Abstract
This 2006 oral history interview documents Bob Lustig's recollections as a longtime member, having joined the club in 1964 and regularly attended forums over a 40 year period. Lustig, a Cleveland-born attorney whose father was also a club member, provides detailed descriptions of the club's former location on Short Vincent, including its dining room layout with three named conversation tables (the Soviet Table, Sanhedrin Table, and Schoolmaster's Table), and discusses the club's transformation from a men's-only organization that became coeducational in 1972 due to political pressure from candidates who refused to appear at segregated venues. He recounts memorable speakers and events, including Bobby Kennedy's eulogy for Martin Luther King Jr. (the only forum without a question period), the famous Metzenbaum-Glenn Senate primary debate, and various political figures from George Wallace to Antonin Scalia. Lustig describes the club's evolution from a locally-focused organization viewed as leftist by Cleveland's business elite to one with national radio distribution and increased corporate support, attributing much of this transformation to members like Dick Pogue, while noting changes in membership patterns, the decline of regular lunchtime attendance, and the successful introduction of a New Leaders group to attract younger business professionals.
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Interviewee
Lustig, Bob (interviewee)
Interviewer
Humphrey, Tom (interviewer)
Project
City Club - Civil Rights
Date
2006
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
72 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Bob Lustig interview, 01 August 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 807016.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/801
Transcript
Bob Lustig [00:00:00] This in the form of a historical of the City Club. What I know about the history of the club or do you want to do individual remembrances of various and sundry things that went on, or how do you want to do it?
Tom Humphrey [00:00:16] A little bit of both. I’ll ask you questions like why you joined the club, what it was like when you first joined. Who were some of the prominent members when you first joined, maybe who influenced you, who came up and said you gotta do this, seems to be the way many people join.
Bob Lustig [00:00:36] Any organization.
Tom Humphrey [00:00:37] Right. And notable speakers, who stands out, who- And for various reasons, kind of how the club has changed. I’m not sure if you remember what the club was like when it was on Short Vincent or if you could-
Bob Lustig [00:00:51] Yeah, no, I very- I will probably be one of the few you will talk to who actually ate lunch regularly on Vincent.
Tom Humphrey [00:00:59] Okay. Oh, that’s great. That’s great.
Bob Lustig [00:01:02] And before we leave here today, I want to take you back to the mural because believe it or not, the room scene, that is Vincent.
Tom Humphrey [00:01:11] Oh, it is?
Bob Lustig [00:01:12] Yeah. That is the actual room.
Tom Humphrey [00:01:13] Okay. Okay, Gary, I think we’ll start. 10. Are you ready? Okay, so go ahead and start recording. You too. My name is Tom Humphrey. I’m here with Bob Lustig at the Cleveland City Club. This is part of the City Club Oral History Project and the Euclid Corridor History Project. It is August 1, 2006. It’s about 2:00 in the afternoon. And I think we could start by asking you to spell your last name for us so we have it on the record. So later when I transcribe it, I don’t misspell it.
Bob Lustig [00:01:46] It’s L-U-S-T-I-G.
Tom Humphrey [00:01:49] Okay, maybe we could start with- If you could start by telling us a little bit about yourself. Where you grew up, when you moved to Cleveland, if you’re not from Cleveland, things like that.
Bob Lustig [00:02:02] Kind of boring. Born and raised in Cleveland Heights. Went through school in Cleveland Heights schools, graduated Cleveland Heights High, stayed right in town, went bought undergrad and graduate school to Western Reserve. That’s what it was called in them our days. And went on to the University School of Law from which I graduated in 1960. My father was a longtime lawyer in Cleveland. I entered into practice with him after a six month stint in the army and have been practicing law in downtown Cleveland in the Leader building ever since.
Tom Humphrey [00:02:43] And where is the Leader Building exactly?
Bob Lustig [00:02:45] The Leader building is East 6th and Superior.
Tom Humphrey [00:02:48] Okay. And your offices have been there since.
Bob Lustig [00:02:51] So my father moved in there. As near as we can figure out in about 1938. Prior to that, he was in the Standard building.
Tom Humphrey [00:02:58] And where was the Standard-
Bob Lustig [00:02:59] Standard Building is at Ontario and St. Clair.
Tom Humphrey [00:03:04] Okay, okay, I know where that is. I think we can figure out where that is on a map. Western Reserve is different from Case Western Reserve.
Bob Lustig [00:03:13] No, Case Western Reserve or Case or whatever they’re calling it these days is the combination of the old Western Reserve University and the old Case Institute of Technology.
Tom Humphrey [00:03:24] Okay. And so Case divided itself. Case and Western Reserve divided themselves. Were divided separate schools?
Bob Lustig [00:03:30] They were absolutely. They were not only separate schools, they actually at one time had a fence running down between the two campuses, running south from Euclid Avenue almost back to the railroad tracks. And God help the student of one who was found on the other campus.
Tom Humphrey [00:03:49] This separated the scientists from the liberal arts.
Bob Lustig [00:03:52] Something like that. They also had a very, very noted football matchup on right around Thanksgiving Day. It was the last football game of the year and was quite a rivalry. I’m not really sure when that finally expired, but I can actually remember going to one of those games.
Tom Humphrey [00:04:10] Okay. They merged at some point in the 1970s or ’80s.
Bob Lustig [00:04:18] Well, I graduated in ’60. It was, I’d say, 10 to 15 years after that when the two schools merged.
Tom Humphrey [00:04:27] And for a long time. I know you could get a degree from Western Reserve still, even after they had been combined.
Bob Lustig [00:04:33] I’ll take your word for it.
Tom Humphrey [00:04:34] Now, friends who went there. Okay. So you grew up in Cleveland.
Bob Lustig [00:04:40] Yes.
Tom Humphrey [00:04:42] Your father was a lawyer in the city.
Bob Lustig [00:04:44] He was also born and raised in Cleveland.
Tom Humphrey [00:04:46] Was he a member of the City Club?
Bob Lustig [00:04:47] He was.
Tom Humphrey [00:04:48] And how- Any idea how long he joined or how long he was a member of the club? This is unfair.
Bob Lustig [00:04:55] Not really. I believe he joined during World War II or somewhat before that.
Tom Humphrey [00:05:03] And why did- Was there- Were there other members of your firm that joined? Well, let’s go back. When did you join in the City Club?
Bob Lustig [00:05:11] I joined the City Club in 1964.
Tom Humphrey [00:05:13] Okay, so just a few years after you started practicing law in the city.
Bob Lustig [00:05:18] Correct.
Tom Humphrey [00:05:19] And I guess why did you join?
Bob Lustig [00:05:23] Well, of course, my dad was a member. My partner, Morton Nycove, who was a vice president of the club back in the very early ’60s, was also a member. I used to go to City Club functions. I used to go to the forums before I was a member. And as long as I was going, and it was right up the street from where my office was, I could eat lunch there whenever I wanted to. So why not join?
Tom Humphrey [00:05:48] Yeah.
Bob Lustig [00:05:48] Okay. And that’s basically how I came to be a member.
Tom Humphrey [00:05:51] Before we started, before we turned on the tape, as it were, you had mentioned that you used to go to the club at Short Vincent.
Bob Lustig [00:05:58] This is when the club was located on Short Vincent, in a building that looks similar, that looked similar to the present Hermit Club building, if you’re familiar with that. It was just a little two-story building that was sandwiched in amongst the two larger buildings that housed National City Bank and a number of pretty junky buildings that faced East Ninth Street, running from the old Bond Clothiers at the corner of Ninth and Euclid north, including the old Roxy burlesque house and fairly noted for some really cheesy bars and B-girls. And let’s just say it was a very colorful neighborhood. It also housed a couple of the best restaurants in Cleveland. You had the Theatrical Grill right across the street, right down the street you had Billy Weinberger’s place. The name will slip back in just a moment to me. And then across the street and going up Short Vincent, you had Marie Schreiber’s Tavern, you had Monaco’s, you had Fisher Rohr’s, you had the Hickory Grill. I mean, these were the top places to go in Cleveland.
Tom Humphrey [00:07:16] Right, right.
Bob Lustig [00:07:17] And that whole 9th Street down to the square, this was the major part of downtown.
Tom Humphrey [00:07:25] If you can kind of- What was the short. What was the club like on Short Vincent? Say when you walked into the doors, you left your office, you were going to lunch, you walked into the club at Short Vincent.
Bob Lustig [00:07:35] You walked into a set of double glass doors which were of course opaque. After passing the way I came passing the opaque windows, leaded-glass windows that form the front of the building, you walked into a little vestibule and that opened onto a dining room. That dining room had three major tables in it and then a number of tables for two or four. The kitchen was to the left and then there was a second floor. The second floor was generally was a lounge and a card room and billiard room, which was actively used by a number of the members after the lunch hour. There was quite a card game that always went on up there. It was everyday card game, I am told. I never partook of it, but I’m told pinochle was the big game. The big tables were conversation tables. There were two tables that seated about 20 people each.
Tom Humphrey [00:08:49] Oh, so they were really big.
Bob Lustig [00:08:50] Oh, yeah. And a remnant of the one table is here in the club today, the old Soviet table.
Tom Humphrey [00:08:56] And that’s only part of the table.
Bob Lustig [00:08:57] Oh, that’s only part of the table, yeah. As I say, you put 20 and you could squeeze in 22 or 23 seats around that table were both of the tables round? Yes, the other, the second big table was called the Sanhedrin table. And the third table was called, which was a smaller table that only seated about 12, that was called Schoolmaster’s table. And there’s the obvious reasons. The schoolmaster’s table. In the days when Mark Shinner was the superintendent of schools of the Cleveland School District, obviously Short Vincent is a short walk from the school board headquarters, there were a number of the highest staff of the school board who came regularly over to the City Club to sit down, have lunch together and hash over the events that were affecting the school system. The Sanhedrin Table was the conservative table. The Sanhedrin- When you Google this, you’ll find that that was the Council of Jewish Elders, I think, formed by Napoleon to govern the Jewish community in France at the end of the 18th century. And then there was the Soviet Table. And it was interesting bit of history that goes way back before me. Fellows who sat regularly at that table, when I asked them how did it get this name? The story is that in the 20s, first it was always the table at which the liberals gathered and one of the members was a florist who saw that there was always a fresh bouquet of red roses on the table. And at some point this constant discussion, argument, what have you amongst the members. And one of the more conservative members of the club looks at the guys at the big table, of course this was after the Russian Revolution and said, ah, you’re nothing but a bunch of Reds anyway. And somehow Reds got translated into Soviet. And if you look at the remnant of the table, you’ll see in the center is the hammer and sickle. And the names you see that are painted around that circle are the early members of that table. And actually at one time you had to join that table separately. You had to pay extra dues to be a allowed to sit at that table. You’ll also see on that table a number of names are blacked out. And that goes back to the McCarthy era when there was such fear that some people wanted to have their names removed from the table. And that’s how it was done. They were simply blacked out.
Tom Humphrey [00:12:00] I never would have made that connection.
Bob Lustig [00:12:02] That’s the reason for it.
Tom Humphrey [00:12:04] I mean, it’s an obvious correlation. It’s an obvious connection. I guess I never would have thought of that.
Bob Lustig [00:12:09] And one of the names at that table is my old partner, Morton Nycove. He was one of those radical liberal ADA-type Democrats, ADA Americans for Democratic Action.
Tom Humphrey [00:12:22] Okay, so you sit down for lunch. You have lunch.
Bob Lustig [00:12:28] Oh, no, you didn’t sit down for lunch. You sat down to argue with anybody and everybody at the table. It was never the attraction at the City Club. It was the camaraderie. It was the conversation that brought people there. Now, of course, I’m talking during the week. This has- The forms were something else again. But this was a daily occurrence, I would say, when I became a member of the club. The club was roughly composed of three fairly equal groups. A group that came frequently and used the club facilities, whether it was for lunch, whether it was for the lounge, whatever. It was for another group. And of course, obviously these overlapped, was a group that came on Fridays for the Forum. And by the way, at Short Vincent, the Forum itself was in the regular dining room. There was no separate theater seating or anything like that. It was just in the dining room. Obviously very limited. You couldn’t begin to have the crowd that we have here on Euclid Avenue today. The third group were people who almost never came to the club, but who paid dues in order to support what they perceived to be a free speech platform. And that retained itself through the move from Short Vincent over to the time we spent 10 years over in the old Women’s Federal Building, and for a while when we came to what’s now the City Club building, formerly the Citizens Building here on Euclid Avenue. But I would say by the mid-’80s, the idea of going somewhere for lunch just to have something other than business and get your work done, seems to have passed from the scene. And that’s been one of the many changes, and certainly not just in the City Club. I think it’s in all service clubs, other organizations. I think you see it in things like the Kiwanis, the Rotary and everything else, where that type of meeting for camaraderie, for public service, for social activity, just seemed to have passed from the scene.
Tom Humphrey [00:14:55] How do you feel about that?
Bob Lustig [00:14:59] You know, I’m just getting old enough to get very nostalgic for things the way they were.
Tom Humphrey [00:15:04] Right.
Bob Lustig [00:15:04] And, yeah, who likes change? Sure, I’d love to have the old days and be over, to come over here and sit down with the kinds of people who used to come over here and talk BS, do whatever. But that seems to be an era that has simply passed. Almost like the manual typewriter. It just doesn’t exist anymore.
Tom Humphrey [00:15:28] Okay, this is kind of an odd question, somewhat out of the blue. And we’ll come back to other things. The club in the Short Vincent space was a cozier confine.
Bob Lustig [00:15:44] Oh sure. Well, it was entirely different. First of all, you got to remember I’m talking about the early ’60s. Now the club in those days was a men’s-only club. These things don’t exist anymore today. The club became co ed in 1972.
Tom Humphrey [00:15:58] But it’s always been interracial.
Bob Lustig [00:16:00] Oh, again, if you go back and look at the mural that was painted in the ’40s, it was like a WPA project almost. You will see a person of color in the picture. From the day the club was formed in 1912, it was always open to members of all races and creeds. That was never an issue. But we didn’t take them thar women, not until the ’70s, 1972. And a very, very simple reason, and I’ll give you the reason for it. The City Club has always been very, very active in political campaigns in the sense that it offers a platform from which people can make their pitch and be questioned on it. And we’ve always attracted, in the presidential campaigns, we’ve always attracted particularly in the primaries and the run up, pretty good turnout of anybody who’s running. It was made very, very clear to us in the 1971 lead up to the ’72 election that either we were going to change or candidates would refuse to attend, appear at a forum that was segregated in membership.
Tom Humphrey [00:17:18] Who put the pressure on the club to, in other words, who delivered that message?
Bob Lustig [00:17:25] I think every candidate that was running for office was afraid to appear before a group that was. Did not allow members of one group or another to be members. So it was uniform across the political spectrum. You got to remember, I’m talking now, I’m saying 1972. But if you think back, that was the ’60s, right? That was the tremendous upheaval, tremendous social change at that time. And whether it was Democrats or Republicans, they all had the same reaction. So there was a movement within the club by the club’s leadership. Larry Robinson was president at that time and he took the lead as I recall. And there was quite vocal opposition from a lot of the older members. They didn’t want women coming into the lunchroom during the week. Women were always welcome at the Forum. The Forums were always open. That was never segregated. The only segregated event that the club ever had, and we can talk about this later, was the Anvil Revue. The first night of the Anvil Revue was men’s only. And they deliberately had a second night. So those who wanted to bring their spouses or significant others had the opportunity to do so.
Tom Humphrey [00:18:41] Did they kind of vet the show, check it out, make sure it wasn’t too-
Bob Lustig [00:18:44] Oh, Lord, no. Oh, no, no, no. They had nothing to- I mean, the show was nuts. There was an all-male cast, so all the female roles were played by men in drag. But it was never- I certainly can’t recall any of the scripts being in any way that would have been considered racy, politically offensive. Oh, yes, that was the whole purpose of it. But not in any way sexually or any other kind of way offensive.
Tom Humphrey [00:19:15] Going back to the question I was going to ask just a couple minutes ago, the space in Short Vincent was a small space, relatively.
Bob Lustig [00:19:24] Yeah.
Tom Humphrey [00:19:24] And smaller than it is now.
Bob Lustig [00:19:26] Yes.
Tom Humphrey [00:19:26] Oh, do you feel like that kind of in comparison, almost cozier, did it inspire a different kind of Forum than the kind of thing, the different feeling at the Forum than you see in a bigger space today?
Bob Lustig [00:19:43] No, no. The attitude, the atmosphere at the Forum has always, to my mind, been a product of the audience that was in attendance. And we’ve always been blessed with a number of members who take the Forum seriously. We would have guys who would come in and have written their questions out by studying the speaker’s prior pronouncements before they ever came. And the question period is an open period, and the speaker could be talking about X, and the question can be about Y. It’s an open question. So whether the crowd was friendly, hostile, or what depended on who the speaker was, what he was selling and how it was received by the audience. And if he was selling a load of whatever, he would get questions that would challenge him on the accuracy of his statements.
Tom Humphrey [00:20:50] Okay, I’ll take that as a political way of saying, I’m trying to be polite. That’s all right. I’ve interviewed several people and some people who were kind of business businessmen in the community in the city in the 1960s felt that the club was in some respects less relevant to them. It doesn’t seem that you feel like that’s the case. Did you feel like the club was kind of important to your maybe doing business, but also just being a member?
Bob Lustig [00:21:20] Of the civic community as far as doing business was concerned? Certainly in the ’60s and ’70s, membership in the City Club was not membership in the Union Club or the CAC. The City Club had a reputation as a leftist organization. It was roundly looked down upon by the, what I will call the power elite in the city. I’m talking about the upper business class. And it has been a long, hard uphill climb over the last 20 years for the City Club to have achieved the status it now has where it is widely accepted within the business community as an appropriate organization that one should devote their time and attention to.
Tom Humphrey [00:22:13] Okay, well put.
Bob Lustig [00:22:15] I think, and I will give an awful lot of credit for that transformation to Dick Pogue, who has been an absolute stalwart in his activity here at the club. When he first became active at the club, he put up with a lot of this may be rebroadcast. So he put up with a lot and stuck with it. He has his own, obviously his own principles, but he is a believer, I have perceived, in the principles of free speech. And he has actively worked to make the, to bring the club into the mainstream of the Cleveland business community. It always was active in the political community, but not in the business community. And I think he did more than anybody else that I can name to bring that change about in the way the club is perceived in this town.
Tom Humphrey [00:23:19] Okay, if we go back to the ’60s, you joined the club in 1964. You’d been coming for a number of years already.
Bob Lustig [00:23:27] Yes.
Tom Humphrey [00:23:28] Who were some of the notable speakers? I’ll ask you about a couple people, but maybe who jumps out when you think about the City Club? Who is the person who really just leaps out at you? Or a couple of people who just leap out or moments at the City Club that leap out?
Bob Lustig [00:23:46] First of all, unlike many, I schedule my day, my week, so that my Friday noon is- I have an appointment at the City Club. So I attend probably more Forums than any but a very small handful of people who are regulars here and our staff. I probably attend 35 to 40 of the Forums a year. And I’ve been doing that now for a little over 40 years. Who stands out? It’s a long list. One of the obvious ones was Bobby Kennedy giving the eulogy for Martin Luther King, which, incidentally, I’m sure others have told you is the only time in City Club history the question period was not allowed. And that’s out of respect for Bobby for the event that he was there for, which, incidentally, had he not come, would have probably bankrupted the City Club. We had booked him. You know, you didn’t book Bobby Kennedy overnight. We had booked him way in advance. The ballroom at the- Was then, I guess, the Sheraton, the old Cleveland Hotel, today, the Renaissance Hotel. We had 12, 1400 people guaranteed for lunch. And when Martin Luther King was murdered, Kennedy said, I can’t appear at a political Forum like this. And Alan Davis, who was our director at the time, said, senator, if you don’t come, the club will be out of business. We’re on the hook for 1200 lunches. We can’t afford it. And that’s when he said, well, I will come, but it’s going to be a eulogy. It’s not going to be one of your regular events. And he saved us from bankruptcy by coming and giving a speech that has been noted worldwide.
Tom Humphrey [00:25:45] This is in the spring of 1968. March or April, I can’t remember off-
Bob Lustig [00:25:49] The date, I don’t remember the exact date, but yes.
Tom Humphrey [00:25:52] Can you kind of describe both the mood of the other members of the club at that lunch and what this speech was like, what it was like to be in the audience, what it was like to look up at Bobby Kennedy as he delivered this eulogy. Cleveland, several cities experienced after Martin Luther King’s assassination, several cities kind of endured racial violence. Cleveland was one of the few cities that did not, at least in that moment of time, endure the same kind of racism at that moment.
Bob Lustig [00:26:25] But shortly thereafter, shortly thereafter, the Glenville riots.
Tom Humphrey [00:26:29] And much of the credit is given to the fact that Bobby Kennedy was in fact here and gave a speech at the City Club that kind of smoothed the water, at least for a little while and for a very short period of time. So maybe if you could kind of take us through some of that, the feeling of the other members of the club-
Bob Lustig [00:26:45] Boy, oh boy, that’s a tough one. And not only because it’s 40 years ago, the- Generally, first of all, 1200 people there, you obviously had a very wide representation of people who were not members. You had a really wide community there. The mood I would classify as somber. Whether you were a supporter of civil rights or not, whether you were admirer of Martin Luther King or not. The fact of the assassination, you know, this was how many who had been murdered. It was only five years earlier that the President had been murdered. And you’ll notice I used the word murder, not assassinated. You know, the whole attitude in the country was, my God, what’s going on? So, you know, it’s like you stepped out of an icewater shower. And I would say what occurred that day is about what you would have expected if you were in a church attending a funeral. I mean, that’s what you heard and that’s how people treated it, with great respect, with great dignity. And you took away from it whatever you felt. But it was a just a very, very, I’ll use the word again, somber occasion.
Tom Humphrey [00:28:23] Okay.
Bob Lustig [00:28:26] Another City Club performance that I’m sure you’ve heard about already was the famous Metzenbaum–Glenn debate.
Tom Humphrey [00:28:37] I think I have heard about this. If you could explain what happened.
Bob Lustig [00:28:40] Well, this was a primary election campaign in which John Glenn and Howard Metzenbaum were competing for the right to run for U.S. Senate. Metzenbaum was a much, much better speaker, a much sharper guy on his feet, and was generally thought, particularly in this town, to have it all over Glenn. Glenn was - and always will, was after, and always will be - a very reserved, very quiet, seeming, unemotional kind of guy. In the course of his address, Howard Metzenbaum charged that Glenn was not competent to be a U.S. Senator because after all, he had never had to meet a payroll. Came Glenn’s turn to talk. And I don’t think anybody ever saw John Glenn more animated, more passionate and more direct. If I can go back to my Army days, if the sergeant, he was the sergeant, he ripped him up one side and down the other, telling him that no, of course he hadn’t had to meet a payroll. He only had to go out and do his duty in Korea, do his duty in the military, risk his life on a daily basis. And when he got done and sit down, Howard Metzenbaum was without a reply. And many people ascribe Glenn’s victory in that primary race to that particular exchange at the City Club. It was quite a remarkable performance. Again, before a very large audience. My recollection is that was in the Cleveland Convention Center. There’s a room there that seats about 2,000 people and I think it was pretty much sold out. It was again a very, very major event. Speakers, speakers- Again, I’ll go way back into the ’60s. There was a woman by the name of Helen Caldicott and if I can spell it, I think, I think it was something like C-A-L-D-I-C-U-T [sic], maybe a double T. And I believe she was a physician from Canada and she was one of the very early anti-nuclear activists who gave a stirring anti-nuclear speech here at the club and I think made about half the audience converts on the spot. Another very interesting one that I can recall- Gee, I don’t remember the first name. Mrs. Allende, the widow of the Chilean president who was murdered in the Pinochet uprising in the question period, was challenged by some of the members because she said it was the CIA who was in back of the murder of her husband. And when she was challenged on that, she became so upset she just walked off the podium and walked out of the club. Interesting way to do things. Another fellow who didn’t much care for the way he was questioned at the City Club was Jim Rhodes, former governor. He got so angry, he thought the questioning was impertinent, disrespectful. And I think this was on his second go at the governorship at which he was successful. He refused to appear at the City Club. And not only did he refuse ever after to appear at the City Club, he was instrumental in seeing that a number of Republican politicians also refused, one early one being one Ronald Reagan. There was a time Reagan came to Cleveland on a campaign tour and the question is, should he appear at the City Club or appear on Public Square? He appeared on Public Square. He did appear subsequently at the City Club as sitting president. Yes, he did, and gave a very, very credible performance. I was there at that one.
Tom Humphrey [00:33:07] Kind of moving, somewhat more local, one of the. Maybe he wasn’t the only member of the club who ran for mayor, but certainly in the 1960s, Seth Taft ran for mayor against Carl Stokes, and they had a-
Bob Lustig [00:33:22] They had quite a go about here at the City Club. Yes, indeed they did. Actually, one of the regulars at the old Soviet table was Tony Celebrezze. He got his start there was an outfit political organization called the Cosmo Club, short for Cosmopolitan Club. Again, back in the ’50s, not exactly your standard political arrangement. It wasn’t a Hungarian club or an Italian American club. It was a Cosmopolitan Club. And Tony was part of that group. And that group got behind him in a big way and was instrumental in his push to become mayor. Ralph Perk was a member of this club. Again, you might not say Ralph Perk, Republican Ralph Perk, but he was a member of the club also and used to come. I’ve met him here a number of times at the lunch table. Very, very decent fellow. Of course, as far as the mayor’s races are concerned. Again, what turned the trick in the primary campaign when Mike White was running? The performance he gave here at the City Club, when he was supposed to be running fifth on a field of five, was given great credit for his winning that primary and beating George Forbes.
Tom Humphrey [00:34:52] And Dennis Kucinich has spoken here, but not recently.
Bob Lustig [00:34:55] Not recently. Dennis has spoken here. I know. Dennis tells me that he’s spoken here more than anybody else has ever spoken.
Tom Humphrey [00:35:02] At the City Club.
Bob Lustig [00:35:03] Of course, he’s run for so many things.
Tom Humphrey [00:35:05] That’s right. That’s right. I have a list. Tell him I’ll check.
Bob Lustig [00:35:09] He may be right. As far as appearances at the club, he may well be right. He has appeared here any number of times. But in the last few years, he doesn’t. He has not chosen to appear. He also hasn’t had any really serious opposition to do so either.
Tom Humphrey [00:35:28] Right. He runs almost unopposed almost every time. Not literally unopposed, but.
Bob Lustig [00:35:33] Right. It’s not a serious race. Right.
Tom Humphrey [00:35:38] Maybe coming up a little bit more to the present. Well, let’s back a little. I’ll come back to that in a minute. The city club has been the kind of focal point of a lot of hot debate, but also the city itself has experienced a lot of hot topics, a lot of hot debate and rioting. How has the club kind of addressed some of the hotter issues that have played plagued the city? Like, for instance, the Glenville riots that we talked about that occurred shortly after Kennedy spoke, Or kind of civil rights in general in the ’60s and ’70s?
Bob Lustig [00:36:14] That’s actually a fairly easy question to answer because you have to look back at the personage of who was the director of the club at that time, and that was Alan Davis. Alan Davis himself was in an interracial marriage. His wife Bernice was here at the club any number of times. Lillian Anderson was our assistant director. A woman of color, very lovely lady, retired, living out in Berea, I believe now. Alan was our director for 22 or 24 years. He had originally been a Methodist minister. He lost his pulpit when he got divorced. Bernice was not his first wife. He was what we would now call the community relations director of the old channel 61. And when we had an opening for director, he was selected. And this has to be back about maybe somewhere in the middle to later ’60s, because I remember at least three directors prior to him. But I would say by ’68, ’69, Alan was the director. He had a small congregation that he was minister for over at 30th and Central. So you had a guy who was instrumental here who was very, very well known in civil ri
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