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 going to ask you, why has the shopping changed so much in Shaker?
William Gruber [00:33:32] I think it’s changed every place. I mean, you have the giant shopping centers that came and every time you have a new shopping center, everybody goes there. So, you know, you have the shopping centers that grew up along Chagrin Boulevard and then Beachwood Place and then Legacy Village and you know, just more and more. And then the giant Kmart and Walmart and these giant stores that pull, sucked people away. And then, you know, I think the competition of these big stores and the cheaper goods led to kind of the demise of a lot of the mom and pop stores. And that was the big, that was what really populated the stores in Shaker. So those are mostly all gone. You know, the drugstores were mom and pop operations, family owned operations. There were, you know, so that’s where is their family owned drugstore anymore. I mean they’re all the big chains pretty much so. And then the chains decide where they want to go. Depending on, you know, we’ll make only $2 million over here. So let’s go over here because we’ll make $3 million. You know, why and where they go to certain locations. So that led to a lot of the family style stores going out of business and being gone. So a lot of that left Shaker. So and just in the, you know, they’re in the normal course, you know, restaurants turnover. I mean 14 years for a restaurant at my dad’s restaurant, that’s a long time for a restaurant. I mean there are some that last longer. But you know, a lot of restaurants only last a year or two. Many, many, many restaurants don’t last that long. And then other type of small, you know, mom pop stores, they just, you know, people start them and then they just can’t make a go of it. So it’s not surprising when things change. Then the movies change. So they went out to the Giant, most of the movies. You know, there was a Shaker theater down here at Lee and Chagrin and the Vogue Theater. And I mean every major intersection it seemed and every town had a, had a movie theater. And those are all gone, you know, pretty much.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:35:46] Do you think that’s kind of for the economy of Shaker and the reason why?
William Gruber [00:35:50] Well, it’s a reflection of the economy. I mean, it does hurt. I mean it hurts. Yeah. It makes it harder for a place like Shaker that doesn’t have, you know, room for the big office buildings or a big Walmart or something, these giant stores. It makes it harder for a place like Shaker and then a lot of it move to near intersections of interstates. And since Shaker doesn’t have an interstate, it makes it harder to draw. So yeah, sure, it hurts when you look at micro level, just like at Shaker Heights. It’s exactly- It was built to have the family owned businesses, the small businesses, and since those have had such a hard time, it just makes it harder to bring shops in and things like that.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:36:49] With Shaker currently, do you think that’s a current struggle to kind of reintroduce the small businesses?
William Gruber [00:36:59] Oh yeah. Shaker has to kind of reinvent itself in that way. And I think that’s why, you know, that’s why they’re trying to redo the Van Aken - Warrensville Chagrin intersection. Not only to make it a traffic-wise, a better intersection, but also to open up land for development and hopefully kind of reinvent itself. And if they could get a developer or several developers to come in and do a large development of multiple uses where you have offices, residences and shops. That seems to be the thing that a community can do that works in some places. Like, it’s worked in Hudson and it’s worked in Westlake, and it’s worked a little bit in Beachwood, although it doesn’t have the residences in it. But. So if they could do that, then that would be a way of bringing in development and tax money. Otherwise, it’s just struggled. You know, Shaker’s done a lot to renovate the Chagrin Road businesses to help them do that, put a lot of public money into infrastructure and to draw developers who will be willing to invest money into doing major upgrades to the way the properties look and all that. So they brought in Shaker Town Center a number of years ago, and that’s constantly trying to remake itself and draw shops. But it’s hard because it’s not big enough of a shopping center to bring the giant stores, but it’s big enough that it can have big empty spaces. If you lose a tenant, you need some big tenants, relatively large tenants, not the giant stores, but relatively large tenants. Every store these big. And like I said before, the national companies, you know, they’re on a. So, you know, it’s a different development wavelength. It’s like, you know, they’re not. It’s not like they want to. You can invite them to Shaker and say, oh, we need your, you know, X type of services here. Why don’t you come here and open a store? And, you know, you’ll probably make, you know, you’ll certainly make money. That’s not really the way that it works. They work on a macro level. They’re looking at the whole region. They’re looking where they can maximize profits, not just make some money. They’re not necessarily interested in, gee, people in this area need these services. So we’ll go there. I mean, that’s part of their marketing analysis. But they’re really looking at a wider area. So it really makes it so much harder to draw. You can’t just say, well, we have, you know, we’ll really help you. We’ll work with you. If you bring your store here. I think it’s- It may be a little easier with, like, businesses for their offices and things like that to be able to do that, because, you know, they. There are things you can offer them potentially. But for these national chain stores, you know, like CVS, they’re building a brand-new store in Shaker, and that’s great, but it has to be a standalone store. They refused to use any of the old buildings. They had to have drive through it has to have certain dimensions to veer from that is really difficult. The same was when Walgreens moved in up at Shaker Plaza. It had to have. They were a little bit flexible, but not very. They had to have very certain specific things they wanted. And if you don’t go along with them, then they’ll sit. They’ll go elsewhere. Well, yeah, because then you’re like, well, you don’t want to get a reputation for being too tough on businesses wanting to come in. You do want to uphold standards, but you feel like you’re under the gun to accept pretty much anybody that comes along. But if you’re too desperate, then you really give up your community standards. So it’s a balance, I guess.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:41:03] And with the centennial this year, is that taking more kind of a center stage?
William Gruber [00:41:10] Yeah, I mean, it’s- I think it’s just a kind of an overall, you know, gloss to the year. I don’t, you know, I don’t know that it. For the average person, I don’t think it means that much. I mean, it’s important, but it’s just added an extra incentive to have more activities and to have more community involvement and that sort of thing. And so then that sense, it’s fun and good for the community, it just sort of reinforces the community feeling of why you might, you know, why you might want to live in Shaker as opposed to elsewhere. And so in that way, it’s a good thing.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:41:50] So when you moved back to Shaker, what did you do?
William Gruber [00:41:57] It was actually the- What do you mean, what did I do?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:42:01] I guess after you got married, is that right?
William Gruber [00:42:03] Yeah, well, actually, I hadn’t-
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:42:04] You did any kind of job?
William Gruber [00:42:05] Oh, well, I mean, it wasn’t really even bringing back. I never- I had never actually lived in Shaker Heights till we bought our current house. But I just- When I graduated from college, I looked into. I was considering Peace Corps VISTA, which was like Americorps is now VISTA, but it’s sort of the Peace Corps inside the United States or other options. And I actually got into VISTA and I had a placement and I turned it down only because when I got home, I worked right away on a. I had to finish up some school late, so it was like. And I was studying abroad, so I didn’t finish until like August, September, and came home like in September. And since I was interested in Cleveland, you know, I did my senior project in high school volunteering in the Community Development Department of Cleveland and did so. A couple guys and I from Gilmore volunteered there, and we drove the whole inner city of Cleveland, recording the addresses of vacant properties. That was kind of the thing they assigned to us. So we learned a lot of neighborhoods. And for my senior thesis in college, I did it on the Cleveland Model Cities program. So I was always interested in urban issues and Cleveland in particular. And so I never really. And my family was all here, so I never really wanted to thought of permanently moving away. And then. So when I came home right away, I started working on a mayoral campaign, the Ed Feighan campaign for mayor. He lost to Dennis Kucinich. That’s when Kucinich became mayor. But through that campaign, at the end of a campaign, if you ever worked on a campaign, if your side wins, then people are saying, oh, are there jobs available? Particularly if it’s a local campaign, presidential campaign, I’m not sure you really have much of a chance of getting a job. But with a local campaign, you really might get a job or opening to a job. And. But since my candidate lost, everyone was saying, okay, now what are you going to do? Because I volunteered for a couple months intensely. And what’s fun about doing that is right out of college is that while I wasn’t paying because I was available, had no ties or anything like that, I was available 24 hours a day for a couple months. I instantly was elevated to a very high position in the campaign just because they need people like that. And so I worked way higher than my experience or knowledge would have normally placed me. And so that was a great experience working in a lot of different neighborhoods in Cleveland. And so after that, I made a lot of good contacts. And some people said, well, the Cleveland Catholic Diocese has foundation funds to train neighborhood organizers. And so I trained as a neighborhood organizer with the Cleveland Catholic Diocese. And that was. And they actually, it was a paid position because they placed as a trainee. They were placing us with various neighborhood organizations in Cleveland. And it was the big. That was in the. In the late 1970s and early ’80s. And that’s when this kind of work was really reaching its zenith. And it was very big around the country. It was what Barack Obama did in Chicago, the exact kind of same work. And it was the same Saul Alinsky model of neighborhood organizing that Obama learned. And that’s what we studied under. And our whole goal was to go out to neighborhoods and help them help themselves. So we didn’t go into neighborhoods and say, okay, here’s what you should do. We went in and said, what do you want to do? What do you need help with? What problems do you have? What do you want to try to address yourselves? And we’ll just be your staff to help you do that. And that was our goal from the beginning. And so I worked in a number of neighborhood organizations, lived down. And during that period, I lived down near 71st and Superior in the inner city. And so I lived there. And then after a couple years, I decided to go to law school. I went to Case Western Reserve and then lived on 124th street near Shaker Square. And because that was on an easy bus route to Case, and it was also near Shaker Square, which was a fun area to be in and very close to my family home in Beechwood. So it was a perfect location. Had a couple different roommates, lived there in a double house until I got married. And then my wife had already bought a house in University Heights. She went to law school with me. And so we moved in there for a couple years. But I wanted a live in Cleveland. And my focus was because during law school, I had worked as a law clerk in the city Cleveland law department. And I didn’t. They didn’t have a residency requirement then, but I became a lawyer for them and I wanted to live in Cleveland. So that’s when we bought the Haddam House, which had the house in Cleveland and the garage in Shaker Heights, and went in the Shaker School. So it was kind of a perfect location. It was only a few blocks from where I had lived during law school, and it was right by Shaker Square and not too very close to Shaker. And we could use the Shaker Thornton, because in the school district, you can use all the recreational Shaker resources. So Thornton Pool and the ice skating rink and all that, we could join that as residents.
William Gruber [00:47:53] You’re not really a resident, but as a school district resident. And then once we had kids, they went to the school schools there. And that’s just. It’s a chalk neighborhood, which is. It’s an acronym for Cormere, Haddam, Ardun, Larchmere and Kemper. And that whole area is a place where a lot of judges, Carl Stokes lived there. First black mayor of Cleveland in that neighborhood. A lot of judges and city officials have lived there, a lot of attorneys and live in that area. A lot of employees for Cleveland lived in that area. And then once they had the residency rule in Cleveland, that came later. All the more so it became a great area for city Cleveland employees to live in that area. And it’s just a wonderful neighborhood. And right next to Shaker Square, so. And right by the Shaker Lakes, I mean, which is. It’s just ideal. And the Rapid and everything. And so. And I could take the Rapid downtown to work. And that’s what I did for years and years. Well, 18 years. I worked for Cleveland for 18 years and finally in nine. And then. So after 10 years there, we moved to the Leighton Road house, which is. I mean, one end of the street is the Shaker Rapid, the rapid transit stop. The other end of the street is Lower Lake in the park. So it’s. And then two blocks down, four blocks down is Shaker Square. I mean, it’s almost. It’s so ideal. Unless you want to live out in the country. I mean, you have suburban living right there, but you’re right in the city and you have the park right there and. Amazing. The nature center and all that. And yet you can get on the Rapid and be downtown in 15 minutes. You can actually drive downtown in 15 minutes. I mean, you’re close to University Circle. It’s just. It’s really true. Terrific. So that’s where we’ve been ever since. And so that. So what moved us actually into Shaker, as was your question from the Cleveland Haddam House was just because with two kids, my wife wanted more bathrooms and a family room. And so the Haddam House was wonderful, but it was. It just didn’t have family room and it didn’t have. It only had the one bathroom upstairs. So this gave us the hat. The Leighton Road house had more bathrooms and a family room. That was the only. Really the only thing we were looking for because we wanted to be in the same neighborhood and we only moved two blocks. So we didn’t really. Same schools, same everything, except just the house had a little bit more of what we were looking for.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:50:24] So did your school. Did your kids have a good experience at school?
William Gruber [00:50:29] Wonderful. Yeah. And, you know, we gave them the option when they got to high school age, if they wanted to consider private schools, we would have sent them. And I went to Gilmore and my wife went to Laurel. She actually was a resident at Laurel. I think the last class or one of the last classes that had a resident, they had a small group living at Laurel, and she grew up in Brecksville but went there. And so we were completely open to them, but neither of them were really that interested. At one point, our daughter had a number of issues and we thought of sending her to and checked out Laurel and Beaumont and a number of schools she actually got into Beaumont, but because she was an orchestra player, you couldn’t match that even with music programs in the private schools. They’re good, but they’re just not like Shaker and the counseling programs. Whenever we had issues with our kids in schools, the, the counselors in there were just amazing. And the schools just always worked with you. And the private schools aren’t so forgiving. I mean, maybe if you’re a huge donor or something. But otherwise, kids with problems, they didn’t want to hear it and they didn’t want to take that on. But all the way through the schools, we had a wonderful experience. You know, it’s not perfect all the time, but we never, you know, I can’t really think of any real negative aspect to their time there. And you know, I’m sure they had pros if you feel now there are some pros and cons to it, but they got good education. Maybe they would have gotten slightly better education at a private school. It’s hard to say. You know, I just think as a well rounded education, I don’t think that could have been any better anywhere else. And so, yeah, we were very pleased with it. It’s a shock to them. You hear this all the time from Shaker parents, but it’s a shock to them. Once even going to college. You think of going to college like going from Gilmore Academy to college was kind of an eye opening experience because suddenly you were thrown into a world of a lot of diversity and people of different backgrounds. But going from Shaker to almost anywhere, it’s the opposite. You know, you’re going to a less. So my kids have gone to smaller private colleges and they’re a lot less diverse, a lot less cosmopolitan, a lot less open minded in some ways than high school was. So it’s kind of a shock to the system when they go away. They finally, you know, when they’re here, they don’t realize it, but I think they finally start to appreciate what they had in their education and just the whole lifestyle.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:53:28] It’s almost that time but were there any things that we didn’t mention? Anything?
William Gruber [00:53:33] Oh, I don’t know. When you say almost that time, like in a minute. Oh, okay. Well, I don’t know just any anecdotes of things growing up in Shaker. And I mean, you know, my relatives, it was funny how they all seemed to come to Shaker. The whole one side of the family was all ended up in Shaker. Even though my mother grew up in Cleveland Heights and my dad on the west side, once they moved onto Winchell Road in a double house. They lived with an aunt and uncle and who raised their kids there. And then later they moved into a different house in Shaker. Two or three different houses, but always in Shaker. Not all to St. Dominic, some to Gesu. And my grandmother and aunt lived there. And another aunt moved into Shaker and I remember visiting her. So it just- A lot of family had ended up here and in different houses, you know, and it just shows how diverse it is, you know, as my grandmother got older, she’s in an apartment building and it was really nice. And my brother and sister in law moved into a house on Winslow, which was like they have various nicknames, but Baby Row or Newlywed Row. And so when they were newlyweds, they lived in a double house on Winslow and had their first kids there. And then when they had more kids, they needed more space. So they moved into a different house in Shaker, but once in University Heights and then in Shaker. So there’s a kind of a progression that it’s natural that people can go from one type of residence to another to fit their needs like we did. And I think it’s pretty common, but staying right within the air. It was funny, the house we lived in Beachwood, it sticks out into Shaker. And I told you the story about the fire and how long it took the Beachwood to get there. At one point, that area of Beachwood considered trying to be annexed into Shaker. And I don’t know all the facts around it was way before I must have been either very young or before I was born. So it had been late ’50s, early ’60s, somewhere around there. And it obviously didn’t happen, but there was an interest in. Because I think that area felt more like Shaker. The housing was older and it just felt more part of Shaker. It was a more diverse neighborhood and that sort of thing. So that was always kind of the center of attention was towards Shaker and the rapid and downtown and all that. So. Right. Yeah, because Beachwood didn’t have parks, didn’t have a pool, didn’t have any recreation facilities at the time at all. I mean, all that came much later. It had the schools, but it didn’t have, you know, the reputation of the schools was fine. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything super. And plus my mother wanted me to go to Catholic schools. But it didn’t have the same resources it does today or the same the shopping or anything else. So really it was like a village. It was just a small residential community. I didn’t think of anything else at the moment.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:56:54] Okay, thank you for coming.
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