Abstract
William Gruber is a life-long resident of the Cleveland area whose family owned the popular restaurant Gruber's. Growing up in Beachwood and Shaker Heights, William eventually settled down with his wife on the edge of Shaker and the city of Cleveland. In this interview Mr. Gruber relates his experiences growing up in Shaker Heights, discussing schools and shopping in detail but also touching upon his relationship with downtown and recreation outlets that were available to him.
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Interviewee
Gruber, William (Interviewee)
Interviewer
Halligan-Taylor, Gabriella (interviewer)
Project
Shaker Heights Centennial
Date
5-5-2012
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
56 minutes
Recommended Citation
"William Gruber Interview, 5 May 2012" (2012). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 915027.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/518
Transcript
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:00] Let’s just start off with your name and where did you grow up?
William Gruber [00:00:05] My name’s Bill Andre Gruber, and I grew up in- Actually, the house that I grew up in is in Beachwood, about two blocks from Thornton Park. And my parents owned that house for about 52 years. So I lived in that house till I graduated from college.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:28] And what brought you to Shaker?
William Gruber [00:00:30] Well, I mean, I always lived in and around Shaker. So we did all our shopping in Shaker, went to the movies. I went to grade school for eight years in Shaker. My father owned a restaurant in Shaker. So we- A lot of my relatives lived in Shaker. So we were always- Our lives kind of revolved around Shaker Heights. And then I live in Shaker now. I moved in, actually, to a house in - let’s see if I can remember what year it would have been - 1986, two years after I got married. We moved into a house on Haddam Road, where the house is in Cleveland, but the garage is in Shaker, and it’s in the Shaker schools. So we were in the Shaker schools starting in 1984 or ’86. And then in ’96, we moved into a house in Shaker. So hadn’t been in that house ever since. So we’ve been Shaker residence now for whatever that is, 16 years. Is that-
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:01:26] Can you talk a little bit about your dad’s restaurant? How did he get involved with that?
William Gruber [00:01:29] Well, my grandfather came from Germany and opened up restaurants in various places, not all at once, but different ones in different parts of Cleveland. And his last one was in the old arcade downtown. And so my father and his brother grew up in the restaurant business, although they weren’t. That’s not what they did for a living. Both of my uncle and my father became lawyers. But when my grandfather retired, I think in 1947, it’s ’46, ’47, Mother, my grandmother said, well, to the boys, you know, it’d be good if you went into the restaurant business to give your father something to do, even though he can’t run it himself. So they reluctantly opened up a restaurant in Shaker Heights called Gruber’s. And my grandfather didn’t live more than a year or two after that, but they kept the restaurant open from 1947 to 1960. They sold it in 1960 or 1961, and it stayed with their name for a couple more years under different ownership, and then eventually closed. And so they were in the restaurant business there in Shaker for like, 14 years or so.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:02:52] And what kind of food was it?
William Gruber [00:02:55] It was, I guess you’d call it classic American fare from the 1950s and - ’40s and ’50s - and it was the only restaurant in town that- It had the highest rating of any restaurant in Cleveland at the time, and the only one in Ohio, I think, that highly rated. And it was consistently the location where most of the area celebrities, I guess you’d call them, would go to. So, like, the owner of the Browns, Paul Brown, would go there all the time, and the owner of the Indians baseball team, a lot of the baseball and football players hung out there a lot, and other people who are well-known around town went there a lot. So it was kind of a place to be seen and sort of a classic restaurant. Though, in those days, like, women, women weren’t allowed to be in the bar. There was a bar and then the main restaurant. Women weren’t allowed in the bar alone. So a woman couldn’t just walk in there. That was forbidden. So they had to be escorted by somebody, and men had to wear a tie. Only one man, Bill Veeck, was allowed to go to the restaurant without a tie. They would have a tie and a jacket available for anybody who didn’t have one. So in those days, you had to be dressed up to go in there. And I remember it mostly because I just wasn’t born until ’55, so I remember it mostly as a kid. And so. Or only as a little kid. And so what I remember mostly is the. We’d have birthday parties there, but I don’t remember those so much as the back room. So we would be going into the back rooms behind the kitchen and offices and where they stored food and all that kind of thing. So I kind of. As a kid, that was the fun thing. I remember giant casks, wooden casks sent from the east coast, full of live lobsters, for example, that as a kid, you thought were really pretty neat.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:04:54] Would you say then, was it kind of more of, kind of classy?
William Gruber [00:04:59] Yeah, it was. Yes. Yeah, right. It was a place where people would go for a special occasion. It was considered expensive. Looking at it now, we would laugh at the prices, but, you know, 2.95 for a steak or something. But back then it was considered place you’d go. So a lot of people I run into all the time, who, when they find out I’m related to the restaurant family, will say, you know, oh, that’s where I went from my prom, or that’s where I went on, you know, my first big date or something like that.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:05:34] You mentioned kind of going to Shaker a lot for the shopping. And I was wondering what kind of stores were there.
William Gruber [00:05:41] Well, I mean, in the Shaker Plaza. Shaker Van Aken Center area, besides my dad’s restaurant. That’s where we- And also across on the Chagrin Shopping center at Warrensville. That’s where we get our haircuts. That’s where we get our shoes. That’s where we’d get. They were all kind of mom and pop stores where we’d get our clothing. I remember Jay Engel where we got our clothing. And Lesher Shoes where we bought our shoes. And I can’t remember the name of the barber shop now, but we got our haircuts. Chandler and Rudd was a grocery store. My mother would go to a fair amount also. Down the street from there, Borden Arrows was a restaurant. A restaurant, excuse me, a grocery store that stood alone. There’s a building still there. It’s been renovated and added onto. And there’s no grocery there anymore. But there was a grocery store there at Lynnfield and Chagrin and Bordon Arrows. And so she’d go there and the Miller Drugstore for the, you know, for all the needs that you’d go to a drugstore now for. But also because they had a soda stand there. So they had the bar, soda bar, and the stools and all that. So we’d go there all the time. And then Draeger’s Ice Cream every- You know, we’d go there for their candy and ice cream all the time. There’s a. I’m trying to remember what other. There’s a Mabee’s Place for hamburgers along there and a Woolworths. And then the Vogue Theater, which I just saw a thing in the Plain Dealer about the Vogue Theater or the Sun Press Plain Dealer had a little thing about it today. And that the Vogue Theater was big source of entertainment where we went all the time to see movies there. So those are all the basic needs were basic in those days. There were no giant superstores or anything. So where you went for almost everything was. There was a Pick ’n Pay grocery store there, too. So pretty much what you- Hardware store, the Van Aken hardware store, which is still there. So all your basic needs you got right there, sans delicatessen. We went there a lot mostly to pick up food for like, Sunday dinners. Corned beef and rye bread, pumpernickel, all that kind of thing. And with my father having the restaurant there and going there frequently, he kind of knew everybody, knew all the owners, knew a lot of the people who worked at these places. So when you went in, they always knew who you were. And you went for all your basic Needs all the time. So you saw them over a long period of time, over years.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:08:40] So even though you lived in Beachwood, you kind of-
William Gruber [00:08:42] Yeah, because Beachwood, especially in those days, you know, Beachwood didn’t have- Well, Beachwood didn’t have any of the stores or the shopping centers that they do now. So we didn’t- There wouldn’t be any reason to shop in Beachwood. It was pretty- I mean, until, for example, until I can’t remember when it became a city from a village, but until I was in- When we- When I was in high school. So that would have been in the nineteen early seventies. My house had a fire in it. And at that time, Beachwood still had a volunteer fire department. So it was only after that that they got a regular fire department. I don’t know if it had much to do with our family fire because I know that our neighbors were in our family. Our neighbors especially were outraged because it took so long for the police fire department to come from Beachwood. And Shaker was closer, but Shaker couldn’t come unless Beachwood asked them to. So Beachwood was pretty small at that point and didn’t have the offices or anything like that. The freeway wasn’t in there. 271. So, you know, none of that existed growing up. So really Shaker was the only place nearby that had shopping. And because it had everything you needed, that’s really where you went other than downtown shopping. So for department stores and all that kind of thing, you’d go downtown, but for the basics, it was right there in Shaker.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:10:07] Did you ever go downtown?
William Gruber [00:10:08] Oh, yeah, all the time. My father worked downtown. His law offices were originally in the- Now, I’m going to forget the name of the building. It’s around the tip of my tongue. But he was in the building on Public Square. That was one of the two buildings next to the Cuyahoga Building. Both were imploded to build what became the BP building. And I don’t know what they call it now, but it’s a tall skyscraper on Public Square. But, Williamson. He was in the Williamson Building and then, and then in Terminal Tower on the 10th floor for many, many years. So we went down for that. He was a member of the Cleveland Athletic Club. So we’d take the Shaker Rapid downtown and go to the Cleveland Athletic Club a lot. We’d go on a lot of weekends to swim, bowl, that sort of thing. And I even took school scuba diving lessons there with him with my dad. So. And then shopping. I mean, people would go down as A kid, you’d go down to ball game, baseball game or football game, and then to a lot of times go hang out. There were a couple of magic shops down there and places like that where as a kid you’d go hang out, go to the department stores, get food down there, that sort of thing. So, yeah, it was. I mean, we did a lot of. It was sort of the center of the world was between Shaker and downtown Cleveland, basically.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:11:42] Were you more excited to go to Shaker or downtown, or was it just kind of you went there?
William Gruber [00:11:46] Well, Shaker was like daily needs. Downtown was sort of more special. You know, until we. Until I was in later grade school years, that would be in the late ’60s, anytime we went downtown, you’d get dressed up. So it was more of a special occasion thing at Christmastime. And to go shopping or for whatever, to go to meet my father down there or whatever, it was more dressy. And then when you’re growing up, until I was in seventh or eighth grade, I wouldn’t be allowed to go alone downtown, whereas I could go alone down into Shaker to the shopping center because it was so close to where I live. We could go on our bikes or walk down in a few minutes. So you could go there as a kid, but you couldn’t go downtown as a little kid on your own. So it sort of was just different. The reasons you’d go to one than the other.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:12:42] In Tower City. Do they do like the Christmas decorations?
William Gruber [00:12:48] Well, yeah, it was. I mean, Terminal Tower- It wasn’t Tower City, it was Terminal Tower. And the train station was there. So the trains came in there. And plus the Rapid transit. And so it- Yeah, Christmastime, that was decorated. I mean, the windows. It’s not so much the Terminal Tower decorations that anybody would remember from them. It was really the Higbee windows, Public Square, and then the windows of the other stores and the other department stores. That’s what you really- That’s where the decorations were. And a few of the stores, shopping center department stores like Sterling Lindner, that would have a giant Christmas tree in it and that sort of thing. So Terminal Tower was more utilitarian. Basically, you went there as an office building and to go to the train station. Yeah, I mean, or to go, you know, if you’re going somewhere on the train or going on the rapid. Or something. There wasn’t all the shopping in there, except you have Higbee’s, the big department store was there, and the hotel on the other side. So if you went there for shopping, it would really be going to Higbee’s. And then Lower Level they had a stand where they were famous for their malts. I guess I forgot what the. What they were called, but they had like a malted drink that everybody went there for.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:14:11] What was it like? Kind of as a little kid kind of walking by on these decorations during Christmastime?
William Gruber [00:14:16] Oh, the windows. I know it’s such a shame in New York if you go, you still can see all the windows that are decorated there. And they even have like things set up to control the crowds that go to want to see these windows. So you have to kind of get in line. So yeah, it was- It was just really fun to see all the windows. Everybody had something different and they outdo each other in different displays. So it was just kind of a fun thing to see all the. You had a reason to kind of walk around to various stores and see what they were going to do that was different each year.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:14:52] Did they have an ice skating rink down in Public Square back home?
William Gruber [00:14:56] No, the ice skating was done occasionally, I think probably in the ’70s or 8- Maybe not even. Maybe even later. Like ’80s and ’90s. Occasionally. Once in a while they would do the ice skating. I don’t know if you remember that, but they would put a rink down there. It hasn’t been there for a few years though. They used to do it, but that wasn’t until later. It wasn’t done earlier on. I don’t remember outdoor skating. Downtown they had. For a while there was outdoor skating in front of the. Where the Galleria is now, in front of the Erieview Tower. There was a place you could go ice skating. Now if we went outdoor skating, it would be out here in the Heights.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:15:38] Did you ever go to that? You said you mentioned sports game. Do you remember any specific Indians games?
William Gruber [00:15:43] Oh, sure. I mean, I don’t remember any of the good Indian years in the, until the ’90s, because they were after ’54 - I wasn’t born until ’55 - that was sort of the end for them in the late ’50s. So ’60s were terrible, 70s were terrible. And so you could go down as a kid and you’d go and buy a cheapest ticket they had. And because it was so empty by the middle of the game, you could go down and sit in the best seats. So that’s what we did. And I remember going down, even though it seems funny now, but even when I was in seventh and eighth grade, we could go down on our own on the rapid transit and just walk to the stadium across downtown and go to these games and come back at night and take the rapid home. And I mean, now I’m not sure if I’d send a seventh or eighth grader down and do that all alone or not. And football games were a bigger deal because they were always full. And my father, I think he must have liked football better. He had season tickets for years. And so I went to a lot of football games, a lot of Browns games at the old stadium with him or to use the tickets or whatever. And that was kind of a big social thing. So most of the time he and my mother would go with friends and they’d all sit together, but occasionally then we could go too. So that was a kind of bigger social occasion. And the other was more going as kids and then the other places. The old Arena on 40th and Euclid. My father knew the guy who built the arena and was friends also with the guy who. I don’t know if he owned the Barons or coached the Barons. He played on the Barons for a number of years and was involved down there, actually. His daughter, [inaudible] Roberts just retired from working for the Shaker Police Department. And. But so we would go to. They didn’t have a basketball team at that time, but they would go see the Baron’s hockey team a lot for hockey games. And that’s where you’d go to see the circus when the circus came in town. And. And that was about the only other thing. I don’t think they had Ice Capades or things like that back then, but. And then eventually when the basketball team came in the first few years, they played in the arena. So I remember seeing them there. That’s a little bit further uptown. But again, that would be mainly going with, you know, my dad and his friends.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:18:21] Did you ever go to the circus weekend?
William Gruber [00:18:23] Oh, yeah, we went to the circus all the time. And I think always at the arena. I think once the downtown. I know once I had kids, we took them either out at the- They had the circus. Oh, I know. Public Hall is the other place they’d have it. That’s right. At the Public Auditorium.
William Gruber [00:18:41] I mean, Public Auditorium downtown at the convention center, which was the old convention center gone now, but the Public Auditorium is still there. And they’d have the circus there as well, I think. I don’t know which one. What years it was in the arena and which years it was there. But I remember at the Public Auditorium because you could walk around at the lower level and see the animals before they would go out and perform and see. And that was kind of cool. Oh, yeah, we went to the- It seemed like we went to the circus every year that it came. I don’t know if we did, but that’s what it seemed like.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:19:14] Was it Barnum and Bailey’s, do you know, or was it just all different?
William Gruber [00:19:17] I think so. Ringling Brothers. Yeah, I think- I’m pretty sure that was the main one that came through.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:19:23] I’m just curious because it doesn’t come through anymore.
William Gruber [00:19:24] Oh, yeah, sure it does. [crosstalk] Yeah. Every year. Yeah, every year they have the parade of Elephants up 9th Street from- Because they come by train. And now because the train station is down next to this football stadium, they get off the train there, the circus trains come in there. And then they have- And I think they do it also, obviously, for publicity. But then they marched the elephants right up 9th Street to the, to the arena or the whatever they call the one now. It’s- No, it’s- I forget which. Q. The Q, I guess it’s called now. So they marched right up the street. So I haven’t seen it for a few years there because my kids are grown up, but when they were little, we went there. But I don’t know if it’s every year or every other year. It seemed like it was like every other year that the circus came through. That. That was sort of the cycle. I don’t know if that’s the same cycle. But they’re still around.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:20:15] Huh. I just, I’ve never seen it advertised.
William Gruber [00:20:16] Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:20:18] I remember because I saw circus when I was really little with my cousins, my mom and grandma.
William Gruber [00:20:22] Oh, yeah. Because I have a friend who worked in publicity, and so she, for some of the years worked on the circus. It was her firm did that. And so she, you know, she would go to that kind of event and she always had to take tickets and stuff and would talk about meeting the contortionists and that kind of thing. From the circus, some of the circus people, which was fun.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:20:46] How do you think- Kind of- Maybe it’s just a cultural thing, but how do you think it’s kind of changed in Cleveland as far as kids being able to go off on their own back in the ’50s and ’60s and kind of not so much?
William Gruber [00:20:59] Yeah, I don’t know. There’s cultural- I think it’s from safety perspective. I think that’s one thing. I don’t know if you can say parents are more protective or because of the publicity of kidnappings. And they don’t happen as often as people think. But I think that all it takes is one that you hear about. And as a parent, it scares you to death. So I think that a lot of that, I think. And then I think a lot of the. Just the down, just like the city. The riots in the 60s, I think made a lot of people scared to go. In parts of Cleveland, it was this very scary time. And there was, you know, out here in Shaker, Beachwood area, I remember talking at school to kids and the teachers would talk about it. Some about with our family is, gee, I wonder if are they going to be. Are the riots going to move up into the Heights? And that was. I don’t know how realistic of a concern that was, but it was a real concern because it wasn’t very far away. And the thought was, wow, is it just going to spread and just keep and come right up? Is there going to be burning and looting of stores and all that kind of thing going to happen in our neighborhoods? So I think that that scared people off. The racial divisions scared people off, you know, so people would. And still I hear that all today where- So there are, you know, places in. Around town where there are a lot of people who won’t come to Shaker or this east side area because. And I think a lot of it is racial, racially tinged. Even if they don’t, people don’t admit it. But from further out suburbs or from the west side, because. Because it’s like, oh, no, I would be afraid to go in that area. As if they think that there’s a lot of crime or that it’s going to be dangerous. So I think that had a lot to do with it. And then downtown going downhill a lot. So things left and so people just went less. And so if people go less, then kids don’t grow up doing it. And I remember some point in high school I went to some Red Cross training for swimming. I was a lifeguard. And I remember got kids from outer suburbs, Solon, Brecksville, Hudson or whatever, wherever out there. And it was like the first time they had to come into the Red Cross headquarters, I guess, for. To get the. To do the final testing or whatever. And, and they were, you know, just the first time they’d ever been into Cleveland. And they were kind of scared and their families were kind of scared to have let them come in. And so I think that’s what happens is people stop coming in. People spread, spread out more and more. And when you’re not used to going someplace, it makes you more afraid of it. And so I think people then tend to stick in their own communities and they don’t Want their kids going off on their own. So it’s the publicity about all the things that could happen to your kids, plus the kind of divide of the whole region into little areas where people feel safe and secure. And I don’t think they let their kids go off. So I don’t think a lot of people would let their kids go off on their own to go downtown, on their own or wherever when they’re that young.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:24:20] Does that make you laugh or is there just kind of-
William Gruber [00:24:23] Oh, it’s just sign- It’s just kind of the- You get used to it. That’s just sign of the times, you know, there’s not much you can do about it. I mean, it kind of angers me sometimes when I hear people talk like that. In fact, just the other day, I can’t remember the situation, but someone talking like that. Since I worked for the city of Cleveland, I lived in the city of Cleveland in several different neighborhoods. I’ve done other volunteer jobs and things like that. And I know Cleveland very well, and the neighborhoods I know where I’d feel comfortable, where I wouldn’t at certain times of day or night or wherever. There’s some neighborhoods in some areas where anybody on earth would feel uncomfortable. Even the people who live in those neighborhoods and might not go out. But it’s a very small segment of really all of Cleveland or the area. So to me, it’s kind of too bad that people feel that way, because you can have the same issues pretty much anywhere as you could, and so it’s much exaggerated, and so that’s sad.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:25:31] You were in the Shaker schools then, right, during the integration?
William Gruber [00:25:35] Well, I wasn’t going to the Shaker schools or the Beachwood schools. I went to St. Dominic’s School. So I do remember that integration there, because I remember I went from. So I must have. Let’s say I graduated from eighth grade, 1969. And you started there in first grade. So what would that make it? So, like, started in 1960, probably 1960, ’60–61 was probably my first year. And then- So all the way through the ’60s, and somewhere, I can’t remember exactly which year it was. Third, fourth, fifth grade. Somewhere in there, the first Black child came to St. Dominic’s and I remember the nuns, you know, like, it seemed like they prepared us for weeks. You know, maybe I’m exaggerating because I was little then. I don’t remember, but it seemed like there was a lot of preparation of talking about it. Like, how should we, how should you act when the Black person no, Negro is what people said then nobody said black. But you know, this Negro child comes, how can you, how should you act and what should you say and not say? And you know, it was, it was like they were preparing us. So it was like this. I just can’t imagine what that kid must have gone through being like the first Black kid in the school and everybody’s trained to be very, be nice to him and all that. So I don’t think the kid was in my class. But by the time I graduated, there were Black kids in every grade pretty much. And so it was. And I had friends who were Black. It wasn’t that big a deal. I mean they were still a very small minority of the kids in the class, in the school, but they were spread throughout the school. And the integration didn’t for a Catholic school, I mean it didn’t, it was no big deal really other than that like first step when they were like preparing us for what it was, you know, how you should act when this person came. That was kind of strange. So. And by the time I graduated and went through seventh and eighth grade, the nuns were pretty liberal. I mean, I remember they, you know how upset they were at the time Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. And two of my nuns, seventh and eighth grade teachers were arrested at the St. John’s Cathedral downtown at an antiwar mass where this group of priests and nuns wanted to have a mass and the bishop wouldn’t let them, so they went ahead and did it anyway. And so the bishop called the police and so the police threw them out and arrested some. And so that was pretty cool actually I thought to have your nuns. And in those days the nuns were still wearing complete full habits. And these were Dominican nuns. So the only thing you ever saw of them was a little circle around their face. Not even all of their forehead or not all of their neck. So it was like you’d see their chin and their eyes and that’s about it. Not their ears or anything else. So to think of your nuns being in an anti war mass was like, wow. I think subsequently those same two nuns left a few years later, but lots of things changed and now I don’t know if St. Dominic’s I don’t think they have any nuns there at all, but pretty much not all the teachers, but there was a convent right across the street from the school and had to be, you know, it had to be at least 8, 10 nuns I would guess that were in the schools, least one per grade, pretty much and the principal was always a nun and always in the full habit. But yeah, I’d never heard they were tough sometimes. But you hear these stories of other Catholic school kids going through with the nuns who are hitting them and all this stuff. I mean, I never went through that. They were all. I thought. I mean, they were very progressive when you think about it. I think of things today and I think how our nuns in grade school never had a problem teaching us about evolution. I mean, they never even would have thought about the idea of saying, oh, well, we’ve got to teach the Bible as if it was literally true and that evolution may not be true and we should treat the others. We also have to teach that. And it’s like, no, they taught the Bible in Bible class, but it was taught as this is what the stories are of creation. But they never thought that that was literally true. So they were- On science and everything else, they were very accepting of all the modern science and everything. And so today to hear all this stuff. Yeah. Conflict is kind of. To me, it’s so ludicrous because I don’t know how that can be a conflict with religion. That’s interesting. It wasn’t for them. It was no conflict. The one thing I do remember is there was. Ohio has always put money into private schools, including Catholic schools, religious schools, which I don’t agree with. So our school would get money, public money, but we could only use it for public. No, for nonreligious education. So there would be like an overhead projector that was with public money and we could use that in our history class or English class, but we couldn’t use it in religious class. And there were other things like, you know, projectors and that kind of stuff that they were very clearly marked and designated. You know, these are things we can use with the public funds and these are things we can’t.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:30:50] So private schools still get public funds?
William Gruber [00:30:53] Yeah, they still get- Yeah. I think it’s surprising to me when you hear how much they do get. But yeah, they still get subsidy from. Not- It’s not huge, but it’s compared to the private public schools. But they still do get subsidized.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:31:10] Yeah. Because I went to St. Charles and now that I think about it, I remember all the books said property, private city schools.
William Gruber [00:31:16] Oh, really?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:31:17] And I always like thought that was weird.
William Gruber [00:31:19] Yeah. Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:31:21] Until later. What high school did you go to?
William Gruber [00:31:26] Gilmour Academy, which is in Gates Mills. So. And you know, I’d get on a bus at like 6:15, 6:30 in the morning, and then it went down into the inner city of Cleveland and picked up kids there and then back out. So it was like an hour and a half on the bus every day.
William Gruber [00:31:47] We didn’t get there until about 8, at least, maybe 8:15. And so it went all through, through Beachwood, Shaker and Cleveland and then back out to Gilmour.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:31:59] And what time did you get home then?
William Gruber [00:32:02] Well, actually when you’re the first person on the bus, when the bus takes you home, you’re the first person off too. So it wasn’t that late, except if you stayed late for sports or something like that. And then by the time I was in later years, I could drive myself to school. But I do, I mean, I don’t know how much about Shaker. Right. You wanted to hear more about Shaker in particular. And so I guess really so much is the same today except for I think the housing and all that is really pretty much the same. The school’s there and all that. But the shopping has all changed. The movie theater’s gone. I remember the Three Stooges coming for a live appearance at Van Aken Shopping Center one year and just all the movies that they’d have there. You’d go and on a Saturday they’d hand out. You’d get a hat to wear or they’d hand out a booklet about the movie. And these were big blockbuster movies that were two and a half, three hours long at least. And you’d get, they’d sometimes have live appearances by people for the movies. And so it was a really big deal to go there on the weekend to see a movie.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:33:27] And I was goi
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