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Characteristically,
Condon's good humor pervaded his work right up to the start
of a new era in local journalism-an era that would no longer
feature his quotidian assessments of events of the day. With
a byline as familiar to most Clevelanders as their own signature,
it was Condon who chronicled the ups and downs of a city going
through its most troubled and tumultuous years, and who helped
the old town whistle past the graveyard of its bleakest times.
Although
born in Massachusetts, Condon grew up in the Irish neighborhoods
of Cleveland's near West Side, and he spent his entire working
career in the city that at various times he lectured, lampooned,
lambasted, and even loved. He joined the Plain Dealer
in 1943 as a general assignment reporter, but he soon invented
what he called the “highway beat,” hectoring Ohio
gubernatorial candidate Frank Lausche into supporting construction
of the state's first major thoroughfare, the Ohio Turnpike.
As
a reward for his efforts, he was named the newspaper's radio-TV
editor in 1948-a time when there was but one television station
in Cleveland. But he was given his own general-opinion column
on the Op-Ed page in 1962, and for the next two decades he
managed to do what few writers before or since have achieved:
He earned the attention and respect of hundreds of thousands
of habitual readers, and he did it five days a week, rain
or shine. During those difficult years in the city, the only
constants of a Cleveland morning were a cup of coffee and
Condon's column, a tasty concoction of news, opinions, impressions,
insights, memoir, satire, pedantry, and no small amount of
whimsy. Even during the darkest hours of the 1960s and 1970s-when
racial unrest, recession, population flight, and even municipal
default cast
a pall over the city and its long-suffering residents-Condon
kept a light burning for all those who believed that better
times might lay ahead.
During
his newspaper career George Condon won honors from the Press
Club of Cleveland in four separate categories: public service,
headline writing, humor, and general column excellence. He
received the Distinguished Service Award of the Society of
Professional Journalists in 1980, and in 1990 he was inducted
into the Press Club's Journalism Hall of Fame.
Of
the six books he has authored, four are about Cleveland-its
history, its struggles, its failures, its triumphs. Few people
have known the town better, from its founding in the 18th
century to its renaissance in the 20th. Even fewer have been
able to paint in words such engaging, enlightening, and entertaining
views of a community and its citizens, past and present. And
no one will ever again do it with quite so tender a touch.
text
by
Mark Gotllieb
Fall 2002
http://www.lkwdpl.org/lfiles/condon
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The
Battle of the Bridge
Cleveland
and Ohio City were connected at Detroit Street by a
floating bridge jointly owned by the two communities.
It was a modest, low structure which, however crude
and rustic in appearance, served its purpose admirably
until the fateful year of 1837, when the City Council
of Cleveland abruptly adopted a resolution directing
removal of that half of the bridge extending from the
east bank to the middle of the river.
This
provocative action may be best understood in the light
of some backstage finagling by a pair of real estate
speculators named John W. Willey and James S. Clark,
[who had] built another bridge over the Cuyahoga River
where Columbus Street, far to the south of Detroit Street,
came down into the valley. Columbus Street was an important
highway linking Cleveland with the farmlands and towns
to the south. Its traffic formerly had been accustomed
to following Pearl Road to the Detroit Street Bridge,
passing through the heart of Ohio City, before swinging
over the river to Cleveland. Cleveland's action in severing
its half of the Detroit Street Bridge was something
else again. It was a transparent effort by Cleveland
to divert all the important through traffic to the bridge
south of Ohio City, thereby bringing about a major bypass
of the rival community to the west.
It
is an unconfirmed legend, but likely enough to believe,
that a horse-drawn fish wagon, running late toward the
marketplace in Cleveland, went careening onto the bridge
in the predawn darkness through a heavy mist and rumbled
noisily toward its watery surprise. Retaliation was
quick. The council of Ohio City declared the hated Columbus
Street Bridge a nuisance and ordered the city marshal
to abate" the nuisance "without delay."
It
was Ohio City's move, and the city marshal, flanked
by deputies, strode purposefully onto the bridge and
planted some heavy charges of powder. He and his men
ran back to the shore, put their fingers in their ears,
and cringed in expectation of the explosion-as did everybody
in the crowd. But the worst that happened was several
sharp popping noises and several large bursts of smoke.
A
council of war was held in Ohio City and a date was
set for an all-out attack on the bridge. It is estimated
that nearly a thousand men from Ohio City and other
communities of the county gathered for the attack. Many
of them were armed with clubs, rocks, and rifles, and
they even had their own chaplain. Dr. Pickands, pastor
of the Presbyterian Church, invoked divine aid in behalf
of the stalwart force before it began the march to the
bridge site with a lawyer, C. L. Russell, in the lead.
When
the Ohio City army reached the Columbus Street Bridge,
they saw that Cleveland had marshaled a formidable defense.
There, across the river, stood a company of militia
with muskets in readiness to rake the bridge area. And
if this were not enough to quell the Ohio City offensive,
Cleveland had also rolled down to the river's edge an
ancient cannon which usually was fired as the highlight
of the Independence Day celebrations-continuing the
tradition of Uncle Abram Hickox.
Before
the opposing forces could enter into any hostilities,
a peacemaker suddenly appeared on the bridge. He was
none other than John W. Willey, mayor of Cleveland and
real estate moonlighter, the villain of the piece. A
mighty roar shook the Ohio City side of the bridge when
Willey stepped forward and held up his hands for attention.
Before he could utter more than a few words, a volley
of stones drove him to cover, and the fight, you might
say, was on.
-Abridged,
with permission of the author, from Cleveland: The
Best Kept Secret (Garden City, New York: Doubleday
& Company, Inc., 1967)
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