Abstract
Judge Burt Griffin discusses in great detail the battle to stop highway construction through the Shaker Heights-Cleveland Heights area, which was seen as a threat to those communities and to the ecological and environmental balance of the Shaker Lakes nature preserve. Griffin discusses the battle, which was driven by grassroots activists (and largely by women), in the context of Shaker Heights' unique history. Details on activist strategies; relevant financial, legal and environmental considerations; and class, gender, and age dynamics of community activism are also discussed. Also of note is Griffin's recollection of the changing political atmoshphere in Shaker Heights in the 1960s, when the city took a progressive stand on racial integration and fair housing.
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Interviewee
Griffin, Burt W. (interviewee)
Interviewer
Eakin, Martha (interviewer)
Project
Shaker Lakes Nature Center
Date
10-30-2006
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
63 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Burt W. Griffin Interview, 30 October 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 902014.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/202
Transcript
Martha Eakin [00:00:00] Will and okay, so I’ll introduce us. My name is Martha Eakin and we’re here at the Nature Center today to interview Judge Burt Griffin. And I want to thank you very much for being willing to stop over here and share your memories about the Nature center or before the Nature center with us.
Burt Griffin [00:00:18] You’re very welcome.
Martha Eakin [00:00:19] And today Justin Hons is going to do the technical recording issues, so we don’t have to worry about that. And when we get done, we do have a release form, which I think we’ve already taken care of. Did I say it was October 30th? It’s October 30th, 2006. Did you grow up in the Cleveland area?
Burt Griffin [00:00:42] I was born at St. Luke’s Hospital and lived on Ansel Road in Cleveland until I was five and then moved to Ardoon, right near Shaker Square, and have lived in the Shaker School District ever since then, except when I went to college, was in the army, was in law school and occasionally worked in Washington. But I always came back to Shaker.
Martha Eakin [00:01:08] Well, Shaker’s fortunate. That’s lucky. Could you describe or would you describe an early memory of an outdoor experience? I mean, are you an outdoor type person?
Burt Griffin [00:01:21] Well, I have a vivid recollection of walking over here with my mother when I was probably in kindergarten in first grade and bringing a picnic lunch around the Lower Shaker Lake and walking around and sitting near the Canoe Club boathouse and occasionally then at other times seeing people canoeing on the Lower Shaker Lake.
Martha Eakin [00:01:55] I don’t know that we’ve referred to it as the environment back then, but if you were going to describe your environmental or nature education, did you have any formal education that would sort of be called environmental now?
Burt Griffin [00:02:10] None whatsoever. I want to add one other thing before I forget it. Another vivid experience I have with the Shaker Lakes is sledding on the hill that’s at the intersection of what is, I guess, North Woodland that runs across the bridge that separates the marshland from the Lower lake and North Park. And at that southwest quadrant, I guess, of it, believe it or not, there was a sledding hill. It is now completely covered with trees. And I’ve taken my grandchildren on the boardwalk that now traverses that area and goes in toward the marshland. And when we get to that point where you can see through all, see all these trees and you can barely see the intersection of North Woodland and North Park, I point out to them, I said, you know, we sled. There’s a hill there. We sledded down that Hill, you can’t see it at all.
Martha Eakin [00:03:15] They believe you.
Burt Griffin [00:03:16] They believe me. I think they do, yeah. I hope they do.
Martha Eakin [00:03:23] Could you tell a little bit about how or when you might have first gotten involved with the Nature center? Or perhaps. Perhaps the Nature center wasn’t here, but it certainly wasn’t when you were sledding.
Burt Griffin [00:03:34] Well, my next real involvement came when I was living at that time on Lomond Boulevard in the Lomond School district between Glencairn and Grenway. I was active in the Shaker Heights Democratic Club. A number of us became aware that the state was proposing to build a freeway along Lee Road and that they had an ultimate plan to put an intersection right where the Nature Center now is. But they were told by the county engineer and by the mayor of the city of Shaker Heights and by the state government that of course that would come a long time in the future and wouldn’t necessarily have to occur at all because the Lee Freeway was actually going to stop at Harvard and it was going to just be a stub of the Lee Freeway, although they had a plan for what they were calling the Clark Freeway, which was to be an east west freeway. And the extension of the stub of the Lee Freeway was planned ultimately to intersect I-90, which did exist at that time. So that where the Lee Freeway going north from Harvard and the Clark Freeway coming east from wherever it was going through the city of Cleveland, those two freeways were going to intersect right at this wonderful place where there was this parkland with the Lower Shaker Lake and the Canoe Club. By that time the Canoe Club had ceased to exist. But this was vacant land and it was going to take out some houses on Southington and so forth.
Martha Eakin [00:05:40] And do you remember the names of some of the people that, I mean, like perhaps somebody called you or, you know, how did. Can you.
Burt Griffin [00:05:51] Well, I know who I originally got intimately involved with. I honestly don’t remember who first called me, but it really did emerge out of a couple of us at the Shaker Heights Democratic Club, one of whom was Bill Lowery, another one was Irwin, I-R-W-I-N, Barnett. And ultimately we brought Charles Miller in. And I can’t remember at that point whether Charles was still living in Shaker or had moved over into the so called Gold coast area on the west side. But in any event, there was a small number of us at the Shaker Heights Democratic Club who didn’t believe that this was, you know, the leaders at the county level and the state level said, well, we’re going to stop at Harvard. And we’re not really. It’s going to be a long time off. And although we have this plan, it’s not really going to take place, you know, very quickly. Don’t worry about it. But of course, we knew that you couldn’t stop a- Couldn’t dump traffic off of an expressway at Harvard near Lee. And that create an enormous traffic jam across Lee Road, which would then have to be relieved by an extension of what they were calling the stub, the Harvard Stub. So those of us in the Shaker Heights Democratic Club decided to reach out to other people. And we kind of drew up a list of people and developed into a very diverse bipartisan coalition with the starting point being people who lived on Southington between South Woodland and Shaker Boulevard, or on West Park between South Woodland and Shaker Boulevard. But mostly the people on Southington. And the two in particular that I recall were James B. Davis, who was then a lawyer at the law firm of McDonald, Hopkins & Hardy, and William B. Norris, who was known simply as Brad Norris, who was a partner at Hahn Loeser, L-O-E-S-E-R, Friedheim, Keogh and Dean. The firm is now simply known as Hahn Loeser, together with Bill Lowry, who was also a partner at. And it’s L-O-W-R-Y who was also a partner at Hahn Loeser. And Bill was the one who was active in the Shaker Heights Democratic Club. But Davis was an ardent conservative Republican. And James B. Davis lived on Southington. Herb Hansell, H-A-N-S-E-L-L, lived not too many doors from where Davis lived. And Hansell was a lawyer at that time at Jones Day, which was then called Jones Day, Revis and Pogue. So you had this interesting coalition of politically diverse people, all of whom were lawyers, but all of whom saw themselves being affected by this. And I guess my interest, even though I lived on Lomond, a considerable distance away from here and didn’t use the park area here at all, was my recollections of it as a child and as a youngster, having gone to Boulevard School, Woodbury School, which in those days was called Woodbury Junior High School and Shaker High School and realizing that if this interchange were created right where the Nature Center is, this beautiful area was going to be destroyed, the residential quality of Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights would be destroyed. You know, even though I didn’t have a direct, I wasn’t immediately being affected by this. Certainly my recollections of what a wonderful place this was to live and of course, what it would do to the rest of Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights as a result of this. So we- This became our big citizens project. And when we were able to network out through both Republican and Democratic connections to ultimately persuade the mayor of Shaker Heights that he shouldn’t go along with what the governor was telling him about not worrying and, you know, that we shouldn’t be an impediment to improved transportation for the rest of the county. And what the county engineer, who was a Democrat, we had a Republican governor and a Democratic county commissioner. And the county commissioner. He wasn’t a county commissioner. Excuse me, Albert Porter, he was the county engineer. The two of them were saying about how we needed this interchange and connecting freeways to improve transportation in the metropolitan area. And we didn’t quite see that we should sacrifice this wonderful area to live in. And we didn’t see it as a. Frankly, we did not recognize it as destroying the natural environment. We saw it as destroying the residential environment. Because the reality was that very few people at that time used the Shaker Lakes, and particularly the Lower Shaker Lakes as a part of their life. We mostly drove by it. There, wasn’t walking through it as we can now. The Canoe Club had gone out of existence, I believe, by that time. So just seemed to be some idle land that wasn’t very expensive and people could build a freeway through. But we saw it as destroying the Shaker school system, the residential area. And with that kind of thought, we were able to mobilize people politically to stop this. Then there was a rather minimal amount of federal legislation that required an environmental impact statement. And one of the lawyers in the group began to see this as a legal hook, that if we could relate this not only to residential impact, but to environmental impact, we might have a legal basis for stopping this. And understand that Shaker Heights was viewed as an extremely upscale community. And in those days, more upscale, more populous than the surrounding areas to the east, such as Pepper Pike, Beachwood, Orange and so forth. Those areas were not as heavily developed as they are now. Now they’re fully developed. And I would guess that maybe in the early ’60s, which is what we’re talking about. And, Martha, you may be able to help me on this. My recollection is that what I’m talking about, the early stages of this was 1965.
Martha Eakin [00:13:50] Yeah, I think people- It appears I went back after I spoke with you just to get my dates right. It appears that people were sort of getting wind of this. It appeared on the books, you know, the engineers were beginning to pretty specifically dream in 1965. And things proceeded from there.
Burt Griffin [00:14:06] But even then, 20 years after the Second World War, there was a lot of land still to be developed for residential purposes in Beachwood, Orange, Moreland Hills, and so forth. And. And still the most densely populated of the upper income levels were in Shaker Heights. So that the rest of the political world saw this as a bunch of rich people who were preventing less affluent people from having transportation or preventing the growth of affluent residential areas and thus interfering with the continued prosperity of the central city. That was the political economic conflict that really underlay what those who were concerned about protecting residential, residential environment were faced with. And the political hook of this came through the requirement in federal funding legislation for environmental impact statements. I don’t think it was at all clear how showing that there would be an adverse impact on a natural environment Would necessarily override the need to have what people saw as improved transportation. But that was the hook, nonetheless, that we saw as being possible here. One of the lawyers, and maybe a number of us, realized that there was a lawyer who at least had lived in Shaker, and I can’t remember at this time Whether he was still living in Shaker, Whose name was Charles Miller, who knew something about this and that. And Charles Miller knew something about environmental law because he had brought a successful lawsuit, I believe, in the 1950s, but maybe as late as the early 1960s, to stop the burning of trash on Cleveland’s lakefront. Many people may not be aware of this, but the area that is now occupied by Lakefront Airport was created completely by a landfill that was made possible by dumping trash from all over the metropolitan area on the lakefront and then burning it.
Martha Eakin [00:17:17] So it wasn’t dredge, it was trash.
Burt Griffin [00:17:18] It was trash. And so that virtually 24 hours a day, if you drove along Lakeshore Boulevard from the West Side to the East Side, past the stadium and so forth. But in the area where the airport now is, There was this horrendous amount of smoke that emanated from trash being burned, I think, 24 hours a day on the lakefront. And Miller had been able to bring a lawsuit to enjoin the burning of that trash. And there may not have even been environmental impact laws at that point, because air pollution. I don’t think there were any federal or state laws about air pollution. I think it was simply a classic nuisance action that was brought. But because he had been successful in stopping the burning of trash for landfill on the lakefront, and we knew him because he at least had lived in Shaker Heights. And as I say, I still think may have still been living in Shaker at that point. We brought him into this. And then Brad Norris and Bill Lowery, through people in their law firm at Hahn Loeser, started researching this. And another very important person in this was a young lawyer at what was then called Thompson Hein and Florian is now simply called Thompson Hein, whose name was Dick Stoddard. S-T-O-D-D-A-R-D, I believe it may be R, D, T. And Dick was probably at that point, 28, 29, at most 30, but a very committed person to community issues. And I’m not sure what his politics were. He might have been a Republican also. And he was an articulate, bright and physically imposing person with a lot of charm. And he put in tremendous amounts of time in this. And he, either through legal research on his own or the work that people were doing at Hahn Loeser and Charles Miller and so forth, became very articulate and knowledgeable about the environmental problems. And so a strategy evolved that we would bring pressure to have. Those who were thinking about financing this because it all had to be financed basically with federal money for these freeways, would develop an environmental impact statement that would be taken to the federal Department of Transportation to stop the funding of this. So you had a kind of legal strategy to stop funding. And then you had this kind of grassroots community political pressure using their influence with the Republican governor, with the Republican mayor of Shaker Heights, whose name was Paul Jones. And then in the course of this, a decision to reach out to much older women who were. This was almost totally male enterprise up to the point I’m now describing, because all of those lawyers were men. And that was an era where there weren’t very many women who practiced law, and certainly not in large law firms. But there was a group of ladies who were not kids. And I would say that the men that I’ve been describing were all. Dick Stoddard was, I think, very late 20s, might have been 30. As I said, Jim Davis and I were in our. I was 33. Davis was probably 35 at that point. Brad Norris was probably in his early 40s. Lowery, Hansel and Miller were in their late 40s, might have been 50 at that point. Although I. No, I don’t think that any of them were 50. I think that they were probably in their early to mid-40s. But living in this area on Southington, for example, was Martha Akins mother, Jean and Martha, you had gone through Boulevard School, but you were by that time out of. You weren’t living here, were you?
Martha Eakin [00:22:41] We were living on Southington.
Burt Griffin [00:22:42] No. You personally?
Martha Eakin [00:22:43] Oh, I was home. I left after ’66.
Burt Griffin [00:22:46] Graduated from high school in 1966. Okay, so you were.
Martha Eakin [00:22:51] And that’s how I know your name, even though I.
Burt Griffin [00:22:54] And how old would you.
Martha Eakin [00:22:56] My mother talked about you and she.
Burt Griffin [00:22:57] Talked about his daughter. Well, see, your mother then, by my standards. Now, your mother was still a young woman then, but she was probably around 60.
Martha Eakin [00:23:06] She was probably late 60s because she died in 03 at 98. So.
Burt Griffin [00:23:13] That was 35 years before. So she was 63. And Mary Elizabeth Croxton, who seemed to me to be older than your mother. But these were all women of a different generation who were involved in the garden club and various other kinds of things like that that relatively affluent, well educated women of that era would have been involved in. Your mother, I think, was a Smith College graduate.
Martha Eakin [00:23:46] Wellesley.
Burt Griffin [00:23:47] Wellesley. Okay.
Martha Eakin [00:23:49] Do you know who might have said, let’s check in with. I mean, was it because they were neighbors like my mother was on Southington?
Burt Griffin [00:23:56] I think it was probably. I think it was probably Jim Davis, who might have known, because I’m sure that Jim’s mother, Alice Davis, and your mother were very good friends. And Alice Davis may have still been living at that point. I think she probably was. I’m actually not sure of that. Jim Davis had bought a house right next to his mother on Southington between Shaker Boulevard and South Woodland. And for a while, when he was unmarried, he lived with his mother, I think. And then at some point, and I think perhaps still unmarried, he bought the house next door to his mother and then he got married. And my vague recollection is that Alice Davis may still have been living at that time. So she and your mother would have been. Were absolutely of the same era. So my guess is that it was Jim Davis to Alice Davis to Jean Eakin, and from Jean Eakin to Mary Elizabeth Croxton and so forth, that that’s probably the networking that occurred. But I could be totally wrong.
Martha Eakin [00:25:28] And did you have meetings ever? I mean, was there. Do you remember any strategy sessions where the lawyers met with at least some of these ladies and said, this is what we think needs to happen?
Burt Griffin [00:25:38] You know, the funny thing is I don’t remember that. I remember those of us who were lawyers all thinking about how we could, you know, legal things we could do and. And our organizing public meetings and reaching out with our political party networking and all this in that era was all basically the influence network tended to be male, although all the work that was done was by the women. And so that. And I don’t really remember. And I’m sure some of the. How many of these gals are still living? Is Mary Elizabeth Croxton? Is she alive?
Martha Eakin [00:26:22] No, she passed away quite a while ago, before my mom. My mother, Jean Eakin, she died in ’03. Kathy Barber, whom we have interviewed, remembers being a secretary for some meetings about the freeway that took place. She thinks maybe it Shaker City Hall. See how she said there was.
Burt Griffin [00:26:45][crosstalk] Well, I think people.
Martha Eakin [00:26:46] But she said there were both Democrats and Republicans who.
Burt Griffin [00:26:49] I think we may have had a big public meeting at the Woodbury Auditorium, but you really have to check with me on that. But in any event, this coalition got formed and who really met with whom between the political lawyer types and the ladies in the garden club circle, I don’t know. But they also networked out the people who had some real money to contribute to the Republican Party. For example, Frank Joseph, who was a partner at Jones Day, lived on West Park. And his house was going to be just wiped out by this proposed extension of the Lee Freeway. I think it was going to run right through his house. And Herb Hansel and our kind of core group knew Frank Joseph, obviously, since they were in the same law firm together. And I think they were partners. I think Herb was a partner at that time. So that kind of networking went out through connections of people who had contributed heavily to the Republican Party and who incidentally had influence on Mayor Jones. In those days, the Shaker Heights City Council was controlled by Republicans. This was not a liberal Democratic suburb at that point. So it was that networking that was necessary. Ultimately, the combination of the threat of litigation and then somebody came up with the idea of creating a nature center. I don’t have any recollection of what the details of that were. In 1966, when, when this effort was still at full steam, I went to head the Legal Aid Society. And I continued to be active with this, but I wasn’t in private practice. And it was when I was in private practice that I was most active with this. And then in 1968, I came to. I went to Washington to head up the legal services to the poor component of the federal anti poverty program. And so I was then gone from mid 1968 until I came back in mid 1969. And by that time the whole. This had basically been stopped politically, it had been stopped. So I think I lost touch with how the group actually came to fund and organize the Nature center. Hopefully you’ve got somebody who. But that became very important because the ability to really create this as a nature preserve was what permitted the enforcement of the environmental protection provisions of the federal highway funding statutes. And this became a very crucial part. So what your mother did, and Kathy Barber and other people, and probably Frank Joseph to help finance this, if this nature center had not been created, the highways would have gone through.
Martha Eakin [00:30:48] So sort of a multipronged effort. I mean, there was some of the sort of the legal expertise and the political connections to get something stopped, but. [Cross talk] Also something that had a race created. That would be a permanent reason to.
Burt Griffin [00:31:01] Prevent it happening then and in the future. And I presume, although you guys would know a lot better than I do, that initially there was meaningful federal funding for the nature preserve. So you would have had two political components of the federal government somewhat vying with each other. No, that’s your job.
Martha Eakin [00:31:34] I’ll do it.
Burt Griffin [00:31:37] So that’s kind of what I know.
Martha Eakin [00:31:40] You know a lot. Did you ever come across, I think I mentioned when I spoke the other day of a gentleman named Worth Loomis?
Burt Griffin [00:31:47] Yes.
Martha Eakin [00:31:47] He was a business person. He was somehow involved with the big meeting that took place. I believe it took place at Byron, not at Woodbury. That’s what newspaper article said.
Burt Griffin [00:31:58] Okay, well, that would be right. That’d be right.
Martha Eakin [00:31:59] Then such a similar thing. It’s probably the same meeting you’re talking about. And he was definitely involved with that meeting.
Burt Griffin [00:32:07] And Dick Stoddard had relationships with Worth Loomis and I think that Brad Norris also did, too.
Martha Eakin [00:32:14] And I think this was a meeting where maybe Governor Rhodes or some representatives from. Maybe he wasn’t there, but some representatives from the Ohio Department of Transportation came and weren’t expecting as many people as.
Burt Griffin [00:32:27] Do you know when that was? Do you have a date on that?
Martha Eakin [00:32:29] Yes, we have a date. And I. I meant to bring the letter with me. It happened. The meeting was in February and I’m not going to.
Burt Griffin [00:32:39] Be able to tell you of what.
Martha Eakin [00:32:41] Year I have if I can’t. It’s not off the top of my head, but I do know it at home. But I can’t tell you right this minute. But I have this letter.
Burt Griffin [00:32:51] Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve been able to reach Jim Davis or not.
Martha Eakin [00:32:57] No, I haven’t. And since I spoke with you, I haven’t tried to.
Burt Griffin [00:33:01] Davis would have been heavily involved with that, as I think I indicated to you. Davis may have some files on that.
Martha Eakin [00:33:07] Okay, so we need to check. Let’s see. Did Mayor Jones, to your knowledge, come around. I mean, look, I’ll talk to him and straighten him out or how do.
Burt Griffin [00:33:21] You know how that he ultimately came around. But he was a pawn all the while of other people. He was not your aggressively political mayor. Mayor Jones had two jobs. You know what they were?
Martha Eakin [00:33:42] No.
Burt Griffin [00:33:42] Well, Mayor Jones was the mayor of Shaker and he ran the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit. And you know, the Rapid transit system was then owned by the city of Shaker Heights. It was not owned by the regional. There was no regional transit authority. And he was the chief conductor of the. I’m being facetious in saying that, but he was kind of like the chief conductor of the Rapid transit. He got part of his. Well, the city of Shaker Heights paid his salary, but part of his responsibility was to be the mayor and part of his responsibility was to run the Rapid transit system. He was, I think, an engineer by background and not a politician. And, you know, Shaker Heights was still run at that point by a bunch of people who were, in effect, heirs of the early founders of Shaker Heights. Not political heirs, not financial heirs, the Van Sweringens and so forth. And this was a very old line, conservative, Republican establishment type of group. It wasn’t, you know, it was the early stages of racial integration in Shaker Heights. And those people were all worried about the effect that racial integration would have. And, you know, so that the liberal movement which turned Shaker into kind of a national model for successful racial integration was just getting started. When I graduated from Shaker in 1950, there were two black kids in my class, two black girls, both of whom paid tuition to go to Shaker and didn’t, I think, must not have lived in Shaker, but lived right on the edge of Shaker. There was no residential racial integration and Shaker at that time. And it wasn’t until about 1960 that that began to occur. There were no fair housing laws. There were restrictive covenants in all the Van Sweringen deeds, so that you could not. Under the Van Sweringen deeds, you could not buy your house without approval from your neighbors, which meant that it was difficult for anybody except white Anglo-Saxon Protestants to move into Shaker. There was an affluent and professional small Jewish population, but they were able to buy their houses because somehow they had connections and their neighbors didn’t. Vetoed. So the law changed in the 1960s. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that Fair Housing laws came into existence.
Martha Eakin [00:37:01] Very different times.
Burt Griffin [00:37:02] Correct.
Martha Eakin [00:37:03] You mentioned that some people felt that if the freeway went through and it was the rich people keeping it up. But it was going to be not a good thing for commerce and for the growth for the city. I mean, did you find that people felt that they were correct after the freeway didn’t go through? Did you ever hear, was there somebody saying, see, look at the problems we’ve had, if we’d only had that freeway, we would have been better off? I mean, did you ever run into anybody who?
Burt Griffin [00:37:37] That we would have been better off if the freeway went. [crosstalk]
Martha Eakin [00:37:39] Yeah, right. If we had the freeway in the- If the arguments-
Burt Griffin [00:37:43] I don’t think so. I never ran into anybody. And interestingly enough, there were many people who lived in the city of Cleveland and obviously of not the income levels of Shaker Heights who were concerned about the Clark Freeway coming from west to east and wiping out their houses. And these were all people from blue collar families, but they had no political clout. There were actually many more of them who were going to be affected by the Clark Freeway and their houses would have been ripped out too, and the city of Cleveland neighborhoods would have been destroyed, but they didn’t have political clout. And actually, now that I’m saying this, I do have some vague recollection that we, well, we were able to make alliances with people who did live in the city of Cleveland, but who would not have been able to take the leadership and have the influence that the Shaker Heights people had. And my recollection is that one of them was the councilman from the Lee Harvard area who was going to be affected by the so called stub that was going to stop at Harvard. And that was George White, who at that point was a city Cleveland city councilman and who ultimately became a common police and federal judge. And you know, you ought to talk with George White. He’s alive. And you clearly ought to talk with George. He will remember a lot of the city of Cleveland politics of this. There were other people in the white ethnic sections of Cleveland who were going to be affected by this. Both near Westsiders where Clark Avenue went through, and then East siders in neighborhoods that at that point were predominantly Central European, Polish and so forth, who would have been affected. But they didn’t have the influence with state and local government that the Shaker Heights people had. Nor did they, nor did any of them have the skills. They weren’t lawyers, they didn’t have the time, they didn’t have, as I said, they didn’t have the money.
Martha Eakin [00:40:14] So you need money, you need time and skill, connections, all those things you’ve mentioned. Where was the stub, the Stub would have ended?
Burt Griffin [00:40:25] Where did it at Harvard coming from? Well, it was going to come somewhere, I think off of I-271, the very southern part of I-271. And it was going to somehow come across Lee Road. And that’s why it was called the Lee Freeway. And it was ultimately going to go all the way to Euclid and connect with I-90. So it was going to be a kind of as I-271 makes a semicircle around what was then the eastern border of the eastern suburbs. Because when you get on the other side of 271, you know what you’ve got got are lots of Pepper Pike, Moreland Hills, Orange, areas like that, which at that point in the early ’60s were only sparsely developed. So there was a lot of land that was available there. And that’s where 271. Albert Porter, the county engineer, lived on the east side of 271. So he was all for building this I-271 freeway that ultimately connected, as we know, with Interstate 271 coming up from the south. And so what you could have seen then was a kind of network of north south connections that would have had I-71, I-77 running north south, and then this other thing which was going to be the Lee Freeway, which was going to kind of come between I-77 and I-271, but would connect with I-271, which loops around to the south.
Martha Eakin [00:42:31] What about. At least the Lee frame would have had it on through Cleveland Heights, where the. I mean, Cleveland Heights is just on the other side of the park. Were you connected? I mean, were there.
Burt Griffin [00:42:44] Stoddard may at that point have lived in Cleveland Heights, but the primary leadership for this was coming from Shaker Heights. I think Stoddard did live in Cleveland Heights.
Martha Eakin [00:43:07] In terms of the freeway that it does say here. Did you personally have any involvement with fundraising? You just said you were aware of people and you thought Frank Joseph might have been involved with that.
Burt Griffin [00:43:17] And your mother.
Martha Eakin [00:43:19] And I’m sure that, that she was. And I don’t- I think her first it wasn’t that her garden club was contacted somehow. She. Somebody mentioned it to her and she said, well, one of the groups we can use is a garden club.
Burt Griffin [00:43:37] Right. And that’s why I think that Jim Davis is probably the one because through his mother and your mother were good friends.
Martha Eakin [00:43:47] Besides the freeway, we also just have some questions just that have to do with the Nature center. Now that you, you know, you are back and you do live somewhere nearby. Have you continued or do you have some sort of an ongoing involvement with the Nature center or you just haven’t? You walk the parkland, but not with the.
Burt Griffin [00:44:08] I give the money every year and I walk around through the nature center areas five days a week.
Martha Eakin [00:44:18] Have you had any experience at the Nature Center? I suppose this would be a program or some official involvement with the Nature center that would have changed or enhanced your experience of the natural world?
Burt Griffin [00:44:32] Not really. Bought some things from the gift shop.
Martha Eakin [00:44:39] Has anything happened at the Nature Center at any time that either surprised or disappointed you wasn’t doing what you hoped it would be doing here?
Burt Griffin [00:44:51] I think this place is great, and I may be wrong on this, but I don’t think we had herons at the lower Shaker Lake as we now have. I don’t remember any Canadian Canada geese here. There may have been a few ducks, but I don’t think a great many of them. I remember when I was in high school that the lake that we call the duck pond was there and the ducks that were there were called Dr. Weidenthal’s ducks, because I think Dr. Weidenthal, who lived at the corner of South Woodland and. Is it Torrington that comes through there? Yeah, South Woodland and Torrington. His house was on the lake side of South Woodland and Torrington, and I think he brought those ducks there. That’s what we all believed. And you could ask. His son is still living. Dan Weidenthal.
Martha Eakin [00:46:03] How do you spell Weidenthal?
Burt Griffin [00:46:05] W-E-I-D-E-N-T-H-A-L. Dan doesn’t live in Shaker, but he lives in the- You know, he may live in Pepper Pike or someplace like that. And he’s in the phone book. He’s an optical surgeon. But his dad. My recollection is his dad caused those ducks to come there and that the rest of the lakes didn’t have any ducks, let alone Canada geese, and definitely no heron. If they were there, none of us walked around it to see it.
Martha Eakin [00:46:40] Is there anything that you wish was happening at the Nature Center? It isn’t- I mean, this is your opportunity to say, gee, I wish.
Burt Griffin [00:46:51] I wish they’d put those signs up that would keep people from feeding the birds.
Martha Eakin [00:46:56] I’ll pass that in, but I don’t have.
Burt Griffin [00:47:00] I just think the Nature Center is wonderful. I’m embarrassed that I don’t make a greater contribution to it.
Martha Eakin [00:47:06] I think you helped make it be here, so I think you’ve done a very good job. Is there anything that you think I should have asked you about that I possibly missed, as we’ve gone over the history of before the nature center. You can take a minute.
Burt Griffin [00:47:28] Well, I might make another comment that has always. About something that’s stuck with me all through this, and that is that it wasn’t at all clear in the minds of just ordinary people that this battle that we were. That all these more affluent people were putting up was of community interest, community benefit. You know, I practically, all my life, when I’ve been living here, have got my hair cut on Woodland. And there was a barber, had a barber shop at the corner of 130th and Woodland. And he’d been there for years. And I do recall being in his barbershop when this was all going on and how he thought this was holding up progress. He said, who uses the Shaker Lakes? And I think he was partly right on that. I don’t think anybody used the Lower Shaker Lake. So we were holding up the progress of improved transportation. The number of people who use the whole Shaker Lakes area, but especially the Lower Shaker Lake, has been multiplied many times by. By this Nature Center. The only thing that’s, that’s been diminished has, has been the ability to sled on that hill. Don’t you remember that?
Martha Eakin [00:49:14] Yes, I do. And if you were very skillful, you could come down and go out onto that culvert, you know, and if the icy. You know, if you’re really good, you geared it just right, you could go.
Burt Griffin [00:49:23] Out over this and nobody would believe that with all those trees that are in there now that you could have ever sledded down that hill or that they even. I’m not even sure people would be aware that there’s a hill there.
Martha Eakin [00:49:36] It would be fun to have a picture side by side of what it looks like now, because I think just as an example of environmental education, you don’t realize how fast trees grow. Forest moves in, you can move it out even more quick light. But it comes back pretty quickly. I wondered if you have any questions. Justin often has wise questions.
Justin Hons [00:49:58] I was curious if you could maybe reflect on what you thought were both the limitations and the necessity of the legal approach to dealing with the encroachment of the two freeways. How necessary was that success in stopping that? Also, what were the limitations? And how much did the legal framework maybe need? The grassroots framework from people such as. Her mother as well?
Burt Griffin [00:50:27] The legal framework was absolutely essential to stop it. And the creation of a nature center wouldn’t have been possible if there weren’t the legal framework to stop this. If it had not been possible to legally demand an environmental impact statement and ultimately hold out the prospect that litigation, such as the stuff that brought an end to the dumping on the lakefront, but that some litigation could have tied this up. And there was a precedent for this litigation. Because there’s a very famous case that involves a park in Memphis, Tennessee. And I think it’s over. I think it’s called. The name of that park, I think, is Overton Park. And I think that the name Overton is in the name of that litigation. That litigation preceded the Lee Freeway battle and maybe actually was continuing to go on during the period of the battle over the Lee Freeway. So that the success that people were ultimately having in Memphis created the strong likelihood that litigation over the Lee Freeway and the Shaker Lakes could exist. And Overton park had a much stronger case than we had, in the sense that Overton Park had existed in Memphis for probably 100 years. And it was a park that was really a public park, whereas what we had here was a set of lakes that, as my barber was basically right. Nobody really used them except those kids, such as Martha and me, who sledded down that hill and the occasional times we came over with our parents, babysitters and whatnot to have picnics here. But this was not an area that people really walked through. There were no joggers in those days, no bicyclists or anything. Nobody was doing any of that stuff. But Overton park in Memphis was really used as a public park. And it did preserve a natural environment in Memphis. And so the success of that case. And I don’t think we would have known that we had some legal rights if we hadn’t read about. And some of us had heard about this Overton park case.
Justin Hons [00:53:13] I had one more other question. This is kind of a slightly. A what if. But just to compare, maybe the change. The changing set of politics then to today. Do you think that this type of effort would be successful today?
Burt Griffin [00:53:30] Yeah, absolutely.
Justin Hons [00:53:32] Why do you think so?
Burt Griffin [00:53:33] Because the laws are stronger. We actually would have people at governmental levels who would be. Whose jobs would be to help protect this. But. But for practical purposes, there was no Environmental Protection Agency in those days. There was simply an Environmental Impact Statement. But the people who then decided whether the interests of improved transportation were outweighed by environmental considerations were all people at the Department of Transportation whose main interest was in building roads. And if they hadn’t been stopped by litigation in Tennessee and perhaps some other places that I’m not aware of, they would Just go ahead and build these freeways.
Martha Eakin [00:54:26] I know people have surmised, you know, thinking back to the battle, if there hadn’t been, you know, well, there’s your group that we know about or the legal side of it. And if there hadn’t. One of the things that the ladies provided was that they weren’t working. So they were educated people, but they were also available time wise to give time to it. I like to think that nowadays, even if they’re two family, I mean two, both, if they’re partners in a household, both of them are working, but that people would find this important and there would be the laws to use and that the people would see it as important enough that they would still take the time somehow to see that it happens. But I’ve heard people say maybe now, you know, if it weren’t a wealthy community, if there weren’t people who had time, you know, maybe things would be different.
Burt Griffin [00:55:27] Well, I think people who are wealthy and have time have an advantage over people who are impoverished and are just trying to keep their lives together. I think, you know, I don’t know what the equal rights law is with the fact that, you know, in the generation we’re talking about, even the wives of my generation were home largely taking care of kids. And clearly this was true in your mother’s generation and wish your mother were alive and could reflect on this, you know, because I. And I don’t know. So your mother’s, Your mother’s children were all out of the house except for me. That’s right. You were. I keep forgetting that. I think of you as I was the afterthought.
Martha Eakin [00:56:53] You were my brother, of my oldest brothers.
Burt Griffin [00:56:56] So you were in high school in 1965.
Martha Eakin [00:56:59] That’s correct.
Burt Griffin [00:57:02] Okay, so you’re in your middle 50s.
Martha Eakin [00:57:06] I’m 58.
Burt Griffin [00:57:08] Late 50s. Yeah. Well, you’re. But you’re the 60s generation, so you’re a baby boomer. But. So, you know, I mean, how much time do the women of your generation. But what about. See, my kids are in their middle 40s, and most of the women in that generation who would have come out of the socioeconomic environment that we all came out of are working. They’re professionals, they’re physicians or they’re executives in businesses. That wasn’t. I mean, to what extent is that true? Your contemporaries.
Martha Eakin [00:58:02] That’s true. You know, many people are working there, not just staying home. I listened to Hazel O’Leary speak at Case. She was the energy secretary of energy under Clinton, and she’s now the head President of Fisk University. And she talked about the importance of, among other things, of leaders and that for economic reasons, both or, you know, people in a household need to work, but that there isn’t. There should be more respect and sort of a place for. Maybe there’s one person who covers the monetary end of things, but there needs to be somebody who covers the civic end of things. And. And that really to make communities work. It’s not a totally crazy concept. It’s not. The women just sit home and have to take drugs because they’re so bored. But there are many important things that need doing. The whole sort of culture of volunteerism, that it’s not just taking people around the art museum, but there are vital things that need to be done. Maybe can’t be accomplished just in the other 24 hours that you don’t have.
Burt Griffin [00:59:22] Yeah. You know, when I think of who. What happened in the Shaker Heights Democratic Club, for example, the women who were active in the Shaker Heights Democratic Club were all stay at home mothers, and they did the real grassroots organizing work. If there was something that was put on at Byron Junior High School, I kind of think that the women did the organizing. The men may have been the front guys and they may have exercised some pressure, but that meeting got put together by women. I think I may be wrong on that, but.
Martha Eakin [01:00:15] My sense was there was people. You know, it wasn’t Xerox machines, but making copies went door to door. You know, there was like a network of people that said, we’re going to leaflet. And this is. It was like getting.
Burt Griffin [01:00:28] Let me give you another name that I think you should talk to here. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before. And this is Paul and Sonja Unger. Unger Paul and Sonja. Sonja is S-O-N-J-A, Paul and Sonja Unger. Paul is in good shape. I’m not sure what kind of condition Sonja’s in, and she may have Parkinson’s or something like that, but Sonja was the president of the Shaker Heights Democratic Club and she was a dynamo. Paul had a very successful small business. So between the two of them, they had a lot of time and a certain amount of money to contribute. And they lived on South Park between where Parkland comes in and Lee Road. They have lived there. Okay, they don’t live there any longer. And I think they may live in Moreland Courts or someplace like that, but they lived there for many years. At the time this was going on, they lived on Van Aken but they ultimately bought a house that would have been also destroyed by. And they may have even built that. That house because it’s an unusual house. In a sense, it’s a somewhat modern house compared to the more traditional homes that are along South Park. But, you know, if Sonja is still of a full mind, she would remember clearly the role that the women played in this. Paul may remember it, too. But Paul tended to be in the background of things, and his interests had much more to do with national affairs. But Sonja was a real Shaker Heights activist. She ran the Shaker Heights Democratic Club in that period.
Martha Eakin [01:02:44] People to try. So you gave us. And you spelled people’s names very nicely, and you remember that. Anybody else? My final question was just if there was one last person, but you already brought up, I think you’re one less person.
Burt Griffin [01:02:56] Well, there’s another person whose reliability I don’t entirely trust and whose name. Now, I have a freudian block. But she was active and she lived in the Ludlow area. But. But Sonja would be a very good. If Sonja’s mind is still good, she would be a very good recounter of history. All right.
Martha Eakin [01:03:23] Well, thank you very much. That was great.
Burt Griffin [01:03:26] All right.
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