…n 1960 Minter was unable to land a job as a high school coach after applying to more than three dozen area school systems. The secretary to the president of Baldwin Wallace empathized with the plight of this talented African American struggling to break into a segregated job market. She put him in touch with her sister who worked as the secretary to the director of the Cuyahoga County Welfare Department, where he was hired as a caseworker….
…tury Americans or even among Clevelanders. This lack of recognition is unfortunate because Goff, like his better-known contemporaries Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, changed philanthropy forever, here and around the world. As the American philosopher William James has stated, “The great use of a life is to spend it for something that outlives it.” As more and more citizens across the globe adopt and adapt Goff’s concept of pooling their…
…er of the executive committee of the National Association of Manufacturers and serves as trustee and chairman of the board of University Hospitals of Cleveland, advisory chairman of the board of the Cleveland Museum of Art, trustee of the Musical Arts Association and trustee emeritus of Case Western Reserve University. In addition to his past service as board chair of the Cleveland Foundation, Rankin is a former member of the boards of trustees…
…1915–17 survey of Cleveland’s city schools commissioned by the Cleveland Foundation. Ayres’s critical report resulted in a number of changes within the school system. At the outbreak of U.S. involvement in World War I, Lt. Col. Ayres volunteered to lend the Russell Sage Foundation’s statistical expertise to the Council of National Defense. After the war he moved to Cleveland, where he served for 26 years as vice…
…ics, the nation’s leading military contractor, which had been charged with pervasive misconduct in the awarding of government defense contracts. After getting the company back on track, he retired in 1990. Pace served on the national boards of the Boy Scouts of America and Junior Achievement. He was a Cleveland Council commissioner for five years and helped to found the Greater Cleveland Roundtable. In 1984, he chaired United Way of Greater…
The Trust for Public Land (TPL), a national leader in land conservation based in California, has been working in Ohio since 1974. With the support of a $100,000 grant from the Cleveland Foundation in 1977, the organization played a key role in acquiring 30,000 acres of land for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park around Blossom Music Center, at the former site of the Richfield Coliseum, and along the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail, a scenic…
…million citywide master redevelopment plan underwritten in part by the foundation. The plan, which was formally adopted by the City of Cleveland, included a massive downtown renewal project called Erieview. Conceived by internationally known architects I. M. Pei & Associates, Erieview envisioned $100 million in new construction, including government, office and apartment buildings, retail spaces and even a hotel, for a blighted area…
…isbursement of endowment income. Goff insisted that a community trust’s income must be distributed by an independent group of citizens, of which a substantial number were to be named by the holders of positions of honor and trust in the community. Breaking with the practice of setting up foundations as private corporations with self-perpetuating boards, he proposed that only two of the five members of the Cleveland Foundation’s grantmaking body…
…ant relatives) to the Cleveland Foundation. During 60 years of unremitting toil—later in life she had cleaned offices in downtown Cleveland and washed laundry in her three rented rooms—she had accumulated well over $10,000. Prudently invested in blue-chip stocks, Bohm’s nest egg would be worth more than $150,000 today. Bohm had been almost completely blind as a result of inoperable cataracts when she died, just a few days before her 80th…
…le until 1990. He retired as chairman in 1991. In 1978, Vail launched the New Cleveland Campaign to promote the area’s many cultural, entertainment and industrial assets. He co-founded Cleveland Tomorrow (now the Greater Cleveland Partnership), a group of business leaders who work to improve the city’s building and industrial base by bringing business and government together. He has served as a trustee of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation,…