Abstract
Oral history interview with Stanley Adelstein, a longtime member of the Cleveland City Club who joined in 1941 and served in various leadership roles over 63 years. Adelstein discusses the club's evolution from its original location on Vincent Avenue to its current Citizens Building headquarters, including the transition from Saturday to Friday forums and the admission of women members in the 1970s. He describes the club's distinctive traditions, including the famous Soviet Table where members engaged in political discussions, the elaborate Anvil Revue theatrical productions that lampooned public figures, and the club's commitment to free speech through controversial speakers and debates. The interview covers notable speakers from George Wallace to Ronald Reagan, memorable debates between political figures like Howard Metzenbaum and John Glenn, and the club's financial challenges and solutions including corporate sponsorship and funded forums. Adelstein also discusses the club's outreach programs including student forums and high school debate tournaments, reflecting on how the organization adapted to changing times while maintaining its core mission of providing a platform for open dialogue and debate on public issues.
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Interviewee
Adelstein, Stanley (interviewee)
Interviewer
Humphrey, Tom (interviewer); Estrin, Rachel (participant)
Project
City Club - Civil Rights
Date
8-4-2004
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
104 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Stanley Adelstein interview, 04 August 2004" (2004). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 807004.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/803
Transcript
Stanley Adelstein [00:00:01] It’s amazing how time flies by, and sometimes I don’t have enough hours a day to do the kind of things I want to do. But thank you for coming on.
Tom Humphrey [00:00:09] No problem. I’m just going to start by saying that I’m Tom Humphrey and we’re with Stanley Adelstein and Rachel Estrin. We’re doing the City Club oral history of longtime members of the City Club. And it is August 4, 2003, and I’m trying to plug something in which may or may not work, but we’ll see. Maybe you could start by telling us a little bit about how you came to Cleveland when you joined the City Club, things like that.
Stanley Adelstein [00:00:41] Sure. Do I speak right into that microphone?
Tom Humphrey [00:00:43] You can speak wherever you want to speak. This microphone will pick it up.
Stanley Adelstein [00:00:47] You’re all plugged in too? I came to Cleveland in 1919 because I was born in Cleveland, and that was 85 years ago. Basically, I’ve lived in Cleveland all my life except for World War II, when I was stationed in the U.S. Coast Guard and spent about three years on the west coast, the great West Coast. I first joined the Cleveland City Club in 1941, which is 63 years ago. And I joined because I knew something about the City Club. It was very famous even then. And in order to join the City Club in those days, one had to have two sponsors. At the time, I knew a very prominent lawyer in Cleveland who was on the board of trustees Ohio State University, named Lockwood Thompson. He served as a sponsor for me. And at the time, I happened to be dating a young woman named Dietz. And her father was the science editor of the Cleveland Press to no longer existence. And he sponsored me. So that’s the time I joined. And my earliest memories of the City Club are in going to the meetings that were held, the forums that were held every Saturday, not on Friday, but every Saturday. And they were held in a beautiful building on Vincent in downtown Cleveland, almost directly across the street from the Theatrical Grill. It was a freestanding building. It was a City Club building and very picturesque with stained-glass windows and some early carvings. Baluster going upstairs had- It was like a building in England, you might say. And I’d go down on Saturdays. Most people worked on Saturdays in those days. Certainly the law offices and the businesses worked on Saturdays. And people would come at about 11:30 or 12 o’clock to the forums. In those days, they were only broadcast by one radio station. WGAR was the only station that carried it. There was no such thing as a City Club network at the time. But the traditional question and answer period was a very important part of the City Club and even way back then. One difference from what it is today was that listeners, and there was no television, but listeners on radio could call in their questions. I do remember the secretary of the City Club, executive secretary of the City Club, executive director of the City Club, being handed written or typed questions from the radio audience which he would then present to the president. And the president would then read the question and the speaker would try to answer it. But the tradition which was in effect then of people asking questions from the floor was very much a part of the City Club program. And of course it’s remained that way through all the time that I’ve been involved, which is 63 years and even today. I made a few notes to sort of help me here. Some things I might just take a look at here to see where we were. One of the great traditions of the club, which I remember a few times when we come down to have lunch there during the weekday, because we did serve lunch even then, was to have three large round tables. The biggest one was a Soviet Table and that would accommodate maybe 20 people. Then there was the Sanhedrin Table and then was the so-called Board of Education Table. The Soviet Table was the most famous of the three. It had an unusual name because Soviet- It was given that name back in 1921 when a number of happened to have some red roses at one time, red flowers that were on the centerpiece. Someone had given it to them. And so somebody said, well, that’s an appropriate thing for you people who are sitting around there. You’re a whole bunch of communists anyhow. And of course there was a rather jocular way of saying that these were people who were very free thinkers and they were people who would sit around, not just have lunch, but to talk about things and have discussions. Most of the discussions were about political issues, local and national and international. And- And some of the names whom I remember being around that Soviet Table during my day were people like Jack Raper, who was a columnist for the Cleveland Press, very famous columnist. And he was a rather iconoclast, you might call him a curmudgeon. And he would point out in his column whenever a politician says something he thought was baloney, he would put a great big- Had a bull- That was a little item that appeared in the newspaper. And one of the things that the Soviet Table had on the table was somebody had sent them a little sculpture of a black bull. I think it’s still on display in the cabinet that one sees at the City Club as you cover the headquarters that are there. But that was something which was sort of typical of the people who spoke around the table. They were outspoken and they said what they pleased and they just loved to come there and talk at lunchtime. In more recent times, I say maybe 30 years ago, 40 years ago, I remember people who I used to see, such as a federal judge named William Thomas, who at the time was a very prominent lawyer in Cleveland. He subsequently was appointed by his Democrat, appointed by Frank Lausche, then governor, to become a member of the common pleas bench. And he ultimately, I think, was appointed by either Lyndon Johnson to become a federal judge. But he was a regular at the Soviet Table also. There was a man named Peter Witt, who was a very, very outspoken, challenging speaker of the ’30s and ’40s who often spoke, sat at the Soviet Table and spoke with challenging things. Ed Byers, another name I remember currently, not currently, but before we dismantled the Soviet Table, Seth Taft, who was an active Republican, ran for mayor of Cleveland, was also frequently at the Soviet Table. Peter De Leon, who was a member of the City Club Hall of Fame, was a regular at the Soviet Table. We see it all the time. One of the things the Soviet Table was members would have their names written into the, painted on the center of the table. At one time, There were probably 40, 50 names on there. Unfortunately, the Soviet Table is no more. When we retrofitted and redecorated the City Club five, six years ago and changed it somewhat, we decided that it just didn’t have any real function any longer. But the Soviet Table, the part of it that has the names on it is still on display. And if you go to the. I think it’s the Dick Pogue Room, where the City Club board meets. On the wall there is the remnants of the Soviet Table. The other big table that was there that was traditional for many, many years was the Sanhedrin Table. Sanhedrin, I think, is a name that some of the Jewish people gave to the elders who were involved in the early days of Israel. But it was not a Jewish table by any means. But there were people, Christian, Jews, non-Jewish, non-believers, whatever. But it was a more conservative table in the sense that the people there rarely got into big arguments. Most of them sat, had their lunch, they would read their newspapers and maybe have a few little quips here and there. Quite different than the Soviet Table, which had a lot of animation, a lot of thoughts being thrown around all over the place. The third table was the Board of Education Table, which was frequented by people who were administrative people on the staff of the Cleveland Board of Education, which, as you know, is just a few blocks down the Street, East 6th Street, Superior, in that area. And there would be at least 10, 15 people every day who would come there on weekdays and have lunch there. And they would sit around, talk about educational matters. So those were three traditions of the City Club, which I certainly aware of. They no longer exist, I’m sorry to say, because people are more interested in other activities and they don’t have the time and leisure that they had in those days. Shall I continue to ask any questions?
Tom Humphrey [00:10:34] Sure. I was- Do you mind if I ask where you sat?
Stanley Adelstein [00:10:41] One more thing about the building we had, and you can still see pictures of it, a painting of it, actually, I- On the wall of the City Club, that large panorama in the rear shows the stained-glass windows. It shows the painting of the Indian looking out over Lake Erie. And it shows a table or two which would depict the Soviet Table and the others. So. Still a visible reminder of the old City Club facility that I remember in 1941 on Vincent Avenue. Upstairs, by the way, first floor, as you walked up the main room, the dining room and the lunches were served on the first floor. But as you went up the first landing, there was the cloakroom, went to the second landing. There’s a different kind of a facility there. People, City Club members would go after lunch and leisurely play cars, pinochle bridge or whatever. They had couches. I remember seeing some City Club members stretching out and taking a nap upstairs there. In later years, they even had a television set there. A little bit of crinky- Not crinky, but antiquated sort of thing. But it was an activity. And they smoked cigars. A lot of them smoked cigars. They loved cigars. I remember one name particularly. Vilas. Very, very prominent name in Cleveland. His family at one time owned the Cleveland Indians and had a relationship with the Higbee Company. Very wealthy man. He was a City Club member. His son, who is now 85 years old, 86 years old, is a personal friend of mine. But his father, Malcolm Vilas, would often be upstairs there playing cards, Pinochle, smoking a cigar and, and that was a way in which they would leisurely do things after lunch and even certainly on Saturdays after the City Club Forum was held on Saturdays.
Tom Humphrey [00:12:41] When did the club switch from Saturdays to Fridays?
Stanley Adelstein [00:12:45] That had to be at least 25 years ago. I’m trying to remember. I don’t remember a specific time when it was. But it was the time when businesses began to close down on Saturday in Cleveland and even my law office. I practiced law in downtown Cleveland for almost 50 years. Even at the end, just before I retired, we still had people who came down on Saturday, but not very many. We had at that time about 25 lawyers in the office. There wouldn’t be more than about four or five of us there. That would be the two senior older partners, Aber and Barrick, and a few younger people trying to impress the older people how hard they worked on Saturdays. And I was one of those. I was probably guilty of the word now for being an overachiever. What do you call that when you overwork?
Tom Humphrey [00:13:40] A type A personality.
Stanley Adelstein [00:13:42] A type A personality. Those other words a little more derogatory than that. A workaholic. Of course, I was probably clearly being worked. I was careful not to leave till the last of them. About that time, though, when so few people were coming downtown, Saturday forums didn’t make sense anymore. So we gradually changed over to Friday forum. Of course, in the days I’m talking about, the City Club didn’t have women members. It was the men’s City Club. I remember when Larry Robinson was president, I was vice president. President. No, I think it was. Well, anyhow, I was vice president about that time. But anyhow, when Larry Robinson was president, he proposed that we change the City Club articles of corporation to take out the limitation to men. And the reason we did it is very interesting because there was pressure being brought on the City Club from two completely disparate sources. So first of all, some speakers were saying, because you do not permit women to be members of the club and rarely would women come to the forums. I don’t remember any women being there in those days. Any event, we’re not going to come to speak because we think your club discriminates. We’re not going to speak to you. That would be sort of a very serious blow. On top of that, there were a few organizations, mainly women’s organizations, which were a little more aggressive. And they said, well, City Club has a tax-exempt status, something like 501c3, which meant we paid no income tax. And they felt there was something in the Internal Revenue Code that would prohibit a 501 organization from existing if it prohibited women from joining and therefore they’re going to take it up with the IRS. A win or lose, it would have been a loss for the City Club. What a loss. And the combination of those two factors was enough to persuade some of the leaders of City Club the time had come for a change. I remember the meeting when we discussed that change in the articles of incorporation. And some of the older members were very adamant about it would be a different kind of a club. We don’t think that’s proper. It is to say the city is going to come crashing down. [laughs] They almost implied as much. Of course, the reality was it passed overwhelmingly. And within a few years, some very fine women were elected to the board of trustees of the City Club. A number of women became officers of City Club. We had some wonderful women who provided leadership as president of the City Club. And from that point on, it’s been worked out very, very well. Meanwhile, the Women’s City Club, which had a few men who belonged to [inaudible] in one or two, was having a difficult time itself because it was engaged more on the social level of things, on the cultural aspects of Cleveland. And at one point there was talk of a merger. We never merged with the club, but the City Club and the Women’s City Club, and I was part of it, agreed to share space together. And that did not occur in the Vincent building, But it did occur. We had to leave the Vincent building about 20 years ago because land was being assembled to put up what is now the National City Center. And the City Club building, which at that time was owned by the Curry brothers, had to give up its space. So we moved to the Women’s Federal Savings and Loan building on Superior, directly across the street from the Cleveland Public Library. At that point, Women’s City Club, which had been in the Bulkley building, decided to move as well. And the two of us shared space in that one building. And I worked on the lease, as a matter of fact, which we were co-tenants of the building. Going back to those early days, though, again, we had a tradition with something very special of candidates who wanted to be on the board of trustees. Today we have simply a dominating committee that nominates for four people. And those four people were automatically at the board. Not so. When I joined the club, we had eight persons nominated for the board of trustees. And there was a spirited, spirited campaign carried on. And it culminated in a special event held in the evening a week or so before the election at. At which time we. Should I stop here?
Tom Humphrey [00:18:38] No, keep going.
Stanley Adelstein [00:18:39] At which time we had cndidates field night. Thank you, dear. And each of the candidates had a manager who would put on some kind of a skit trying to show why his candidate was the better to be elected. Thank you to the board of- Thank you to the board of trustees. And these skits were hilarious. They really were outstanding events involving a lot of talent. I’ll never forget when I was nominated, I was sort of petrified by the thought giving of humorous 10 minute talk about why I should be elected and having someone help me out with it. I went to a young member of the City Club. It’s probably going back through three, five or four years ago. And his name is Vic Gelb. He’s still an active member of the City Club. And Vic was an advertising executive with a small advertising firm. I told him, Vic, I’m a candidate for the City Club board and I’m worried what I should do. Please help me. Would you be my manager? Sure. He says, Stanley, I’ll be your manager. You heard this story before? No. I said, well, what am I supposed to do? He said, well, Stanley, all you have to do is to prepare a very serious talk about how you think there should be a merger of the City Club and the Roxy Theater. The Roxy Theatre - you may not know this - was Cleveland’s only burlesque show.
Tom Humphrey [00:20:10] That’s right.
Stanley Adelstein [00:20:11] It was on Ninth Street, Almost contiguous to the City Club. If the two lines have been extended. And they had burlesque shows there. I don’t think they ever went to a burlesque show there. But they did. And so I prepared a little talk about a merger. Vic Gelb had somebody bring along a record player. And he had the record on there of some kind of a bumps and grinds type of a thing. And meanwhile he got three or four of the ladies from the, from the Roxy to come behind me. As I was giving this talk about how a merger of these two clubs would be great for Cleveland. I spoke about the- I did some corporate mergers in those days. And I said, first of all, you have to examine the assets of the two companies, whatever they are, these women behind me. And you gotta determine what their fine points are and all that kind of stuff. And I was very serious. And he had these ladies behind me and the people roared. I was elected to the board. Should make the story short. But that was a great tradition. And in a way I certainly regret that we no longer have that because it’s sort of become cut and dried now, which the board, the nominating committee finds four very competent people. They’re diverse usually, and they’re automatically elected. But that spirit, that energy and the imagination that went into the campaign is no more.
Tom Humphrey [00:21:43] When you joined the City Club, there were no women, and you mentioned that before. It strikes me as a little odd because the City Club was otherwise so inclusive. Certainly some people could join the City Club. And, because of either their race or their ethnicity, they were excluded from or kept from joining other clubs.
Stanley Adelstein [00:22:10] That’s true. But remember, you have to put into context at the time, women, as you know, in the United States did not even have the vote, could not even vote constitutionally until took a constitutional amendment in 1920 to give women the vote. So the City Club made this change probably 35 years ago. And women had a lot of limitations on what women could do in certain states. They could not even own real estate. As a matter of fact, a woman could not testify against her husband in certain states regarding physical violence, even rape. A man had a right to have sexual relations with his wife whenever he wanted to. And there was no such thing. Thing is a rape between husband and wife. So we’ve come a long way. And the City Club, even though it did have a liberal tradition of free speech of all kinds, nevertheless in that area of women, it was backwards, certainly by today’s standards. But by those standards of the time, it was and it wasn’t.
Tom Humphrey [00:23:30] But even for the day, it was fairly forward. The club in general was fairly forward thinking in that it admitted members that admitted people into the club that other clubs excluded.
Stanley Adelstein [00:23:43] Oh, yes, the Union Club for many, many years was a very prestigious club in downtown Cleveland. Never had black members, never had Jewish members, and certainly never had women. And these changes have all occurred within the last couple decades at the most. I remember when the first Jewish members were admitted to the Union Club. It was a very dramatic move. And I know some of them very well. Had dinner with one of them just last Friday night. He told me how he was one of the five Jews who were taking them the Union Club. And that was when he first came to Cleveland from Sandusky, probably about 30 years ago. And Jewish- I remember many Jewish people would not go to the Union Club even though meetings were held there because they felt it was discriminatory. Let alone Blacks, let alone women coming back to the City Club. I don’t think we rarely had a woman speaker at the City Club in my early days when I was there, rarely a woman, might have had a Black or two, but I’m too sure about that. So we did have, maybe quietly, a discrimination policy on women and Blacks. Not only Blacks were members in the beginning. That was no problem. That was not an issue. But women definitely not. And I think he must take it in context.
Tom Humphrey [00:25:10] Who were some of the- You joined in 1941. Who were some of the speakers that you really remember from, say from that era, from the ’40s and ’50s?
Stanley Adelstein [00:25:19] Yes, I certainly remember one in particular contingent speakers, which was the governor of Alabama named Wallace, George Wallace. He came to speak to the City Club while he was a governor, a sitting governor. He was an outstanding standing segregationist and made no bones about it all. And he came to the club on Vincent Avenue. There were pickets outside hearing signs about what a terrible man this was. And he spoke. He gave him the opportunity to speak and ask questions. Hope and I were away. We were in Europe at the time. I remember seeing a picture that appeared. I think it was in the Herald Tribune, International Herald Tribune. The pickets outside the City Club building. My gosh, what’s happening in Cleveland? Enjoying something. But that was an outstanding speaker. I remember Jane Fonda coming to speak to City Club when she brought along with her infant child. And Alan Davis, at that time was the executive director of the City Club, tells about before the meeting, she was actually nursing her infant in his office. She gave a talk. I heard the talk by it. I don’t remember much about it. The call was about Vietnam. It could be about 30 years ago or something even before that time. But she was certainly one of the outstanding speakers that I do remember. Probably one of the very outstanding speakers was a woman pediatrician named Dr. Helen Caldicott. C-O-L-D-I-C-O-T-T [sic]. And she spoke about 25 or 30 years ago, maybe longer, about nuclear warfare or nuclear weapons. It was a dramatic speech. And she spoke from the standpoint of being a child pediatrician. And at that time, as today, we do sell tapes of the broadcasts were held. And we had the largest number of requests for tapes we’d ever had before. That may have been eclipsed by some speakers more currently, but I’ve forgotten how many people, 200 or something like that, wanted tapes of her talk. She came back to speak again a few years after that. She wasn’t quite as dramatic, but that first time she came, she was really an outstanding, outstanding speaker. Gave a memorable memo talk. Of course, we had presidents come. I was president of the City Club Forum foundation the year that Ronald Reagan came to speak to City Club. I’ll never forget that we had probably 800 or 1,000 people who showed up. And when we had other headlining speakers such as that ilk, we would leave the City Club quarters and go to a hotel. We had this at the. I call it the Cleveland Hotel, the old hotel in Public Square. And the Secret Service was tremendous. He brought along his own cook, and he brought along his own waiter. And he also did something very unusual. Of course, they had the Secret Service here before the meeting, and he insisted that we rent out or purchase what we did. Now, a whole series of mattresses were placed behind the podium. Not the podium, behind the stage. We sat at the stage. The president and Bruce Akers, who at that time was vice president, reduced him because Dave Sandel, the president, was in the hospital at the time. And I was there, and a few of the old, old members of the club. David Ford, who was one of the original members of the club and a very active Republican. Any event, There were about 10 of us at the speaker’s table. And then there’s this large curtain behind it. And then on the floor were these mattresses. And the Secret Service insisted that we have it there. And the reason for it was that if there was any kind of attack against him, remember, he had, fairly close to that time, had been shot by somebody to try to kill him. So there was three threats against his life. If anybody came up, anybody tried to throw him, Secret Service people who was on the stage were instructed to give him a shove and push him in the back so he’d fall on those mattresses and be out of the danger. Any kind of a security arrangement. But that’s what it was. That was fine. He gave a talk, and he was one typical Ronald Reagan talk, by the way, before he came, he insisted there’d be no questions. And we told him, he told his staff, we don’t do it that way. There must be questions. Well, then they said, well, if there ought to be questions, we have the questions submitted in writing and have them looked at by the chairman. We don’t do it that way. We do it by questions from the floor. People ask whatever questions they want. So to make a long story short, he complied with all our rules, and it went just fine. And one of the things was to have those mattresses there after it was all over. And their official photographer sent photographs to everybody on the podium who had been seated with him. I have a couple of them I still have. We got a bill from the White House for. We sent a bill to the White House for $6,000 for the cushions, the mattresses that set up there. They sent back a very nice letter saying, we’re sorry, but this is not in our budget. And we sent a letter back saying, we’re sorry, but we only- We did it because you asked us to do it, and we feel it’s a proper expense for you to have. And they said, we’re sorry, we’re not going to pay it because this is something that’s one of our rules, that whoever sponsor has to provide adequate security for the president. This went on and on and on. And we debated about suing the White House, which we never did. And we paid the security $6,000. And in those days, that was 25, 30 years ago, $6,000 was a lot of money to the City Club, but we paid it and we learned a lesson.
Tom Humphrey [00:31:19] I hope several of the members that we’ve talked to already have talked about how periodically the sitting president of the City Club would call them, or if they were unfortunate enough to have their offices close to the City Club, the president of the club would come over to their office and ask them if they had just a little money to help tide the club over for a couple days or for a couple weeks.
Stanley Adelstein [00:31:45] The club had some very, very, very serious financial crises during the time that- When I first joined the club 64 years ago, there was a time when we had no executive director we could pay. And Peter De Leon, who’s now gone, a member of the hall of Fame, served as a pro bono, now charge as a City Club executive director to line of speakers. And he’d call many people from the City of Cleveland who were office holders to come talk. We kept the forums going every week, despite our financial problems. Kept them going one way or another, we did. And the idea of sharing space with the Women’s City Club was an excellent idea financially because all of our expenses were divided half and half. And that cut down a great deal of cost on our expense for whatever we did. Shared many personnel, so that cut down the space as well. Unfortunately, the Women’s City Club couldn’t even afford to pay its half about 25 or 30 years ago. Had to say, we can no longer pay half. We’re going to pay 40% and 30% and 5%. They said, we just have to leave. So we were left holding the bag on the entire thing with the entire lease, all the burdens of the lease on the City Club’s hands. That was the time, and I’m probably jumping a little bit chronologically, though, when we had a move from the Women’s City Club building, Women’s Federal Savings and Loan building, on Superior, we had to leave that space because that land also was being taken this time for a new structure by the big petroleum company, British Petroleum, which needed all that land. Fortunately, fortunately, at that time we had a lease. I say we, the Women’s and the Men’s City Club, had a lease with the owners of the building that gave us something like an additional 10 years to run from the time that BP wanted to take the building over. So they had to settle. In order to buy out a lease, you had to buy it out as a matter of negotiation. I was the chairman. Nelson Weiss was the president of Siegle at that time, my law partner. Go on now. And I was the chairman of the entire committee to work out the arrangement with BP to find a new location and to find a temporary location. And because we had that trump card, you might say. And also because in those days, as today, the petroleum companies were going great guns. BP was flush with money. We got a wonderful settlement worked out with them. Came close to something like seven or 800, a lot of money, 25 years ago. And we had a pullout, couldn’t stay. And we had the job then of finding a new location. And I was chairman of that committee to find a new location. And we searched all over Cleveland had a lot of negotiations with the Statler Hotel because they had a ballroom that was not being used. Turned out they were a little too difficult as a potential landlord to work out a good lease. We came very close, worked out a lot of time with the Hollenden building, Hollenden Hotel, which is no longer in existence where the Bank One building is now, couldn’t work that out. We had a potential deal with Cleveland State University, which at that time was talking about maybe someday having their campus extend westward to Playhouse Square, where that new building now exists, can’t think of the name of it. And we were very close to working out a deal with them. But at that time, it was just an idea for Cleveland State. They had no idea. They weren’t sure when they’d get the money from the State of Ohio. They weren’t sure how it would be worked. So there were too many amorphous things that couldn’t be fitted together. So we had to give up with Cleveland State University. Finally, we found the committee, found the Citizens Building where we are today. The entire second floor had been used as a warehouse for the Stone Shoe Company, which had a retail store on the first floor where Rite-Aid is, or CVS is, today. And that second floor was a complete disaster. It hadn’t been touched for years except to store shoes there. And we’re going to work on a lease with them. The problem was that the City of Cleveland said, how many people do you get these City Club meetings? He said, we sometimes get as many as 350. That’s the number we can accommodate. They said, That’s a lot of weight. Are we certain that the City Club, that that Citizens Building can accommodate that kind of weight on that space? I said, well, we think we can and we want you to prove it before we’ll allow you to give you a building permit to remodel that space. Well, how do you prove something like that? What you have to do is at your expense, bring in sandbags to that space on a Friday afternoon that aggregate the weight of the 350 people who will be there. I can’t figure it out, but 35,000, 40,000 pounds of weight. So we did that. And at that time I was chairman of the, Herb Kamm was the president of City Club, head of the Cleveland Press. And so we had a little party. Hope and I had a party for the board members and executive staff of the City Club and the Women’s City Club at the Racquet Club out here at Pepper Pike. And that weekend, we had it on Saturday night, and meanwhile, all that weight was there. We held our breath till Monday morning to see if the damn floor had collapsed or the sand come through. Fortunately, not a scintilla of sand came through. The floor was solid. And the City of Cleveland said, okay, go ahead. So we promptly spent a lot of money remodeling the s
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