now, of course, but they brought him and his crew on the trolley, and we dragged him around town, and he just. I’ve got the tape. And he just, you know, we gave him all the information he needed for his show because he always likes to know things, but he really. Yeah, he gave Lolly the Trolley a tough time, but that was fun.
Mark Souther [00:37:06] Nicole, probably one more before we need to change.
Nicole Kiehl [00:37:09] Okay.
Mark Souther [00:37:10] About three minutes.
Nicole Kiehl [00:37:17] So the Broadway actors and actresses, did they perform at the playhouse?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:37:22] They were here for. They were. No, they were here for a benefit for George Abbott. It was just a huge celebration that was being held here in Cleveland. I think they were doing a play related to it. But it was a big, big, big event, and it was really something.
Nicole Kiehl [00:37:42] Okay, so can you tell me about your stories from Euclid Avenue?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:37:47] We’ve had a lot of things happen, you know, during the course of the business, but when we first started out, Euclid Avenue was not a very nice street. Once you got beyond Cleveland State University, I mean, probably once you got beyond 55th, really, it was okay, kind of out to 55th. But once you got between 55th and, oh, about 105th, it was pretty grim. And there were a lot of hookers on Euclid Avenue. And we had to think of things to kind of explain them away, because there we are cruising out Euclid Avenue, and they’re going, hey, baby. You know, and they’re flashing their boobies and wearing, you know, swimsuits and shorts. And it was just. It was very interesting. So we just. We came up with a name for them. We called them either the strolling hostesses or the pavement princesses of Euclid Avenue. And so that. That, you know, it was fun, and it kind of took the curse off. And it gave people something kind of to chuckle about and not think negatively about us, because it was. That was really, you know, something interesting. We had a guy walk up one day, too, and he actually put his fist through the windshield. Just like, he pounded so hard on the wind, he just walked up and went, boom, boom, boom. And cracked the windshield for whatever reason. I mean, you know, just obviously one of the mentally ill on Cleveland streets. And in some other areas for example, we were in the Warehouse District one day coming around a curve, and we found there was a small car parked on the curb and we couldn’t get around by the Bradley Building. So a bunch of strong young men got off the trolley, picked the car up, moved it over, and we just drove by. And it was really. It was really cool. You know, it’s like a VW Bug or something. And they just picked it up and moved it. And, you know, we’ve had people, ladies, of course, travel with little dogs now, and of course, we never thought twice about having dogs on the trolley. I never thought they’d be on the trolley. But I was driving behind the trolley one day and all of a sudden I see this lady and she’s sitting. She’s got a little dog in her lap. The dog’s looking left, looking dogs doing whatever the people are doing. You know, on your left, dog looks left. On your right, dog looks right, going, wow. We do the Critter Cruise, though. We get called by the Gateway Animal Clinic, and in September, we take a trolley over and the dogs that are too old or too tired to actually go on the Critter Cruise, you know, the run, we carry them with their masters so they can be part of things without having to run. So we do the Critter Cruise and, you know, the main thing is that we will do just about anything on the trolley that is safe and fun and would add, you know, to things. And if I don’t have a good feeling about somebody, I won’t rent to them, I won’t charter to them. They’re just some people that, you know, you feel uncomfortable about. I don’t have to charter. You know, I’m not under government edict to charter to everybody in the world. But it’s been a good run and I want to have another life. I want to have other things to do because my partner and I have really been working off and on seven days a week for 20 years. It gets old real fast. And so I’m getting older, he’s getting older. So it’s an interesting. It’s an interesting time of life. And we just have to see what the future will bring, hopefully. I’d love to see someone young and enthusiastic come along and say, I’d love to have that business and then come up with the money, because we have not gotten. Everybody thinks we’re rich and we haven’t gotten well to do at all. We really, you know, at the end of 20 years, we’ve got nothing. We’ve got an aging, aging rolling stock, aging employees. And that’s not meant to be a negative. And that probably is not for publication, per se, on a public basis. But, you know, we are not rich. We each make about $50,000 a year, and that’s it. And company covers our gasoline, thank God, in our car. And that’s about as far as it goes. So, yeah, it’s been a labor of love and it has been a commitment to Cleveland, and that’s really where we started. Were it not for someone like George Voinovich and the people at the convention bureau and people like Mary Ellen Withra, who was the Treasurer of the State of Ohio at the time, we wouldn’t be here. But they bent over backwards to make it work for us.
Nicole Kiehl [00:42:16] Back to Euclid Avenue and what you said about it, when it looked like that, when was that?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:42:25] About 85 through. Probably ’85 through at least 95. I would say it wasn’t the best looking street in the world once, maybe even ’85 through ’93, because once they built the Gateway complex and then Gust Gallucci’s moved out there and then Pierre’s Ice Cream built, that began to clean the area up and make a difference. Once the construction started to take place out there and once the Midtown Corridor, people really got hold of things and began to work very hard to clean them up. And I have a lot of respect for what they’ve done. And Premier Industries, when they were there, was a very critical part of keeping that part of Euclid Avenue clean and nice.
Nicole Kiehl [00:43:12] When do you think, in your opinion, did you see it start going downhill before that, Euclid Avenue, well, getting to where it was in, say, 1985?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:43:24] Oh, I mean, I think it had probably started. A lot of people in our generation don’t understand, but, you know, Euclid Avenue at the east end was a whole other downtown, just like here. It was called Uptown. And it was the area probably from about ’80, maybe 85th or so. 85th or 90th to 105th. And that was a great area. I guess it was just fun, full of restaurants and places to go, and Skateland was there, and there was the Elysium skating rinks and dance halls and theaters, and it was really something. So that when that was in place, I think that was probably, I believe, the 20s, you know, turn of the century through the ‘20s, and maybe up to the time of the Depression, maybe even to the ‘30s. I don’t know. I think that Euclid Avenue was probably quite okay. I would have to think maybe Post World War II would be when the decline of Euclid Avenue began, because that would be the massive move to the suburbs. It would be the black migration to Cleveland. It would be the loss of Glenville, Hough and Fairfax as, you know, as white areas and they became urban areas. So I think that that probably was the massive change.
Nicole Kiehl [00:44:49] So do you think that when it comes to say, the Playhouse Square area, how did that all change, the Playhouse Square area? I mean, did it become just a ghost town after that? Pretty much.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:45:02] Playhouse Square, Yes. Yeah, Playhouse Square, as opposed to Uptown. Okay. Uptown was gone first and then Playhouse Square became, I think a ghost town if you want to call it that, with the migration to the suburbs and the building of the malls. The mall started probably in the 1960s, if I recall, and the malls just totally eliminated the need to come downtown. You didn’t shop downtown. You didn’t come to movies downtown. You didn’t come to anything. So that was the end of Playhouse Square in its former state. And then the rebirth began in ’78 and then continued with a vengeance through the mid-80s and into 1990. And that was the rebirthing and to bring people downtown, to bring a million people downtown the way they do now. So it’s critical. And with Ideastream now taking over its spot, that is going to create a new vibrance and a new vitality, I hope, to Playhouse Square. Playhouse Square has some major defects in that there is nothing to keep people here. Starbucks is not enough to keep people here. After a show, there have to be, you know, more cafes and more people oriented venues that are clustered together rather than spread out like they are to really make this a vibrant area. Kind of like the Warehouse District.
Nicole Kiehl [00:46:30] So. So basically, overall, what’s your view of Euclid Avenue today? Do you see it going further and progressing or.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:46:39] I don’t really know. As I said, I’m not a big. I have not been a big fan of the Euclid Corridor project because as far as I’m concerned, I don’t want my trolleys stuck on Euclid Avenue with one lane heading east. I mean, that just doesn’t bode well for me, being able to get out to University Circle easily. I am hoping that everything will move and that there will be no delays and no problems and people not stopping suddenly in the middle of the street or stopping at the curbs. It’ll be interesting to see. I fear greatly for everything that is in the path of the project while it is under construction. You’re seeing what little bit of retail there is, downtown being obliterated through the construction phase. I don’t see how anybody can hold on during this. So it’s going to be interesting to see. I think Playhouse Square will hold on simply because by its very nature, people are going to come and use it. And they’ll walk over construction to go to a theater. But I don’t know that the Euclid Corridor project is going to have the tremendous impact. If indeed the art element of it is well done and can make the Euclid Corridor project an attraction unto itself. Let’s ride out on the Euclid Corridor line and see all the artwork and let’s see what’s being, you know, and have people do it as a curiosity. And then as long as they can safely get into University Circle. Once they get to the East End. If you have to get off at the little rapid that’s under, you know, the hill as you go up Cedar. I don’t consider that something that is a positive, because you. I mean, for older people, that’s a long haul to walk into University Circle and go to an institution. So we’re going to have to see what happens. But we’ve got the money. They’re going ahead. I told Joe Calabrese he can’t make them red. And he told me they were going to be silver. I don’t know what color he’s going to make these trolleys he’s bringing into downtown either. And I’m a little miffed about that. But we’ll, you know, we’ll work on it as long as they’re not red. He’s paying much, much, much, much more than I would ever pay for a trolley. He’s bringing trolleys into downtown to work as the Loop buses. It’ll be interesting. It’ll be confusing. We’ll see. And I’ll be getting the calls. Your trolley passed me by. Sorry, it’s not mine.
Nicole Kiehl [00:49:01] As far as Lolly the Trolley goes and the business and everything, what really has been the key to all of your success with it?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:49:12] The people I have working for me. You know, a tour is only as good as the person who gives it. And if the person is enthusiastic and really gets involved with the customers and makes them feel special. The information is important, but the person who delivers it is as important as the information. So it’s their qualities, their commitment. The trolley is the vehicle. My people are really the essence and the soul of the company. And also we treat people well. A little old lady who calls, who just wants to bring one of her friends on a daily tour is every bit as important as, oh, like Mayor Campbell’s brother called to book something and nice guy. We had a wonderful time talking. But, I mean, people, you can kind of suck in, you know, your breath and go when somebody big calls. But the little old lady who comes with her friend is every bit as important as the head of a major corporation. And so that’s how we have always, I think, structured the business. My phone, when you call us, says, thank you for calling Lolly the Trolley. Press 0 at any time to speak with a friendly person. That’s the first thing you hear. You do not have to go through a menu. You do not have to listen to a lot of things. It’s not friendly. You should never get lost in attendant mail jail. So that’s part of it. And we just take care of people. We. We become kind of their friends. I helped plan so many weddings, and I’ve listened to so many mothers of the bride over the year, and we know more about weddings than they do. So we’re able to help them, and we tell them the questions to ask and what they should think about. And so we help make things successful for other people. We’re good at what we do, and I just hope that those who come after me are, you know, care enough to be good at what they do.
Nicole Kiehl [00:51:07] I have no further questions.
Mark Souther [00:51:09] I have just two questions. For one thing, just briefly, it sounds that much of your business comes from local Clevelanders as well as from tourists. Do you have a sense of what percentage of your business comes from out of Cleveland?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:51:26] When we started the business, 70% of the business was local, 30% was from out of town. It has totally switched over the years. And 70% of our business is probably out-of-towners at this point, and 30% is local. Depending on what is being done on an average weekend, you know, my public tours on weekends, I would say at least 70 to 80 percent are out-of-towners. I can tell by the area codes on the phone calls and on the phone numbers we take.
Mark Souther [00:51:59] Are they mostly conventioneers or are they.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:52:02] No, they’re people visiting here for various reasons. With a lot of the conventions, we actually book them on a separate basis, you know, as groups, and take care of their needs. That way, a huge convention, we will get an awful lot of people, but they’re just average folks. I call them the hidden visitor. And you don’t see them reflected in room nights or hotel nights. They’re staying at somebody’s house, and they just want to get out of the house for a couple of hours. So they come down to see us. And we’ve done some, you know, we did the Biomechanical Society group that was here this summer at Cleveland State, and they had their show, their program here, and that was fun. And we did the Society of North American Goldsmiths, and that was a lot of fun this year. You know, taking them to all the studios and doing art walks and that sort of thing and showing off Cleveland, you know, Cleveland’s best.
Mark Souther [00:52:58] And my final question is, how do you. You know, in planning a tour, it seems to me that it’s always easier if the path between the sites of particular interest is a pleasant path. And of course, in Cleveland, we have some areas that are, you know, less sightly than others. And I wonder if you could tell us just little bit about how you choose the routes. Do you choose routes based on what kind of image you’ll get on that route? And are there some areas that are particularly tricky because you’re worried about a particular area looking not so great?
Sherril Paul Witt [00:53:30] When you go through an area that doesn’t look great, you just acknowledge it because you can’t always give people the rosy picture. So, you know, in Cleveland especially, I think, suffers more than most. We really have some grave problems that need to be addressed. But by and large, it is amazing what we think of as terrible in Cleveland, people consistently, to a person, say, what a clean city. We don’t think it’s clean. They do. Yeah. So they must come from filthy cities. But they just say, oh, my God, what a clean city. What a wonderful city. You know, I never knew Cleveland was like this, and what a surprise. So when we choose, we choose routes based on possible information. Where does the most information lie? And sometimes it’s not a visual. I mean, Euclid Avenue is not much of a visual. So we tell stories that relate a little bit to what you see on the way out. And I’ve been threatening for the last, what, five, six years. My information is horribly out of date. So I have to redo the whole script again. But it is. There’s an art form to it. And I have a little, you know, there’s a formula that I use when I write the scripts, and it seems to work. So I just hold onto it, and that’s my little secret. It’s my trade secret, I guess. But when you. When you are doing a tour, the routing is critical. Sometimes it’s how to get quickly between point A and point B. But Cleveland is laid out in a very logical manner. It’s very easy to tour Cleveland. And the script. The tour route that I use is one that I more or less inherited. And then we’ve kind of done things over the years. Sometimes there’s really more to show than we can include in the tour. I mean, ideally, I’d love to buzz up Cedar Hill and go down historic Fairmount and come back and go down through that area and maybe buzz out Lake Avenue. There are a lot of things that we love to show that we can’t that are within 10 minutes of downtown Cleveland. So we’re very fortunate. We have more to show than time to show it. And it is. It’s a great city. We want these streets to be interesting. We do a public art tour of Cleveland for kids, for schools, and also sometimes artists will come to us or people have people in visiting, and we’ll do public art tours. And when you start delineating all the public art in Cleveland, it’s really very interesting. A lot of it’s along the public paths, so it’s nice to raise that awareness. It is very important that we continue the public art focus for the Euclid Avenue corridor because it speaks to the cultural qualities of the city when you have art in place, it doesn’t have to be. Everybody doesn’t have to like it, but it has to be there. If you’re heading out Chester Avenue, you see The Politician at 65th and Chester. It is that huge piece with the wheels that turn and his mouth opens and closes. Have you ever seen it drive out Chester? Take a look. It’s huge. It’s probably about 40, 50 feet tall, and it’s in primary colors, and it’s a marvelous public art piece. So we, you know, we have lots of public art, and it’s just fun to feature it, I think. I love the Gehry Building out in University Circle. It’s wonderful. And we have all the studios in Little Italy that people can go visit. We have an awful lot to offer, and Cleveland is just a tremendous city. I have a lot of tours left to right, so I don’t know if you know who I’m going to be writing them for, but I do have a lot of tours left inside me. All right.
Mark Souther [00:57:21] I guess that led me to one final question. Have you ever thought about writing a book about or maybe you have. And I’m just. I’m not from Cleveland. Have you ever thought about writing a.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:57:28] Book about my experiences?
Mark Souther [00:57:30] Well, not about your experiences so much as a tour book, for example.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:57:34] You mean how. A book about how to write tours?
Mark Souther [00:57:36] No, just a good tour guide for Cleveland.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:57:39] Well, people have asked me over the years, gee, could I have a copy of your script? Or could you do, you know, a tour book? But then anybody could do what we’re doing. Why give it away when they can pay for it? I’ve always been really funny about that. I will give people, if they have a legitimate reason, I’ll give them a select page or two of the script if they need it for something. But I’ve never released the script to anyone in the general public because we worked very hard to get it. And it is copyrighted. But, you know, why do I have to give it to somebody? There are so many books on Cleveland. I mean, I have four shelves filled with books on Cleveland. So, you know, you don’t really need yet another one, I don’t think. I might do a CD-ROM of Cleveland with little titles or something, and that would be an easy sell. And then that would be like the same as taking our tour, but without all the information. But you’d see all the things, and it would be a prompt. So that’s in the back of my head. Maybe that’ll pay for my retirement. Don’t know. All right.
Nicole Kiehl [00:58:54] Good.
Sherril Paul Witt [00:58:54] I was gonna say, where’s my watch? There it is. Good.
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