We caught up with Valerie McCall, Cleveland’s Chief of Government Affairs, as she and about a dozen other people representing the city waited to board the plane. 

McCALL:  “We’re going so we can see first hand what will be expected of us as we host the games.”

This year’s games begin Saturday and conclude the following weekend. About 10,000 athletes from more than 70 countries will compete in close to three dozen sports.  McCall says the delegation is required to participate in certain events. 

McCALL:  “There’s opening ceremonies, closing ceremonies… we have to officially receive the flag, which is a big thing because it lets us know that it comes to our city after this.”

Others along on the trip include staff from the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission and Positively Cleveland, as well as the Rock and Roll Hall of fame, the Akron Convention and Visitors’ Bureau, and corporate sponsor Equalsurance.

City officials expect the 2014 Gay Games to draw more than 100,000 athletes and spectators to Cleveland. 

Ohio Secretary of State spokesman Kevin Kidder says that while voters should take care to prevent these errors in the first place, mistakes can be fixed.

KIDDER: “If there is an error by the voter, the board will contact so that the voter has a chance to come down to their office, correct the error in person and we can make sure that vote’s counted.”

County elections officials in Columbus say simpler rules would cut down on slip-ups.  Any changes would be up to the Ohio Legislature.

In the early hours of July 19, a Germantown (Tennessee) dispatcher received a 911 call from former Cleveland Cavalier center Lorenzen Wright’s cell phone.

The dispatcher heard a garbled male voice utter an expletive, then at least 10 gunshots.

“Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?” the dispatcher asked.

Then the phone went dead.

The dispatcher called back. No one answered.

Nine days later, Wright’s body was found in a wooded area of southeast Memphis, two law enforcement sources confirmed Wednesday afternoon.

The former basketball star went missing on July 19, just hours before he was supposed to ride back to his townhouse in the Atlanta area with a friend and his six children.

Hundreds of Wright’s friends and fans, including kids on bicycles and women pushing strollers, rushed to the scene Wednesday where the body was found, in an area across the road from the TPC Southwind golf course near Hacks Cross and Winchester. Cars lined Hacks Cross as far as the eye could see, some with their lights flashing.

Some people cried and watched as a news helicopter circled overhead. Some took photos of police officers and each other with cell phones.

Police cars stopped onlookers from getting too close to the crime scene as they walked up the winding road of a planned office park nearby. One officer said the scene reminded him of the day Elvis died, when fans flocked to the gates of Graceland.

The Wright family issued a statement Wednesday night through a cousin of Wright, Camella Logan.

“Lorenzen’s family has come together to mourn his loss and honor his legacy,” the statement said. “We appreciate your thoughts, prayers and condolences as they are comforting at this very difficult time. Additionally, we ask that you please respect our privacy as we try to cope with his sudden loss.”

Wright’s mother, Deborah Marion, arrived at the scene Wednesday night with a handful of family members. She crossed the crime scene tape and tried to talk to police when she was told to move back.

Eventually, two officers let her through. She started running down the road toward the crime scene before being stopped by an officer.

She spoke with police, then walked straight to a van without speaking to anyone.

Marion lived nearby and Wright often used the little-known road through the wooded area—known as Callis Cutoff—as a shortcut to her home.

“RIP Memphis Tiger alum Lorenzen Wright,” former Tiger Chris Douglas-Roberts, now of the Milwaukee Bucks, posted on his Twitter account.

Wright, 34, described by friends as a dedicated father, leaves behind two daughters and four sons, ages 4 to 15.

He visited his children July 18 at his former wife’s home in Collierville. He was supposed to meet them the next day to take them back to his home in an affluent northern suburb of Atlanta so they could spend the rest of the summer with him, said family friend Jeremy Orange.

The children had spent most of the summer with their father, who took them to the movies, amusement parks and the swimming pool and helped them with their basketball skills, Orange said.

Wright had asked Orange to drive the children to their mom’s Memphis home July 16 because oldest daughter Loren, 14, was competing in a beauty contest. Orange said Wright, known to friends as “Ren,” hugged each child and gave Loren a kiss goodbye as they left the Atlanta area.

Wright, who hadn’t been scheduled to come to Memphis, could be spontaneous.

His roommate, Michael Gipson, dropped him off at the Atlanta airport to fly to Memphis on July 18, and Wright planned to catch a ride back with Orange and his children the next day, Gipson said.

Antavio Brigance, Wright’s longtime barber, said Wright came into his shop not long before he disappeared.

“He was laughing, cheerful and bubbly,” he said.

After his haircut, Wright left with a friend in a silver, older-model Chrysler 300, said Brigance, who declined to describe the other person in the car.

According to the missing-persons report filed by his mother, Wright was last seen leaving his former wife’s house on Whisperwood Drive at about 2 a.m. July19.

Four days later, the family reported the disappearance of the 6-foot-11 power forward to Collierville police.

One factor that could have put him in jeopardy: He was known to carry a wad of cash, according to the missing-persons report.

“He had been toting some money at the barbershop,” Brigance said.

Orange estimated Wright was carrying between $2,000 and $3,000 in big bills. Police have not said if robbery is a possible motive in the slaying.

His friends have said they don’t know why anyone would harm Wright.

“He’s a relaxed person. I’ve never seen him mad or upset,” Orange said. “I’ve known people from the NBA who are real stuck-up and cocky. That man is not like that.”

Gipson agreed.

“I don’t think he had any enemies,” he said.

Wright recently had endured some tough times, with a fractured thumb that had halted his NBA career, financial woes and a divorce finalized in January.

But his roommate said he remained positive, that he had begun dating again and he had two NBA teams inviting him to tryouts. Wright was scheduled to fly to Israel last weekend to try out for a team there, prompting his agent to make several calls searching for him, Gipson said.

The University of Memphis player joined the NBA in 1996 as the Los Angeles Clippers’ No. 7 draft pick. He joined the Grizzlies in 2001 and spent five seasons in Memphis, where he had dreamed of retiring.

Attorney Gail Mathes, who represented the athlete’s ex-wife, Sherra Robinson Wright, 39, during the couple’s divorce, said he remained kind during the process and continued to put the children’s interests first.

“Man, he loves those kids and they love him,” Orange said."He has that father instinct.

“When I’m driving them, he calls to tell me: ‘Take care of my babies.’”

SOUND: angry din of voices in a community meeting

Residents at this meeting with officials from the Ohio Department of Transportation were hotly divided over a plan to construct noise barrier walls along a stretch of I-71 that runs through the center of the community.  ODOT ranks it as one of the noisiest roadways in the state. 

Tim Collins said he only wanted what had been promised to him.  His house sits on a bluff just above the highway.  He claimed transportation officials came through his neighborhood measuring the noise.

COLLINS: “ODOT came with their sound meter, and they decided that we needed a wall.”

Laura McShane --- who admitted she doesn’t live right next to the highway --- was against the wall.  She asked why tens of thousands of dollars need to be spent on a highway that’s been noisy since the 1960s

MCSHANE: “It’s something that obviously wasn’t a priority for 40-50 years.  All of the sudden, they’re mitigating this noise now?”

Councilman Brian Cummins, who arranged this meeting, thinks the anger of neighborhood activists like McShane dates back to those early days, when highway planners paved thoroughfares right through communities like Brooklyn Centre.

CUMMINS: “Unfortunately, these freeways were built smack dab against these houses, cutting up the neighborhoods, so this kind of adds insult to injury to a lot of people who have been here for a long time.  You know: ‘First you cut up our neighborhood, and now you’re putting up these darn, big ugly cement walls.’ “

ODOT Transportation Planner Dale Schiavoni stands by the quality of those ugly cement walls.

SCHIAVONI: “We think they’re very effective.  We think it definitely enhances the quality of life for people who live along the freeway.”

In terms of the look of the walls, Schiavoni says his agency does offer some different wall color and design choices, but it’s too late for that in Brooklyn Centre --- the project is already underway.  A swath of neighborhood trees were recently clear cut to make room for construction equipment.  A number of local residents feel like this all happened too fast, with little public input.

SCHIAVONI: “They were notified.  We had meetings.  We sent out fliers to people who lived directly on the freeway, it was in the paper.  It’s always a difficult issue to get people to show-up at a meeting.”

Councilman Brian Cummins believes highway officials are more interested in getting a standard noise wall up as quickly as possible.

CUMMINS: “I think it’s frankly indicative of the transportation system and the industry overall --- it’s all about concrete and pavement.  It’s a big federal transportation agency that’s running this stuff, and they’re not necessarily known for caring too much about aesthetics, and the people that are impacted by freeways.”

SOUND: highway ambience behind Collins house

From Tim Collins’s backyard, you look across ten lanes of traffic.  Along the berm, are several pieces of earthmoving equipment that will help put up the new noise wall, in the coming months.  Collins likes the fact that there will be a big hunk of concrete between him and the highway.  What he doesn’t like is the way this whole controversy has turned community members against each other.

COLLINS: “I just hope the neighbors who didn’t want the wall don’t get too peeved that we are going to get it.”

A couple blocks away, Laura McShane is resigned to the fact that the walls are coming.

MCSHANE: “Well, I hope they’re happy looking at their cement wall.  I hope that gives them some quality of life and I hope they stay here.”

ODOT is currently experimenting with a so-called “living” highway wall down in Licking County.  It will be made from a stack of fabric bags filled with sprouting, noise-absorbing plants as a “green” alternative to concrete.  Brian Cummins says he’s starting to read up on that option, in preparation for a new noise wall project, just down the road.  ODOT has plans to build sound barriers along I-90 in the north part of his ward in 2012. 

John Mitterholzer is a senior program officer with Gund. 

Mitterholzer: “What our grant dollars allow users of the Ohio Direction Card to do, if they use five dollars or more at a market, they’ll get an additional five dollars from our grant.”

Four farmers markets in Cleveland now offer the incentive.  If the program is successful, the foundation hopes to expand it to other places in Cuyahoga County.

Mitterholzer: “I hope first and foremost, it allows everyone in Cleveland to have access to fresh produce, at least during the growing season this year.  That’s really important to me.  I also hope that it provides income for farmers.”

Tiffany Leeper runs the Lakewood Farmer’s Market. She says using the food benefits at the farmers market is easy.

Leeper: “Basically, if people have an Ohio Direction Card, they come up to our tent and they can redeem points on their card for tokens that they use to spend with the farms and the other vendors here at the market.”

Eleven farmers markets in Northeast Ohio currently accept the Ohio Direction Card.  Leeper says it’s important to spread the word that farmers markets accept food stamps. 

(excerpt of ”StutterTalk”)

The two 30-something speech pathologists from Brooklyn co-host a popular podcast on stuttering and both are lifelong stutterers. They’re now successful speech pathologists, but in the beginning, even those close to Reitzes and Jackson doubted they could do it.

REITZES: “Both of our mothers, both of our fathers.”
JACKSON: “Actually, the first thing that both of our parents thought when we both told them that we’re going back to school for speech therapy is: what parent is going to want to bring their child who is struggling with stuttering to see a person who is still stuttering.”

Reitzes and Jackson have an easy answer to that. They say stuttering is not something you cure; you learn to manage it. Their own struggles and successes give them empathy for their patients, who often feel more comfortable with therapists who know what it’s like. And, most speech pathologists have little or no training in stuttering, so specialists like them are rare.

Now they both work in schools and Reitzes has a private practice on the side working solely with people who stutter. But when Reitzes was training in the late 1990s, his fight for acceptance hit the local news media.

ROS ABRAMS (WABC-TV): “For a speech major at NYU, the future looked hopeless. The University told him he could not advance to the next level unless he passed a speech assessment test. Now, that was a frightening prospect for him because he had a speech impediment. So he got 7 on his side…”

New York University told him, essentially, that he had to have flawless speech to make it through.

REITZES: “I remember a professor saying to me ‘you should not be stuttering in class’ and I would say, ‘I’m going to speak in class, and I’m a stutterer. That’s what you’re going to get with me.’”

NYU eventually relaxed its requirements. Reitzes graduated, and got a job with a school district. But he learned quickly to be up front with people about his stuttering.

Eric Jackson just became a certified speech therapist, working with preschoolers. Jackson says he still encounters skepticism from parents.

JACKSON: “Someone was tipped off and went: beware of the stutterer from working with your child! They were concerned, and it’s OK they were concerned. Rightfully so.”

For Reitzes and Jackson, who stutter but are easy to understand, they can usually win most people over. But how concerned should parents and patients be when they hear that a speech therapist stutters? Peter Reitzes:

REITZES: “I’ve never met somebody who was not able to get the words out quickly enough to be successful at what they do.”

But for some, getting to that point is still a work in progress.

TEMME: “OK, hi, my name is Sam. I’m from Toledo.”

At this month’s stuttering conference in Cleveland, 24-year old Sam Temme fearlessly addresses a small room at one of the open mic events there.

TEMME: “So I sort of just wanted to practice public speaking…”

Temme seems at ease in front of the crowd, even if the words don’t flow effortlessly. She tells them how she’s starting her second year at Bowling Green State University in speech pathology.

She takes me around the conference, and we happen to run into Eric Swartz, one of her speech therapists at Bowling Green.

He’ll soon be a professor in speech pathology, but his journey is another reminder for Sam Temme that discrimination or discouragement can happen anywhere and success--when you stutter--isn’t easy.

SWARTZ:  “I got fired from one job because of my stuttering.
BOBKOFF: really? Tell me about that.
SWARTZ: Well, I was working in the public schools and the last week of school, my supervisor told me to have a seat and she said the principal doesn’t want you back because they’re tired of your stuttering.
BOBKOFF: Isn’t that against the law?
SWARTZ: Yes, it is, but because it was second hand information, it would be hard to make a case.”

Sam Temme has already had her own mixed experiences. She was accepted to one grad program, but she says they had special terms for her. She interpreted them as basically saying she could get kicked out if she couldn’t control her speech with clients.

TEMME: “I think that’s kind of hypocritical because you’re supposed to teach people who stutter to accept it!”

Temme ultimately found a supportive school in Bowling Green, where her professor Rod Gabel also stutters. He has no doubt that people who stutter can be great therapists, but he also says it’s not that simple. 

The tricky thing is knowing when a therapist’s stuttering goes from an asset to a hindrance.

GABEL: “Can you be able to effectively and efficiently manage your own problem such that it doesn’t inhibit that person who’s getting your help from improving? And, I think that is such a tough thing.”

Everyone’s stuttering is different. There are good days and bad days. Good years and bad years. Some like Professor Gabel have achieved very fluent speech. Sam Temme is still working on it. When we spoke, at one point she had a 22 second block on a word.

During this time, she blinks rapidly, but otherwise seems patient. It’s frustrating, but she’s used to it.

And she believes she’ll be effective as a therapist.

TEMME: “I think that people who stutter can be great communicators still.”

She says that just because somebody might take more time to finish sentences, doesn’t mean that their message can’t get across. 

As he watches the older divisions, 10 year-old Ryan Tomlinson from California recognizes that the friendly atmosphere will dissolve once the weekend hits.

TOMLINSON: “You make friends and it’s competitive. When you’re on the starting line, you’re competitive.”

Kristi Murphy, an 18 year-old racer from Mentor won five championships over the past decade and has one goal going into Saturday.

MURPHY: “Set the world record.”

You wouldn’t guess that petite, soft spoken Jamie Berndt is the girl who Kristi and so many other racers aim to beat.  Berndt, a rising junior at Youngstown State and a Canfield native, is the world record holder in the ultimate-speed division.  She’s looking to defend her title this year, but she shrugs off the competition. She and her dad have been prepping to try and beat her own record.

BERNDT: “We’ve been practicing and trying really hard to beat it. I don’t know exact, but it was 27 something, I’m not really exactly sure.”

The 600 drivers range in age from 8 to 21. Families from around the country design their cars with the goal of winning, but Derby spokesman Bob Troyer says that the race’s emphasis on family and sportsmanship is what’s really important.

TROYER:  “Those were values that were around in the 1930s, and they’re values that are going to be around in the 2030s.”

Troyer expects more attendees this year as producers of the movie “25 Hill” film scenes during the race.

The idea for the Statehouse News Bureau began during the deadly Blizzard of 1978, the worst winter storm in Ohio’s history. Public stations broadcast a news conference with Gov. Jim Rhodes over phone lines to listeners, who learned that National Guard members would be clearing roads and using helicopters to rescue stranded drivers and transport medical personnel to hospitals. Bill Cohen, then at WOSU, anchored that news conference, and station managers realized that pooling resources to hire reporters based at the Statehouse following state government each day would be a valuable public service.

More than a dozen reporters have worked at the Bureau since 1980. The list includes NPR anchor and reporter Brian Naylor and NPR’s newest business reporter, Tamara Keith. Keith worked at the Bureau in 2004, before moving on to cover Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in Sacramento. She says she was amazed by the access Ohio reporters have to state officials, and talks of the somewhat surreal experience of riding on a bale of hay around the Ohio State Fair with Gov. Bob Taft, as he yelled “Good morning, chickens!” when passing the poultry barn. Other Bureau reporters moved on to commercial outlets. Jim Otte, who covers western Ohio for WHIO-TV, was with the Bureau from 1982 to 1988. He describes working at the Statehouse as the only way to cover Ohio political issues, because it’s “like being the cop on the beat.” He says he remembers when the reporters got their first computers, “which were the size of a car engine and had the memory of a two year old.” And he adds, “The technology is dramatically different, but the quality of the reporting remains the same.”

The Bureau has covered every statewide election since its inception, and has followed dozens of battles over budgets, bills and ballot issues. We’ve covered presidential visits, and found the stories in seemingly endless committee meetings and speeches. All of us have witnessed executions and have followed the controversies over Ohio’s death penalty, including in 2006, when Joseph Clark sat up halfway through his execution to say that the drugs weren’t working. We were there when Bob Taft became the first Ohio governor to be convicted in office, as he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor ethics charges. All of us have participated in candidate debates, which have led to some memorable exchanges – including the one four years ago in which Ken Blackwell said Ted Strickland’s decision not to vote on a certain Congressional resolution amounted to a tacit support of sex between adults and children.

Bill remembers the 1993 deadly riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville as “dramatic but frustrating,” as reporters were kept far away from the prison where raging inmates were holding hostages inside. Jo spent most of a year following the Marc Dann sexual harassment scandal, which she notes had “all of the elements of a good novel.” It included revelations of state money invested in rare coins and Beanie Babies, stories of fraternity-style parties at the home of the state’s Attorney General, who had been a nearly-unknown state Senator two years before, and a confession of an extramarital affair with a staffer at a live press conference. Some of my favorite moments have been recorded by our TV cameras - for example, when I got a private tour of the Governor’s Residence two years ago, and this year when I interviewed former Congressman Jim Traficant. But I’ve also had a great time outside the political realm. Last year I produced a series on businesses and charitable groups making money with “green” ideas such as recycling batteries and repurposing household fixtures. 

As other news outlets have been cutting back their staffs and their coverage at the Statehouse, we continue to be the only fulltime broadcast journalists assigned to report on what’s happening with state government on a daily basis. And our experience and institutional memory is tested all the time. Bill Cohen has a vast collection of thousands of campaign buttons and pieces of paraphernalia. And we notice the same names come back over and over – sometimes it’s the politician who returns, but sometimes it’s his spouse, her child or another family member. And when the Bureau was founded in 1980, the major issues on the campaign literature and in the headlines were high unemployment, budget shortfalls, school funding, campaign financing and high speed trains.  As Bill Cohen puts it, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

MILLER: “Right now, I think one of the things is their shipping cost probably tripled in the last 9-12 months. From what I see is they just cannot operate as cheap as they could before.”

SOUND: Cars and occasional clip-clops of buggies

Miller owns Country View Woodworking in Millersburg --- one of dozens of furniture companies here along Ohio route 241 in Holmes County --- halfway between Cleveland and Columbus.  The local chamber of commerce has listings for about 450 such shops, ranging in size from 5 – to – 25 employees.  Holmes County is said to have the largest concentration of Amish in the world, and the area furniture business brings in close to $280 million each year.

Miller was one of thirty small business owners who came to Cleveland, this week, to attend a Furniture and Millwork Fair, sponsored by Cleveland State University and the Cleveland Institute of Art.  The event was designed to help hook-up these small-town entrepreneurs with a bigger marketplace

SOUND: din of the furniture display area

Although the fair was open to all small furniture companies, the Amish were clearly in the majority, displaying their products and attending seminars on best business practices.

For example, interior designer Jane Frankel had some advice on attitude.

JANE FRANKEL: “They have got to be aggressive. I get sent lots of cds, I get lots of emails, I get lots of pictures.  The person that follows up and maybe calls me every 2 to 3 months, they are the ones that are going to land the job.“

One of most popular seminars featured speakers from American Campus Communities --- one of the nation’s biggest developers of student housing.  ACC builds the dorms and buys the furniture --- millions of dollars-worth.  Carin Sistare was impressed by the ability of these small companies to handle big orders through collaborative work.

SISTARE: “This was eye opening.  The workmanship is unbelievable. They are very, very genuine; they’ve been great to get to know, they have awesome questions.”

Organizers report ACC has pledged to include the Amish furniture makers in their bidding process. 

SOUND: Wood saws in the Millersburg workshop.

Back in Holmes County, Roy Miller admitted that he’s had a hard time getting some of his colleagues to buy into this outreach to bigger markets.  A number of Amish woodworkers from the region refused to make the trek to Cleveland, preferring to keep contact with the outside world to a minimum.  But, the recession of the past couple years has changed Miller’s perspective on the traditional Amish way.

MILLER: “We have to compete, we have to get better.  It used to be when we started a business here in Holmes County, everybody would come knock on your door and try to get you to build furniture for them. Today is different; I like to say my business used to run me, now I have to run my business.“

He’s even got a website. 

SOUND: Horse and buggy clopping off into the distance.

LeBron’s brand will soon follow him out the door. But a new, grassroots brand has risen up to take one last shot at the player formerly known as “The King.”

The local online t-shirt companies Fresh Brewed Tees and The T-Spot are both selling shirts with the tongue-in-cheek moniker Quitness, a play on Nike’s “Witness” slogan.

And at Great Lakes Brewery in Cleveland, there’s a new “Quitness” ale out today. And it’s bitter. It’s been aging for weeks, but brewery owner Pat Conway and brewers Luke Purcell and Joel Warger didn’t know what to name it until LeBron announced his decision.

CONWAY: And serendipitously, it came together, and Luke, Joel and I worked on what we’re now calling the Quitness.  And the fact that it’s bitter was like a hand in a glove.

But Conway says it’s all in fun, and Cleveland fans will be better off once they leave their bitterness behind.

CONWAY: We have our fair share of gloom and doom around Cleveland, but we take the position, you just start to smile and laugh at these things because in the grand scheme of things, it’s not all that important.

The ale’s available only on tap at the pub in Cleveland, and only until it runs out. Conway doesn’t expect it to last very long.

Former Plain Dealer sportswriter Bob Dolgan knew Steinbrenner since about 1960.

BOB DOLGAN: “George was a complex character; you know how controversial he was. The thing with him as winning—his famous line was “Winning is the most important thing in life. Second comes breathing.”

That attitude lead to Steinbrenner’s larger-than-life persona, and near-tyrannical control of the Yankees; a ten million dollar purchase that’s now a one-point-six billion empire.

But Steinbrenner’s first team came in the city he loved - when he saw the opportunity to own a struggling pro basketball franchise - the Cleveland Pipers.

DOLGAN: “Steinbrenner bought the team. First time I ever saw him, and he acted pretty much in those days like he did in later years with the Yankees.”

Including firing the first African-American coach in pro basketball…

With money from the family’s Lorain County-based American Shipbuilding Company, Steinbrenner headed a group who wanted to own the Indians in 1972, and partnered with local businessmen to buy the team from Vernon Stouffer, who suddenly changed his mind and sold to the Nick Mileti Group -

DOLGAN: “If he had bought the team, Cleveland would have had two or three more pennants, and a world series championship, because George - you know everything comes from the top - and George demanded excellence in everything he was involved in.”

His generosity was also legend, paying for funerals of employees, giving Joe DiMaggio a Cadillac ...because he thought a subcompact wasn’t a fitting car for the former Yankee slugger…

But his largesse wasn’t always accepted.

Several years ago, his hometown of Bay Village rejected a Steinbrenner gift of a new football stadium, reportedly because some people there didn’t want his name on it - though he’d served as a volunteer track coach at the school long before his New York years.

Steinbrenner also loved horses, and the name of his racing concern, Kinsman Stable - is to honor his roots, and his grandfather, whose first business… was on Cleveland’s Kinsman Road…

Funeral arrangements will be private, the family said. There will be an additional public service with details to be announced at a later date. 

HARVEY PEKAR: “It was just that they had been used in a very limited way. And when I started thinking about what could be done with them, that’s what sort of led to my getting into comics because the field was so ripe for innovation.”

In 1976, Pekar started chronicling his life - hiring artists, like Crumb, to illustrate his stories. Pekar wrote about his day to day struggles in his hometown of Cleveland, recording a mundane, grumpy and completely genuine character in the black and white frames of comic books.

PEKAR: “A lot of my writing is like that, I get stuff off my chest and it helps to get it out.”

Pekar’s “American Splendor: Off the Streets of Cleveland” was an on-again, off-again endeavor that he frequently said never earned him enough money. But his books earned him brief stints of fame, helped by a series of sometimes outrageous appearances on “Late Night with David Letterman” in the 1980s.

PEKAR: “We’re getting into it Dave...just keep me on for another ten minutes...”
DAVID LETTERMAN: “I’m just praying for a terrorist...”

Letterman eventually got so upset by Pekar’s antics that he was banned for life, even though he subsequently appeared on the show twice. In 1994, Pekar chronicled his battle with lymphoma in his book “Our Cancer Year.” About ten years later, a caller to 90.3’s “Around Noon” asked Pekar if Letterman’s health problems gave the pair a reason to reunite.

PEKAR: “It’ll take more than the mere shadow of death to make Letterman make contact with me. He wants to avoid me at all costs.”

Pekar’s “American Splendor” series caused a seminal change in comic books, says Brad Ricca. Ricca teaches English and comic book history at Case Western Reserve University.

BRAD RICCA: “Before it was just the Hulk fights some giant alien and punches him to Pluto or something. This gave comics a real sense of the literary.”

In 2003, actor Paul Giamatti played Harvey Pekar in the acclaimed film based on his comics, “American Splendor.” Part of that movie was filmed at John and Carol’s Comics on Cleveland’s west side. At the front entrance an employee erected a small memorial to Pekar saying simply, “You will be missed.” Store co-owner John Dudas says Pekar and his stories captured the essence of working class Cleveland.

JOHN DUDAS: He had that blue collar work ethic and blue collar mentality. You gotta go to work in the morning you gotta get up you don’t not necessarily like it but is there a bunch of snow on the ground? Well you better get up two hours early and shovel it because your boss doesn’t care if you’re late. That kind of good blue collar ethic. That’s what he represented to us.

And Ricca called Harvey Pekar a kind of “mobile landmark.” A frequenter of haunts near his Cleveland Heights neighborhood, Pekar enjoyed his own special kind of fame, but he was always uniquely himself.

RICCA: “He was never Mr. Pekar. He was always just Harvey. You have these big professors here and the people who buy the comics here and they all knew him as Harvey. And I think that’s a real testament to him and to Cleveland because I don’t think he could have come from anywhere else.”

Pekar’s longtime friend Toby Radloff had his own suggestion for memorializing his pal: Go to a shop and pick up a copy of “American Splendor.”

For most of his life, he made little money from comics. For decades, he was a file clerk at a VA hospital.

Pekar loved jazz and was a critic and record collector before venturing into comics.

In a 2005 interview with WCPN, Pekar said it was meeting fellow jazz lover and illustrator R. Crumb that changed his view of the medium.

PEKAR: Comics could do anything that any other art form could do. It was just that they had been used in a very limited way. And when I started thinking about what could be done with them, that’s what sort of led to my getting into comics because the field was so ripe for innovation.

Pekar’s longtime friend Toby Radloff worked with him at the VA, and gained his own 15 minutes of fame through Pekar’s comics and the movie. Radloff describes his friend as a brilliant technophobe.

RADLOFF: “I would say he’s always been an eccentric. I would say he’s always been behind the times which has been good for him. And, he’s always had great insights into his writing.”

For now, Radloff says there’s at least one way to honor Pekar. 

RADLOFF: “If possible, even if you have to go to a bookstore, the internet, buy an American Splendor book. It would be a tribute to him.”

LEBRON: “This fall, I’m going to take my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat.”

…This was the reaction from Cavs fans at the Harry Buffalo.

(crowd yells)

The bar is just feet from Quicken Loans Arena. Matt Neiheisel drove from Youngstown to be there.

NEIHEISEL: “It’s so hard to talk. I’m ready to shed tears.”

LeBron was supposed to bring a championship to this hard luck city. Now, he’s dead to fans like Salvatore Ross.

ROSS: “LeBron’s an idiot. He’s pompous. He wants the spotlight. Miami is the perfect place for him.”

Outside on the sidewalk, Clevelander Jason Lemieux hugged and consoled his friend Stephanie Ramos.

LEMIEUX: “Oh my god, look at this. This is sadness.”
RAMOS: “I feel like my heart’s been ripped out, stomped on and everything like—once he said South Beach, I don’t know why people were still standing in there.”

Just after she said that, some Cleveland fans ripped apart a poster of LeBron James. But perhaps the harshest words came in a letter from Cavaliers’ majority owner Dan Gilbert. He said LeBron deserted the region and called the decision a cowardly betrayal.

DAVIS: This is the first time I’ve ever had to utilize unemployment. I’ve been working since I was 19 years old.

Each week, Davis would receive a check worth about $240, which she used to pay bills and to feed herself and her eighteen-year-old daughter. But her last check came on June 12.  She’s one of thirty-six thousand Northeast Ohioans whose benefits ran out last month, after Senate Democrats and Republicans failed to reach an agreement to extend federal unemployment payments.

DAVIS: I think that I have 67 cents in my bank account, and $22 in my pocket.

There’s no clear indication if or when a bill to extend benefits will pass. So Davis and a growing number of others in the area must find new ways to make ends meet.

One option is county assistance. Tom McGinnis manages the social service center in Geauga County.

MCGINNIS: Once a person loses the unemployment compensation, they may very well be eligible for food stamps, and we’re trying to determine how many of those individuals we can expect over the coming weeks.

Since Davis’s daughter is now 18, she’s not eligible for the $355 a month in welfare payments that a parent with a dependent child could receive.

But she could try to find a program that pairs workers with employers. Larry Benders directs Employment Connection in Cuyahoga County, where more than eleven thousand people exhausted their benefits in June.

BENDERS: And that’s going to continue for the next several months. So it’s a real real problem. And yeah we’re going to see here at Employment Connect more people looking to partake of our job search services. 

Davis has thrown her name in with several recruiters and staffing agencies. But Ohio’s 10.7 percent unemployment means high competition for job openings. That hurts workers like Davis, whose skills are in industries that have been moving away for years.

DAVIS: On an average week, I probably send out between 50 and 60 resumes, not just in the transportation industry—any type of industry. I like to think that my skills are at least somewhat applicable to other industries; other industries don’t see it that way.

Davis has applied for food and cash assistance with Cuyahoga County—but she won’t be able to meet with anyone there until the end of July. In the meantime, she has harsh words for the members of Congress, who are now in recess.

DAVIS: I know that at the end of the day, their families are eating. Mine isn’t.

CERVENIK: There is a lot more cost than just the fireworks themselves. Police and fire overtime, it’s clean up, it’s port-o-pots. The fireworks we were told were going to go up 20%. So you’re looking at almost $50,000 in Fireworks. And you’re looking at almost $50,000 for all the other costs worked in the show, including clean up. So, I don’t see it as a prudent expenditure of money at this time.

Still, many area cities will be lighting up their night time skies, between now and Monday. The city of Cleveland will hold its annual fireworks display in the Flats, along with 42 other cities across in Northeast Ohio.

BROUSSARD: Don’t be surprised if it is Miami.

Buzz Bissinger. Co-author of LeBron’s book.

BISSINGER: I think Lebron should go to New York. It’s New York. It’s the greatest place on earth.

KC Johnson, Bulls beat writer at the Chicago Tribune.

JOHNSON: There are several people, league executives and agents I talk to who think that Chicago has the best chance.

And, Mary Schmitt Boyer, sportwriter, Cleveland Plain Dealer.

BOYER: My gut feeling is he will stay with the Cavs.

The only man who maybe knows the future is the one they call King James, or, as the 25-year old says somewhat immodestly:

JAMES: I guess I’m the chosen one I guess.

What brought him to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2003 was luck—but fate sounds better. The high school star from down the road in Akron was the number one draft pick, and the Cavs were so awful, they had first dibs.
He brought Cleveland prestige, international attention, and some really good basketball. But he was supposed to bring this city its first professional sports championship since the Johnson administration. Cleveland comic Mike Polk.

POLK: Logically, he can’t leave here because if he leaves here, he leaves here having failed. You hear that, LeBron? I know you’re a huge NPR listener.

Polk is the mastermind behind Cleveland’s highest profile attempt to convince LeBron to stay: a plea in song from some of Cleveland’s B and C-level celebrities. It’s somewhere between self-parody and heartfelt love letter to Cleveland. Even Ohio Governor Ted Strickland sings a few lines.

That video went viral weeks ago. But how do Clevelanders feel now?
On East 4th street, a bustling block of nightclubs, restaurants and bars, people sound tired of the whole spectacle.

Here’s Mandela Jenkins.

JENKINS: Sure everyone’s depending on him, Cleveland’s economy, everyone’s depending on him but hey. The bird’s got to be free to fly.

Some on Twitter are already calling this Lebromageddon. But Matt Frakes is an optimist. 

FRAKES: I think he is going to re-sign with the Cavs.

But there’s a twist.

FRAKES: Course, I didn’t grow up in Cleveland so I have a positive attitude in relation to people to who grew up in Cleveland who always have a negative attitude.

Economists estimate the Cleveland area stands to lose tens of millions of dollars if LeBron heads for a bigger market. It would ripple through the restaurants, the bars, television advertising, hotels, even tax revenue. He pays lots in taxes. 

For what it’s worth, many pundits believe Cleveland still has a slight edge over Chicago, Miami, New York, and the other teams trying to woo the King. LeBron James loves Northeast Ohio. Akron writer David Giffels:

GIFFELS: He has 330, the local Akron area code, tattooed down his right forearm.
But if the lure of another city wins out over his love of home, comic Mike Polk says Clevelanders will survive. 

POLK: This is still a vibrant city in a lot of ways. And the idea that this manchild who’s really good at throwing a ball through a circle can just completely take it down with him if he leaves is just ridiculous. You have plenty to live for Cleveland, chin up.

LeBron’s advisors say he has an open mind about the whole thing. And, former Hornets coach Byron Scott is expected to lead the Cavs’ next season. Scott should know soon if LeBron will be there too. 

Going INTO today there was a lot of mystery about where these gatherings would take place. It turns out they met at the offices of James’ marketing company on East 9th Street in downtown Cleveland.

{sound of street}

Outside the building on all four street corners stood a dozen or so people with signs that read “Home” and “Community.” Now here’s the unusual thing...When a reporter with a microphone approached....

REPORTER: “Hi, my name is Eric Wellman with WCPN, can I ask you a couple questions?”

They refused to talk - they gave me a curt shake of the head. No luck across the street either. One of the sign holders finally took mercy and explained they were actually employees of the Cavaliers. Cavs Marketing and Promotions Manager, Joel Layman says the gesture is to show James he’s wanted.

LAYMAN: “We’re just here to support LeBron. Hope he stays here. He means a lot to the city so we’re just here for him.”

And that’s a sentiment any fan would express, whether or not the Cavs cut their check. 

As for what’s on tap for the next few days...nothing’s been confirmed. But area media are reporting that James will field pitches tomorrow from the Miami Heat and Los Angeles Clippers, and the Chicago Bulls on Saturday.

BISSINGER:
“He is idolized in that area in Cleveland and Akron since he was 15 years old and it’s not good for him. He needs to be coached and he needs to be challenged. For all of his greatness he hasn’t won anything."}

Bissinger made this point in a recent Op-Ed in the New York Times in which he urges James to move on --- to play in New York.  But Akron writer David Giffels disagrees. He says the city of Akron is central to James’ identity.

GIFFELS:
“And I think he’s well served by that. He’s been well served by that and that’s why his reputation is so positive. He hasn’t fallen into the trap of easy money and quick celebrity and that sort of thing."}

Buzz Bissinger says he doesn’t buy that argument. He says James doesn’t need to be in Akron to stay grounded.

BISSINGER:
“LeBron is fundamentally a decent man. LeBron isn’t going to change whether he plays in NY, Chicago or Timbuktu.”

James has meetings with at least two teams today. 
He’s entertaining pitches from the Nets this morning and the Knicks this afternoon. 

KOVEL: You can’t talk to anybody who lived in Cleveland before 1960 who hasn’t been to Euclid Beach.  Every Sunday school, every church, everybody had meeting out there. 

Kovel is a member of a group that developed a plan to revive Euclid Beach’s 1910-vintage carousel, which has led an itinerant life since the storied amusement park closed in 1969.  The ride was first shipped to a park in Maine, where it was a central attraction for 30 years.  After THAT park closed, the carousel changed hands a few more times - eventually landing back in Cleveland at the Western Reserve Historical Society, where it’s been sitting in storage for the last decade. 

During that time there was a major lobbying effort to bring it back to the old Euclid Beach site, in the North Collinwood ward of councilman Michael Polensek.

POLENSEK: The thing that had to happen with that is you needed to have a year-round venue. That’s the problem we lacked at that site.

Now the plan is to rebuild the carousel on the grounds of the Historical Society and open it to the public for a couple bucks a ride. 

POLENSEK: Here you have a year-round venue, here you have the protection, here you have the security --- you have everything..

A six million dollar fund raising campaign will soon be launched to help with construction and to provide an endowment for ongoing maintenance.  Organizers plan to have the ride rolling by 2013. 

JACKSON: Relationships, politics and fear.

Good old boy relationships… political maneuvering… and fear of change, he said, had left the once powerful economic engine of Cleveland spinning it’s wheels.  Over the course of two hours, Jackson argued that bad economic times were also a time of great opportunity for those willing to take some risks.  For instance:

JACKSON:  We should invest in the local economy by purchasing goods and services from each other. 

In other words, big institutional buyers, such as hospitals, should buy their bedpans, say, from local manufacturers instead of a Chinese vendor with the cheaper price.  An audience member respectfully challenged that scenario

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: How do you balance the logic of buying local with the business necessity of profitability?

JACKSON: Well, just because you can, don’t mean you should.

Jackson argued that the cost of overseas labor and shipping were on the rise, which would eventually make home-grown products more attractive.  At the same time he said it was important to convince foreign investors to spend their money here, such as the influx of overseas cash that is helping to restart the Flats East Bank development project.  This combination of acting both globally and locally might make some people uncomfortable, he said, but he didn’t see how there was much choice.

JACKSON: I want to be where the world is going, not where the world is now.

Sisters of Charity is one of numerous agencies across Ohio applying. 

Program and Evaluation Director Leslie Strnisha says the money will help them integrate educational and social services for children living in Cleveland’s Central neighborhood—most from low-income African American families.

Strnisha: “One of the exciting opportunities I think is to really put a focus for the first time on all of the resources—not just in Central but on the greater Cuyahoga county community—that are available and really try and see that if we did a concentrated effort to reach every child in that community, could we replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone.”

Part of the application process is to identify the community’s needs and the leaders who can spearhead the project.

Keith Reed is the editor of Catalyst Ohio magazine and has been helping Sisters of Charity conduct focus groups with families.  He says it will take years to build the infrastructure in Central Cleveland.

Reed: “This is not something that could happen overnight.  We have to remember, it took more than a decade to build the Harlem Children’s Zone to where it is, and to see results.”

Leslie Strnisha says she knows the pressure is on to create a strong plan, as there are over three dozen applicants just in Ohio.

Strnisha: “There’s many worthy neighborhoods in Cleveland, and schools and opportunities; we certainly would not say that ours is the only one.  So we wish everyone luck.  It’s a competition, in some ways.”

Groups in Akron, Ashtabula, and East Cleveland are also vying for the planning dollars. 

Grant applications are due Monday. 

DEPOLO: No other artist was offering help to me when I started.  It was trial and error.  So, I try to give them a little bit of guidance that I didn’t have.  It’s all about confidence in yourself. 

Nearby, some other students are singing.  Another group is getting acting lessons.  It’s all part of a six-week summer program called Art Works, run by the arts advocacy group, Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio.  The Art Works program is based on an idea that co-founder Deborah Ratner saw in Chicago, where high school students were paid to apprentice with professional artists.

RATNER: The program in Chicago was to get the kids off the streets. To get them involved in something that would nourish their souls and expand their view of the world.  At the same time, they would be learning from mentors who were established artists and they would be getting paid.  It would be an alternative to, perhaps, a job at a fast food restaurant or packing bags at the local grocery store.

ArtWorks was started in 2005 and, this year, 120 apprentices were chosen for the program, out of several hundred who applied from nearly 60 high schools across Northeast Ohio.  Program manager Kristen Rothman Rothman says ArtWorks attempts to change perceptions about the supposedly “impractical” nature of the arts.

ROTHMAN: You know, sometimes people say, it’s just the arts.  It’s nice, but what is that going to get you?  You’re going to be waiting tables the rest of your life, according to the cliche.

One could also argue that, in a time when art programs often fall victim to school budget cuts, it’s only smart to reframe art education as a form of job training.

ROTHMAN: I’ll be honest with you, it really has come down to that in a lot of cases. But, we firmly believe the skills that you learn just by being in the arts, by working in an art form, the creativity, the problem-solving skills that are inherently in any art form, are skills that are required to do any job that you going to look at in the 21st century.

In addition to learning how to paint, sing and act, the students are also taught some basic work skills --- how to dress, how to behave, how to handle a job interview, even how to file taxes on that summer salary you’re going to be making.

ROTHMAN: They make $7.30 an hour for 30 hours of work per week. And for most of them it is their first paycheck.

Along with that paycheck, the students get some financial literacy lessons about spending vs. saving, and the dangers of credit card debt.  Teacher JoAnn Depolo says it’s a combination of aesthetics and discipline.

DEPOLO: We need to prepare them for the workplace, and that would be --- starting on time, being responsible for their duties and tasks, and being accountable to a supervisor.

And if you goof off?

DEPOLO: It’s the same as any other job.  They’ll have warnings, and then, if it’s not corrected, they’ll face the consequences.  This is preparation for life skills. 

ADOGNRAVI: I hadn’t had any real jobs before ArtWorks,

Rachelle Adognravi’s a tenth-grader at Cleveland Heights High School.

ADOGNRAVI: ArtWorks was my first real job where I actually got paid for a certain amount of hours and stuff. 

And it’s got her thinking that…just maybe…she could pursue a career that would involve her drawing skills.

ADOGNRAVI: I’ve been thinking about that for, like, ever.  But I hadn’t really found out a way to actually do it yet.

Between now and the end of July, the ArtWorks apprentices will spend their summer days picking up the skills…and the confidence… to try and make that happen.

ADOGNRAVI: I still have back-up plans, of course, but I would really like to be an artist.

HOTCHKISS:  “I just saw the walls start to move, like kind of sway, the wall in front of me.  And then I felt a little uneasy and there was like the sensation of rocking in the floor.  Not an intense rocking, but kind of a swaying rocking, if you will.”

Several buildings in Cleveland—including 55 Public Square—were evacuated shortly following the quake as a precaution.  No injuries or damage has been reported. Dr. David Pierce is a geology professor at Lakeland Community College. He says the shaking tends to be more pronounced higher up in buildings.

PIERCE: “You’ll get the shaking at ground level, but that gets transferred through the building too.  And the higher the building is, the more it’s going to wave, the more it’s going to move.  It’s going to transfer all that energy through the structure of the building, and then you’re going to get subsequent movement from that.  So the people higher up will have a tendency to feel it I believe more so than people on the ground.”

Dr. Pierce felt the shaking at his office as well.

PIERCE: “I was on the third floor of Lakeland Community College, and it really felt like someone was pushing on athe building, almost like when you dock a boat and you get that residual wave effect.  And it was kind of a long duration, from 10 to 15, some people say 20 seconds long.  It seemed to keep rolling.”

Sarah Kresnye works at the Center For Community Solutions on the third floor of the Buckley Building in downtown Cleveland. 

KRESNYE:  “It felt like the room was spinning.  I actually put my fan on because I thought I was going to pass out, and we could feel the building shake and everybody sat silent for a minute, and then everybody came out of the woodwork, you know - did you feel that, did you feel that?  We all said we felt the same thing, that the room was spinning and we were going to pass out.  And it turns out there was an earthquake.”

Seismologists will be analyzing data from a network of research stations and should have a better sense of the earthquake by Thursday.

Silver: “It was in a building that had been built around it, so that building had to be deconstructed before we could move the capsule out and as you can see, we had to take off the front of the Great Lake Science Center building just to be able to fit the capsule inside.”

Following the terrorist attacks of nine-eleven, heightened security measures at the NASA Glenn Research Center limited the number of visiting school groups at the center.  Dr. Abraham-Silver hopes that the new, more convenient location will attract around 300 thousand school aged visitors each year, thirty times more than the former location.

The Great Lakes Science Center is one of only ten NASA Visitors Centers and is the only center located in the northern United States.

But Mark Salling, who analyzes census data at Cleveland State University, actually sees some silver linings in the new data. Even though Cleveland lost more than half a percent of its population in one year, that is actually a slower rate of decline than in past years.

SALLING: “We’ve been really in bad shape since 2000, and really well before that, and the story has always been Cleveland continues to lose huge numbers of population and yes we lost a lot of population this last year, but it’s a lot less than we had been. That’s good news.”

Salling says this estimated data bodes well for the official 2010 Census numbers that will be released next year. He doesn’t expect those numbers to be as dire as some predict. 

As for last year’s decline, the Census data doesn’t provide insight on whether the exodus was to nearby suburbs or far away cities like Phoenix, Arizona. Salling says the nationwide recession suggests many may have stayed in the region, as there are few jobs anywhere. 

SALLING: “Many of these people are probably moving to inner ring suburbs in particular.”

That’s because developers haven’t built much in the farther flung suburbs during the downturn. That too is good news for the core city.

TESTIMONY: There needs to be more committee meetings at this size level instead of waiting for something to happen to get to this level.

Overall, the mood seemed positive, as reflected by Jerry Mundell.

JERRY MUNDELL: Just looking at this room, you see the solidarity.  These are people who love this neighborhood.  This is our neighborhood.  It does not belong to muggers and drug dealers.

Former North Olmsted resident Ann O’Connor said that she had no regrets about trading the supposed safety of the suburbs for this new sense of community she’s found in Tremont.

ANN O’CONNOR: In North Olmsted, I really didn’t know my neighbors.  I know everybody on my street.

The group plans to meet again in 45 days to chart the progress of replacing street lamps and boosting participation in block clubs.  Perhaps the first test of the community’s image in the rest of the region will come on July 9th, the date of the next Tremont Art Walk.

Haile-Selassie: Every part of its skeletal elements that we were able to recover indicate it was fully bipedal like ourselves and it had more advanced human like upright gate.

If that theory holds true, that means hominids were walking upright 3.6 million years ago, much earlier than previously thought. Their findings are published in today’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.