Abstract
In this 2012 interview, Bob Rawson talks about Shaker Heights as a child and today. His parents were both involved with Shaker Heights, and the city of Cleveland. He talks about his focus on education in the community, reflects on his childhood in Shaker Schools, and discusses what he believes to be current issues in Shaker.
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Interviewee
Rawson, Bob (Interviewee)
Interviewer
Smith, Kelsey (Interviewer)
Project
Shaker Heights Centennial
Date
6-21-2012
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
32 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Bob Rawson Interview, 21 June 2012" (2012). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 915003.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/524
Transcript
Kelsey Smith [00:00:01] I’m gonna have you say your name.
Bob Rawson [00:00:04] Robert Rawson.
Kelsey Smith [00:00:07] And today is June 21, 2012.
Bob Rawson [00:00:10] Correct.
Kelsey Smith [00:00:13] I’m gonna start out with some basic questions about you just to get into it. So where were you born?
Bob Rawson [00:00:20] I was born in Washington D.C. during World War II because my parents were both working for the government there during the war.
Kelsey Smith [00:00:30] So where did you grow up?
Bob Rawson [00:00:32] Right here. Well, we moved here when I was 2, so I really have spent my whole life here, with the exception when I was away in school here in Shaker Heights.
Kelsey Smith [00:00:46] Which neighborhood did you move to here?
Bob Rawson [00:00:48] Well, we first, when I was really little shaver, we lived in an apartment on North Moreland, which may have been just over the border in Cleveland. I’m not sure. But in any event, we then moved to the Lomond district, lived on Daleford Road, and then when I was in the third grade, we moved to Malvern and lived on Manchester Road. And that’s where I spent the rest of my youth. And my parents lived there their whole lives.
Kelsey Smith [00:01:23] And when was it? What year are we talking about when you first moved here?
Bob Rawson [00:01:29] Well, in 1946, the family came back to Cleveland. My mother grew up in Shaker Heights as well, and so we moved to the Lomond area probably in 1950ish, I would guess, but I was pretty small then, so I don’t have any memory of that. We moved to Malvern when I was in the third grade, which would have been 1953 or four probably again, I’m estimating, but that’s about the timeframe.
Kelsey Smith [00:02:08] So what is your earliest memory of Shaker Heights?
Bob Rawson [00:02:13] Well, I remember our house on Daleford very well and all the kind of childhood activities that one associates with that. I also remember the elementary schools that I went to and starting from kindergarten when I had vivid memories of my separation anxieties when I went off to kindergarten for the first. For the first time. But what I remember growing up are the schools that I went to and the people that I knew in those schools and the friendships that I formed then, many of whom are friends still today.
Kelsey Smith [00:02:58] What kinds of community activities were you and your family involved in growing up or were you?
Bob Rawson [00:03:05] Well, my parents were very much engaged in various aspects of the community. My mother was a full time volunteer with the League of Women Voters, the Parent Teachers Association. She served on the recreation board. At that time there was a separate recreation board. It’s now all been absorbed within the Board of Education, but she was ultimately chairman of the chairperson of the recreation board. My father was involved in a variety of community activities and I’m focusing on Shaker Heights. Now, because they were both engaged in the broader Cleveland community, too, but my dad ultimately became a member of the school board and subsequently, or at one point, president of the school board. So they were very much engaged. Throughout my growing up, I learned from them the notion that one ought to be involved in one’s community if you were going to take seriously being a citizen of the place in which you live. So when I was younger, I was just involved through the schools. I mean, that was the vehicle by which kids had an opportunity to be engaged in one one thing and another. But we were always, as a family, very much engaged in Shaker Heights.
Kelsey Smith [00:04:31] When your father was on the school boards, what kind of issues was he facing? Do you remember?
Bob Rawson [00:04:37] Well, I can’t give you the exact years, but to roughly tell you, he was on the board in the late ’60s and early ’70s. And it was during that period that the Shaker busing plan was introduced, which was the first effort to, on a voluntary basis, integrate the elementary schools in Shaker Heights. We always had, during a lot of my youth, had only one junior high school, now thought of as a middle school. When I was in the seventh grade, a second junior high school was open. So we had Byron and Woodbury. But the elementary schools all were geographically centered around a particular geographic area. And in fact, each of those geographic areas became identified with the elementary school. The Malvern district, the Lomond district, the Fernway district, the Boulevard district. This building, the now library, was Moreland School, and this was the Moreland School district around here. In any event, the voluntary busing plan was voluntary. It paired up schools in the east and west side of Shaker Heights in a way that would allow parents who wished to do so to put their students, their children, white or black, into a school which was predominantly of the other race. And it was a very successful first step toward the integration of the Shaker schools. So that’s a principal thing I remember that my dad was involved with during his time on the school board.
Kelsey Smith [00:06:21] Did that affect your family in any way?
Bob Rawson [00:06:25] Well, for a large part of the time that he was doing that, I was off in college, so I wasn’t immediately connected with it. I do know, because some of the calls came in when I was. When I was home, that some residents took exception to the notion that there ought to be a voluntary busing program. So that. I know we got a lot of angry phone calls, and there were a couple of public meetings, which were fairly heated meetings. But Shaker Heights being Shaker Heights, the community talked through the issue. And it became a very successful program over time. People became accustomed to it. And in fact, because of the nature of the community and the instinct that people have for working together and working through issues about which reasonable people differ, sometimes unreasonably. So we got through that and my dad got through it. All right.
Kelsey Smith [00:07:27] This is, you know, technically in Shaker, but if you do want to talk about in the broader Cleveland context, that would actually be great as well.
Bob Rawson [00:07:35] Okay. Well, my mother became assistant director of the Cleveland Foundation and for a period of time, for about a year or so, served as interim director of the Cleveland Foundation. So she was always involved through that vehicle with all manner of what are called today non governmental organizations, public spirited bodies, organizations that were attempting to provide services of one kind or another to people throughout the greater Cleveland area. She. My experience, my impression was that she knew about everybody who was engaged in one way or another in a community oriented activity. At least that was my impression as her son. My dad was. Well, among other things, he taught at Case Western Reserve in the graduate program in what is now the Mandel School for Social Sciences. He was an expert in municipal finance and taught that. In addition to that, he ran a small business. But in addition to that, he was president of the Citizens League and the Citizens League Research Institute. He was president of the City Club. He was the head, I’m not sure what the title was, president or chair or something of NOACA, the Northeast Ohio Coordinating Agency, which coordinates a variety of planning activities. And I think it’s a seven county area, but I could be wrong about that. And historically, I don’t know what it was at the time he was doing it either. But he was very engaged in a lot of municipal government activities. He was involved nationally in what was initially called the National Municipal League. He became chairman of that. It’s now called the National Civic League. But my parents were government junkies, I guess you could say. I mean, so that’s what they did, one form or another. That was their extracurricular. It was what kept their intellectual juices flowing. That’s who they were.
Kelsey Smith [00:09:58] Did that rub off on you at all?
Bob Rawson [00:10:01] Well, I guess because I’m back here, I’m for starters. So my roots are very definitely here and I’ve tried to be engaged in a variety of community things. I followed in my father’s footsteps in a lot of respects. I was also president of the Citizens League and the Citizens League Research Institute at various times in my life. And I’ve been involved in education as much as anything else that’s I suppose, my avocation, Both K through 12 and higher ed on the K through 12 side. During the 1990s, I was chair of an organization called Community Initiative in Education, which was an effort to marshal private resources to aid the Cleveland Municipal School District. That is the thought was if we could raise private monies to supplement what the public budget could afford to do for the kids in the Cleveland schools, that that would increase the possibility that the school system would function in a better fashion than I think most people would say over time has been a less effective school system school effort than it could have been. Not that there weren’t good people trying to make, make it run. So I was chairman of that for six or seven years. At the present time, I’m chairman of the board of Cleveland State University and I’ve been on the board there since 2007. Prior to that, I was chairman of the board of Princeton, on the board there for 20 years, which is my alma mater. So when I say I’ve been involved in education, that’s what again, when I’m not practicing law, which is what I do to feed myself and my family, then educational activities have been my primary interest.
Kelsey Smith [00:12:08] What does the Citizens League do?
Bob Rawson [00:12:11] Well, I think it was a mistake on the part of the supporting organizations. But the Citizens League went out of business for a number of years. There now are people who are restarting it, which is a good thing. The Citizens League was and was in business probably for 90 years, starting in. It was founded in the early part of the 20th century by reform minded people who believed that government needed a watchdog. And so if you want to use a single label, what the Citizens League was, was a municipal watchdog for the various levels of government. Sending observers to watch city council function in Cleveland, also coming up with programs and ideas and legislation that would make civil service function better, would make the city of Cleveland function better. There was a movement at one time to reduce the size of the Cleveland City Council and to increase the term of the mayor. And the Citizens League was very instrumental, along with individuals in getting that achieved. We once had a 33 member city council in Cleveland. We now of course, have a new form of government. But 33 council members was way too many and led to a parochial perspective on the council, as you would expect that it would. So reducing it to. I think we got it down to 11, but I could be wrong about the number. So that’s the kind of thing that the Citizens League was engaged in. We now have of course, a county form of government which was something that the Citizens League and similarly thinking people tried to get done for decades. We had it on the ballot several times in the ’50s and about once a decade there would be an effort to get it done. And I’m sure you talked to my wife about all that, so yeah.
Kelsey Smith [00:14:14] So you practice law now?
Bob Rawson [00:14:16] Yes.
Kelsey Smith [00:14:17] Where in Cleveland are you?
Bob Rawson [00:14:19] Yes, I’m in Cleveland. I’m with a firm called Jones Day, which is a multinational firm. We have I think, 38 offices all across the world and across the country. Probably a dozen of those offices are actually in the United States, but the remainder are in Asia, Europe, the Middle East. So when I started with the firm in 1971, we had 105 lawyers or so. We now have 2,500. So we have grown and we were basically a Cleveland and Washington firm at that time. And now, as I say, we’re all over the world.
Kelsey Smith [00:15:01] I’m going to ask you a little bit more about growing up in Shaker Heights. Do you remember, I mean, besides your dad being on the school board in the schools, do you remember any. Well, you said you were in college while you were. What do you remember about the schools? I mean, growing up through them, was there anything distinctive about.
Bob Rawson [00:15:22] What I remember primarily, Kelsey, is my peer group and the strength of the faculty at all levels. I mean, and I remember, I can remember who my teachers were from the time I was in the first grade, virtually all the way, all the way through. And I remember characteristics of them. I had just wonderful teachers and I’ve been very grateful for that and very grateful for the fact that I had. We had a peer group. We pushed each other. We were each of us better students because we were competitive types. And as a consequence, I think we pushed our teachers some too because we were pretty good students, I think so I remember all of that, but I remember also the things that you remember of, of childhood. I was, when I was in elementary school during the summer times, there were what was called, were called play schools at each of the elementary schools. These are for elementary school age kids, obviously, and it was like a summer camp, but we would play baseball against the other elementary schools. And I can remember riding bicycles from one school to another to play on an asphalt baseball field because that’s what most of the schools had and that’s all we knew. So if you slid into third base, you slid on like sliding on your driveway to get to third base, but that’s what you did, destroyed your blue jeans in a rapid hurry, which didn’t make families happy. So I remember those kinds of activities. We had a good time growing up. I mean, in part, this was maybe an accident of childhood, but also the time we grew up in, I was a Youngster in the 50s. And looking back on that, that was an easy time in this country, relatively. It was a time of growth. And you’re a historian, you will know about that period. So my memories are all. Not that every day was great, but basic memories are very good then. My first job in life was working for the Shaker Recreation Department. My job with a friend of mine was to line the baseball fields every day for the games that would be played that evening. So they provided me with a limer, you know, one of these machines that drops lime and rakes and shovels and stuff like that. And if it rained, we had to make sure the field was playable and then line the fields. So my first two real jobs, two summers, was doing that for the city of Shaker Heights. So I have a lot of. Lot of memories going back in this community. I’m about to celebrate my 50th high school reunion. I know you have a hard time believing that somebody as youthful as I am could possibly be 50 years out of high school. But this is timed, and we feel fortunate to correspond with the centennial, so we will be able to share some of the celebration as we see it. But I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of these folks who are spread all over the country coming back. And we think we’ll get pretty good attendance back just because there’s some of us who stick around and have lived here, but many others who’ve gone elsewhere, had successful careers, raised family and so on elsewhere. It’ll be fun to catch up with them.
Kelsey Smith [00:19:21] Shaker seems to have a legacy with their schools.
Bob Rawson [00:19:25] The schools are an important part of this community, there’s no question about that. But it’s a combination of a terrific school system, but also a city which functions in a very effective way. You really need to have that kind of combination, because if you don’t have the services the city services, police, fire, snow removal, street maintenance, maintaining a clean environment, then schools aren’t going to thrive either. It’s just the two go hand in hand. And so I think we’ve been fortunate in Shaker Heights to have been well led over time. And partly that’s a credit. It’s not partly, it’s entirely a credit to the quality of the community, of the people who live here, who are invested in this community, care about it, care deeply about it. May not love the taxes they have to pay, but they appreciate the value of what services they get in return for those taxes. But again, I’m sure you talked to Judy about some of those kinds of things.
Kelsey Smith [00:20:35] I find it very interesting. Shaker Heights has such a sense of community that you don’t see a lot of places.
Bob Rawson [00:20:43] But yeah, if you look around this area, Shaker Heights has a longer history than a lot of areas. I mean, downtown Cleveland, of course, predates Shaker Heights. But if you think of. If you’re sort of comparing suburban communities, a lot of the communities that are doing very well and are wonderful communities east of here are very new communities compared to Shaker Heights. I mean, we’ve been around 100 years. Chagrin Falls probably has been here around that period of time. I don’t know. But when I was growing out, Solon was farmland, basically. Mentor was a very small community. You know, it’s now, I think, the biggest high school in the state or close to it. So, you know, the world has changed, but communities that have a less lengthy history may not have developed, hadn’t had time to develop the kind of culture that has developed in Shaker Heights.
Kelsey Smith [00:21:51] So do you think it’s that history that helps foster that?
Bob Rawson [00:21:54] Well, I think that’s a part of it. But I think being an inner ring suburb, while has its challenges, is also an advantage because it draws people who want to have a suburban experience, but also are interested in being a part of an urban community. And it’s a nice thing to be able to border on the city of Cleveland sitting here. You know, we are three minutes from the city of Cleveland, and if you want to get to University Circle, you’re 10 minutes away. You want to get downtown, where I work, it’s 20, 25 minutes from here. And that’s something that I have valued and I think is one of the things that has made Shaker Heights successful. It was originally what created Shaker Heights. When the Van Sweringens built the rapid transit, built their community, built a rapid transit to conduct the downtown to the community. I mean, you know all this because you’ve heard it from others, but all of those kinds of things are integral to who Shaker Heights is. If you want to play an intellectual game and dream of moving Shaker Heights 10 miles east or out to Chesterland, you’d have a different community. It would be just as good, but it would be different in a variety of respects. We have space in Shaker Heights. Our property lots are pretty decently sized, but we don’t have the kind of space that you have out in Chesterland or in places. And people who live out there live out there in part because that’s the lifestyle that they choose, and that’s wonderful, but it’s just different.
Kelsey Smith [00:23:34] So what made you move back to Shaker Heights?
Bob Rawson [00:23:37] Well, roots have a lot to do with it. Judy and I were in Washington when we decided to get married and decided to come back to Shaker Heights. But a lot of that was because living in Washington, which is a great place to live as a young person, and if you’re interested in government, I mean, it’s a wonderful place to be. But if you think about putting down roots, raising a family and becoming engaged in a community, then it’s hard for us to envision doing that in Washington. If you do that in Washington, you need to either decide you’re going to live in Maryland or you’re going to live in Virginia or you’re going to live in the District. Those are very different kinds of choices. But we felt much more comfortable coming back here. If we were going to live anywhere other than Washington, then the logical place for us to come was here, or we could have. I worked for a firm in San Francisco when I was after my second year in law school. So I gave some thought to being a Californian, but I ultimately concluded, nice place to visit. Which, good thing. I concluded that because one of our sons lives out there now. But I’d rather live here, you know, not something some of my friends understood. But Cleveland’s a good place.
Kelsey Smith [00:25:01] How does living here now compare? Like, what changes have you seen Shaker over the years?
Bob Rawson [00:25:08] Well, there’s been more continuity, I think, than fundamental change. The community has changed and it has matured. In a lot of ways, we are a much more diverse community than when I was growing up. That’s literally and figuratively true. We are more diverse racially and ethnically. And in terms of the orbits in which people live and move, all that’s a very positive change. From my perspective. Labels are hard to appropriately apply. But the fact that we are more diverse in the respects that I’ve just mentioned means that we are in some ways a more welcoming community and a community with broader perspectives than maybe was the case when I was really young.
Kelsey Smith [00:26:16] So your wife has been very involved in Shaker Heights itself. Have you been involved in that way?
Bob Rawson [00:26:24] Well, I have volunteered for various school board or school system committees and so forth over time. I was on the board of the Shaker Schools foundation for a period of time, and I was involved in a committee early on, after we came back in the early 70s committee that was appointed by the superintendent to study improving student achievement, which was largely aimed at trying to close the gap between minority student achievement and the majority population student achievement. This is an issue which remains with us today. I mean, the committee I was on didn’t solve it, unfortunately. But so, yes, I’ve been involved in some Shakers things, not so much on the city side because Judy’s. You know, we divide up our strengths somewhat, and that’s been Judy’s, Judy’s bailiwick more than mine.
Kelsey Smith [00:27:25] Were there any other issues that you. While you were volunteering schools, what kinds of things did you do?
Bob Rawson [00:27:32] Excuse me. Finance is always a major issue. And so I can recall being on several levy committees and so on addressing that kind of issue, because the kind of education that we offer students in Shaker Heights is not. Doesn’t come cheaply. And the community has always been willing to invest in our schools. And that’s, I think, been a huge strength of the community. So over time that’s been, I think, a principle thing.
Kelsey Smith [00:28:25] Where do you live in Shaker now?
Bob Rawson [00:28:27] We live on Brantley Road, which is across the street from the lower School of University School, and we’ve lived there actually for 34 years now.
Kelsey Smith [00:28:40] And what is it about Shaker? If you have something. Is there something about Shaker you love most living here?
Bob Rawson [00:28:49] Primarily, it’s my neighbors. And I don’t mean physically just the people on Bradley. It’s the people that I have associated with over my adult life. It is that. It is also the proximity to the city where I work, proximity to cultural institutions that I value. And even though I don’t get to them as often as I promised myself I will, it’s wonderful to be. To have access to them in the way that one does if you live in Shaker Heights. I also love the way it looks. I mean, I guess I become used to it because I’ve lived here for so long. But it’s a beautiful community with Van Sweringens did a nice job in laying out the plats and so on. The concepts of the schools as they laid them out have made real sense over time. It’s physically a very attractive place with the lakes and the paths along the rapid right-of-way now and so on. It’s physically a warming place in which to live.
Kelsey Smith [00:30:06] I didn’t realize that the Van Sweringens had planned out the schools as well.
Bob Rawson [00:30:11] Well, when I say that the properties in which the schools, it may not have been true. Of all, I think there were originally eight elementary schools, and they may not have all been laid out that way. Somebody else could probably tell you that. But historical society people would know. But my impression is that they based this as a planned community. And they had really planned out a good deal of the whole enterprise, particularly the western part that borders on the city of Cleveland, the eastern part that sort of east of Warrensville Center Road, I think, developed later on. And I don’t know whether they had actually mapped out the plats for that or not. But for the most part, the one thing that all of us wish, except for the people who belong to the Shaker Heights Country Club, is that they had planned that proper to be property, to be public park rather than a private club and a golf course. It’s beautiful and it’s wonderful for the membership, but if you can imagine that as a place where you could build community parkland, it would have been a wonderful thing.
Kelsey Smith [00:31:43] Well that’s all the questions I have, but if you have anything else you want to add?
Bob Rawson [00:31:38] Well, I don’t think of anything. I hope that I’ve given you some grist for your, for your mill, so to speak.
Kelsey Smith [00:31:45] No, thank you very much.
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