In January, Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance welcomed four new members to its board of directors.
Derrick Hall is the vice president of the Akron Board of Education. He also works for Summa Health Systems specializing in clinical integration and population health. Derrick said his primary goal for joining the KNA board is to work with the community to ensure Kenmore High School is filled with a community-serving school after the 2022 school year and beyond.
James Hardy is a senior program officer for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where he uses his extensive experience in city-wide economic and community development to build healthy, equitable communities. James served six years as the deputy mayor of integrated development for the city of Akron. In his role as board member, James hopes to expand KNA’s economic development and revitalization role in the community. “There’s nowhere in the city like Kenmore Boulevard,” he said. “I want to finish what we’ve started there.”
Laura Smiley is the sales director for The Summit (91.3FM Akron/90.7FM Youngstown/90.1FM Athens Rock and Recovery; The330; KIDJAM! Radio), where she works with with local businesses, organizations, musicians and music-loving patrons to grow the local music economy and community. Laura has served on the KNA Promotion Committee since 2020 and has hosted several The Summit Presents shows at the Rialto Theatre, which she considers “the best venue in Akron.” Laura joined the board to help program and promote Kenmore Boulevard as Akron’s new music row. “At The Summit, I have a microphone, and I want to use it to help,” she said.
Wendy Zarara is the manager of the Kenmore Branch Library, where she has grown music and culture, history and health programming since joining the staff in 2019. Wendy has served on the KNA Events Subcommittee since joining the Kenmore branch’s staff, and she hopes her board service brings even more activity and programming to the neighborhood.
ABOUT KENMORE NEIGHBORHOOD ALLIANCE Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance is a community development corporation formed in 2016 to preserve, enhance, promote and develop the Kenmore neighborhood in southwest Akron by engaging residents and stakeholders in effecting physical, cultural, artistic, recreational and business revitalization. For more information, visit www.betterkenmore.org or follow KNA on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @kenmorehio.
Originally published as “Reflections” in Akron Life Magazine on October 14, 2009
As Akron’s Kenmore neighborhood observes its centennial, current residents and those who used to call Kenmore home are reminiscing. Ruth Zeh dwells in the second group and, at age 96, the granddaughter of local historian P.P. Cherry is savoring memories that date back to 1916, when her parents, Charles and Mamie Cherry, moved to South 13th Street off Kenmore Boulevard.
The Cherry family moved to Kenmore from Bishop Street in Akron. Zeh was born July 9, 1911, and one of her earliest memories is being rescued by boat from Bishop Street during the devastating flood of 1913. She was the youngest of six children, but never knew three brothers who died before her birth.
“I was 5 years old when we moved to Kenmore,” Zeh recalls. “The streets were mud. The house next to us had farm animals. We had a chicken coop. I had to hold the chicken (when it was time for slaughter). At the corner (on the boulevard) was a grocery store with a meat market. It was Ritzman’s grocery.”
The mention of Ritzman’s name triggers a special memory about the grocer, who often gave candy to his customers’ children. “Mr. Ritzman knew I didn’t like candy, so he gave me a dill pickle,” Zeh says.
Across the street from Ritzman’s were a bakery, a flower shop, a milliner and the Ideal Café, a restaurant whose owner also ran a poolroom. Next to the Ideal was the Boulevard, a movie theater, and nearby was McDowell’s Drug Store, a meeting place for teenagers. “That’s where I met Steve,” Zeh says of the man she would later marry. “Steve lived on 15th Street.”
Kenmore also had another movie theater, the Rialto, which Zeh says she didn’t like because the place was crawling with mice that “ran all over our feet.”
Zeh spent many Saturday afternoons at the movies. “We stayed and stayed until my mother came looking for me,” she says, adding that she knew it was time to go when she heard her mother coughing at the back of the theater.
Other pictures from Zeh’s memory book include watching hobos line up for handouts and a vegetable vendor and a ragman who did business from horse-drawn wagons. “I sold aluminum foil balls to him,” she says of the ragman. “Sometimes they’d fall off the wagon, and I’d sell them to him again.”
The Cherrys had the first telephone on 13th Street. “Mom charged 5 cents for the neighbors to use our phone,” Zeh recalls.
Zeh’s father, a volunteer fireman, died when she was 14. After his death, Zeh’s mother drove with her daughters to Palo Alto, Calif., in the family’s Model A Ford in search of employment. When none could be found, she sold the car to raise train fare back to Kenmore.
“The neighbors were very good,” Zeh says of the time after her father’s death. “I knew all of them. I was a busybody. I used to go to the grocery for a lady on our street. My mother asked me what she paid me. I told her 2 cents. She said, ‘No more!’”
Zeh and her sisters, the late Pearl Witwer and the late Bessie Zembrodt, performed around town as the Singing Cherry Sisters. “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” was one of Zeh’s favorite songs.
A highlight of Zeh’s teen years was when the bridge over the Ohio & Erie Canal was completed, facilitating traffic to the Northern Ohio Traction & Light car barns. The community celebrated with a parade in which Zeh was crowned Miss Kenmore Car Barns Bridge.
Looking back some 80 years later, she says, “I went to different merchants and asked, ‘Will you vote for me?’ That’s how I got to sit on a cart or something in the parade. It was just very funny. Emma, my friend, was mad at me because I beat her out.”
In 1928, the year Kenmore was annexed to Akron, Zeh was a salutatorian of Kenmore High School’s January graduating class, and her future husband was valedictorian of the June class. Both went to work for Goodyear, she as a secretary for 18 years. The late Steve Zeh enjoyed a 48-year career, rising from stock boy to assistant vice president.
They were married on Feb. 13, 1937, had four children and lived for the next 17 years on 13th Street. In all, Zeh lived 40 years on 13th Street, a vantage point from which she concludes, “I saw Kenmore grow up.”
Freedom Tax Service, which specializes in providing tax and financial services to small and medium sized businesses, musicians, artists and other independent contractors, kicked off 2022 by moving into its new home at 988 Kenmore Boulevard between The Nite Owl and Stone’s Kenmore Mattress & Furniture.
“This [move] gives us a great building that is well suited for our growing business,” Freedom Tax Service owner Jeffrey Vujevich said.
But the move to a new location isn’t the only change at Freedom Tax Service.
Vujevich has merged Freedom Tax Service with Tax Prep Medina, Inc. – a business he co-founded in 2021 in Brunswick, Ohio. The merging of the two businesses has enabled his Kenmore office to offer more financial planning resources to the community than ever before, and Freedom Tax Service has assumed the Tax Prep Medina moniker.
In addition to providing expert personal and business tax preparation, financial planning, payroll, bookkeeping, and accounting services, Vujevich is a licensed insurance agent and Tax Prep Medina offers Medicare supplements and Medicare Advantage plans through United Healthcare.
“Taxes impact everything we do, so it makes sense to plan your finances from a tax perspective,” Vujevich explained. “We now have more financial professionals to serve our client’s tax planning, financial, and other needs. With higher taxes returning in 2026 when the 2017 tax cuts end, it’s important for everyone to know how taxes will impact their incomes both while they are working and as they retire.”
Need help filing your taxes or have questions? Tax Prep Medina is ready to help.
Medina Tax Prep is located at 988 Kenmore Blvd. and is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and other hours by appointment. For information, call 330-753-5000 or visit taxprepmedina.com today!
Akron Black Artist Guild members. Top row: Josy Jones, Bronlynn Thurman, Diane L. Johnson, Dominic Moore-Dunson, Dara Harper, and Kenmore resident Charlee Harris. Seated: Floco Torres and Ashley Pippin [Dara Harper/Ideastream Public Media]
The Akron Black Artist Guild (ABAG) launched in 2021 as a mission-driven and value-centered organization dedicated to fully realizing the shared vision of a more diversified arts and culture scene in Akron. Among those cultivating, amplifying and advocating for the work of Black creatives is Kenmore’s own Charlee Harris.
Harris, co-operator of So Fresh Used Auto Sales, jokes that being surrounded by family members and friends who are artists meant that she had to become an organizer. In 2017, Harris joined her artist mother in leveraging their large commercial space, relationships with creatives, and Harris’s business savvy to create East Ave Flea Market, a small group of traditionally underrepresented makers and entrepreneurs.
Harris’s work was on the leading edge of creating a community for Akron’s underrepresented artists. It is a concept that crystalized in 2020 after the Akron Cultural Plan uncovered a perceived lack of connection and diversity within the arts sector and a sense of isolation among Akron’s Black artists.
As the Black Artist Guild began to form, and after Harris worked on Kenmore First Fridays as an AmeriCorps VISTA, she had the idea to renovate the family’s commercial space to host a full-fledged, multi-media art gallery. That, combined with their makers market, evolved into what is today East Ave Market & Galleries, the first facility of its kind in the Kenmore community.
“We wanted to have an art space where local artists who maybe can’t get into those institutions, or maybe don’t qualify to have a space, that they can use and present their art,” she explained.
On the second Saturday of each month, the space features a new installation by an Akron-area artist, and the market is now open for shopping during business hours and gallery events.
Harris’s ingenuity is one example of what the Black Artist Guild hopes to pass on through their 2022 Reimagine Fellowship, which will commission three local Black artists to create original works that reimagine and investigate the intersection of creativity in Akron’s non-art sectors. The ultimate goal will be to build thriving communities, foster artistic, educational and professional development, and connect Black artists to opportunity and resources.
“I’ve been in Akron my whole life and part of the arts my whole life and there’s never been anything like it” Harris of the Black Artist Guild.
Fellowship staff like Harris will support Reimagine Fellowship artists, who will be paired with mentoring organizations in West Akron, East Akron and Kenmore. Selected artists willcreate original works that reimagine and investigate the intersection of creativity in non-art sectors through collaborations with residents and organizations like Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance.
“Akron has a past, but it also has a future,” Harris said, “and I think it’s a bright one, especially for young black creatives and young black artists.”
For more information about the Akron Black Artists Guild and the Reimagine Fellowship, visit www.abaguild.org. For more information about the East Ave Market & Galleries, visit www.facebook.com/eastavemarket.
Hundreds of music lovers flocked to Kenmore Boulevard December 17-18 for some of the region’s finest musicians during the Rialto Theatre’s first-ever Kenmore Winter Break Music Festival.
“We wanted to do something special: bring a lot of our favorite artists together for a new kind of music festival,” Rialto Theatre co-owner Seth Vaill explained. “By December, people are really starting to miss summer festivals, and many are home for the holidays, looking for something fun and different to do.”
The event was organized and presented by The Rialto Theatre and The Summit FM along with sponsors EarthQuaker Devices, SIT Strings, The Guitar Department and Lay’s Guitar Shop. It was such a success, the Rialto and The Summit are planning other festivals throughout 2022, including Kenmore Spring Break Music Festival to be held April 1-2.
“The ice and snow will be melting, and people will have a good case of cabin fever,” Vaill said. “They’ll be ready to get out and see some shows, and we’re going to give them two great nights of music.”
The Kenmore Spring Break lineup is currently in the works. For updates and ticket information, stay tuned to therialtotheatre.com and follow @therialtotheatre on Instagram and Facebook.
If you’ve visited The Rialto Theatre during the last several months, you’ve likely been treated to some exciting new offerings: hot coffee, tea and baked goods, plus free acoustic concerts courtesy of The Rialto Living Room.
The Living Room is an intimate performance venue with a stage accommodating solo and duo performers. The bar doubles as a coffee shop operated by SRINA Tea House & Café. Every Tuesday through Saturday from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., SRINA serves up organic coffee, tea and pastries made in Kenmore by Summit Croissants’ Sally Ohle.
The welcoming space has already earned its share of regulars, including Joseph Baker, a freelance graphic designer and the frontman of the local band Akronauts.
“I work at coffee shops exclusively when I’m not on location with a client,” Baker said, continuing, “I get tired of going to the same cafe over and over again and The Rialto Living Room is a fresh, cozy, relaxing spot to work.”
The Living Room hosts free midday acoustic concerts Fridays 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., which feature regional performers like Ben Gage and Chrissy Strong. Rialto owners Seth & Nate Vaill say they will expand to free early-evening performances Wednesday through Saturday.
“The Living Room is a place where you can meet a friend after work, chat over a drink and hang around for some quality live music,” Seth said. “It’s a way to keep our doors open to the community more often.”
After months of bitter debate and loud protest, the end came quietly on New Year’s Eve. Assistant Akron Law Director Alva J. Russell submitted a final transcript of annexation proceedings. Summit County Recorder Mary Paul stamped the official document.
Kenmore officially ceased to exist at 6 p.m. Dec. 31, 1928. Overnight, its 18,000 residents transformed into Akron citizens. Some of them went reluctantly.
Once hailed as “the fastest-growing city in the world,” Kenmore lasted a mere 20 years as a municipality. Those were 20 memorable years, however.
The Akron Realty Co. carved the town out of Coventry Township pastures and cornfields in the early 1900s. Kenmore’s chief backers were Noah R. Steiner, president of Akron Realty; William A. Johnston, manager of the Barberton Land and Improvement Co.; and Will Christy, president of the Northern Ohio Traction Co.
The men envisioned a residential area between Akron and Barberton with a streetcar line connecting the two thriving communities.
The crowning feature would be a 100-foot-wide boulevard passing through the center of the town. Double tracks would run down the middle.
“In Kenmore, there will be five-foot grass plats on either side of the tracks, and the trolley poles will be placed in the ‘devil’ strip between the two tracks,” the Beacon Journal reported in 1901. “Neat metal stations will be placed at frequent intervals along the boulevard. The trolley poles will be painted white. Every 600 feet along the entire length of the boulevard there will be placed an electric arc light, thus lighting the entire boulevard.”
Steiner wanted to name the town Hazelhurst or Hazeldale in honor of his daughter Hazel Steiner, the future Mrs. Bert A. Polsky. For reasons still unclear, he decided to call it Kenmore. Local historians have disagreed on whether the name derives from a place in New York, New Jersey, Virginia or England.
Developers touted Kenmore as a nice neighborhood far away from the smoke and dust of factories. Its lots were mostly residential, although a few notable companies — such as Diamond Rubber Co., Colonial Salt, Zimmerly Bros. Packing Co. and Webster, Camp & Lane — lurked on the outskirts of town.
Akron Realty sold 1,500 lots in 1901 for “the new town whose brilliant future is already assured.” Dozens of dwellings, churches and other buildings rose on tree-lined Kenmore Boulevard. Real-estate dealer M.C. Heminger was the first to move his family to the boulevard.
Kenmore schools began in 1903. The high school’s first graduating class in 1907 consisted of four students — Elsie Wagoner, Floyd Wagoner, Vesta Heminger and Maggie Henry.
The little town kept growing. On Dec. 28, 1907, Kenmore residents voted 77-11 to incorporate into a village. Incorporation papers were filed Jan. 9, 1908, and the change took effect in February.
Voters went to the polls that March to choose Kenmore’s first leaders. Elected were Mayor Charles Smith, Treasurer Byron W. Swigart and City Council members John Bergdorf, Orion D. Capron, Blanchard McFarlin, George W. Foust, Madison C. Lotz and Jacob Wirth.
Officials met at Central School until Kenmore City Hall, a handsome brick building, opened in 1916.
“That the mayor and councilmen are serving without salary in spite of the fact that much of their time is devoted to the interest of the village shows the spirit actuating them,” the Beacon Journal reported. “It is safe to predict that within a year or two, Kenmore will be a model little village, both as to government and dress.”
Little village? Its population exploded 300 percent over the next decade to 18,000.
The bustling community earned the nickname as “the fastest-growing city in the world.” Its famous boulevard was a blur of activity as citizens went about their daily lives.
Such rapid growth proved to be Kenmore’s undoing. The city was 90 percent residential and had few industries from which to collect taxes. When the city fell into debt, it couldn’t provide adequate public services.
So it charged residents more.
The breaking point came in 1928, when the Kenmore City Council approved an ordinance that increased sewer bills $8 a year. Angry citizens formed a committee to explore the city’s possible annexation to Akron, which could provide better services at lower cost.
Former Kenmore Councilman Henry G. Morris led the campaign.
“In comparison with other cities of similar size, important public services, such as garbage collection, street cleaning, health control, public library and provision for care of indigent persons have been either nonexistent or developed in a manner having little appeal to the people on account of the added assessments created and poor service offered,” he wrote.
The revolt caused a bitter divide in the community. Accusations flew. Neighbors turned against neighbors.
Four Kenmore councilmen were jailed for a week in contempt of court when they resigned office rather than place the merger before voters.
Finally, the issue made it to the November 1928 ballot in Akron and Kenmore. It had to pass in both cities to take effect.
Akron overwhelmingly approved it, 59,010 to 11,618. Kenmore was more cautious, but still voted 3,854 to 2,225 in favor.
The merger of the two cities wiped Kenmore off the map — beginning with addresses. Many Kenmore streets had been named for U.S. states. They were changed to numbered avenues to avoid duplication with Akron streets.
The Kenmore Herald, founded in 1913, ceased operations.
Kenmore City Hall ended its governmental duties. Most Kenmore officials lost their jobs, although Police Chief William Poalson and his six officers joined the Akron force while Fire Chief Fred Kelly and his three firefighters joined the Akron squad.
The city’s demise was a mere formality when the annexation document arrived at the recorder’s office on New Year’s Eve. With the official’s stamp, Kenmore became the 9th and 10th wards of Akron.
Kenmore lost its city status but it didn’t lose its identity. To this day, it remains a tightknit community with deep civic pride. The streetcars are gone, but Kenmore Boulevard continues to be the center of activity.
The Akron Realty Co. picked the right location in 1901 when it began laying out a town — “For the investor and the man or woman who wishes to create a competency for later years, there is no spot or place where a few dollars will show greater earnings than purchases made in Kenmore.
“For as sure as the sun rises in the east, as if by magic, Kenmore will join the bounds of Akron with her sister city Barberton.”
Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
A wrecking crew tears down the former Lawndale Elementary School on Friday after a fire destroyed the Akron building at 2330 25th St. SW in Kenmore.
Not much was left standing after the weekend.
A wrecking crew methodically tore down the former Lawndale Elementary School on Friday after a three-alarm fire gutted the Akron building Jan. 10 at 2330 25th St. SW in Kenmore.
A backhoe operator pulled down the stubborn walls while another worker trained a hose on the smashed debris to minimize the dust.
“Oh, geez,” said Lawndale alumnus David Robinson, 88, of Akron. “I hate to hear that. I went to school there.”
Lawndale Elementary was built in 1912 when Kenmore was a separate village from Akron. Over the generations, thousands of children filed through its hallowed halls. Lawndale celebrated its centennial in 2012, but the Akron school board decided to close it in 2016 because of declining enrollment at the 12-classroom building.
All that’s left are the memories — and a mountain of charred rubble.
Students painted mural in 1947
Compounding the sadness among alumni was the belief that a beloved, irreplaceable mural was lost in the fire.
Robinson had helped paint it in 1947 with his seventh-grade classmates under the direction of art teacher Virginia Goson.
The artwork, which decorated a stairwell on the top floor of the three-story building, celebrated the rebirth of Akron’s rubber industry after World War II. The mural included scenes of rubber plantation workers tapping trees, a ship crossing the ocean, chemists working in a laboratory and a rubber worker building a tire.
“We were just kids and we enjoyed doing it,” Robinson recalled.
Art teacher Virginia Goson supervises as Lawndale Elementary School seventh graders put the finishing touches on an Akron mural in May 1947. In the foreground are Guy Thrams and David Robinson. In the background are, from left, John Reffner, Donald Holliday, James Dorton and Hubert Schaneman.
Among the other students who worked on the painting were John Reffner, Donald Holliday, James Dorton, Hubert Schaneman, Guy Thrams and Grace Prats Gillings.
Robinson said Goson was a young teacher, maybe a year removed from college, when she directed the project. Robinson had never worked on a mural before.
“Heavens no,” he said. “She just took a group of boys and gave us a chance to get out of school, I guess.”
He believes they worked on the painting in a hallway before the artwork was raised in the stairwell. Robinson doesn’t remember how long the mural took, but judging by the size of the paintbrushes, it must have been delicate, painstaking work.
“They were just the small brushes that you use in art class,” he said. “They were not very big.”
The children used tempera paint and favored muted tones: blues, browns, creams and grays. At the bottom of the mural, they lettered a single word: “RUBBER.”
Account
Robinson said he was proud of the finished product. The painting was 10 feet high and 8 feet wide. Once it went up, it didn’t come down.
“I’ll tell you a story about that mural,” Robinson said. “They painted the interior of the building that summer. The painters wanted to take the mural down and paint the walls.
“And they wouldn’t let them. They said, ‘No way.’ I don’t know if they didn’t know how to get it back up again. They never did paint where that mural hung. They painted around it.”
Retired art teacher Virginia Goson takes a portrait with former students Guy Thrams, David Robinson and Jim Dorton in 2011 in front of the mural they created in 1947 at Lawndale Elementary School in Akron.
Reunion at Lawndale
Robinson returned to the school in 2011 for a mini reunion of mural painters. He, Dorton and Thrams took a portrait in front of the mural with their former teacher, Gosen, who had retired in 1974.
“It was about the time of the war, and we wanted to do something about Akron,” Gosen recalled at the time.
“And I let the boys just go. I was their teacher. I just let them go paint.”
She died in 2017 at age 94.
The Akron school board voted in December 2015 to shut down Lawndale because enrollment had fallen from 350 to 160. Students transferred in the fall of 2016 to Sam Salem Community Learning Center at 1222 W. Waterloo Road.
Private developer Leroy Stowers purchased Lawndale for $44,000 in 2019, but the city ordered the vacant building’s demolition in 2021.
The end came sooner than expected.
Akron firefighters responded to a blaze about 6:30 a.m. Jan. 10 at the old school. The building was engulfed in flames when they arrived. Firefighters battled the blaze for nearly five hours before getting it under control in the freezing conditions. Water from the hoses turned into cascades of ice.
Investigators were trying to determine the cause of the fire last week.
Saddened by the loss of his school, Robinson wondered about the 1947 mural.
“Did the fire damage it in any way?” he asked.
Certainly, it was unlikely to have survived the inferno.
But what if the mural hadn’t been destroyed in the fire? What if it hadn’t been smashed to pieces when the building was demolished?
Search for painting
Contacted Friday, property owner Stowers said he was unaware of the 1947 mural and had not removed it.
Akron Public Schools spokesman Mark Williamson didn’t recall hearing about the painting. He asked Debra Foulk, executive director of business affairs for the district, if she knew about it.
Foulk said the district has a number of items in storage from old school buildings. She asked two employees to check, but the search turned up empty before the long holiday weekend.
Former board member and school namesake Sam Salem, a Kenmore native, said he also had wondered about the mural when he heard that Lawndale had burned.
“I have a slim memory of being told the mural was stashed somewhere,” Salem said.
“I think I know where it is,” she said. “I know it’s a painting from Lawndale, but I don’t know if it’s the one you’re talking about.”
Williams suggested contacting New Beginnings, a thrift store and boutique at Kenmore Boulevard and 13th Street Southwest.
Store founder Tugg Massa, executive director of Akron Say No to Dope, answered the phone.
“I may have come into possession of such an item,” Massa said.
Safe in storage
He invited a reporter to come take a look. In an adjacent storage area, behind some chairs, tables, milk crates, boxes and a giant wooden cross, an 80-square-foot painting leaned against a wall.
“We have moved it several times,” Massa said.
A mile away from the charred ruins of Lawndale, the 1947 mural sat safely in storage. The colorful painting has a few tears, but it’s in good shape.
Tugg Massa, founder of the New Beginnings thrift store on Kenmore Boulevard in Akron, stands Saturday next to a 1947 student mural that used to hang in Lawndale Elementary School.
Massa said it was dropped off anonymously at the thrift store last year by someone who had salvaged it from the school. Store volunteers wondered what to do.
“Someone brought it to me and asked me if I knew what to do with it,” Massa said. “I said, ‘Well, what is is?’ And they said they weren’t sure, but on the back it has ‘Lawndale Elementary.’”
Looking for a good home, they decided to donate it to the Kenmore Historical Society. It’s sitting in storage, waiting for appropriate transportation because it’s such an odd size, he said.
If it hadn’t been salvaged, the mural would have gone up in flames last week. Massa said other people suggested throwing it away, but he made sure it was preserved.
“I didn’t want anything to happen to it,” Massa said.
Lawndale Elementary School is gone forever.
All that’s left are the memories — and a student mural from 1947.
Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
Kenmore lost one of its most beloved artists and neighborhood cheerleaders in 2021. But thanks to family, friends, some fellow creatives and Kenmore revitalizers, her creative legacy lives on.
Paula Sandusky’s love of community began on Janis Avenue in Kenmore’s Castle Homes development. There, she attended Highland Park Elementary School (now Sam Salem CLC) and Hope United Methodist Church, where a young man named Arlie Holman caught her eye. But, like many youthful interests, that relationship would take time to fully develop. And the same can be said of her artwork.
Growing up, cross stitching was a favorite hobby of Paula’s. She had an eye for interesting and beautiful things. When a military marriage took her to Germany, she immersed herself in a culture that was very different from her somewhat sheltered upbringing in Kenmore. There, her love of art grew. She continued her cross stitching. She would do crafts with her children. And when a divorce sent her back to her old Kenmore neighborhood, she was met by a fellow artist who, after years, was eager to greet her.
“We were always sweethearts,” Arlie said of Paula. “Since 1974, we had always been in love.”
This time, the couple would stick together and were married for 35 years. During that time, art became a big aspect of their lives together. Arlie, a pencil artist and painter, said Paula was “very good without any formal training.” In fact, he said she had never really tried drawing or painting until about 15 years ago, when a drawing of a family dog began a new passion for her.
Encouraged by Arlie and her artist son, Eddie, Paula continued to draw over the years. And while she enjoyed creating and showing off her drawings, Paula’s favorite medium for artistic expression may have been weaving. She found joy in creating weavings and made many during her life. Several were even displayed during a group art show at Project Three Gallery, a pop-up art space at the corner of Kenmore Blvd. and 15th St., a space that would leave an even bigger mark on the landscape of Kenmore.
Together, Arlie and Paula contributed their talents to Caleb Aronhalt’s “Kenmore, OH” mural on the side of the very same building where Paula showcased her artwork. They did so as members of the Art Bomb Brigade, a local community mural arts and education program they became involved in when Eddie participated in The University of Akron’s Arts Lift program. After her passing, Paula was honored when, as part of a Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance revitalization project, Arlie and the Art Bomb Brigade painted the piers of the Manchester Road overpass with shapes of flowers Paula loved most.
“Kenmore is where we live. It’s our home, our community, and she wanted to help improve our community and bring it back,” Arlie said.
Paula believed – and participated – in Kenmore’s revitalization efforts. As a member of the Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance’s Design Committee, Paula helped to guide some of the aesthetic decisions made regarding murals and wayfinding on the boulevard. She also served with Arlie on the Summit Lake Planning Committee, working to keep the area clean and establish recreation activities on the lake’s north side.
And there is no question: Paula was a loyal lover and champion of Kenmore her entire life, so much so that in late 2019, when her daughter, Elizabeth, and son-in-law, David, were looking to buy their first house in West Akron, Paula intervened.
“My mom gave us the biggest guilt trip,” Elizabeth recalls. “She told me ‘You’re from Kenmore, you need to come back to your home. Kenmore needs good people to bring it back to what it was,’” she said. Elizabeth and David ultimately bought a home in Kenmore, much to Paula’s delight.
Paula’s family remembers her as a person who cared about everyone and wanted to help everyone: Someone who believed in the good in everyone and sincerely was interested in listening to other people’s stories and what they had to say. But for her first love, Arlie, she was much more: “Paula was the light in my life and now that light is gone from this life. There will be a day when we see each other again.”
A GoFundMe campaign has been set up by Paula’s son-in-law, David, to raise money to buy a headstone for Paula’s grave. To support this effort, donate now.
