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

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 space and getting it in shape. Meanwhile, we had to find a temporary space because we had to leave where we were. That was part of the deal. So I went and negotiated the people who were the operators of the Hollenden Hotel. And they had a very nice lunchroom there. And they also had a second floor ballroom. And they agreed to let us use the ballroom every Friday for our forums, which we did, and use the lunchroom downstairs every day for our lunches. So he could have the continuity having lunches. We moved the Soviet Table and stuff over there. So we had continuity in that first floor of the Hollenden Hotel. And that went on for almost five or six months and upstairs. And we spent a lot of money to recondition and retrofit the building not the way it is today, because that represents a another different program, but to make the move. And almost $800,000, $900,000 were received from the BP. We had a committee that met regularly. We invested that money not in securities stocks, but in high-class short-term bonds. In those days - I think Jimmy Carter was president - bonds were paying very high interest rates. It was not unusual to get- Bonds were paid 15, 16, 17, 18% interest. So the money grew to a million dollars over that period of time. And we used most of it to recondition the space and to make it what it became. And then we had some money left over. We turned over when it was all over, something like $100,000 to the City Club Forum Foundation, just separate corporate structure and the $100,000 to Women’s City Club at the time, both partners. So BP can be thanked for pushing us out from a very small, tiny quarter there in the Women’s Federal Building as a sort of a nothing kind of space function. But that was it. And you mentioned earlier about memorable forums, and one forum I’ll never forget while we’re in the Women’s Federal Building was when we brought Hope’s nephew, who was a very prominent psychiatrist named David Schwartz, located in San Francisco. He was an expert on cults. And 25 or 30 years ago, the cults were a very prominent thing in American life. Moonies were very prominent. And David came to speak to the City Club on deprogramming because he’d been hired by a number of prominent families in the Bay Area to help them get their children out of the cults, out of the Moonies gave an excellent talk. And I remember to this day we were with him just a couple of months ago. Two of my clients, I say my office clients, we have a number of clients, asked me if they could meet with David after the forum, talk to him about a personal matter. It turned out that they were talking to them, two disparate families about children they had who were in cults. They want his professional advice on how to get them out. That was a message meaningful, very meaningful forum, very meaningful forum. And it ranks among one of the top forums that we had because of its timeliness. The City Club has always tried to have timely, timely forums over the many, many years. It’s amazing how successful Jim Foster has been, our executive director, the last seven or eight, nine years has been. And so selecting speakers who, when they come to the Salt Lake City Club, there’s some important issue involving the subject they’re talking about. As recently as two years ago, we signed up Bishop Pillow to come, and we signed him up. We had no idea there’d be all the scandals involving the priests, involving sexual malpractices among the priests and whatnot. And he came right that very time. Just one example. There have been many, many examples like that of timely speakers. Another thing I should mention still some time on the tape, please, is a matter of the outdoor forums we used to have on Fridays in the park in the summertime. City Club has tried very hard to have the forums go continuously, 52 weeks a year. And the problem came in the summertime. And somebody thought, we’re having these forums anyhow on Superior and the Women’s Federal Savings and Loan Building. Why don’t we have them outdoors? There’s a beautiful outdoor park between the Cleveland Public Library and what was in the Plain Dealer building. Plain Dealer building is now in that park. Used to have picnic benches, and people came there and they packed their lunches and whatnot. So we had a City Club active member named Sidney Andorn, who at the time was a radio announcer and a columnist and a very articulate, bright man. And he served as chairman. And we’d have the physical setup in the park, much like we had at the Women’s Federal Savings and Loan building. We have a table there and speaker, and we have box lunches and that kind of thing. And have an outdoor forum. And people would have microphones, as you do, and take them among the people in the park, and they would ask questions. And it worked out pretty well for most of the summer. The only problem was, there were the damn buses. They wouldn’t have been superior. They not only belched a lot of smoke, which is a pollutant, which we still do to this very day, but they also made a lot of noise. And frequently, even though they had amplifiers in that little park area, it was difficult to hear the speaker. And from a radio standpoint, it was very difficult to get the speech carried by the radio. So after one summer of that, we decided no more of having them in the outdoor park. But we did decide to try something a little bit different. And this was just about the time we moved into the Citizens Building. So I’d have box lunches. We tried to save money all the time because money was a real problem. And we had box lunches available, either meat or whatever. Somebody would take your box lunch and you sit down at the table and have lunch and hear the talk on a Friday. Because those days, the entire restaurant operation was operated by the City Club. We had our own staff. We were running a restaurant as well as running a City Club. Also a financial disaster, because it’s very, very hard to run a restaurant profitably unless you have an active bar. And City Club members were never very active drinkers. They were thinkers, not drinkers. As a result, the bar never made any money, and the operation of the food lost a lot of money. I think a lot of them went out the back door with a help or whatever, so we had to give it up. We tried several different organizations that catered it, and they too, could not make enough money to survive. And the last few years, we’ve had what seems to be a pretty good relationship with the staccato who were handling the food operation. And it’s taken away from the City Club responsibility of hiring a chef and manager and all that kind of stuff. So we don’t. We’re simply involved in the City Club activities, which do not include a food operation for us anymore.

Tom Humphrey [00:45:53] And one of the other speakers mentioned kind of in the last, I guess, 15 or 20 years, there’s been a somewhat shift in the way the City Club has operated, in part because there’s been a larger influx of corporate money into the club.

Stanley Adelstein [00:46:14] Well, that’s probably true. As I say, money has always been a problem. I was the chairman during the club’s probably 70th anniversary year of an effort to raise major money for the club by what’s called funded forums. And I had a regular committee that met almost every week to talk about potential givers who could give $25,000 to have a forum every year in their name, most of them on a subject they would name and to have this go on in perpetuity. And that represented a lot of individual money, some from corporations. Hope and I gave $25,000 for a forum every year on the environment. A number of the banks gave money for different subjects, the economy or the presidency. I got some of our clients to give money. The Blum estate, represented by Joe Barrick, who’s now gone, a law partner of mine, gave $25,000. And some of the money did come from corporations. That’s true. We now have something like 36 forums that are funded forums, which means that during 36 weeks during the year, we have to have a form that fits into a subject that was selected. But that money gave the Forum foundation financial stability, which it never had before. And that enables the Forum foundation, which is a separate organization, has a separate corporate structure, a separate board, separate officers, enables it to each year give the City Club a subsidy, something like $890,000 a year to run the City Club. So, yes, there has been corporate money and also individual money coming in, but they’ve been very important for the City Club’s financial stability. In addition to that, we have special forums or sometimes sponsors sponsored by corporations, which also bring in special amounts, new amounts of money to the club. That’s true. The foundations themselves have given money. The Gun foundation raised $25,000 to have an annual memory, annual forum in memory of Jim Lipscomb, who was the president of the Gun foundation and the president of the City Club at one time, Cleveland foundation has been very generous. Also we have a forum named in memory of Steve Minter, who was the executive director of the Cleveland foundation up until many years ago. So it hasn’t just been corporate money. It’s been money from foundations, individuals, not all of whom are wealthy, but those who felt they wanted to do something to give the club some financial stability. I think maybe to a certain extent the club membership has changed a little bit in that we have a lot more younger people who are in the club who were before. It’s no longer a stuffy, old stodgy club. We have a lot of Young people’s group there, Young Leaders Group, which is a relatively new, I’d say the last 10, 15 years. We never had that before in the early days. And some of those young people are actually now on the board of the City Club. They attend board meetings. These young people were responsible. We tried very hard to get. We, the City Club tried very hard to get Peter Lewis to talk to the City Club. We never could get them to come. Somehow the young people, the New Leaders Group contacted Peter about a year ago to come to a special Friday forum, which would be called the Young Leaders Forum. How come? He said, I got. He came, we sold the place out. It was a sold out crowd. [00:50:30] He gave a wonderful talk, but the young people were able to do that. So the young people had been a very positive thing for the club because all of us were over. Our time was limited. We were going to be here, but we’re building up a new cadre of new people who are going to give the club a certain amount of enthusiasm and energy which we never had before. And I think that is good, right?

Tom Humphrey [00:50:58] This is the New Leaders Group that-

Stanley Adelstein [00:51:00] Pardon me.

Tom Humphrey [00:51:01] This is the new- Yeah, New Leaders.

Stanley Adelstein [00:51:03] New Leaders. New Leaders. That’s what we call it.

Tom Humphrey [00:51:06] It’s targeted at young professionals in the city and. And New Leaders pay a slightly lower rate to be a member of the club. And then once you’re 40, they kick you up to the full member. So last year they, personally, they summarily drummed me out of the New Leaders when I turned 40, pushed me out the door, you remember, that’s actually how I got into this.

Stanley Adelstein [00:51:36] Terrific.

Tom Humphrey [00:51:39] I wonder if I could ask you about a couple specific moments in the history of the City Club. We have a few minutes and then we’ll kind of wrap up. I guess one of the more memorable moments that for me personally, of course, I wasn’t there for it. Was when Bobby Kennedy talked the day. When Robert F. Kennedy talked, the day after morning Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. And I wondered if you were there or if you remember this as anything extraordinary or not.

Stanley Adelstein [00:52:15] I don’t really think I was there because I think if I were, I would remember the stories that are told about it and the stories- And again, this is sort of hearsay because I don’t recall personally being there either out of town or working hard on whatever workable, chargeable hours. But I do remember the story that he was unable to give his talk because he was so emotionally distraught by this horrible thing. I know we were away. In fact, we were in Washington. You see what had happened. I remember the city practically closed down. It made the terror warnings of Tom Ridge look like nothing because soldiers all over the place and there were embarkments and. And all kinds of sandbags piled against the Capitol steps because they were afraid of there being a demolition of the city by people who were so unhappy about the terrible tragedy. So, no, I was not in Cleveland for that event. And all I remember is the fact that he was unable to physically go on with the torrent because of the terrible thing that happened.

Tom Humphrey [00:53:15] And I guess around the same period, maybe a little later than that, I wondered if you were present during the Howard Metzenbaum, John Glenn.

Stanley Adelstein [00:53:26] I was. I’ll never forget that because Howard was a very, very popular lawyer. My vintage. And he’s still around. He’s still living. He’s probably about 88 years old now that lives in California or Florida most of the time. But any event, Howard was a very ambitious, articulate speaker, member of the state legislature in Ohio. And he wanted to become a United States senator. He had the personal funding to be able to fund a campaign. And his opponent was John Glenn. And the debate was held at the. I took my father down to here because such an impressive event. The debate was held down at the. One of the hotels because there were big, big crowd. And the telling moment came in that debate when John Glenn, who had been in the army all his life and had been an astronaut, and when Howard accused some debate about how to run a business and run a government. And Howard made the charge to John Glenn. You’ve never been in business. You’ve always been a government employee that turned off John Glenn, who came right back and told him what he had done in the army and astronaut and supposedly cost Howard the nomination because John Glenn was nominated and subsequently was elected to the United States Senator. In subsequent years, Howard Inouye made a comeback because he in turn was nominated and he defeated Taft in the present governor, or was it his father? I’m not really sure which one.

Tom Humphrey [00:55:04] His father.

Stanley Adelstein [00:55:04] His father defeated Taft and so Howard became a senator. But that debate was a seminal debate. A seminal debate. And debates have always been a real part of the City Club. We’ve tried very hard to get two sides to come and speak, but sometimes that’s difficult. George Voinovich has evaded coming to the. And on one occasion we had an empty chair because we invited him to come and he wouldn’t show up. And whoever was running against him at the time, I don’t remember who it was, was there, and it was just an empty chair. The same thing is happening this year. He’s refusing again to come speak to beat the City Club. And as a result, if we have the forum at all, it would be just the young man, Eric Fingerhut, who’s challenging him, and he will not show up. So. So debates are important. I had a very vivid. I’ll never forget the one we had between Dr. George White, who was a neurosurgeon at Metro General Hospital and a Catholic who was debating the whole issue of vivisection, the use of animals for testing for various types of tests involved disease and the anti vivisectionist. And George White had a very, very animated debate. This is also the Women’s Federal Building, and a very vivid, vivid time. Another debate we had, I’ll never forget, was involving the Skokie period in Illinois when there were protesters, Nazi protesters, walking through the streets of Skokie. And there were threats of fights and all that kind of thing. The debate was between Rabbi Rosenthal, the head of the Jewish temple in Cleveland Heights, and a friend of mine named Franklin Heyman, who was a former Clevelander, who was a speech professor at Northwestern University. And this also was held, remember this vividly, in the Women’s Federal Savings, had to be at least 20, 25 years ago, Rabbi Rosenthal was in favor of denying a permit for the people to march through Skokie. Professor Frank Hayman, who was an active member of the ACLU, was in favor, in the interest of free speech, of giving him the right. And Rabbi Rosenthal, who was more of an orator than he was a logical speaker, he physically went up to Frank Heyman, he had his fist and practically put it in his face and said, how can you be in favor of Nazis? And of course Frank Heyman is Jewish. They’re both Jewish. How can you be in favor of allowing Nazis to walk through the city of Skokie? That was a memorable moment in debate as well. They never came to actual fisticuffs, of course, but it was a showing of how deep the passions went on that issue. And the City Club has historically tried to have opportunities for such passions to be vent at forums. That’s been our mission, our creed, and we hope we don’t water it down as time goes on and people become more fixed in their ideas and more unwilling to hear the other side. But that’s been our tradition. Try and allow that kind of a strong feeling. One of the first forums that Jim Foster was in charge of when he was here was when the attorney for- Qhat’s the name of that Yugoslav man whose citizenship is taken away here in Cleveland? John Demjanjuk.

Tom Humphrey [00:59:00] Right.

Stanley Adelstein [00:59:01] His son-in-law, who’s an attorney, Lipovic, something like that, spoke to the City Club. This aroused a lot of strong feeling among some of the members that that man should not be given an opportunity to give his views because he was in effect defending somebody who’s accused of being Nazi guard. But the club stood firm. He spoke and the world survived. City Club survived. Didn’t have any adverse effect at all at the time. There were some very strong feelings. This should not happen. But the City Club has stood for freedom of speech, debates or otherwise that have been followed through all these many, many years.

Tom Humphrey [00:59:42] Do you think the City Club has followed that credo and continues to follow it?

Stanley Adelstein [00:59:49] I think we do. I think the questions have not become quite as pointed as they used to be. In the old days, the questions from the club were really pointed. Didn’t have what I call a geography question. A geography question is a simple soft question which the speaker. Oh, that’s a very good question. Thank you very much for asking it. And he goes on to give a little talk. The really good questions the City Club has been famous for are the ones that really challenge the speaker. Why did you say that? What about the other side? And really give it to him. I think there’s a little bit less of that now. [01:00:24] I’m not quite sure why it is. A few of us who still go to the forums try to have more of the challenging, combative questions, but somehow it doesn’t seem to have the same kind of a. And maybe it will come back. It depends upon the speaker often how challenging. We have speakers coming up this fall who are going to be very challenging. Whether Madeleine Albright or Henry Kissinger were coming. Or Condoleezza Rice. Who? Condoleezza Rice. Condoleezza Rice, certainly Howard Dean, who’s coming in three weeks, who’s written a book that’s very challenging of President Bush and certainly Ambassador Joe Wilson, who’s coming in October. These should inspire some very challenging questions. So we do have a wonderful forum committee which headed by a fine young man at Jones Day who tries to bring in comparative speakers. The problem really is money, because speakers who have a big following on a big, big fee, City Club pays no fee to anybody. We give them a round trip airline ticket from Continental and maybe hotel room and a lunch, but no fee. And that’s a very, very difficult thing to compete against. So it becomes more difficult, especially 52 weeks a year, to get controversial speakers who will come without being paid anything. But we try. I think what makes a city club great. When I joined the club, I was given a card that said, you now have membership privileges with 14 other city clubs throughout the country. I remember I had some legal matters in Atlanta, Georgia. Going to a City Club down there once, I think somewhere down in Oregon. Now, instead of 14, there only are three that are left. Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, the Detroit Economic Club, which is somewhat of a different kind of a club, and the Cleveland City Club. So unfortunately, the kind of clubs that fostered free speech and controversial ideas have withered away, dropped out. And Cleveland City Club, to its credit, is still in existence and it’s still going strong. Financially. It’s stronger than it’s ever been before because mainly of these funded forums with 3300 forums and now they cost $50,000 used to only cost $25,000, but the last five cost $50,000. We now have a big forum fund of almost $800,000 that’s grown and is invested that provides the financial security for the club. And we have slimmed it down in the way of various finer efficiencies. So I think the club will continue and will survive, albeit there are different kinds of challenges.

Tom Humphrey [01:03:31] Why do you think the other clubs have. I’m sure that there are some financial risks reasons why some of the other clubs have withered on the vine kind of so to speak.

Stanley Adelstein [01:03:39] But why do you think the other.

Tom Humphrey [01:03:40] Clubs have faded away? Do you think there’s a larger. Well, I’ll just leave it at that.

Stanley Adelstein [01:03:45] Part of the reason is city clubs are basically city clubs. They’re in the core of the city. But so many American cities, just as Cleveland have had a great exodus of the reasons that people work in the city, many of the employers no longer are in the city proper and they’ve moved out of the suburbs, go to Atlanta Georgia, where I went to this old City Club, and the city is honeycombed with all these highways that just take people in and out of the city. But they’ve had a great exodus of many of the big employers from the inner core of the city outside. As a result, people who live outside the city find it more time consuming and more difficult to come to a forum, even if it’s held on a weekday, still means by the forum itself lasts an hour lunch with anything else and getting there a couple hours. As a result, it’s hard for some of these cities to support a club. A City Club has the same challenges, really, because we have the same exodus. We’ve had a lot of devoted people. Cleveland’s always had a history of committed people who care. And as a result, we’ve survived and I think we will survive.

Tom Humphrey [01:05:03] I guess I wanted to ask you, I’ve asked some of the other people we’ve interviewed, so I’m going to try and be consistent and hit some highlights. If I might get you to talk a little bit about the award given to Antonin Scalia maybe about a year and a half ago or two years.

Stanley Adelstein [01:05:19] Ago, a very controversial matter because it was a Freedom of Speech award. And when we originally offered the award to him and he accepted it, we thought it would be a regular forum with all the things with a regular forum. And then subsequently, after we issued the invitation, we learned from his staff that he would not permit recording or televising of his speech. And the questions, because he didn’t do that for the Supreme Court hearings, he didn’t want to, and his rules were that the way it would be. We were faced with a bit of a dilemma as to what do you do when somebody getting a Freedom of Speech award sets rules that are quite contrary to the freedom of speech? And we’re going to tell the Supreme Court justice that we’re sorry, but under those circumstances, we withdrawing the offer. Some of us, including myself, although I didn’t have the courage to say it at the time, in retrospect, felt that that should have been our position. But others felt we’d already made a commitment and we issued the invitation and we’d work it out somehow. So we went ahead with it. We got a lot of adverse publicity about it, a lot of adverse publicity. I’ve had at least three friends from different parts of the country send me newspaper articles in their home communities as diverse as San Francisco and New York, criticizing the City Club and poking fun at us. I think one of the news magazines, Newsweek or Time. So we took a lot of gaffe for it, a lot of unpleasantries for it, and I regret that very much because our whole tradition is freedom of speech. But it was done. He came, he answered questions. I didn’t go, I didn’t want to go because I felt philosophically it was opposed to what I felt was important. But there were, I think a large crowd, crowd there, four or 500 people, 600 people. He is a prominent jurist, believe him or not. Brilliant man, partner Jones day. But that was the story. It was done. Hopefully it will never happen again. We’ll never be confronted with that kind of a thing. And if we do, I hope we have the courage to at that time stand up and say, I’m sorry, but this is our club, these are our principals. And we tried to somehow ameliorate it by saying something about. This was not a regular forum, it’s a special event that’s tied in with the freedom of speech. But I think it was a bit of a rationalization, trying to make it sound right.

Tom Humphrey [01:08:09] The justice took some publicity later. Antonin Scalia took some publicity later because he gave a speech at a high school, I think in Alabama, where he kicked out the student newspaper, was there to record the event and a student operated television station was there to film the event. He instructed his people to remove them from the gymnasium.

Stanley Adelstein [01:08:41] Well, he was consistent. I guess that’s a virtue he, he scores on that he has two strikes in. He was consistent, that’s for sure. One more thing I want to tell you about. SID Club for many years sponsored overseas travel and hope. And I went on, I think the very first trip and this was done during the time of the Soviet Union, so that would be at least 15, 20 years ago. And we were scheduled to go. We had about 40 people signed up to go. And then just two months before we were supposed to go, there was a terrible, terrible calamity at Chernobyl. And we polled the people who were going, should we go, shouldn’t we go? About half said we should go and about half said, no, we don’t want to go. Too much of a health danger. So we postponed it. We did not go. We funded everybody his or her money and the following year we advertised it again. And most of the people who wanted to go the first time decided to go the second time. And we went and it was a wonderful experience. We had a meeting with the American, not the embassy, but the consulate in Leningrad and spent some time in Moscow. And Alan Davis, who was the executive director, went with us. Very well-arranged. It was a memorable trip. And then for a number of years thereafter, we sponsored trips together with a travel agency in Cleveland. I can’t think of the name right now. To other parts of the world, including London and to France when you’re. And I think to Czechoslovakia. And that went on. It was a bit of a fundraiser for the club and also another layer of a different kind of activity. But then we gave it up because it did involve a lot of staff time and putting it together and a lot of planning. We felt it was. Couldn’t spare a lot of additional time, so instead we’ve augmented the City Club to have a lot of weekday forums and a lot of special events that we never had in the old days. In the old days, the only event we had was on Saturday and then on Friday. But there was no such thing as weekday forums, no such thing as five o’ clock forums, which we now have for young people. So the club has- I think one of the reasons we have survived is we’ve adjusted ourselves to the times. What’s a different day, different type of additional type of activities for other people that we can involve, but we never change from the basic principle. The speaker speaks for a half an hour, which is what it was when I first joined the club. Then there’s a half an hour of questions, and they’re not written questions. The Commonwealth Club, and we’ve been to a forum of the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. They don’t have their own. They have a beautiful space they occupy in a building, but their forums are held in a hotel, so they don’t have a problem with food. But the questions are all submitted in writing. They get a whole package of questions that come to the president and the president looks through them and he decides which ones are duplications, which ones are the most relevant, and he reads those questions that he selects. And that’s the way it is, as we never have that we always insist upon the questions being hands raised, supposedly first raised, first to call upon. And some of the questions can literally be off the wall, as you’ve heard. I’m sure Rachel will tell you she’s heard something too. You can’t understand them, just whatever they are. And they’re cockeyed. And some of them are irrelevant, some are irrelevant. But sometimes you learn a lot about a speaker, the way he handles and irrelevant, irreverent question. I always felt there’s no question. It’s a dumb question because he’s not the speaker. Does he ridicule the person Involved. There’s a famous, famous story that goes before my time was a man named Colonel McCormick who was the publisher of the Chicago Tribunal and a very, very ultra conservative American. The days when they really had conservatives publisher who came to speak to City Club and somebody asked him a challenging question about some world event, I don’t remember what it was, probably in the ’20s. And the man asked it in broken English, obviously a foreign accent, whether he was a newcomer whatever, whatever. And Colonel McCormick in responding gave a very disrespectful answer to him in which he said, I can sort of tell by the way in which you speak, you’re not a true American or something like that. But it was a disgusting type of answer. I think he was booed by it. But that’s why I say that the City Club is unique in that it permits any kind of a question from anybody. New member, old member, non member, who’s a guest. We encourage that kind of thing. And that’s what gives the City Club. In my judgment, it’s real raison d’etre. That’s the right phrase, reason for being. Because it is something very unique, especially in these days, when to have an opposite viewpoint about something is practically a heresy amongst some people. But to say encouraged that kind of thing, and I hope we will continue it, continue the kind of forums I’ve been talking about that we’ve had.

Tom Humphrey [01:14:29] Okay. I want to let you talk about other things, if you have other things that you want to talk about for a couple minutes and then I think we’ll wrap it up. We’ve taken up almost an hour and a half of your, of your morning.

Stanley Adelstein [01:14:43] I’ll go through my notes here, see what I can read, for one thing, which is another problem.

Tom Humphrey [01:14:50] I suffer the same.

Unknown Speaker [01:15:01] How you doing?

Stanley Adelstein [01:15:02] Well, I think I’m running out of ideas. I’m coming to the end here.

Unknown Speaker [01:15:06] May I get you anything?

Tom Humphrey [01:15:08] No, I think we’re fine. I think we’re almost done. So I think-

Unknown Speaker [01:15:16] Did he do well?

Tom Humphrey [01:15:18] He did fabulous. Absolutely fabulous.

Stanley Adelstein [01:15:20] I’ll step out of the room. You can talk freely.

Rachel Estrin [01:15:23] Can I ask you another question?

Stanley Adelstein [01:15:24] Anything, sure.

Rachel Estrin [01:15:25] Before we had weekday forums and special programs, etc., you had discussed that there was only the Friday or Saturday Forum.

Stanley Adelstein [01:15:35] Yes.

Rachel Estrin [01:15:36] What events went on in the City Club? In the building that housed the City Club during the week? Did anyone go attend the building?

Stanley Adelstein [01:15:46] Well, luncheons were held, served every day. And luncheons were more than just a 45-minute grab a snack or run. They were long periods where people sat around and talked. They weren’t concerned about chargeable hours as a lawyer, very aware of that kind of stuff. But they just were leisurely luncheons. They talked and talked and talked. And it was not unusual after I get a day off my school, go down there and see somebody still talking at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, sitting around the table and just gossiping about- In addition, they had the club room upstairs where they played cards all the time. They had a billiard room there too, now that I think about it. They played billiards. So it was like a club. It had more of a social amenity to it. And the rest of the time it was truly empty, but it was a warm, cozy kind of a place. Those stained-glass windows and generally they had beams up on top, not white beams. They had old, old oak beams that were probably from a barn somewhere. So maybe they took them down, but had a cozy look to it. People just came there just to sit around upstairs and after lunch and to talk and play cards. There were a lot of retirees in those days. And they had a leisurely pace. It wasn’t quite as rapid a pace as it is today. So it kept going on a very leisurely kind of a basis. Something was happening there, but it wasn’t a formal program. It was just drop-in kind of thing.

Rachel Estrin [01:17:13] Right. I see.

Stanley Adelstein [01:17:15] I did not talk about the Anvil Revue. Has anybody talked about that?

Tom Humphrey [01:17:20] No, a couple people have alluded to it, but if you’d like to talk about it, that would be great.

Stanley Adelstein [01:17:25] Oddly enough, we had dinner last night with Jack Pawlowski and I told him what I was doing today. Oh, my God, he said, I was in that Anvil Revue for over 20 years. I said, what did you do, Jack? What did I do? He said, I almost lost my job on account of it. What do you mean? Well, I was paying literally a thousand hours maybe in rehearsals and getting ready for it and practicing it. My boss told me, you got to make a choice here. He was just a young aspiring architect. Then you’ve got to spend more time here at our firm or you’ve got to spend more time at the City Club. Because the Anvil Revue was a special, special production that the City Club, unlike maybe any other city in the country, except maybe the Gridiron Club in Washington, spent a full year of time getting ready for a performance of was truly almost professional. They had an orchestra, they had chorus. They had Barclay Leatham, who was at that time the head of the drama department at Western Missouri University. They had Walter Belding, who was a professional musician. And they had people from various props from the Eldred Hall, the theater at Western Reserve University, who volunteered their time. And literally dozens of City Club members would be part of this program. And the program consisted mainly of a number of acts centering around a mythical character named Ben Sapp, S-A-P-P, played by a wonderful two talented lawyer named Harold Glickman, G-L-I-C-K-M-A-N, and he wore a derby, a tight-fitting suit with a vest. And he was sort of a caricature, a simple, simple American who was basically trying to figure out what was going on in his country and throughout the world. And there were many scenes built around that character who appeared throughout it all. In the process, there would be all kinds of lampoons about world figures who were impersonated by City Club members. And there were no women in the show in those days. It was like a Shakespearean performance. And City Club members would played the part of Frances Bolton, a very prominent woman congressman in Cleveland, Republican Frances Perkins, who was the Secretary of Labor during Franklin Roosevelt’s time. And these productions were preceded by literally days and nights of careful, careful rehearsal. [inaudible]

Tom Humphrey [01:20:20] Can I stop you for just one second? I’m gonna put in a new- [recording ends and resumes]

Stanley Adelstein [01:20:26] Are you okay?

Tom Humphrey [01:20:27] Yes.

Stanley Adelstein [01:20:27] Preceded by literally hundreds of hours of rehearsal in which very prominent Clevelanders would give up their time. They’d have dinner at the City Club in this building that we had on Vincent Avenue in those days. Have dinner, dinner there. They give them free drinks and they would rehearse and practice their lines and their dance steps. [01:20:54] And they had choreography and they had choruses, they had solos, all with live music and costumes. And they were considered so good that the performances were put on in the. For a while in the Cleveland Music hall, which seats a lot of people, 3,000 people. Auditorium. And the ones that I used to go to, they were held at the Masonic Auditorium at 36th in Euclid.And there were three performances. The Friday evening performance was for men and women. And it was like a dress rehearsal. Saturday had a matinee only for women. Could tend talk about the women and men thing. And Saturday night was only for men. And usually it was sold out. Certainly Saturday night was sold out. And City Club tried very hard to get most of the people who were being lampooned in the club to come. They were called the Goats, G-O-A-T-S, and I remember when they came in, there would be a blast of trumpets, fanfare of some kind. Live again. And they stand up the mayor of the city of Cleveland has arrived. Frank Lausche in Atlanta. Congresswoman Bolton has arrived. Very prominent Republican congresswoman. Her family home is where the legacy now is. That was the Bolton estate. She followed her husband, Chester Bolton, who had been a congressman when she died. Her son, Oliver Bolton, who went to law school with me, was congressman. So they had a whole dynasty of congressmen. And she would come, and that was half the fun of it. The senators would come. Senator Buckley would come. He was the Democratic senator. I remember him attending often. Taft would often attend. Probably Robert Taft at that time was the United States Senator from Ohio. And these shows were outstanding. I took my father down to see the men’s show several times. He loved them. He had a great time seeing this show because there were so many wonderful things that happened. And the story was they were basically written by a man named Carl Friedland, who was a wiry old federal bankruptcy judge who really had a great sense of humor, very cryptic and quick and clever. And then the lyrics were written by Joe Newman. And Joe Newman was the owner of a big sports store in Cleveland called Newman Stern, which used to be located in downtown Cleveland at 12th Street and Chester, spread all over his family name, Newman. And he, incidentally, is the uncle of Paul Newman, who never belonged to City Club. We’ve been trying to get him to come speak to City Club without success. But anyhow, Joe Newman was a very talented man, very witty member of the Oakwood Country Club and brought a lot of class to the City Club programs. People of that caliber were in the club. I remember learning at Han Lozier, a very prestigious silk stocking law firm, and Allen Geismer, a graduate of Yale and Harvard College. His widow still lives in Cleveland. Bobby Geismer, he played the part of the first ambassador. He was very suave and he could speak French. And the club had characters like that who really were talented. They spent prodigious amounts of time working on it, making the show into a real talented type of event, a big event. The City Club became famous for that. Some of the tapes are still there. In the City Club archives can be seen. This went on for many, many, many years until the problem became, probably just after World War II, that people again were becoming more limited with their time for pro bono activities. And they couldn’t afford it. Just like Jack Botolowski told me last night, his boss told him, he do the City Club of your job. He had to give it up. So there was a big gap where we had no annual reviews whatsoever. Maybe 15, 20 years. And then, in connection with our big anniversary, we decided to put on a new type of Anvil Revue as a City Club Forum on a Friday. And Bob Conrad, who was at that time the owner of WCLV and a very talented band put together a number of creative people to write the lyrics and the words for dialogue involving a show that would be put on on a Friday at lunchtime with about eight or 10 people who would read their lines, not memorize them. The City Club annual reviews, nobody read a line. It was all like a stage show. But these people read their lines and they were very funny. We had them for two or three years and we had to give those up too, because even those took a lot of time and a lot of effort. Not nearly as much time as did the traditional Anvil Revue, but they took time, so we stopped that. And then I think just a couple years ago we had one more again. And Larry Robinson, who died shortly after that, was in the show. As for other people who are now gone, Hugh Danaceau, who was now gone, was in the show. I remember that very well. And Bob Conrad’s wife was in it and a number of other talented people. So the Anvil Revue, though, has come to an abrupt end. The traditional Anvil Revue, even this abbreviated revue, is short-lived. Maybe we’ll have it again for one of our anniversaries. I hope I’m around to see it. But it was a wonderful way of publicizing the club. Publicizing what Rudy, Jack Raper and that bull put together a long time ago, which was taking some of the public figures who think of themselves as being sacrosanct and bringing them down to earth. That’s really what it did in a very clever, clever, clever way.

Tom Humphrey [01:27:11] So the three shows were all the same shows.

Stanley Adelstein [01:27:15] The claim is that the show for men only had a few so-called obscenities. Now, obscenities in those days were probably nothing at all compared to what the secretary of vice president may say occasion, even the potential wife of the president. I mean, obscenities. And those days were a little nothings. But in any event, the night show was supposed to be a little more so. I don’t know, I never went to any show but the night show. And the story is that although no women were allowed in that show on Saturday night, I’m told by some people who said they were party to it, they dressed up women at times as men and brought them into the show. So there were a few women in attendance on Saturday night, clandestinely, secretly. And had we Known we’d have put them out promptly, sure. But there were some. There were some there. But that goes back to the time when there were no women in the City Club. There were questions you asked previously.

Tom Humphrey [01:28:32] Right.

Stanley Adelstein [01:28:45] Story is told, when the final show was held, they used to have a party. One of the members had a big estate up in Gates Mills or somewhere, and they’d have all the cast come out there for a big celebration of it. It’s about a week or two after the last show was held, they had a big party of cast members only. It was really like a big fraternity. They had a lot of camaraderie going on that time. And it was at that point a week after the show was over that Carl Friedland began to regularly sit down with Joe Newman and write down the thing that was going to be in the following year’s show. It worked out literally for a year ahead, but it made the show something very, very special. Didn’t talk at all about the special event we had about 15, 20 years ago for our big, big anniversary. We had over a thousand people came to a special Saturday night event. Again at this, I think it was a Renaissance hotel. And at the time, Bill Westendick was president of the City Club and I was the president of the Forum Foundation. And Rena Blumberg and Paul Unger - both of them are in the Hall of Fame, both of them are living - were the chairmen of this very, very special event. Has anybody talked about this event? No, we haven’t gone into world famous speakers who came to Cleveland. And Rena and Paul were able to get eight different organizations to pay their fees. That’s one time we paid fees to come to Cleveland, each of whom was to talk for no more than five minutes about whatever subject he or she wanted to. One was Phil Donahue. One was governor. What’s the name of the governor of New York State who gave the keynote address?

Tom Humphrey [01:30:47] Mario Cuomo?

Stanley Adelstein [01:30:48] Mario Cuomo. That’s two. One was not Warren Buffett, but someone of that caliber, a big, big man in corporate finance who came anyhow. This was a singular event and it was something I’ll never forget. And Paul and Rena gave it a lot, a lot of energy and time to put it together. And the arrangement was Cleveland Clinic sponsored one of the speakers. I forgot who it was they brought in. And the arrangement was that by sponsoring a speaker and paying whatever his or her fee was, they had the speaker all day to come to that organization to come to Cleveland Clinic and meet with the physicians and staff or whatever. And likewise then that speaker would be available for the five-minute talk. It’s amazing what they were able to say in five minutes. I don’t know if I got Phil Donahue and- What’s the governor’s name again?

Tom Humphrey [01:32:00] Mario Cuomo.

Stanley Adelstein [01:32:02] Mario Cuomo. At that time there had been in Cleveland, in South Euclid, a very, very unusual sex club. This couple put on a thing whereby they brought in men and women, anybody who wanted to come, they exchange partners, had all kinds of stuff going on there. And Phil Donahue said, Mario, I want you to hear about this activity. At that time, Cuomo was thinking of running for president. Very unusual club that’s being held right here outside of Cleveland, South Euclid. And I can guarantee you three things if you go to that place out there, [inaudible]. First of all, he said, you’ll have a great time, he said [laughs], and second of all, people probably know who you are, something like that. The third thing is you forget about running for president if you go there. [laughs] [inaudible] There were much more weighty things said by the others, much more significant. He said something very significant, too. Can’t remember what they were. But, subsequent years, his wife came and spoke to City Club, Thomas.

Tom Humphrey [01:33:14 Marlo Thomas?

Stanley Adelstein [01:33:15] Phil Donahue’s wife.

Tom Humphrey [01:33:1]5 Marlo Thomas?

Stanley Adelstein [01:31:16] Marlo Thomas, right. She had been doing a play at the Cleveland Play House and she came and gave a wonderful talk on the arts. We try to capitalize on people- We try to get speakers who have people who have contact with them and have them come into the Cleveland. And that’s one of the guest speakers. I brought in a number of people whom I’ve known by chance or whatever over all the years. And my most recent effort, unsuccessful for the last six years, is to bring Robert Redford to Cleveland. Hope and I met him at Sundance in Idaho. Idaho? Utah, Utah. A number of years ago. And I’ve had correspondence with him for about the last six years inviting him to come. And each year he’s making a movie. [01:34:05] But I keep writing to him and Jim Foster says someday you’ll get him standing, just keep a heap after him. [laughs] But that would be a memorable talk, too, if we get him.

Tom Humphrey [01:34:16] Mm hm. Yeah. You were there for the film festival, the Sundance Film Festival?

Stanley Adelstein [01:34:22] No, we love the national parks and science and Bryce throughout that area. And Sundance is an unusual resort, but it’s not a resort in the traditional sense in that it has many cabins that are very lovely. That’s where we stayed, and a lovely little dining room that Redford resigned. But basically it’s there because he tries to bring in a lot of young aspiring artists, whether they’re in theater and dance or cinema. And he brings in some of his friends from some of the professional artists to help teach them. We were there when the people were there from the Milagro Beanfield, were there making that movie. And by chance I met his lawyer who was there. And I told him about the City Club of Cleveland and asked him if by any chance I could talk to Redford. He said, well, he’s very busy. We’ll see what we can do. The following morning we’re having breakfast in this little restaurant and two joggers came by wearing sunglasses. One went up to me and said, I heard we want to buy some real estate out here. What? And he took off his sunglasses and it was Redford. And I told him all about the City Club and Cleveland. He said, well, let me know, I’ll see what I can do. So he’s very involved in the environment and so are we. He does it on a grand scale. He brings people out there and has environmental conferences and all that kind of thing. So I wanted to get him to come speak about the environment. We have an annual forum on the environment. He claims he came to Cleveland about 15 years ago and was here when the Ohio River was on fire. He called me to see if he could get something on a short notice. We didn’t have, what do you call it, an answering recording machine on our phone at the time. And we never knew he was here. So since installed one, he never called again. I keep writing them periodically. That’s sort of the fun of it, though. I’m trying to get the head of BP, a man named Sir John Brown. He used to be a Clevelander. BP has offices here. He, believe it or not, is a very strong environmentalist and he’s done a lot of wonderful things for the environment, including changing the name of BP from British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum, changing all the emblems to be green. And although they do a lot of terrible stuff - they’re drilling all over the world - they still are doing a lot in the way of manufacturing solar collectors. They have a special division that does that, BP. And I’ve been trying to get him to come and he’ll come, he said, but it just has now to work it out timewise. But that’s the way we get speakers. A lot of members of the club have various kind of contacts through all kinds of things and we try to utilize those. And this new man is not new member Sanjiv Kapur, who’s the chairman of our Forum committee has a wonderful committee, about 20 different people, and each of them has some different kind of input. And they’re all working on speakers all the time. So they’re trying to get people in. Hopefully they’ll be able to get some.

Tom Humphrey [01:37:17] Well, I guess we’ve taken up a lot of your time, so if there’s anything else, I don’t want to push you too far.

Stanley Adelstein [01:37:24] No, no. How about the debate tournament?

Tom Humphrey [01:37:27] Sure. Was it a tournament among City Club members or

Rachel Estrin [01:37:32] The high School debate- [crosstalk]

Tom Humphrey [01:37:33] That’s right.

Stanley Adelstein [01:37:34] For many years, high schools have had debate teams. They had sort of a casual competition like the football leagues, that kind of stuff. But about 10, 15 years ago, they blended together to have a real, much more structured type of a tournament. And somehow Baker Hostetler, big law firm, said, we’ll help to sponsor something. The City Club will have the finals of this tournament at the club on a regular Friday forum. We said, sure. And as a result, they have all the events for the entire year that starting out in October, going all the way through until about March, when the two finalists are chosen from all over the city. And they then bring their two finalists come to the club. And we have a special forum, it’s devoted to the debate, special rules for that. Each have so many minutes to speak and counter stuff and all that. And then they wind it up with the- Is our time over here? Do we, dear? [01:38:41]

Unknown Speaker [01:38:41] What?

Stanley Adelstein [01:38:42] How much longer do we have in this room? [crosstalk] You want this room back? Are we overstaying our lease?

Unknown Speaker [01:38:54] No, I’m sure he did fine.

Stanley Adelstein [01:38:55] We’re practically done. You can have lunch shortly. But in any event, we’re talking about debates. So they have the finals here at the City Club, and the finalists come. Have you ever been to one of those?

Rachel Estrin [01:39:07] I’ve never been to one, actually. I’ve never been to one, but I do know a lot of the people who have competed.

Stanley Adelstein [01:39:16] Right. It’s considered a big, big thing. We have a great big Loving Cup we give to that team that wins, and they prepare for it and they bring their parents, their relatives, and they cheer them on and they- [inaudible]

Unknown Speaker [01:39:27] Steven Wiesenberger.

Stanley Adelstein [01:39:28] City Club. The young man who has a job you have. He’s the intern named Wiesenberger. [crosstalk] Weisenberger. Bobby Wiesenberg. He came when he was a little younger than you, and he used to- He was in high school at the time.

Rachel Estrin [01:39:41] Oh, Rob. [crosstalk] Yes.

Stanley Adelstein [01:39:44] His ambition was to be in the City Club Debate because he heard it when he was in high school, junior high school or something. [crosstalk] Anyhow, he not only came, he won, and the whole story. But that’s become a big event once a year. And a lot of people come who never come to any other event. And some don’t come at all because they don’t like it. But some do come. It’s not heavily attended for them, but it’s an interesting event. It’s an event to get young people involved. And part of that, I should say, before we quit, is that we worked out a program. I helped to get the funding for that from the Blum estate from the barrack again, to bring together students from high school to come as our guests on a Friday during the school year. And we bring together almost every Friday during the school year, anywhere from a dozen to 30 or 40 students from diversified schools throughout the Greater Cleveland area who come as our guest. They sit together and they mix together, different tables and whatever, and they hear the speaker. They can ask questions to the speaker. And then after this forum is over, the speaker will meet with them, a little room in the back, and they will have a chance to ask questions. And I’ve been to some of those. Sometimes, frankly, the students’ questions are just as challenging. And not geography questions by any means. They really challenge the speakers. And that, again, is one of the outreach programs of the club, which has developed over the last 15, 20 years. And we’re very proud of that. It gives a certain amount of continuity, again, to people who otherwise would have no involvement at all in the City Club. But I knew no such thing as students coming down. But here it’s a structured way, and we have one person on the staff. The City Club tries to arrange this, make sure they get people from different schools over the school year. And that’s a big, big program.

Tom Humphrey [01:41:37] I’ve seen plenty of- I’ve seen a lot of the student tables at the forums.

Stanley Adelstein [01:41:42] Sure. [crosstalk] Sure. And we introduce them. Whoever’s presiding will introduce them during the intermission, during the time between the speech and the questions that we have with us, and please stand up and that kind of stuff. And also we have another special event that’s held three times a year at the club called a student forum, in which, if you’ve ever been to one of those, in which students from the high schools select a speaker on a weekday and they invite the speaker. We have certain funding that helps to pay for that, was obtained from some of the foundations in Cleveland, maybe some corporations as well. And the students run the entire event. They serve as the chairman, they introduce the speaker. They have students carry around the microphone as Rachel does when she’s there. And they run the entire program. It’s called a special student forum held three times a year for the last, probably at least the last 8 or 10 years. Again a new type of a program. Something entirely different than we had, 1941–42.

Tom Humphrey [01:42:56] Opens it up. It brings a different perspective.

Stanley Adelstein [01:42:58] Different perspective. A whole new atmosphere through the club. We try to utilize the facility we have now all the time. Really something going on all the time. Where are my notes? Asking you some questions.

Tom Humphrey [01:43:17] I don’t- Do you have any questions? We’ve gone through the questions. I want to thank you for doing this and for taking such a chunk of your morning and helping us out with this. We’ll make copies of this on a CD and send one out to you. As soon as I figure out how to do that. It’s the next step in my own evolution. But I’m going to turn this off.

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