Old Friends
There is nothing like old friends. I had a weekend of visiting in Ohio and Michigan, and Anne went along and made lots of new friends.
Wednesday night Anne and I took the redeye into Cleveland, arriving at 6:45 on Thursday morning. We rented a car and set out for Jean's apartment in the NE suburbs. We had a lovely day-and-a-half with her, and we accomplished three-and-a-half things that we wanted to do. Those things were:
1) Jean made an amazing gift to me of her father's violin. It and the case are likely about a hundred years old.
2) We ate dinner at Aladdin's (the one in Mayfield Heights, rather than my old weekly standby on Cedar, due to a variety of factors).
3) I showed Jean how to use a computer just enough to find this blog.
...and...
3.5) We made a partial photography tour with Anne of important historical sites. Historical sites from my eight years in Cleveland, that is. I was really sad to have missed a few: my old apartment, the church where Jared and I got married, the Wade Lagoon, Lakeview Cemetery, and Shaker Lake, but such was the situation when we had a day-and-a-half, a two-year-old, a thirty-something, an eighty-something, and a variety of sleep-, food-, motion-, and health-needs.
Anne and Jean hit it off and had a lot of fun playing together.
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Published in The Plain Dealer from Apr. 3 to Apr. 4, 2016
Wednesday night Anne and I took the redeye into Cleveland, arriving at 6:45 on Thursday morning. We rented a car and set out for Jean's apartment in the NE suburbs. We had a lovely day-and-a-half with her, and we accomplished three-and-a-half things that we wanted to do. Those things were:
1) Jean made an amazing gift to me of her father's violin. It and the case are likely about a hundred years old.
2) We ate dinner at Aladdin's (the one in Mayfield Heights, rather than my old weekly standby on Cedar, due to a variety of factors).
3) I showed Jean how to use a computer just enough to find this blog.
...and...
3.5) We made a partial photography tour with Anne of important historical sites. Historical sites from my eight years in Cleveland, that is. I was really sad to have missed a few: my old apartment, the church where Jared and I got married, the Wade Lagoon, Lakeview Cemetery, and Shaker Lake, but such was the situation when we had a day-and-a-half, a two-year-old, a thirty-something, an eighty-something, and a variety of sleep-, food-, motion-, and health-needs.
This is the bench in the town square in Willoughby, given in memory of Jean's brother Bob Kalina, who was murdered in his dental office in 2006 when burglars unexpectedly found him there after hours on Saturday evening.
This is the building where Dr. Kalina practiced.
Anne checking out the piano bench in one of Jared's favorite practice rooms at school
Anne trotting out of the practice hallway where one of the maintainance guys saw Jared and me conversing at 7:45 in the morning rather than practicing. He said, "I don't hear any melodies or harmonies or symphonies. I come down here and open up this building for music!" or something to that effect.
Anne in front of Kulas Hall.
Anne coming down the back staircase
Jared's old house on Hessler. He lived in the left side of the duplex.
Jared's apartment building on Ford. He lived on the backside of the seventh floor overlooking the beautiful old Presbyterian church.
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Interview with Jean
I met Jean Grod working in the church nursery on Thursday mornings at Bethel Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. We hit it off, and over time she and I sort of became family to each other. She lives in another Cleveland suburb now in a retirement center, and doesn't have much family left; a niece in the mid-West and a nephew in California constitute her only blood relatives. I told her I wanted to write down some of her stories, so you can read here what she came up with for our first interview. This is a picture of her posing with her Coke in a Cleveland restaurant about five years ago:
My mother was 4 ' 11, and my father was probably about 5' 9" or 5' 10". My mother did not drive, so she would walk to the grocery store every day - Heinen's - and everybody on the street just loved her. Everybody she ever met just loved her. My mother was the weak one in the home. My father was the dictator. But when my mother got sick and my father was taking care of her, then you could see that she actually ruled the roost. Everything that my mother did for him, my father did for her, which was amazing.
My best moment was when I went to my band and orchestra dinner at the end of the 12th grade, and since my father couldn't come to the dinner, my mother and my brother came, but just as they were giving me the award that I would be in the hall of fame, my father came in. He had tears in his eyes. For my father to be there, it was an especially wonderful moment.
One time my dad and I went on a date. We went to dinner and he took me to see Moulin Rouge, and it was probably something I'll never forget. It was just something to sit and talk with my father, a brilliant man, but it was a different situation from being with him at home and talking. It was a beautiful, beautiful time. That was one of the few times that we were ever together alone.
My brother - he started to play the clarinet when he was so young that his little fingers wouldn't go around it! The teacher's office was right across the street from my father's office on Euclid Avenue, and my father could see him over there. After a while I got to learn the clarinet. My brother was an absolutely excellent musician. When he got to junior high, the school band teacher knew my father, and he used knowing my father so much, it ruined my brother's interest in the clarinet. My brother gave it up and wouldn't play it ever again. This man used his relationship with my father to torment my brother. I learned that when you teach children, you don't use the relationship you have with their relative in interfacing with them to actually kill a person's interest in something they were really magnificent with. And I... I had to practice every night down in the basement so I would know the tunes for the marching band, but my brother would have just been able to them all, and he would have been in jazz band, too.
I'll tell you a funny that my brother did with a friends of his:
The music teacher that he had first - he would really focus on the orchestra and not look at anything else that was happening in the room. And my brother and his friend tied Mr. Wetlaufer's shoes together. My mother was so mortified. She couldn't believe that my brother could do that. I don't remember many people's names, but I'll remember Mr. Wetlaufer. I was four years behind my brother, and Mr. Wetlaufer retired when I came to high school.
My brother wrote a story in his English class, and it was so good that the teacher put it on the bulletin board for parents' night that night. My mother had to go alone, and she found his essay. And my brother had written that our dog was more important than the children in the family - that he sat at the table and ate his meals with us, and that he was the most important thing in the house. Well, my mother... mortified is the wrong word... I'll have to look up the right word in the dictionary... when she came home and told the story, all she could say was, "How could you?" The truth of it was, the dog was really important; he was part of the family, but Bob really embellished it. My mom was really beside herself. If I were to have done something like that she would have been really angry. There was some anger toward my brother but not the real hard kind of anger.
Bob got to learn how to swim because he was more brave than I was. I got out of swimming. He was a hard-working young man, and he saved up money for a car, and bought one when he was sixteen. It wasn't the greatest, but he learned how to drive. My father was always watching, watching. When Bob went to college, my dad sold Bob's car. We didn't have much money anyway, but my dad had a very, very old car, but my dad kept it like the latest model - there wasn't a scratch on it. In fact when he died in 1973, my mother gave me that 1949 Ford Falcon. All the gas stations I ever went to - it was only a few - the attendants called their manager about that car. It didn't have any windshield washers, of course it didn't have seat belts, and there was something else normal to a car that it didn't have - I can't remember what. It should have been in an automobile museum. I had a hard time learning to drive it, because it was a standard car, and the only car I knew how to drive was an automatic.
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JEAN C. (Kalina) GROD
GROD JEAN C. GROD (nee Kalina), passed away peacefully on Thursday, March 31st at the age of 83. She was preceded in death by her parents, Jack and Ruth Kalina and beloved brother Dr. Robert A. Kalina. Jean was the proud aunt of Mark and Nancy Kalina, and their spouses, Grace and Kim, respectively. Jean entered banking after she graduated from Heights High School and worked in banking until her retirement. She was a friend of many and a volunteer. Jean was a Sunday school teacher for 40 years. She will be remembered for her enthusiasm and love of children. Jean never met a stranger. Her love of children and people endeared her to many. Jean spent the last five years of her life at Breckenridge Village. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in Jean's memory to the Robert A. Kalina Scholarship fund at CWRU School of Dental Medicine 10900 Euclid Ave. Cleveland, OH 44106 or to the charity of your choice
. Cremation by DeJohn Funeral Home. Celebration of Life Service Tuesday, April 5, 2016 at 2 PM at the Funeral Home. Family will receive friends to pay tribute to and celebrate the life of Jean at THE DeJOHN-FLYNN-MYLOTT FUNERAL HOME OF WILLOUGHBY HILLS, 28890 CHARDON ROAD (between Bishop Rd. and Rt. 91) TUESDAY 1-2 PM.
. Cremation by DeJohn Funeral Home. Celebration of Life Service Tuesday, April 5, 2016 at 2 PM at the Funeral Home. Family will receive friends to pay tribute to and celebrate the life of Jean at THE DeJOHN-FLYNN-MYLOTT FUNERAL HOME OF WILLOUGHBY HILLS, 28890 CHARDON ROAD (between Bishop Rd. and Rt. 91) TUESDAY 1-2 PM.
