Abstract
George Cannon is originally from Indiana and moved to Shaker later in life after marrying his wife who resided there. An educator and principal for a number of years within the Shaker school system, Cannon describes working within the for the schools along with describing the home that he lived in which was constructed by Jacob Strong in 1842.
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Interviewee
Cannon, George (Interviewee)
Interviewer
Smith, Kelsey (Interviewer)
Project
Shaker Heights Centennial
Date
7-26-2012
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
24 minutes
Recommended Citation
"George Cannon Interview, 26 July 2012" (2012). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 915030.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/520
Transcript
George Cannon [00:00:03] George Cannon.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:07] Alright. And today is July-
George Cannon [00:00:09] 27th, correct?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:11] Yes.
George Cannon [00:00:12] We all have these fancy phones. We should know.
Gabriele Haligan-Taylor [00:00:14] 26th.
George Cannon [00:00:16] 26th?
Kelsey Smith [00:00:26] So where were you born?
George Cannon [00:00:28] Indiana. Irvington, Indiana, outside of Indianapolis.
Kelsey Smith [00:00:33] And how did you end up in Shaker Heights?
George Cannon [00:00:35] I fell in love.
Kelsey Smith [00:00:43] Now, I understand that you were principal at Fernway School.
George Cannon [00:00:51] Yes, I was. Yes.
Kelsey Smith [00:00:53] So how did you end up with that position?
George Cannon [00:00:56] How did I end up? That’s a long story. Well, you like stories? Well, goes all the way back to my first comment that I fell in love like that. I was with the Department of Education in Indiana and I was at a conference in French Lake, Indiana, which is the home of Larry Bird. That’s the only thing people know. Okay. And this was a legal conference and it was on Title IX in schools. Discrimination against women in sports and athletics. And legal, I’m not a lawyer, I’m an educator. But legal conferences are the most boring things in the world. They read case law and they read statute law. Well, it was about 10 o’clock in the morning the first day of this conference and it was fairly boring. And so in a very loud voice, when they finally stopped to take a coffee break, I said, I need a good woman to bring me a cup of coffee. And about two minutes later, this woman said a cup of coffee in front of me and said, a good woman brought you a cup of coffee, which created about six months of total debate. And I ended up marrying that woman and moving to Shaker Heights because she lived in Shaker Heights. That’s how I ended up here. And so I changed from I was director of curriculum for the state of Indiana and I became the science coordinator here in Shaker. And they gave me this wonderful job of playing with children K through 6 all day long. So I had this marvelous lab and we did hands on science. We played. We played every day. And eventually they decided that I was having too much fun and I should become a principal. So I became a principal of Fernway and still had a marvelous time. Because that way I got to be quarterback at recess, going both ways. So I had a wonderful career here in Shaker Heights. That’s more than you may want to know, but you deal with it.
Kelsey Smith [00:03:07] Can you tell me a little bit more about some of the things you did while you were principal? While you were at Fernway?
George Cannon [00:03:13] Well, there’s some aspects of education that administration that I don’t think people always realize is necessary, like the amount of time you have to spend supporting your staff. You know, I was, had been a teacher for 25 years before I became a principal. So my relationship to administration, even though I had been an administrator before, basically I thought my job was to keep the halls cleaned, make sure they had books and the teachers had what they needed. I considered myself a teacher’s aide, which is a little bit different than what most principals perceive because they don’t come at it like I did, sort of like from the teacher’s standpoint, not from administration standpoint. So I worked very hard to create an environment that was almost family oriented to teach and for children to come. One of my kids got off the bus in the morning. I wanted them to say, I’m going to have a good day today. Not that it’s going to be the greatest thing in the world. It’s not Disneyland. But they were saying, I’m going to school, that’s okay. That’s what I want. That was my whole philosophy. So I worked very hard on setting up programs that would do that. I knew every child’s name in the building. In September, I would stand in the doorway of every class every morning until I could name every kid in that class. And then I would go to the next class until I knew every child in the building. And it made a tremendous difference because we had very little disruptive problems because we knew, we all knew each other like that. At the same time doing that in the school. Every school principal, you have a crisis every day. You have either a child or a staff or a parent in some kind of a personal crisis. And I knew going in every morning that I was going to have to deal with a crisis. Sometimes they were much worse and sometimes they were just something we could solve quickly. But I knew that was going to happen. So your mindset as administrator is much more for me, making sure everything goes smoothly in a school.
Kelsey Smith [00:05:48] Well then you said you started some programs? What kind of programs-
George Cannon [00:05:53] Well, we did a lot of programs that would help children focus on what they’re doing. And not necessarily, I mean, we had our programs that were brought from the district, our reading programs, our writing programs, our science programs, but we always try to add something special every year, have a theme every year. Theme may be a very nonviolent theme one year. Let’s all become very good citizens. Maybe let’s all improve our reading this year. But we always had a theme. Let’s all do the best we can. Let’s all help each other. You know, it was always a theme that we had every year. I also brought my dog to school every day.
Kelsey Smith [00:06:35] What kind of dog?
George Cannon [00:06:36] Well, it’s a black lab. His name was Parker. And I would come into school around 8 o’clock in the morning and open the door and let Parker in. And then about 4 o’clock, Parker would come back to the office. He just roamed the building and did what he wanted to do, like that, you know. And he was the kid’s dog. And it always amazed me that the 10 years Parker was there, I did not have one parent complaint about a dog meeting a building like that. When Parker died and I retired, they actually had a statue made of Parker. It’s in the front hallway in Fernway, like that. But he was just such a wonderful companion. I’d go in the classroom and kids would be laying on him, reading to him. They also found out that if Parker, at that time, we all brought our lunch to school, if he ate somebody’s lunch, the whole class would get pizza. Because they’d call down the office and say, Mr. Cannon, Parker ate three lunches. And I’d say, order pizzas for the class. Well, they realized if they helped us out a little bit, they left all their sandwiches out of their bag and opened the whole class would get pizza. So they also worked the system. Kids are very smart. I mean, kids are professional children like that. And we’re not. We were once, but we’re not anymore like that. And they’re very smart. Like they know what they’re doing. They’re pros. Yeah.
Kelsey Smith [00:08:17] What years were you at [inaudible]?
George Cannon [00:08:19] I was at Fernway from ’92, ’93 to ’05, like that. And before that I was a science specialist working with Jean Sajak at the planetarium and we set up a lot of wonderful science programs. Science Olympiads. Just a lot of fun.
Kelsey Smith [00:08:38] What was it like being in Shaker as compared to, I know you work for the State of Indiana. And Shaker schools have such a high standard.
George Cannon [00:08:49] Well, Shaker having the perspective, having a state perspective. I also worked with Ohio Department of Education a little bit when I was with Indiana. Northeast Ohio has got a high, high demand for quality education. This is when I was kind of in the ’80s, early ’81, ’82. I forget like that. But Shaker always impressed me that they said the city is known by the schools it keeps. And I think that is absolutely true. If you maintain quality educational schools, this will absolutely help the quality of the city like that. And Shaker does. Shaker works at it hard. They really work at having quality schools and incorporating everybody in the system. We have a large minority population that needs a lot of support like that. And we’re constantly trying to do that. I haven’t been there for five years. I’ve been retired, but I’m still around.
Kelsey Smith [00:10:00] Gabby, did you have any other questions about the schools?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:10:04] About the schools? No. Did you have any, out of curiosity, do you have any WPA art in the schools at Fernway?
George Cannon [00:10:14] Do we have any WPA art? No, not really. We did an art program almost every year. Would bring in outside artists in the sense that sometimes we. One year we took one room, empty the room out, let the kids just fill it up. They made caves, they made all kinds of things out of art, you know, like that. It was quite elaborate things. And then one year we did a mural with all the kids participating in a great big mural like that. And one year we did dance. We did a whole year of dance in our phys ed department. Like that’s where all the kids learned. Then we put on a show at the high school, you know, for the parents, like that. So did a lot of art, but we didn’t have any WPA art. We did have when I got there and whatever it was in ’90, something like that. I found a lot of the old 1950s bomb shelter equipment that when I was in school we all had to run down the basement and cover our heads like that.
George Cannon [00:11:21] And they put water and food and things in all the schools. I found a lot of that there, which was remarkable. But it’s gone. Nothing as old as WPA though.
Gabriele Haligan-Taylor [00:11:37] With bomb shelter equipment, did that go to a museum, or was it just-
George Cannon [00:11:39] No, no, the building itself would be considered, and they had these big yellow signs. They were like a nuclear. The nuclear sign. It said this shelter could hold 330 people. Something like that. You know, we took that sign off and auctioned it off. But that’s the oldest thing we found in a building. Nothing from the Depression. School was built in ’27. So it was basically a brand new school during the Depression. Yeah.
Kelsey Smith [00:12:16] So when you came to Shaker, what did you think of the neighborhood?
George Cannon [00:12:21] Ah, well, the house that we had when I moved here was built in 1842, 1844. It was one of the oldest houses in Shaker Heights. And we had a lot of fun with that. We basically rebuilt that house like that. The other homes are just incredible. I mean, it’s a neighborhood. This city is just full of beautiful homes everywhere. That’s kind of remarkable. And the way they laid out the streets so you can’t get anywhere straight probably helped. And the fact that every house is within a six minute walk of the Rapid in Shaker Heights originally that was planned by the Van Sweringens so that they could, everybody could get to the Rapid quickly, to get downtown to go to work.
Kelsey Smith [00:13:12] So I wanted to ask you about your house because I was told that you, The Jacob Strong house?
George Cannon [00:13:17] Yes, yes. Jacob Strong, yeah.
Kelsey Smith [00:13:18] Do you know anything about its history?
George Cannon [00:13:21] I know bits and pieces. It’s been a while since. Jacob Strong, it was in the 1840s, like that. I did look up the tax records once. Dick Park, I don’t know if you’ve interviewed, have you ever heard Dick Park yet? You should do him. He really knows he lives in that house now. The house was built by Jacob Strong, and he was not the best farmer. Sometimes he looking at the tax receipts, sometimes he had a cow, sometimes he didn’t, and sometimes he had two horses, sometimes not. I mean, just looking at the tax receipts, it’s hard to tell what kind of farm he had. But the house was. The story goes that it belonged to that John D. Rockefeller was there at this house now Rockefeller owned was the First Baptist Church, which is a big church. It’s actually across the street now. But at that time it was downtown First Baptist Church. And this was the Manus, or where the preacher lived. And he would come there and talk and sit at that house and like that. And when the Van Sweringens, you know, did Shaker Heights, they basically flattened everything between Fairmont and Chagrin. So all the old houses were basically flattened there. And there were a few left. And from the outlining areas of that, and ours was one of those houses like that. But it was remodeled occasionally. We remodeled it, and Dick’s done some marvelous work with it like that. So it was a fun house.
Kelsey Smith [00:15:04] What all did you do to it?
George Cannon [00:15:06] Oh, wow. Huh. Like that.
Kelsey Smith [00:15:08] I live in an old house.
George Cannon [00:15:10] I rebuilt- Put the kitchen- I knocked out the back wall, put in a raised ceiling, a curved ceiling, a dome ceiling. Did all curly maple cabinets. Put those in. And I built them myself. I built them in a basement like that, and they’re still there. Tore out the walls that were added so that it’s back to original size. Did a lot of just cleaning and rebuilding. We put electricity in places that weren’t electricity. We did the plumbing. We had no idea where the sewers would go. We were testing the sewers constantly because after I rebuilt the kitchen, Miss Margaret fixed peas one day, and all of a sudden I saw the peas on the backyard after she had put them down the garbage disposal. And we had just connected everything to what was there. And we realized it didn’t really go anywhere, so we had to redo all the sewer lines like that. So, yeah, then our next house was on South Park, the Griselli Estate, which was a very large garage basically like that that they had built for the big house. And that was fun built, that was built in 1917. So we went from 1945, 1845 to 1917. Now we’re in 1954. We’re up in getting close.
Kelsey Smith [00:16:50] What was your, did you have a favorite part about the Jacob Strong house?
George Cannon [00:16:56] A favorite part? Well, I spent a lot. It was it when I was teaching science I used to take children there because it was a timber beam house and we could get down the basement and you know, the foundation was, you know, these three-foot-thick blocks of bluestone, you know, limestone, you know, that had been cut and put there like that. And they could see these great big beams going through the house that were, you know, just hand hewn beams. So I guess I like that a lot, but I like the whole house like that. That’s the house our daughter remembers. That was her house like that. Once we moved, she didn’t care anymore. She was too old. You know how that goes. But it’s a great city. It really has been.
Kelsey Smith [00:17:48] Did you and your wife pick out that house or did she already live in it?
George Cannon [00:17:52] She actually lived in it. She bought that house in, we were old. I was 50 when I took my kid to school. We put it in perspective here. So she had bought the house and we moved in. Then I moved from Indiana. I came here. So I was ready to make a change. This is more than I tell people. Got to be careful, say something get me in trouble.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:18:27] Well, with the house when you first moved in there, was there any, you said the original limestone. Was there any other like original like materials like wood or anything?
George Cannon [00:18:37] Oh yeah, the whole house. So it was a framed house. It was timber framed house and was still there. Most of the house was still the way it was built in 1840s. The windows have been changed, of course. Like that had been updated, and I redid the electrical work. It had to be updated because it had been rebuilt. Every now and then somebody would upgrade the house like that. So like that. And it was then Jacob Strong built, he owned quite a bit of property and he built another century house across the street by the church. And that was for his daughter. And then he helped support the first, not him, the first school that was open was Boulevard. And at that time the kids would have to walk through the swamp to get to Boulevard from our house on Fairmont. And when our daughter started school, the district redistrict and she had to go to the Boulevard too. So I always thought that was interesting that she had to go to the same place when they built. That was in 1912 though, when they built the school. That wasn’t Jacob Strong. That was the way after that. But Dick Park knows the history of that house very well.
Gabriele Haligan-Taylor [00:20:03] Did you, do you go to First Baptist Church by chance?
George Cannon [00:20:07] No, no, I don’t. No.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:20:09] It is right across the street though, isn’t it?
George Cannon [00:20:11] Oh yeah, it’s right across the street. Yeah. That was our playground. That’s where we learned how to ride a tricycle. It’s where we learned how to ride a bicycle, huh? Yeah, yeah. Where we would go play a lot like that. So. Yeah, yeah. Shaker has an interesting history with the association with the North Union Shakers that lived here.And that component brings in a certain feeling about this town. No matter where you are in the world, they kind of know about Shakers and they know about Shaker Heights. It’s kind of surprising. I was very surprised. Also Cleveland. Actually last month I landed in Rome at 10 o’clock in the morning, went out to dinner at 7 o’clock at night. A young man said, where are you from? And I said, the States, Cleveland. He said, are the Browns going to win any games this year? And I said, I just went 4,000 miles and I’m being asked about the Browns in Rome. This is literally last month. So it’s an interesting place, this area like that. I think it’s kind of a well kept secret in the country. It’s a beautiful place to live like that. It’s just very comfortable. And part of that is, I think the influence of in Shaker, at least North Union Shakers that lived here, they kind of set a moral tone that’s kind of still here.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:21:45] I was just going to ask, is that is there like a certain standard kind of living in Shaker? Do you have to like, you know, meet the bar I guess?
George Cannon [00:21:53] I don’t know if there’s a standard. I think I was always surprised as a principal, the number of my parents that grew up here. Went away to D.C. went away to New York, went away to Los Angeles, got married, had a child, four years old, time to move to Shaker. Incredible number of people who grew up here come back here to send their children to school.
George Cannon [00:22:22] That’s always amazed me. I think there’s a sense of it’s a great place to have kids. It’s a great place just to be. I don’t know if that answers your question or not.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:22:35] What would you say the schools kind of framework, just Shaker as a whole as far as, just like you said, having the families come back to it and how the schools used to be based around the neighborhoods.
George Cannon [00:22:49] Right, right. I think so. I think it’s very much so, especially the elementary schools, that the children are there more than they are in any other school. I mean, they’re at five years at elementary. There are two years at Woodbury, two years in middle school and four years of high school. And they’re young. And like I mentioned, every day there’s some kind of problem if you’re a principal like that, and little kids bring every one of them to school. The ones you don’t want to know about even you don’t want to know what’s going on at home. You just don’t like that. But it does affect kids. And there’s very much a family environment around each one of the schools, which gives support to the kids and give support to their families, too. But we have great parents like that in our city.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:23:41] Do you have any more questions?
George Cannon [00:23:47] Okay.
Kelsey Smith [00:23:49] Well, thank you very much.
George Cannon [00:23:50] You’re welcome.
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