Abstract
In this 2012 interview, Fran King, a longtime resident of Shaker Heights, describes her experience in the Ludlow community. Moving from Boston to Cleveland with her husband and her children, Mrs. King remembers the early days of the Ludlow Community Association. Becoming more active in civil rights, she details Ludlow's fight against white flight, and the attraction of Shaker schools for surrounding communities. Throughout her memories, the Van Sweringens are mentioned often. Mrs. King, also the founder of the Shaker Heights Youth Center, remembers how she felt compelled to educate people on the growing drug and alcohol abuse among teenagers. She then founded the Youth Center in 1970 in response to this concern. She ends with describing her favorite locations in Cleveland, and some of the many fundraisers that the Ludlow Community Association sponsored.
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Interviewee
King, Fran (Interviewee)
Interviewer
Halligan-Taylor, Gabriella (interviewer)
Project
Shaker Heights Centennial
Date
6-8-2012
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
49 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Fran King interview, 8 June 2012" (2012). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 915009.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/506
Transcript
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:00] Alright. I might just glance at this once.
Fran King [00:00:01] In a while just to make sure it’s recording.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:04] And the other day it stopped on me. I was like, ah, so tell me a little bit about yourself. Where were you born?
Fran King [00:00:11] Well, I’m Frances King. I was born in Boston, Massachusetts. We came to Cleveland with my husband and most of my family. We had three children and we added a fourth later. We came in 1953 because after he finished his intern, he was a physician. We married. I’ll go backward a bit. We married before he even started medical school. But he got there on the GI Bill and we came to Cleveland essentially because he gave me the choice. He said his father was a physician. And he said, my father always wanted to start a clinic in rural Mississippi. He said, if I want to continue that or we could come to Cleveland because that’s where he had done his internship. And I said, well, that’s a no brainer who wants to go to rural Mississippi. And so we came to Cleveland last year of his residency in internal medicine. And we’ve been here ever since. 1953.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:01:35] Wow. Where did he do his internship in Cleveland?
Fran King [00:01:38] It was- It’s now Metro General. It was Cleveland City Hospital at the time. And he set up a practice. He set up an office in Glenville, 105th Street.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:01:57] Okay, what did your parents do in Boston?
Fran King [00:01:59] My father worked for an automobile agency. My mother was a stay-at-home mother. I had two brothers, so she kept houses. Now called a homemaker. Used to be called housekeeper, but, you know, he’s now a homemaker.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:02:20] So what was it like growing up in Boston? Did you live in the city or kind of outside Boston?
Fran King [00:02:26] We lived in one of the suburbs, actually. It was metropolitan Boston. And we lived. We were a minority in a minority area because we lived in a Jewish community. So we were both racial and religious minority.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:02:47] What was it like interacting with the Jewish community?
Fran King [00:02:51] It was fine. But when we got to the. When we got to the teenage years, when dating and marriage was ahead, we took parallel paths instead of being all together in parties and things. And what we did was particularly because the Jewish influence was so strong, it was a religious group, and so they were dedicated to their way of life. And so my family had been active in our church. And so I would seek my social outlet through the church and other friends that my parents had, getting up on Sunday mornings and not because of any call from God, but because if I went to church, I’d see the boy. The fellow said, and the girls too. Yeah. So I did. My motivation was not pure. [trails off]
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:04:10] Godly?
Fran King [00:04:11] Yeah! Yeah, God works in mysterious ways.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:04:27] What religion did you practice?
Fran King [00:04:30] The Congregational Church, which is now the Church of Christ. It was. Is that what the name.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:04:44] The United Church of Christ?
Fran King [00:04:45] United Church of Christ, yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:04:49] So when you came to Shaker, Glenville, technically, right?
Fran King [00:04:55] Well, actually, when we moved to Shaker, we moved to Mount Pleasant, and we were there for three years. His office was in Glenville, but we lived three years in Cleveland, actually in the same house at Luke Easter, the baseball player. It was a big two family house, and we rented out the first-floor apartment. Then we bought the house and actually was not in Shaker. It was in the Ludlow part of Shaker. It was in the city of Cleveland and the school district of Shaker.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:05:37] Okay. Because they kind of intercrossed, don’t they?
Fran King [00:05:40] Well, there was some overlapping, [cross talk] and Shaker was initially long known for being identified not only as Shaker, but as this particular elementary school district. So when they asked, where do you live? We live in Malvern or we live in Ludlow. We live in. So at the time that we moved into the Shaker school district, we were still living in Cleveland. It was Cleveland, but Shaker school district. So technically, I have not been a Shaker resident since 1973, but we moved into Shaker in 1956. Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:06:44] How old were you when you made that initial move to Ludlow with your kids?
Fran King [00:06:51] It was 1953, so I would be 33. Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:07:06] Did you have any experiences because you kind of grew up with, you know, pre-civil rights and went through the civil rights movement with your kids? What was that like? Did you have any certain struggles or?
Fran King [00:07:20] Well, as a. I remember as a high school kid, one of our teachers took class out on an outing and went to a public swimming pool. And this was in Boston. And I got by. I could get in because they didn’t know who I was. But there was another Black girl in the class, and they wouldn’t let her in the pool. And I remember going up to my teacher and saying, they won’t let Kathleen in the swimming pool. And she just kind of shrugged it off. So I didn’t. I was 10 years old. I’m not going to do anything militant at that age. But that’s one of the direct encounters we had with the prejudice or discrimination or whatever you want to call it.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:08:20] In Boston?
Fran King [00:08:22] Yeah, yeah. So even though Massachusetts didn’t have the segregation laws, there were ways that discrimination was practiced. Yeah. But then when I was. When I graduated from college and went to North Carolina to teach, I came smack up against all of that. So when I, you know, when I had a chance, I became not a militant, but I didn’t just get more active. That’s what I said.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:09:03] Did you encounter the same kind of discrimination when you came to Ludlow?
Fran King [00:09:08] No, not the same kind. I was part of the, the militant group that was pushing for- Well, let me take that back. I remember when we were purchasing our house, the Van Sweringen covenants were still in effect. The real estate president that we were dealing with said, you have to go around the neighborhood and get written consent of the people who live on your block. You have to get like three or five. And so I remember a cold February day when I was out ringing doorbells, and I was surprised because I didn’t encounter what I thought people I needed consent from signed. And then when we actually moved into the house a couple of months later, I find that those people had gone. So they were interested in selling their properties, too, so why object them to mine? And I was a little cynical about that.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:10:27] Were you a part of a Ludlow Association?
Fran King [00:10:31] Yeah, in the founding group, Actually not. Well, yeah, and when it was officially organized, I was the first secretary. But, you know, the group had been gathering, but to actually get offices and. Yeah, an official organization.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:11:00] How did that. How did that exactly start? Like, how did you meet with, you know, the other black families and other white families?
Fran King [00:11:07] I’m trying to think of. I know, you know, talking to neighbors about, you know, blockbusting problems and ways to maintain the community. And I remember meeting in Lou Polster’s house and talking about the issues. In fact, before that, I was talking to one of the neighbors who was originally one of the original. Well, she was there when we came. This is a Jewish woman. And then there was another woman. The three of us were our neighbors in the same block. And this woman’s name was Yar Jairus. I don’t know what nationality she was, but I said, you know, we need to have a meeting and talk about this. And she said, we’ve had meetings before you came. She said, you know, there were meetings, I guess, and reading Shelley’s thesis thing, I see the history of that because I remember the principal of the Ludlow School was a liberal thinking person. And the original meeting that the group had was at Ludlow School. And she said, okay, you can come here and talk. It’s a community issue. And when she found out later that they were trying to block minority families from coming in, she said, next meeting they asked for. And she said, no, you can’t meet at the school. I’ve lost track. What was your original question?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:13:01] Oh, just how the Ludlow Association got started.
Fran King [00:13:08] The first meeting that I recall going to, there were meetings before I got involved, my husband got involved. And it had to do with discrimination. But I remember going to a meeting at Lou Polster’s house when he said, in order to keep the community from flipping over from all white to all black, we need to invite or urge liberal-thinking white people to come into the community. It’s not just a matter of not moving out, even if you have to, but you got to replace yourself with someone of your, like, group.
Fran King [00:14:32] So I don’t know, I guess. And we decided we had to do it in an organized fashion. There was a professor at Case Western Reserve, Marvin Rosenberg, who predicted that the community would within three years would be all black. And so we set out to prove him wrong and to try to maintain the integrated community.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:15:08] Right the peaceful [unintelligable]
Fran King [00:15:10] Yeah, well, meanwhile, the pressure was came off Ludlow because other parts of Shaker kind of opened up Moreland and then other Moreland was basically became more segregated than Ludlow. Do you know the Shaker community?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:15:45] Not very well, no. I grew up on the West Side of Cleveland.
Fran King [00:15:49] Okay, well, the Moreland community that’s building near is what used to be the Moreland School. It’s now the library. Well, that community was a lower economic community. And a lot of it wasn’t the fancy part of Shaker. A lot of the residents there were servants or shopkeepers or less affluent people, but they were part of the Shaker school system. So when the. But in fact, it was all Shaker municipality. Whereas Ludlow and Boulevard, which is the other side of Shaker Square, were. Well, they were more affluent than the Morelands.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:17:04] Were your kids aware of this kind of integration movement that was going on?
Fran King [00:17:10] Yeah, particularly the. My older kids. The three older ones my son became in the course of- He became a Black militant, actually. And he was involved in the Black Power movement.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:17:35] Oh, wow. What was his name?
Fran King [00:17:36] His name was Drew King. St. Jude. Drew King III. Actually, when they had the Hough riots here, you know, he was very. He went down and tried to get involved in it, not to promote it. He was trying to be kind of a peacemaker role. And that may be part of his Ludlow heritage.
Fran King [00:18:09] But then when he went off to college, he became much more militant. Part of the college sit ins and marches. Actually, he was jailed once and had been part of a protest movement in Detroit.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:18:31] Because he would have been right in the 60s, right?
Fran King [00:18:34] Yeah. And my older daughter too, at her college she went to Mount Holyoke, same as I did. But she told me she went there. She told me she was part of a sit in. But it was a very ladylike sit in, she said. And both of them, two of my daughters, when they went to college, were placed in rooms with white girls. And in each case, the white roommates left. They asked to be reassigned in the colleges for my older daughter and Wesleyan for my middle daughter. Both of them. Both of those colleges, instead of moving my kids, let the other kids be all reassigned. Which I thought was a good move because they could have just said, you’re not welcome in this room and we’ll put you somewhere else.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:20:00] Did those huge, you know, all the sit-ins and the movements and the protests, did those have an effect like on Shaker at all?
Fran King [00:20:11] Oh, yeah. I mean, it was part of a growing movement, a social movement.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:20:19] Was it kind of like- Because Ludlow was very, very organized, very peaceful, very, you know.
Fran King [00:20:26] Well, the whole of Shaker was peaceful. There never was any conflict or anything. Well, any violence. There was conflict, but it was not violence. And nothing was burned down. There were a couple of suspicious bombings, but there was no large scale. One of the bombings was when attorney Pegg was building a house in Ludlow and the ground was bound. And there was question as to whether it was racially initiated or labor induced because. Because he was using non-labor workers. Then there was another bombing. In fact, we were sitting in a meeting of the Ludlow planning group and somebody came rushing in and said they bombed Reverend Gemmer’s house. And Gemmer was active in the. And they said it may have been people who objected to his anti liquor. To his anti liquor stand. May have been the liquor industry that was trying to slow him down.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:22:07] Maybe a combination. When you moved into Shaker, were you aware of the history of how the Van?
Fran King [00:22:12] Van Sweringens?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:22:16] Yeah, kind of built it up? Were you aware of that when you moved?
Fran King [00:22:18] Yeah, yeah. Actually, if you look at the way Shaker is laid out, it was deliberately planned so it would not be a pass through community. You drive into a Shaker street, you can easily get lost winding around the community. The Van Sweringens were very deliberate planners. And they even had anti Semitic views as there were certain areas where Jews were not welcome.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:22:55] And I believe they have a part in keeping Shakers segregated too?
Fran King [00:23:04] Yeah, [cross talk] that was their plan, Shaker. They wanted White Protestants only, some of the Catholics depending on their nationality. But had- There were obstacles. People. People managed ways of circumventing some of this stuff by having phantom buyers. If you had a wealthy friend or somebody with Connection or something else. They. They would buy a house in your name for you.
Fran King [00:23:44] Yeah, they’d buy a house and then they’d quickly sell it to you. Yes.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:23:53] To kind of swerve around all those laws and rules. So with the integration and with the history and just. I mean, it’s still a great town. I mean, I drive through and I think it’s beautiful. Like this square.
Fran King [00:24:04] Yeah. You’ve got to give The Van Sweringens credit for some of the stuff that they did. Not just in Shaker, but downtown in Public Square.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:24:15] In Tower City and stuff, yeah. And then nobody. It’s sad because a lot of people don’t know anything about them. You know, a lot of Clevelanders.
Fran King [00:24:19] A lot of Clevelanders don’t care that much about Cleveland history. I mean-
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:24:25] It’s unfortunate.
Fran King[00:24:26] Yeah, well, it’s not. I think it’s becoming like this is the centennial of Shaker. So that’s why it’s all becoming more better known.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:24:38] Right? Yeah, that’s why we’re doing this. Hopefully we’ll put everything together and have a nice little presentation over the summer.
Fran King [00:24:47] Okay.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:24:52] Were you. Were you proud of Shaker? Are you proud to live here?
Fran King [00:25:02] My husband was on the school board for eight years. Yeah. I say part of the time we lived in the Cleveland part of Ludlow for four years. And then the rest of the time we moved into Shaker, into the so-called Malvern area. And we lived in Ludlow for 17 years. We lived in Malvern for 19. And we lived. Then we lived outside of Shaker Square, South Park Manor, which was also Shaker. We lived there for nine years. Then because of health issues, we had to move to assisted living facility in Cleveland Heights for a couple of years. And then again for health reasons, we had to leave there because my husband had that assisted living place, said we can’t take care of his needs. They said to me, you can stay here, but he has to be in a nursing home. So we asked our family to find a place where we both could be. And this place said, we can take care of your husband here. So we moved in here in 19, I mean, 2004. I’ve been here ever since.
Fran King [00:26:39] He died the next year in 2005, but I just stayed on and I was glad to be back in Shaker. And this is a nice facility. And this corner suite is a prize.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:26:58] Yeah. You’ve got a great view.
Fran King [00:27:00] Because, you know, when he died, we moved into the suite because there were two of us. And I said, in all our 57 years of marriage, there’s no way we could live in the same room 24 hours a day. We’ve got to have little for each of our own little space. So when he died. And I said to the family, I don’t need both rooms now. And they said, well, you can stay. You don’t have to worry about- Stay here as long as you want. Because they say when you’ve had a major event in your life, like a death or something, don’t make any sudden changes. Give it time. And the longer I stayed here, the more comfortable it got. So here I am. The place has kind of changed a little since we first got here, but the location is great.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:27:58] Yeah. The people are very friendly downstairs.
Fran King [00:28:01] Yeah, It’s a nice place. We were.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:28:03] They directed me well.
Fran King [00:28:04] Okay. We’ve changed management and ownership, but it’s- It’s still- I’m one of the longest living persons here.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:28:27] Oh, really? Good for you.
Fran King [00:28:29] I guess?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:28:25] I know that you co-founded, I believe, the youth center, right?
Fran King [00:28:31] Oh, yeah. The Shaker Heights Youth Center in 1970. Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor[00:28:37] What inspired you to do that?
Fran King [00:28:39] Well, one of my- I was a PTA Council President at the time, and one of the members of our board was interested in youth. And the issues of youth involvement in drugs was just becoming apparent, and particularly in affluent communities. It wasn’t just the inner city drug people, [cross talk] but suburban parents were concerned about their kids getting involved in the drug issues. And so this woman, Ann Landefeld, asked, couldn’t the PTA somehow get involved? And there was storefront across the street on Chagrin, which was available, and that’s how we started. Yeah. And then the city stepped up and we were able to get their support in this city property.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:29:50] Was it. Was it just Ann, I believe her name was, yeah. Was it just you and her? Did you have, like, kind of the whole PTA group helping out?
Fran King [00:30:01] She was the driving force, and the PTA was kind of like, we’re behind you. But basically, until it got going and then people, I say, fell in line.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:30:20] What kind of programs did you guys start out doing to kind of help the youth? Was it just parent-oriented or was it youth-oriented?
Fran King [00:30:30] You know, I don’t recall a lot of the details. The kids were involved and there were adults who stepped in. We just kind of launched it and like a satellite said, okay, you guys go ahead, we’ll back you, but you run the place.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:30:53] Here’s a space. What was it, kind of just like one big support group or is it more preventative?
Fran King [00:31:07] I guess I would say both. Yeah. Educating people and making them aware of issues and making them acknowledge that they were issues and their children were at risk. Because it was, to me, even to me, it opened my eyes. I had no idea that it was a potential problem, if not already a community problem.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:31:37] Did you think Shaker needed the youth center or was it kind of they needed a youth center for Greater Cleveland?
Fran King [00:31:47] I think Shaker was really- They didn’t want this to happen to their lovely community, to their lovely children. It was an issue. You know, teenage drug use was a community issue, but kind of not cast a blind eye on, but kind of a negative say, oh, no, not us.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:32:24] Do you know what’s going on with you center now? Do you know?
Fran King [00:32:27] I don’t know. I don’t know.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:32:30] Well, I know that there’s- The youth center has received some recognition from the Alcohol and Drug Addiction Board. How does that make you feel? I think just recently. Right.
Fran King [00:32:43] Yeah. I haven’t followed the saga of the youth center.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:32:51] But we are aware of the award though? Did it make you proud to kind of be that?
Fran King [00:32:58] Yeah, I guess it’s like, you know, a proud parent thing. I started it, but after that, you know, you take the ball, you’re on your own.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:33:10] Are you proud that they really took the initiative of that?
Fran King [00:33:13] Yeah, yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:33:15] Kind of made it their own?
Fran King [00:33:16] Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:33:25] With education system at Shaker, I know that a lot of people wanted to move places like Ludlow. You mentioned Moreland, right? They wanted to move before the education system.
Fran King [00:33:36] Yeah. The school system was a big draw. And also because at that time, employees of the city of Cleveland had to live in Cleveland. So when the Shaker school system became available to teachers and city administrators and that kind of thing, a lot of the first people into the Ludlow section, we had a lot of teachers and professional people.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:34:22] What was the difference between the Shaker education system and the school system?
Fran King [00:34:24] And so people who- And we couldn’t move into Shaker itself because of the Van Sweringen areas, but we could move into the school district. And Ludlow had a lot of well-educated and hopeful people who wanted the best education for their kids and were willing to pay the double taxes that you had to do.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:35:09] Do you think the kids were kind of a driving force for that?
Fran King [00:35:12] What?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:35:12] Do you think the kids were a driving force for that?
Fran King [00:35:15] Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:35:15] Do you think if that also- Do you think the integration. Do you think the kids were driving force for that as well?
Fran King [00:35:21] Actually, no, not the kids. I mean, at that time, the kids, the parents were the decision makers
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:35:26] Was the decision made because of the kids?
Fran King [00:35:30] Yeah. Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:35:34] So.
Fran King [00:35:38] The thrust was to make the integration itself an attractive feature to attract people who were liberal thinking, who were against segregated issues. And plus the community itself was physically very attractive. Nice homes and well kept municipal services and that kind of thing.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:36:05] And was the rapid in use?
Fran King [00:36:08] Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was one of the Van Sweringen things that they built so the fancy lawyers didn’t have to take the family car and drive downtown. They could leave it for the. For their wives and go on the Rapid.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:36:28] Right. With comparing Shaker kind of at the beginning, kind of really the start, I feel was back in the ’50s and ’60s, making it kind of perfecting it a little bit. You know, it was already a nice neighborhood and, you know, we, like guys, wanted to make it nicer. Do you think that attitude still holds today?
Fran King [00:36:51] Yeah, but there’s so much more available housing wise for everybody. When the fair housing laws passed and a lot of the original Shaker founders, so to speak, moved out of Ludlow into the fancier areas, partly economically, but also new people wanting the same thing. They could go to all parts of Shaker, all parts of the whole community, so to speak, so that the desegregation or integration issues as such succeeded. A lot of opportunity opened. [Recording cuts out for 5 seconds at 00:37:43]
Gabriella Halligan Taylor [00:37:48] Okay, sorry to do that again.
Fran King [00:37:51] And so there was kind of almost a feeling the last one in, kind of don’t you all keep flooding in behind us pioneers because. And then people as they. The young families, as the families got more affluent, they could move from the first house and shake a small house to a bigger house further out. But we did that actually ourselves, and we moved from a smaller house in Ludlow to a large house in the Malvern area.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:38:44] Do you think Shaker kind of set a good example for the rest of Greater Cleveland?
Fran King [00:38:50] Mm hmm.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:38:52] You think anybody kind of- Did anybody else, any other communities, kind of try and be like Shaker?
Fran King [00:39:00] Yeah, I think Cleveland Heights is similar to Shaker. It’s larger and they have a lot of the university community who live in Cleveland Heights, and they have the same outlook, I’ll say.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:39:26] Were there any favorite kind of local spots that you and your family would go to in Shaker?
Fran King [00:39:31] When they had the Somerset Inn.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:39:33] Somerset Inn?
Fran King [00:39:37] Yeah. Do you know where that is? Okay. That was motel in Shaker, which was a place where visiting people could stay, events were held there. It has since become an assisted living facility. So when that closed down, you couldn’t invite your out-of-town people to stay in a hotel in Shaker, because that was virtually the only one. And so they, you know, they had to stay either further in town or off the highway. And a lot of motels built up there. Then let’s see where else. Oh, Shaker Square. There was nice restaurants. Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:40:40] Anyone, do you remember?
Fran King [00:40:41] Stouffer’s? Stouffer’s had nice restaurants there. [crosstalk] Yeah, that was- Well, I don’t think they have- They don’t- They’re out of the restaurant business now, but they had a real nice one here.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:40:59] What kind of food did they serve? Kind of everything. Or do they focus on food specifically?
Fran King [00:41:03] It was everything.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:41:14] Any favorite meals?
Fran King [00:41:16] No, just. Well, they. You know, I forget what they did, what their specialties were.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:41:25] Did you ever go to the Colony Theater?
Fran King [00:41:28] Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:41:30] Did you see any big movies?
Fran King [00:41:33] Well, when we had the. One of the features that the Ludlow Association had was we had fundraisers, and the first fundraiser we had was sponsoring My Fair Lady at the Colony. And when it was new, I mean, the film was new, so we went there for. For that event, which was hugely successful.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:42:07] What did you think of the movie?
Fran King [00:42:13] Oh, I love My Fair Lady. Yeah. Then we had a couple of other fundraisers. We sponsored a concert by Ella Fitzgerald, and we sponsored another concert that had the Fifth Dimension, Nancy Wilson. And we sponsored a concert that had Tony Bennett. The Ella Fitzgerald and the Tony Bennett one were at Severance Hall.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:42:44] Who sponsored it, the PTA?
Fran King [00:42:46] No, the Ludlow Association.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:42:52] I don’t know if you recall, but did you ever go to the Tudor Arms Hotel?
Fran King [00:42:57] Yes.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:42:58] Did you go there for events?
Fran King [00:43:03] Yeah. I don’t remember what. Just social events, I think.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:43:11] What was it like?
Fran King [00:43:13] It was a fancy hotel.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:43:17] I think they just recently made it into a hotel again.
Fran King [00:43:20] Yeah. I forget the name of it. Double trees.[cross talk] Some trees. Then they had. You see on the wall, we have that Martin Luther King plaque. Shaker started this award pro, the Martin Luther King Award program. We were the fourth winners, so I guess that was back. And it was to promote peaceful integration. And they still do it. Yeah, they pick out a person or a group that fosters peaceful race relations and some of the issues that Martin Luther King addressed and stood for. So we were one of the early winners, my husband and I.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:44:21] What year was that?
Fran King [00:44:22] Well, it says there ’93.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:44:26] Do you. Shelley was talking to me about how a lot of the Shaker residents and students went to a memorial service for Dr. King after the assassination.
Fran King [00:44:40] Okay.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:44:41] At the Old Stone Church.
Fran King [00:44:42] I think she said, oh, down. Yeah, yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:44:45] Did you go to that?
Fran King [00:44:46] I didn’t go to that, no.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:44:47] Are you aware of it?
Fran King [00:44:50] I’m sure I was aware of it. I don’t know what I was doing that day.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:44:58] By taking care of the kids. Just a kind of a fun question.
Fran King [00:45:08] Fun or fund?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:45:09] A fun.
Fran King [00:45:10] Okay. So you’re going to ask me for money?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:45:17] No, no, no, no. You’re good. You’re good. What is your kind of favorite Cleveland, like, spot? It doesn’t have to be in Shaker. But what’s your favorite Cleveland spot that you used to go to or go to now or any events that stick out to you. That you remember really being enjoyable.
Fran King [00:45:42] Well, I was trying to think of- We didn’t go to the fireworks displays. We like to go to the Lake.
Gabrielle Halligan-Taylor [00:45:58] Lake Erie?
Fran King [00:46:01] Yeah. In fact, Mentor-on-the-Lake beach. In the wintertime, we went to the zoo.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:46:19] What was your favorite animal?
Fran King [00:46:22] Favorite one animal at the zoo. Oh, I don’t know.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:46:26] Have you been there recently?
Fran King [00:46:28] No, I haven’t. Not for a long time.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:46:35] Did you ever go to, like, Indian’s game or anything? Brown’s game?
Fran King [00:46:38] Yeah, yeah. We had season tickets for the Browns several years. Yeah. In the old. In the old stadium, we. This is before the new stadium was built.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:46:52] Do you remember? I think it was the playoffs, I think. Was it in ’83, ’84.
Fran King [00:46:59] Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:47:00] Do you remember that game?
Fran King [00:47:02] No. There was a game. [Emergency sirens drive by] This is an exciting corner. It was the last game in the playoffs. It wasn’t in the 80s. It was earlier than that. The last. It was in the ’60s.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:47:41] Was it?
Fran King [00:47:42] I think it was ’68, something like that, because I know we still lived in Ludlow at the time. And I gave my ticket to a neighbor and he and my husband went to the game that we won. The last playoff game of the Browns was close as they ever came, but we had two season tickets and my husband and I and our son, we’d alternate who would get two of the three.
Fran King [00:48:28] Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:48:31] Do you still watch the Browns?
Fran King [00:48:33] Yeah, I still have hope. I like football. I like baseball. I’m not into basketball, but I occasionally watch it. Used to be more involved with LeBron was playing for us. Yeah. One of my grandsons played with him when he went to St. Vincent St. Mary.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:49:06] Oh, wow. That’s cool a little connection.
Fran King [00:49:14] But this grandson, he even tried out for professionals. He played a year in Mexico and then decided he didn’t like it. Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:49:32] At least he tried it. Wow.
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