Backing the Free Clinic

…ices free of charge to more than 10,000 people who lack appropriate alternatives. The Free Clinic was established in 1970 in a old frame house on Cornell Road in University Circle as a treatment center for young people with drug-related problems. The foundation backed the creation of this safe haven, where medical care was provided with no questions asked. The need for indigent health care on the east side of Cleveland was so great that the Free…

Frank H. and Nancy L. Porter Fund

…married Frank H. Porter, whom she had known since their Cleveland Heights High School days. But she never abandoned her commitment to helping others. After Frank completed his wartime service in the army, the couple moved to Russell Township on the outskirts of Cuyahoga County, where they brought up four sons and a daughter. With energy to spare, Nancy gave generously of her time and talents to nonprofit agencies that touched thousands of lives….

Lake-Geauga Fund

…the Cleveland Foundation’s Sherwick Fund supporting organization, approached the foundation with the suggestion that a new fund be created to provide Lake and Geauga County residents with a means to address local needs. Both rural jurisdictions had pockets of poverty (as well as wealth) and faced the onrush of exurban development. Recognizing the idea’s merit, the foundation contributed a $500,000 challenge grant to launch the Lake-Geauga Fund….

George and Janet Voinovich

…Molly’s love with people,” as Voinovich, who won the mayor’s race and went on to serve as Ohio governor and in the U.S. Senate, had simply explained. Molly Agnes, the youngest of four siblings, was killed when a van that had run a red light struck her while she was walking back after lunch to her fourth-grade classroom at Oliver Hazard Perry School in Cleveland’s Collinwood neighborhood. Fittingly, her parents decided that income from Molly’s…

Kenneth W. Clement, M.D.

…presidentially appointed federal councils that helped to create and implement Medicare legislation. After being honored for his record of public service by the Cleveland chapter of the Urban League in 1966, he and his wife, Ruth, decided to partner with the Cleveland Foundation to award a college scholarship annually to a graduating Cleveland Municipal School District student who had performed laudable community service. Since its establishment…

Stewardship of the City’s Lakefront Parks

…State Park. Starting with a $25,000 grant to the Shaker Lakes Garden Center that underwrote a 1974 study by the William A. Behnke Associates landscape architecture firm of ways to improve conditions in Cleveland’s municipal-run parks, the Cleveland Foundation led an effort to restore these invaluable recreational assets. Recognizing that the City of Cleveland could no longer afford to maintain all of its 3,000 acres of parklands, the foundation…

Return of Farming to the Cuyahoga River Valley

…tation. Over the years the foundation has helped the park enhance its infrastructure and programs. Perhaps the most innovative of these improvement projects is the Countryside Initiative, which was undertaken to preserve the rural heritage of the Cuyahoga Valley. Planning for the project began in 1999 with a Cleveland Foundation grant of $100,000. Believed to be the only endeavor of its kind in the country, the initiative has nurtured the return…

Raymond C. Moley

…Cuyahoga County town of Berea, Ohio, in 1886, Moley graduated from his hometown college (now Baldwin Wallace University) in 1906 and taught at a country school in nearby Olmsted Falls before being elected “boy mayor” of that rural village in 1908. He next decided to pursue a master’s degree (Oberlin College, 1913) and managed to earn a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 1918 while teaching that subject at Western Reserve…

J. Kimball Johnson

…power mobilization effort. After the war, he was tapped to head a five-state regional office that administered all of the programs then operating under the auspices the Social Security Administration, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Office of Vocational Training. The Cleveland Foundation recorded its greatest growth to date during the first decade of Johnson’s tenure as director. Between 1953 and 1963 the foundation’s…

James R. Garfield

…of Ohio-born President James A. Garfield, he handled the foundation’s legal affairs until 1946, the year he turned 81. Garfield died in 1950. During his 32-year tenure as legal counsel, Garfield worked with the probate and trust attorneys whose clients had bequeathed funds to the foundation to make sure that donors’ wishes were clearly understood and scrupulously observed. Untangling knotty issues (often involving misunderstandings on the part…