Abstract
In this 2012 interview, Robb Forward of Shaker's Brown-Forward Funeral Home, describes his life living in Shaker and the experiences he went through elsewhere. Beginning with his life as a child, he tells stories of Shaker's conservatism in the 1950s and early 1960s, and the role of religion in different ethnic groups. As the turbulent '60s plowed through everyday life, he describes the racial tension and then the anti-war tension, being a Vietnam veteran. Mr. Forward then provides a brief history of his funeral home, its communal role, and his involvement at Plymouth Church. He ends describing Shaker today, and his love and gratefulness for the city.
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Interviewee
Forward, Rob (Interviewee)
Interviewer
Halligan-Taylor, Gabriella (interviewer)
Project
Shaker Heights Centennial
Date
6-22-2012
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
61 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Robb Forward interview, 22 June 2012" (2012). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 915015.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/503
Transcript
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:01] Just basic, basic question. How long have you lived in Shaker? Where were you born? Where did you grow up?
Robb Forward [00:00:07] I was born actually in Cleveland, down at McDonald House. And my folks lived over on Walden in the edge of Cleveland, edge of Shaker, until I was about six months and we moved into Shaker. So that would have been. I was born … 1945, 6:49am and six months later moved to Shaker, to Ellesmere off Fernway.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:32] Did you go to Shaker schools?
Robb Forward [00:00:34] I went to Shaker schools, went to Fernway School. Then we moved and went to Boulevard. And then 6th, 7th and 8th grade. I went to University School, but I had all my friends still in Shaker. So I went back to Shaker High and graduated there in 1964.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:51] What was it like going through the Shaker schools in regards to kind of, I hear a lot about kind of this elitist attitude.
Robb Forward [00:01:02] Oh, very much so. My dad bought the funeral home and that was not a high profile type of business. I know my mother applied to get my older sister into dancing school. There were two dancing schools that were fairly elite. There was Batzer’s and also The Fort. And she was turned down. My Uncle Dewey had been a great athlete in Cleveland Heights High and University School had recruited him and he went to US. And then years later, my dad wanted me to go to US to sort of, you know, thought it would be a good opportunity for me. As soon as I entered US, I got an invitation from these schools, to the dancing schools, which my mother immediately turned them down and sent me to one that was more for just kids. And so that was very much so. There was a clique all the way around. It was religious cliques, it was, as far as income cliques. We didn’t have any people of color in the city for many years. And then finally when we did, when I was in elementary school, there was a daughter of a custodian that was in elementary school with us. And that was like the first African American girl. That was Edwina Johnson, I remember her name now. So that was it. Well, that was sort of the mentality. It was, it was a white bread America town. And the Jewish kids were not allowed to date the Christian kids. The Christian kids were not allowed to date the Catholic kids. The Catholic kids were not allowed to date anybody but Catholics. And everybody went to church. If you didn’t go, that was sort of suspect. And everybody pretty much followed. I mean, the town shut down Wednesday at noon. There was no Commerce after 12 o’clock on Wednesday and certainly nothing on Sunday. So from, you know, that when there was nothing that conflicted ever with a church or with any other type of event. So you went to church Wednesday evening for some things. I was in the choir Tuesday, Thursday and Wednesday, and then Sunday was church day. Nothing ever got involved. And it was very, you know, that’s the way it was. I mean, the picture of all the mothers pushing the baby carriages out all up and down the street, that’s the way it was back then. Somebody, I just took a youth group on a mission trip. And this one young girl, she’s 14, and she said, you grew up in the 60s. She said, oh, it had to be wonderful. I said, not for you. I said, you want to do so many things. And the women back then were expected to just babies and cooking. And that was the way it was. And, you know, the guys came back from the war and they were in charge.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:04:10] What kind of religious group were you a part of?
Robb Forward [00:04:13] Well, I was- I came from an interesting group. My mother was Presbyterian. My father was raised Christian Scientist. When they came to Cleveland, when he was a young boy, they were in the Baptist church. And then he married a Presbyterian in the Presbyterian church. And we were there for about five years. And the story goes that I had two older sisters, but I cried so much that my mother never got to go to church. Always spent the time in the parking lot. So they moved to the Episcopal Church in Shaker and raised me there because they had child care for a moment and childcare became, actually became the choir. They put me in there when I was 7 till 14, and that’s where it was. So it was Episcopal Church, but it was very strict back then. And the youth group. The youth groups around were very strict, except at Plymouth Church, which was Congregational. And so the church group there, it wasn’t under the radar, but it was, all of a sudden all the kids started, started showing up there on a Sunday night. And it was a mix of all the different churches. And the minister, John Adams at the time, he just had kids coming from every church around. And I actually ended up being president of the youth group as an Episcopalian. And we had Catholic kids there. And at the end of the session that we would, whatever we would do, they wouldn’t go up into church because they weren’t allowed to for our final observance. But it was such a liberal church even back then that they accepted everybody. And that was what we had. We did a lot of service projects and a lot of stuff like that, and it was cool. But the religious organizations were fairly strict. All the kids went to catechism in the Catholic church.
Robb Forward [00:06:09] The Jewish kids went to Hebrew school and the Christian kids, you know, they went to Sunday school. I never went to Sunday school because I was in the choir. But that was it.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:06:20] Is Plymouth Church, was it strictly just white Protestants or?
Robb Forward [00:06:25] Every church was white. Yeah. There was no African American families in Shaker until the first one, corner of Lee and I think Aldersyde. Somebody bought the house and sold it to a Black family. And then there was started blockbusting, where they would go into the neighborhood and they’d buy a house and sell it to a Black family and then just start buying up the houses up and down the street cheap and then selling them. That was why the rule or the law came in, or the rule, whatever it was, that Shaker stopped having “for sale” signs. You weren’t allowed to have “for sale” signs in front of your house because you’d see one house would sell and be a Black family. And it was just the whole house, the whole street would have “for sale” signs and white flight. So that was when positive integration started, too, is where they started working on that.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:07:17] Were you in Shaker when that was kind of starting to happen?
Robb Forward [00:07:20] Oh, yeah. I was there as part of it. When Dr. Martin Luther King came in town, he was allowed to be at St. Paul’s inside Cleveland Heights. But when he came out here to talk at Heights Christian Church, the ruling board, whatever, board of sessions or clerks, whatever, they wouldn’t allow him to talk inside the church. So he talked on the steps. And I went over to see it, and it was great. I was 10, 15 feet from him. But then all of a sudden I had a shirt that identified me because I was working maintenance at our office and our general manager came over and he was a little more on the side, a little right wing. And he told me I couldn’t stand there. So I went back and got a jacket and came back and watched the rest of it. But it was very, you know, very difficult for Black families in town. We only had, I think, six in my high school class. And I was an athlete, so the guys that were athletes got pretty close to- But it was- The undercurrent was pretty strong, and it was important that cooler heads prevailed.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:08:38] What year was that when Dr. King came?
Robb Forward [00:08:41] You know, I can’t tell you. It was, well, I graduated in ’64, so it might have been ’61, somewhere around there, but you’d have to look it up. I’d have to Google it to make sure. But I was still in high school, but it was well-known at the time.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:08:59] Did you stay in Shaker for, did you go to college?
Robb Forward [00:09:03] I went to college in Vermont, which was even more isolated, no radios allowed and phone on every floor. And that was it. I went to school in Vermont and by the time I got out of school, it was ’68. It was the height of the war, so all able-bodied, not so able-bodied went. So that kind of kept me removed from Shaker for about another three years. And then I went to mortuary school and then came back and joined the family business. The irony was I was actually headed to seminary. I wanted to go into the Episcopal ministry. But at that time, the Episcopal Church was at the forefront of the antiwar movement. And all my efforts to try to get in there and talk to people about applying, they felt it wasn’t quite appropriate at that time for a returning infantry combat person to go into the ministry. They thought that wasn’t the, what wasn’t the look they were getting. They were looking for, incoming. So I joined the family business.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:10:11] When you are going from Shaker, you know, to Vermont at the time conservative, still a little bit.
Robb Forward [00:10:19] Oh, very conservative.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:10:20] And then going to Vermont, which is really still conservative. Did you, what did you think about integration? Did you care? Did you not care? Were you indifferent?
Robb Forward [00:10:32] Well, by the time I, yeah, I was very for integration, very much so. And made a point of voicing my being pro-integration. When I was finishing up high school and then in college, we had very few people of color at the college, stuck in the middle of Vermont. But coming back and working the summers, I continue to support that. Vermont was very isolated. I mean, the people there was- My former wife, who was a Vermonter, had never seen a Jewish person before in her life. And after we were married, when her parents came to town and would look out the window because they had never seen Black people before. It was pretty rural back then. There was no TV that you would see a lot of exposure to. I mean, they had the three major networks and AM radio and the newspapers where the local agricultural news is what it amounted to. So they didn’t have much of an exposure towards integration at the time. But we had it here and we had it ongoing. And Shaker had the good sense to avoid the white flight by putting in proactive measures and making sure that with voluntary busing, and fun for the future, keeping the areas stable.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:12:02] How did you, growing up in a strictly white community, how did you kind of become pro-integration?
Robb Forward [00:12:10] Probably athletics, because I had to interact with the few Black athletes that we had. And a young man named Curtis Ingram became a good friend of mine. And he later on went on to become part of the Shaker administration. He’s since passed away, but he was a good friend of mine and some of the other guys who were just playing sports. It sort of gives you a different outlook. And also being a little at that edge of the ’60s mindset is whatever your parents said, you sort of like went, no. Which was, I mean, it’s normal in many cases, but it was even more so. My parents were very traditional. They didn’t allow my sisters to date any Jewish men and I wasn’t supposed to date any Jewish women, which I did, and incurred the wrath. But I was the third child and they were kind of, I tired them out so they just sort of didn’t pay that much attention to me. So I just did that. And when I went in the service, my roommate was an African American from Virginia. His name was Posey Randolph Young. To this day we are close friends and he’s about 6 foot 7 and he and I would drive back and forth. I’d go to Vermont to see my wife and I drop him off in Richmond. And as we cut through from Fort Benning, Georgia, cut through the backwoods there in Georgia, there were towns that still had entrances for “colored only.” And this was in 1968 and 9. And so he and I had become very close friends. He was supposed to spread, spend a weekend at my house two weeks ago, but I was going out of town with a church group. So, you know, you get, when you get close to a person or two or three, then you realize that these stereotypes mean absolutely nothing. And that’s when you start, you fight for your friendships.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:14:21] Kind of going through the ’60s coming up to the war. Did you support the war?
Robb Forward [00:14:28] You, you know, it’s interesting. You’re talking about a bunch of 18-year-old kids who have no information. I was talking to some, some young people and they said, well, why, you know, did you support the war or not? Like you just asked me, I said, know about the war? The news was the last 15 minutes of the, of the newscast. It was 15 minutes of your local news and 15 minutes of national news, you know, and if you missed it, you missed it. And the next News was at 11, and the newspapers were not that informative. And then I went, and in ’64 the information wasn’t that broad. And then I went to school in Vermont for four years. For God’s sakes, say the Berry Times Argus. You know, you get the hog prices and the beef prices and, you know, there’s no news. There was one TV per class and it was at the class club. And no radio, you know, AM radio. And so, you know, it’s not that you didn’t support or not, you just didn’t know any different. You heard about it, you heard the protesting. And when you’re graduating from school or when you have to commit, you know, either go or no go. Here’s the choice. 20 years in Leavenworth, or you go in the army. And it’s the same thing as, you know, gay people now don’t know the fear of being gay in the military back in my era, because that’s another, that’s 10 years or 20 years in Leavenworth just for being gay. So the whole thing, it was either or. There was no appeals. There was no more information out there. So I knew guys that struggled with their sexuality and really struggled with the fear of going to jail, because that was not even a question. You were going to jail. And the same thing as if you. They say, well, you could run to Canada. They said, well, that’s jail again. And there was no real, you know, what do you know? You don’t know much when you don’t get any information. And when you’re 18 to 20 years old back then you don’t have the information. Some guy said, well, I went to Canada because I didn’t believe in the war. And my question is always to them is, well, if you didn’t believe in the war, why didn’t you become a conscientious projector? Why don’t you go in the Peace Corps? Why don’t you go in AmeriCorps? Why don’t you go work in Appalachia? Why don’t you use that time, which is legal to do? Why run to Canada just to stay away? There were many options. I mean, Navy, Air Force, I mean, there are a lot of options. So we looked upon it as those, you know, there wasn’t much you could do. And only 1 in 10 actually got in combat. So that was pretty good odds. I actually became 1 in 10. So they say, how bad could it be? Well, you don’t know how bad it could be until you’re there and then coming out of there. The anti war was such that we had to sneak back in town and parents didn’t let anybody know where their kids were anyways. And this isn’t about Shaker, but that was basically the history is. The mailman rang the doorbell when a letter came from me so that my folks would get it, because there was the group of people that would try to get letters and then try to exploit that, and they’d write letters to a soldier’s parents about their son was going to die and he was doing a horrible thing and all this. And when a returning soldier would. Would come, there were some funeral homes that wouldn’t handle the body. And if they handled them, they had to guard them. So it was a whole different era for the soldier. It was like being, -t was like being Black, being a white Black man in the ’50s. You had to hide it and make sure you didn’t get caught. When I returned, I was. People asked where I was and I said, out of town. I didn’t tell them I was in the area.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:18:37] And that was the attitude of Shaker?
Robb Forward [00:18:39] Yeah, absolutely. My own church was at the forefront, the Episcopal Church and antiwar, and I was not considered a returning hero. Basically it was returning murderer. And I was told that. And that was prevailing thought of a lot of the city. But you didn’t talk about it. Well, not a lot of Shaker boys went to war too. That’s another thing. A lot of them just went on to graduate school or they got out of it different ways. There’s not a lot of Shaker guys that went to war.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:19:19] Did you just kind of ignore that? How does it make you feel? I imagine that kind of sucked.
Robb Forward [00:19:24] You ignored everything. You just went about your way. You didn’t discuss it. No, no. Even my family never asked me one question. I came off the plane, put my hat on top of a case, and that was the end of it.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:19:41] And then you said after the war, you went to mortuary school, correct?
Robb Forward [00:19:46] Right. I went to mortuary school. I worked in Vermont for a year. My wife was in nursing school. Couldn’t get a job there because of returning status. Went up and down the street asking for jobs. I finally got a job at the last store in the street selling clothes. And first question he asked you is your draft status. That’s a normal question. And I said, well, I fulfilled my obligation. I said, oh, okay. Well, you know. What was your service? Army. Where’d you serve? Vietnam. Said, okay, we’ll call you. And I’d go through the process. But as soon as they found out I was returning, because back then the television shows were all about. It’s like they could talk about going postal here. I mean, it was all about the Vietnam veterans going postal and going nuts and what they did and stuff like that. And it was so unpopular, you just didn’t. You just didn’t have them. So I sold clothes for a while and then I went to mortuary school.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:20:42] And then you came and worked-
Robb Forward [00:20:43] Back and joined the family business. Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:20:45] And how long has the family business been in Shaker?
Robb Forward [00:20:48] Well, we bought it in 1951. It was already here, from about ’45, ’47. Mr. Brown moved it up from downtown, but we bought it ’51. Expanded in ’60 as far as the building and we’ve been here since then. It was- My father bought it. His father joined him, his brother joined him, I joined him, then my sister joined us, and then my son. So we’re basically four generations. Although my father was the first owner.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:21:20] And it’s called Forward and Brown?
Robb Forward [00:21:22] It’s Brown Forward Funeral Home. But it’s the oldest continuing funeral home in the state of Ohio because Mr. Brown started, we can actually document back to 1825. So that’s what we say. But that was the first city directory and that’s why. But it might have been before that. It was a cabinetmaker like all funeral homes.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:21:44] Did he start in Shaker in 1825?
Robb Forward [00:21:46] No, no, he was downtown, you know, on 9th Street. There wasn’t a Shaker back then, right. Yeah, downtown on 9th Street. And they moved up to Carnegie and then Carnegie to Shaker. Mr. Brown, and then his son decided not to go. He was in the business and he left the business and Mr. Brown needed to sell it because it was elderly and my dad bought it again. Back then that wasn’t very high on the social calendar. So we just sort of were there. But we’ve established ourselves very well now.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:22:18] What made Mr. Brown kind of initially come to Shaker?
Robb Forward [00:22:22] Moving out with the people. And Shaker was a very high end city, so it was good for business. There was another funeral home in town, Vails, but he had some pretty good clientele that followed him out and he followed them as they moved out and that’s where he came to. It was a good location, growing, but again he was getting older and he needed to retire and there was nobody there to pick up the, the reigns.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:22:57] Being at a funeral home, you’re probably pretty integrated into the community, you know.
Robb Forward [00:23:03] Right.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:23:03] Going through kind of know a little bit about most people.
Robb Forward [00:23:07] Right.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:23:08] And since you have that kind of, you know, social connection, how did you kind of see Shaker evolve as far as, you know racial senses?
Robb Forward [00:23:22] Well, we’re a bit of an unusual business. Brown Forward is, many funeral homes are niche. They’re Catholic funeral homes or black funeral homes or Jewish funeral homes or Italian funeral homes, etc. We serve the whole community and we always have. So we get to see this movement because we’re in every church around and we’ve done, we’re not so much in the Jewish community because the rabbis don’t want to come to us. They feel as though they’re losing, which they are. 50% of their population is marrying outside the faith, mixed marriages. And they want to sort of hold on to this tradition, but we hold on very well. And the only other, the main competition for the Jewish business is corporate owned anyways. It’s not Jewish-owned, it’s corporate-owned out of Houston. So, we like to continue to say we serve the whole community. And what we have seen over here is not just religious movement as different religions marry into each other, but racial movement. You know, we’re a great biracial community. Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, a lot of mixed-race families. And so we see that and we serve that. But I see the, you know, the racial impact in Shaker, which was initially thought to be almost like what happened to East Cleveland, like worry and a white flight has turned into such a, and through a lot of effort, you know, Pat Mearns and Walter Kelly and stuff like this, you know, guys, you know, they made a big effort and they did this and they were able to keep this. So now it’s, it’s a comfortable mix. And now I have the African American community coming to me. I have the, all the different communities coming to me. Religious and non-religious community too. And we serve everybody from, you know, the smaller groups such as Baha’i. We serve, you know, we’ve had. I don’t think there’s a religion we haven’t had. And it’s. And there’s also non religious or humanitarian, you know, humanistic service. Humanistic, not humanitarian. Humanistic services we have. They’re fine. It’s great. It all makes business exciting.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:25:53] Have you ever kind of seen any tension among racial relations in Shaker?
Robb Forward [00:25:59] Oh, absolutely, yeah. Back in my day, horrible tension, mean, nasty tension. And now, you know, even my kids went through the schools. There’d be racial outbreaks and racial problems. There are. Yeah, I don’t think you cannot. I mean, it’s just the next group to fight with. I mean, you know, you mentioned our initial conversation, we were just talking to each other about the Irish, you know. Well, the Irish, no Irish hired, Irish need not apply, stuff like that. Well, nobody thinks twice about that now. You know, then, you know, any immigrant status goes through and then it’s Jewish and then it’s, you know, there’s prejudice against Catholic. There was a lot of prejudice back when, in the 60s when John F. Kennedy was going to, you know, run, you know, my grandparents generation were fearful that the Pope was going to run our country. You know, I mean, and that doesn’t even irk us anymore. Nobody even worries about it. So it’s, it’s an evolution and there is racial tension and things happen from, you know, everything from way back where it was Jim Crow era where they would just go and grab somebody and hang somebody and now there’s, there’s riots over things like Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, you know, so people grab something and run with it. The media now is different than it was back then. So that everything’s exploded fast and raises tension. There are, but as I said before, cooler heads do prevail, usually. And people, the people, they get mad about something. We had Tim McDermott, I think, he was beat up by a few black kids that came up from the city. It could have been a racial thing. Instead it was a bonding thing. We said we’re not going to let them let that be defining this area. So there’s a lot of good stuff that comes out of it, but it takes work. It takes people really working. There will always be tension, always somebody mad.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:28:05] Right. Do you think the media kind of makes that worse?
Robb Forward [00:28:08] Oh, I think the media reports it like they never could report it before. And they dissected like they never could dissect before. As I said back in the day when you had Huntley Brinkley for five minutes and then they expanded to 15 minutes for gosh sakes, you know, wow. Now you got an hour and a half of News starts at 4:30 in the morning and it connects to 7, you know, and goes till 10. You got to write something. And the papers are going out of business almost. I mean they’re writing less and less. They’ve all gone to the USA Today type of quick, give you a blurb and they don’t always get it right. I don’t want to say the media expand. I think the media just gives us more information than we used to have. And as you find out, there’s always the danger of taking a little bit and not getting it all in context. And there is righteous inclination. I mean they also, you know, they are reporting some things that used to be glossed over. I mean we go through, if you go on like John Edwards, I mean this stuff coming out of John Edwards, I mean, the guy’s turned into a media hero to, you know, slimeball because of even the new stuff that comes out. Well, that stuff never came out back in the day. And I’m not saying that was a good idea, but I’m saying now that they can get it out, you get more information. So when you find out somebody does something wrong, get mad. Yeah, you get mad. Yeah. So there’s more and people are out there more. People want to want the information. I want the information. Hey, I got a smartphone. I, Twitter. Even in my advanced age.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:29:44] I actually, I follow BBC News more than I do American news. I watch World News with Diane Sawyer and I just shake my head. On one international story, it’s a 30-minute segment and I’m just like ugh.
Robb Forward [00:29:58] You know, the greatest thing about TV is the remote. I mean, you’re talking to a guy that used to flip 3, 5 and 8 and be able to spin it and hit it every time. Now I can use the remote so I can get from Diane Sawyer to Brian Williams to Charlie and then they’re all in the same story. I can switch to BBC. The woman I’ve been going with for 20 years is from Scotland. So we see a lot of BBC at her house. Or if I’ve got it on. And it’s true, you get more international and that’s good. But again, you become a little bit of a newshound because you chase it down. You had to chase it down back even when I was raising my kids, I kept it on headline news. I mean, that was the newest thing. Now there’s so much news and it goes through, you can be better educated, but some people, they’ll never watch news because it’s all bad. Well, how are you going to find out what happens? You got to deal with what happens. So you really should.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:31:04] Kind of backtracking a little bit. You kind of like go through, if you’re kind of comparing the ’60s in Shaker Heights to the ’70s in Shaker Heights, what would you kind of say, like, kind of going through decade by decade? Was the attitude kind of the same or?
Robb Forward [00:31:18] Well, ’60s is tough to say because it finished up in the ’50s, ’50s were white bread, you know, it was just Wonder Bread. And everybody had the laundry hanging in the backyard. And then all of a sudden the ’60s came along and you weren’t allowed to hang your laundry in the backyard and you weren’t allowed to put “for sale” signs out. And it became a different world because it was more of a fearful time. And then my generation scared the crap out of my parents generation, long hair and dancing and breaking curfews. And all sorts of stuff. So it became a little more fearful. And then the war came up. And then all of a sudden the reality of the war came out. And then more and more pictures were shot, but less information was put out there. My kids grew up. And as much as they say, we had a lot of information about Vietnam, my kids went to high school, and there was a page in the history book, maybe. Nobody talked about it. And the World War II vets always would refer to me if they say I was In World War II, the war we won. And my only answer every time was, well, they were winning when I left. What more can you say? So it was a different time. It was a fearful time of what’s going to happen, and then it was a fearful time of what was happening. And that’s what the seventies were to me. And so it was a very difficult time for Shaker, because then they started moving towards more integration, but how to do it. But they put their nose to the grindstone and figured out a good way to do it. And money talked. So the Fund for the Future came up and positive integration came up because the right people were living here at the time. I said, yes, I’m going to let my child be bussed from the Mercer district to Lomond because it will be good for all of us. And this is. And we championed it, and we still champion it. And we do it for a couple reasons, I think. One is to make sure it continues, and two is because we found out that it works and that’s important.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:33:24] It obviously works because there are other cities that try that integration, and some are kind of, you know, with the housing fight against the rails and whatnot.
Robb Forward [00:33:35] And you still see the reports of maybe more of a white community being on the west side is more likely because there’s more white communities on the west side where a family, a mixed-race couple or a family of color will move in and they’ll be spray painted and stuff. And, you know, it’s like dropping back 40, 50 years, you know, and hard heads, you know.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:34:01] I know, you know, Thailand and Vietnam War kind of really started to take everybody’s attention. I know the civil rights movement kind of took a little backseat a little bit in regards to media coverage, especially after Kennedy assassination, Martin Luther King assassination, Bobby Kennedy assassination. Do you think that kind of hindered that progress? Do you think that we kind of kept with it throughout the ’70s? Do you still see those problems on west side and Cleveland?
Robb Forward [00:34:33] If- But, whatever, maybe whoever, you know, you don’t know. But Then again, it also kept activists active. And when they, you know, the more activists you get, the better chance you have. It’s like the, what would have been the chances of having a gay pride parade in the ’50s, maybe in the ’60s with a lot of violence in the ’70s, maybe, I don’t know so much. And this Saturday there’s one, and it’ll be just, you know, it’s another parade. So activists need to be, continue to be active. I still say there’s nothing sadder than an old hippie from my generation. But the new activists are the ones that make you go. The old hippies are sort of like the kids that never left college. They’re just looking for the next thing, and then they’re still walking down the street in their sandals. I had a high school reunion. I saw a kid and he showed up and this was, I think our 30th. And he had a long braid, sandals, shirt, shorts, shirt hanging out. And I said to him, I said, Steve. Yeah. He said, how come he never left? He said, what? Left what? I said, the ’60s. Now you can do it with short hair and a tie. You just need to be active. But he was still floating around there. So, you know, that’s a little pitiful. You know, you need to be. You need to move your relevancy, that was relevant back in the 60s, but nobody’s going to listen to you if you’re falling apart and looking like you just woke up at noon. You know, you need to be a positive activist. And that’s what I think some of us who are still in the 60s that work for things. We work within the system, and that is how it’s been changed. All the brick throwing really didn’t change anything. Certainly got attention, but it didn’t change anything. And all it did was the people that actually made the move, the Civil Rights Act all the way through. Those people made the difference. Hats off to them, too. It’s the same people that the bricks were being thrown at. Well, actually, those guys got it done.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:36:46] How would you kind of say politically, how do you think Shaker kind of transitioned through this era of the ’60s and ’70s?
Robb Forward [00:36:58] Ultra conservative to, we’re a pretty liberal city right now. We’re liberal because we needed to be liberal in order to do the things we did. There is still- Oh, don’t get me wrong. I mean, this is, there’s- We got staunch Republicans and we got Tea Party. Until that generation, we had John Birch Society here. And I don’t need to explain it you go ahead and look it up. John Birch Society was, you know, really, you know, anti communist type of thing. The conservatives worried about the communism was in the ’50s. I mean, I got my hair cut when I was in choir. My dad buzz cut it, and I lost a job singing a particular solo because I looked like a communist. And they gave it to another kid until my hair grew out. I’m not kidding. I mean, there was this feeling. And the John Birch Society, well, not the John Birch Society, but during Eisenhower’s era, because of the McCarthy hearings, et cetera, is when they put in under God in the pledge. And the argument now they’re saying, well, some people want to take under God out of the pledge. And the argument is this country is built on the pledge with under God. And I kind of remind people, I said, you know, it didn’t get here until 1952 or something. I mean, I was in fourth grade, Ms. McGeorge’s class, when they came in, they said, okay, we’re changing the pledge. And they added under God. And it was tough for a bunch of fourth graders to go to learn it. So all these guys that say In World War II we fought for under God, he said, no, no, no, you fought for pledge without under God. And then they put it in afterwards. So that was the feeling of the country and of the shaker. You know, it was very conservative, went into the ’60s and then it was again, they got fearful. But then they saw the positive in the ’70s, the positive. So it has changed. It’s quite a beautiful mix. Now we have everything from one side to the other and that’s good. And I think that makes a stronger community than we even had back in the day.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:39:13] How would you say kind of the ’80s and ’90s, kind of going up to semi-modern era, how do you think they connect when it comes to-
Robb Forward [00:39:19] I think it changes according to more, it changes according to what’s going on. Economics has driven this era. The 2010, very strong. The ’80s and ’90s, the boom of all the money. In the early years, where it was going, people had affluence and showed it and did it. I don’t know if that’s politics or not, but they were doing it. I think that we go by the flow, and I think the politics, I think that more people were happy in Shaker when Obama was elected than were happy in Shaker when Kennedy was elected. But we get through and we get through it. And so I don’t know how to explain the movement. I think it just sort of a flow.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:40:18] So, not really sudden, just kind of-
Robb Forward [00:40:20] No. You know, kids usually go against their parents for a lot of things. Say dad was a Republican, I’m going to be a Democrat. Dad was Democrat, I’m going to be a Republican. But not so much anymore as the kids are really reacting now. The younger people. I say kids, I’m talking about everybody under 40, I think. But, you know, they react more to what affects them and what they feel. They’re more educated about it. They have more input. The louder groups don’t necessarily have more input. They just have more noise. You know, they get a thing and they run with it. But when you go to some of these different groups that will discuss an open venue and different town homes, stuff like that, it’s really- You really hear some good stuff. Just sitting around talking can hear some good stuff. And nobody worries about saying anything. I said back in the 50s, if you felt something, you didn’t dare open your mouth. In the ’60s, if you opened your mouth, you would get an immediate direct answer one way or the other. And it might not be very good. You know, parents would yell or else. The police were very strong back then about stopping all sorts of demonstrations. And the Black-white situation was Black versus white. It was black power. Even in the army, you know, the infantry was good because it was like, yeah, everybody got covered by his back. But in the service, it was Black Power versus the white. So it was very definitive.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:41:59] Currently, do you think the political and social issues in Shaker are very diverse or could you kind of narrow it down?
Robb Forward [00:42:06] They’re really diverse. There’s everything in the world here. I mean, they go through. We have a social issue that went through a board just on dogs. When people were trying to, there was going to be a very thick volume of legislation that banned pit bulls as vicious dogs. And the question came up in the committee, how can you ban pit bulls? That’s by species. And we’re not the city that bans anything by a species or gender or color or anything. Vicious dog takes care of a vicious dog. Pit bulls can be kind or pit bulls can be cruel. My point was that, after World War II, everybody was scared of German Shepherds because they attacked. And then in the ’60s, every Black person was scared because all the police dogs that attacked them in Selma, Alabama, were German Shepherds. Shepard is considered a vicious dog now. Then there were Dobermans. They’re not considered now. Then there were Rottweilers. They’re not considered now. Pit bull is the new bad boy. And now they’re moving out of there for the king, whatever the thing is, nasty thing that comes after. So we’ve got people that get all up in everybody’s face about an issue on dogs. We got people that get an issue about trash collection. Oh, yeah. We got political issues. And they’re more vocal and they’ll say, ain’t it great? That’s just terrific. I had a minister that I worked with in this community that left and went to another church. I won’t say where. And I saw him, oh, six, ten months later, and I said, hey, how’s it going? How you like your new church? You’re in charge of your church. He said, you know, I’m just the shepherd. I said, they come in, I tell them what I, you know, I give them whatever I say and they get up and they leave. I said, I miss saying what I wanted to say and having the whole congregation come up and say, you know, that was a good point, however I see it this way. Yeah, having that conversation. I mean, every church around here is packed with several lawyers, several social workers, several people out of work, several people retired from affluence or retired from blue collar. I mean, it’s so cool. Everything comes up and that’s where the city is. Go down any street and you can have a good conversation. Back in the 50s and early ’60s, you couldn’t have that conversation because they couldn’t say anything.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:44:41] Do you think that kind of has to do with, obviously, you know, modern era, but do you think that’s a specific Shaker phenomenon or is it just kind of all over?
Robb Forward [00:44:51] You have to ask the kids that go to college. My kids went off to college and six months later they came back, you know, and they shook their head. They said, I can’t believe what bubbles people live in outside of Shaker. There’s no diversity, there’s no arguments, there’s no conversation. It’s all this, Bible thumping is, you know, is very hard. I mean, we’ve got churches here and people that are very active in church, and I’m active in church. But when you go off to a place where people come and they only been exposed to one word from a church, then my kids are, you know, they don’t listen to anything else or one view, political view. I’m driving back from Cincinnati yesterday and driving along and I look over to the right and I see this farmhouse and the whole roof of the farmhouse is a Confederate flag. Now, this is Southern Ohio. I’m just out of Cincinnati. And then there’s a flagpole that’s twice the size of the one right outside our window, and it’s flying the Confederate flag. Now they send that kid to college with my kid. My kid’s going to look at them with, what are you talking about? You know, because they don’t mind discussing it, but probably they don’t understand why they won’t get any feedback, you know, discuss back. So, yeah, I think it’s. There are other cities like Shaker, but when the children talk to the kids, college kids coming back and ask them, what are they running into? My son’s best friend was biracial. He went to school in Massachusetts. That’s pretty, sounds pretty good. Yeah. Kids on his baseball team. When his buddy, who was a Harvard Law graduate, would show up, they were using the N word and everything else and stuff. I mean, they were like. But they came out of parts of New England that still have that mentality. So it’s out there. And the best ambassadors are our kids going out. Yeah. Talking. Yeah. My daughter transferred to school after being there for a couple years. She was just tired of fighting. She was in a small community school. Well, a good school. You would know well, but it was the people there. So she, it’s difficult.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:47:12] Right. Yeah. I just, I went to Columbus recently, and in Columbus, I encountered, I saw, I saw at least three tattoos on guys. Arms of the Confederate flag.
Robb Forward [00:47:24] Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:47:25] You know, two of them were at Waffle House. But that’s besides the point. Maybe that’s why.
Robb Forward [00:47:31] I mean, I love Waffle House. You walk in, they go, morning.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:47:35] I was just shocked. Columbus.
Robb Forward [00:47:39] I mentioned about my buddy from the Army, Posey. Well, Jillian’s daughter went to Old Dominion in Virginia for graduate school. So we were driving down there to move her in, and I called Posey up, and he’s up in Richmond. I said, look, we’re driving in there. They’re going to do curtains and little cupboards and all that kind of stuff. Why don’t you and I meet somewhere and just, and we’ll play a round of golf. You know, I’m not a big golfer. He’s a great golfer. So we met in Williamsburg, and he called and got a tee time. And so we, the two of us, and we’re playing. So we got to the third hole and there was four guys a little older than me, but four guys might, you know, ahead of us, four white guys and got up there and said, hey, mind if we play through? And the guy said, ah, it’s jammed up. There’s no, you can’t go through. Oh, okay. So we sat back and I looked around. I said, there was nobody on the fairway and nobody on the green and nobody on the following tee. And I said, okay, I said, Posey, let’s just go around. So I pulled up to the guy. He said, hey, fellows, you can have the hole. We’ll just go beyond, not to bother you. Thanks a lot. We went on, we teed off. So we’re at our second shot, and all of a sudden, four balls come flying up to us. They’re hitting into us. And now I’m getting a little upset. So I go walk. And Posey shakes his head and he says, yep, it’s still going. He said, there are more KKK open meetings in Virginia than any other state. So I go walking on down, and I’m starting to get a little. I figure one old guy going to fight another old guy maybe, and I’m going to get in trouble in Virginia. So I go walking on down. I said, really? You’re hitting into us? He said, we told you not to play through. And I looked at him, and I looked over to Posey. I said, time to go get lunch. That was age and wisdom had me go. Otherwise, we’d been wrapping nine irons and all that stuff.
Robb Forward [00:49:31] So we just got in the car and left. It’s still going on. It doesn’t make any difference-
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:49:32] How long ago was that?
Robb Forward [00:49:34] Three or four years ago. So I played in the, the flip side is, I played in the National Negro Golf Association event that was here four years ago with Posey. And I was the only white guy there. And it was funny because they looked at us, and you’re here why? Never was treated nicer in my life. I had the greatest round I ever had. Everybody was just great. I mean, it was just. It was terrific. But when Posey and I went down to Virginia, man, we were dodging Titleists. And it just. Yeah. And I looked at Posey I said, the reason I’m walking away is I know those guys are going to die before me. And then all four of those bigots are gone. That’s four less. And hopefully their kids will be smarter. And that’s it.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:50:31] Kind of backtracking a little bit.
Robb Forward [00:50:32] Yeah. I digress.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:50:37] At Plymouth Church for a while. Do you know anything about kind of a history of, like, when it was started?
Robb Forward [00:50:43] It’s the first church in Shaker Heights, and they have just, oh, they just had a great article in the Shaker Life magazine you ought to look at. And it gives a history. I only joined it, I finally joined it about 15 years ago. And one of the reasons, Gillian was raised in Scotland, Presbyterian Episcopalian. And I was a lay reader for 22 years. I was active in the church. But we fought hard and long to get the first legally ordained female in the state of Ohio. Mary Sterrett Anderson, first legally ordained female priest. It was great. Now all of a sudden the fight was starting about gay priests. It was like, you know what, I’m just tired of this. And we went around to different churches and so we settled on Plymouth because they got all that out of the way years ago. They were the first denomination to have black clergy, women clergy, gay clergy. They’re open and affirming. Anybody who wants to walk in the door, you don’t even have to be really turn around and say, I believe everything you say. Well, no, they’re United Church of Christ, sort of, you know, Unitarians considering Christ is what the UCC is laughingly referred to because we came out of the Unitarians and the Congregationals came out of the same group. They just split because some just wanted to follow one and some wanted to follow the Trinity. That’s okay, we’re no problem. You know, it was very civilized. And so, you know, the history is it’s a accepting church and that’s what was the attraction to me. It just universally accepting from the first slave ship that was brought in and the Congregationalists, they accepted them and all the way through. So it’s, I mean I wish I’d give you the history lesson. I’ve had it given to me. It’s wonderful. But you look it up and it’s just, it’s more relaxed, you’re not in there kicking and you know, fighting. We took my group down to Charleston and we sat through a service, the youth group. And it was hard for us because some of the things that were being said in church were against what these kids had heard in their church. And it’s kind of like. And all I could do is turn around and just listen and learn. It’s out there. So it’s, you know, that’s what it is. It’s just a more accepting. And I found it comfortable at this stage. And besides that it was an old friend because that was where I had grown up in the youth group and they had had teen dances there when I was in seventh, eighth and ninth grade. I mean there were chaperones that walked around with a 6 inch ruler and you couldn’t get closer than 6 inches. But it was a teen dance era. It was where you met kids and stuff. And then the youth group was say mixed and it was fun. So it was a comfortable place to return.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:53:47] Do you think that kind of accepting and understanding community in the church, do you think that kind of had roots with the original Shaker religious group?
Robb Forward [00:53:54] With the Congregational group? Yeah. Before they became UCC and combined it did. The rest of the city? Well, because it was affluent, it didn’t have to worry about accepting anybody because nobody could afford to come in. I mean, the deed said you couldn’t sell your house to a black or you couldn’t sell your house to, I don’t know whether it said Catholic or Jew. I mean, there were deed restrictions on it.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:54:19] I think it was both. Yeah.
Robb Forward [00:54:20] Both probably. Yeah, but it was a deed restriction so that, I mean, they didn’t have to worry about it. They didn’t have to. That discussion didn’t have to happen. And when it started happening, then it was like, what’s happening? And then people said, this is what’s happening and this is a good thing. Because the alternative is everybody’s got to move and surrender the city. That wasn’t an option.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:54:57] We’re almost out of time. But just, you know, last few minutes. Are there any kind of places in Shaker or places in Cleveland that you remember going or still go to or like to go to?
Robb Forward [00:55:09] Everywhere. I mean, I love Shaker. I love being around Shaker. I love being around the lakes. I love being around the city. The old homes are fun. Cleveland, you know, I love the city. I like going downtown. Playhouse Square, I saw it degenerate and then regenerate. And I knew the people that did it. The fact that the city’s, women in tennis shoes saved the city from the Clark Freeway in the ’60s, you know, they made a, that’s a very important thing. They just decided that this is what they’re going to do. They’re not going to let the freeway be built.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:55:44] That was one that was supposed to come right through Shaker Heights.
Robb Forward [00:55:46] Yeah. And now the Shaker Nature center and all that kind of stuff was set up so that they couldn’t. And they’re smart women. And that was before, like I was trying to tell this young girl who said the ’60s were great. I said the 60s wouldn’t be fun for you because you had to fight for everything you already got. And you would also have to live through the ’50s where your friends would disappear because they had polio. And if you really got an infection, it was a worrisome thing. You didn’t take penicillin pills. The only thing you could take was a shot in the rear end, a penicillin that was oil-based and really hurt. And that Was a one time shot, either fixed it or it didn’t. I mean there’s a lot of stuff that the 60s wasn’t so neat, but now, you know, it’s great. I love to go, I love to go to Playhouse Square. I love the symphony. The symphony is just, oh, what a gift that is. Our hospital system is fantastic. I’m a veteran. The greatest VA in the northeast is here. Our Shaker has libraries that are functional, you know, that are great. And they have programs for the kids, and they have a pool. They do not have a water world, but they got a pool that you can go to and you can be with other Shaker, you know, that’s great. So I, you know, it still has so much to offer. The schools are still so strong. People work constantly to make them good. And you’ve got, you got the public schools and if you’re not so keen on public schools, we got private schools in Shaker. We got everything you want. We got nursery schools, we got pre, we got, you know, we’ll take care of your kids and we’ll take care of your elderly. You know, we’ve got a nursing facility, assisted living facility here that’s close by so you can put your family in there and then just, you know, go about your life. And then they can too, because they’re close to business. It’s a great city, great community. I’m going to hop on the Rapid tomorrow and go downtown. How cool is that? My grandson comes in town, I put him on the Rapid, we go down, get some ice cream, turn around, come back. You know, it’s just, I mean, I got my own little amusement park here. We got playgrounds all over that anybody can use and nobody’s kept out of. It’s just. And people are kind, that’s an important thing. And the city is responsive. And they say, well, your taxes are high, you gotta pay to get people to take care of your city. And that’s the best part. People are taking care. You pay for it and you get it. Yeah. We don’t have a situation where all of a sudden you find like Kirtland did, they missed a couple million bucks. Or Mentor. Was that Mentor? Yeah, they all of a sudden, and then all of a sudden their schools are in trouble. No, no. We got guys watching guys watching gals watching guys. We got everybody watching each other to make sure it goes right. That’s it. Yeah, we don’t have that. We’ve had a couple problems. Even a couple churches had problems where money went missing. Every church I know of now has guys watching guys watching guys watching gals. I mean, everybody’s watching everybody, in a good way.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:58:46] Not like Big Brother?
Robb Forward [00:58:48] No, it’s a great place to live.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:58:54] Right now, if you could go to any place in Shaker, where would you go? At this moment?
Robb Forward [00:59:04] At this moment, you know, I go to my office because that’s where the city comes to me and I enjoy it and I’m comfortable with it. And then I go back to my home because that’s where the street is. And I just walk like I do once in a while. I just walk the streets. The people are there. There’s just not a place that I would go to escape from anywhere. Because everywhere you go in Shaker, you can enjoy it. From the lakes to the schools to the. You know, I love going to a football game in the fall. I just, it’s just I don’t have any. It depends on how I feel. I might want to go to the library, you know, or I might want to go to the park, or I might want to go to my backyard or my office. It just everywhere is, I like walking through the commerce area and seeing people I’ve known all my life.
Robb Forward [00:59:59] I’m a homeboy, you know, I like it. It’s a small town in a big city. That’s about all I got.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [01:00:09] Any just final thoughts?
Robb Forward [01:00:12] I’m grateful that I had an opportunity to grow up in the time I grew up with the people that showed me how to. How we take care of each other. I’m a happy boy.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [01:00:27] You know, hearing all these stories about-
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