This new Community Learning Center will have only one name, not two

Architectural Conception/Akron Public Schools

When Art Modell packed up his football team in 1995 and moved it to Baltimore, he at least made one decent but modest gesture to the city and the whole of Northeast Ohio that had for years supported him and his team. He bequeathed its name to Cleveland.

So, in that sense, the Browns stayed where they were dborn and still belonged.

This was not a given. When another Cleveland professional football team previously hightailed it to greener pastures—greener, as in dollars—the Rams name went, first to Los Angeles and then to St. Louis and finally back to LA again. And Baltimore? It would not have been necessary to heist another city’s team had the Irsays not packed the Colts name, and team belongings, into trucks and hit the road in the middle of the night.

The Akron Public Schools Board of Education might have learned a lesson from this. Names matter. They are part and parcel of one’s identity and place. Board President N.J. Akbar acknowledged as much after the APS leaders voted 7-0 to rename the two high schools that APS had merged into Kenmore-Garfield in 2016 because of declining enrollments and during the district’s decades-long schools rebuilding.

Instead, they took the wrong cue. They left the Kenmore name on a building that has an uncertain future in the Kenmore section of Akron that is fighting valiantly to thrive. Board members said all the right things but only after they had done the wrong thing. One of the more important elements of any community—especially small towns or even just neighborhoods—is its school (or schools). Sports and other extracurricular activities play a large part in this. The community does not regularly show up to observe math class. It does, however, watch its sons and daughters play their games, attend band concerts, and see plays staged at the school. The stage remains but the stars are gone.

No one knows this better than the Buckey twins, Dave and Don, stars of the Kenmore Cardinals’ early 1970s City Championship teams. They followed in the footsteps of Don Plusquellic, who attracted nearly as much in one season as starting quarterback as he did subsequently during 13 years on the Akron City Council and 28½ years, the most in city history, as mayor. Though there is no question who had the better career as a college quarterback—Dave Buckey starred at North Carolina State for Lou Holtz while Plusquellic suffered multiple injuries, first at the University of Pittsburgh and then at Bowling Green—a person can start an argument in Kenmore about which of the greats was better in high school. Dave did have All-American wide receiver Don, with whom he had a rare connection that helped to land them on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

The Buckeys expressed their displeasure at the Board of Education’s naming decision in a letter that appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal (“Cardinals mourn as Golden Rams prevail”, May 26). “Suggesting that Kenmore can keep its name in the Kenmore community for any future use of the old Kenmore High facility is dangling a carrot in front of the Kenmore family that it will never enjoy,” wrote the Buckeys, Dave from Raleigh, North Carolina, and Don from the Villages, Florida.

Though I hope they are wrong, I worry that they are not, and I am not alone. Beacon Journal education writer Jennifer Pignolet reported that board member Bruce Alexander “wanted to make sure the public understood there was no plan at the moment to find a use for the Kenmore building.” Alexander’s statement can be regarded as both responsible and covering the board’s you-know-what. Its members spoke of such hope.

But these same members disregarded both precedent and a new beginning that some in the Kenmore community preferred. Retiring Superintendent David James had presented three naming options: 1) Keep the interim name Kenmore-Garfield Community Learning Center that had been assigned when the schools merged; 2) Call it South Community Learning Center, since both schools are on Akron’s south side; 3) Drop Kenmore and name it the Garfield Community Learning Center since it is located on the Firestone Park site previously occupied by Garfield High School.

The Buckeys pointed out that when “Central and Hower high schools merged into Central-Hower, a combined name was chosen, along with a new mascot and colors. Neither school of community benefitted at the expense of the other.” The board chose to ignore that precedent and the fact Kenmore-Garfield had already gained some acceptance. When the board chose Choice 3, member Patrick Bravo acknowledged that the Kenmore community is “experiencing a rebirth right now, and they’re due some of the respect they’ve earned. That was a big loss for them to lose that school.”

During focus groups with students, staff, and alumni, Pignolet reported, there was support for South Community Learning Center. But, because the district once had had a South High School and had closed it, board member Lisa Mansfield, whom I admire, feared that resurrecting the name would be like “ripping a scab off an old wound.”

So instead, the board chose an alternative that opened a new wound. For the Buckeys, “This goes way beyond a school name. It’s about a soon-forgotten community, tradition, and history.” No one’s history with, support of, and love for Kenmore exceeds that of Don Plusquellic, whose mother and stepfather still live there, as he did for many years.

There is a telling vignette in The Indomitable Don Plusquellic: How a Controversial Mayor Quarterbacked Akron’s Comeback, a political biography I wrote. I will pare it to the bone here. After Kenmore suffered a surprisingly lopsided loss to East High School in the 1966 City Championship game, Plusquellic was beside himself. The Kenmore community had rallied behind him when it learned that Plusquellic would be the All-State quarterback instead of future Ohio State All-American Rex Kern, but not the Akron coaches’ All-City quarterback. The response was withering. Scott Bosley, a Beacon Journal Associated Press All-State voter, had corrected the injustice.

After losing that championship game that he wanted so badly to win for his community, Plusquellic “went home, closed the door to his bedroom, crawled into bed in the middle of Thanksgiving day and bawled his eyes out. He was devastated. He was the quarterback, the team captain, The Man. He should have done something to alter the outcome. He felt the loss fell on him and him alone. He told his mom and dad he wanted to visit Kenmore Boulevard and apologize to every person he saw. He had failed the community that he had supported him so completely.”

Many years later as mayor, Plusquellic came up with the idea of sharing the city’s income tax with Akron Public Schools in order qualify for state funding that would allow aging city schools to be rebuilt in a reconstituted district. That, it turned out, did not include Kenmore High. Now, the next blow: the Kenmore name will disappear, too.

Time for school board members to follow Plusquellic’s example: Go the Boulevard, apologize to every person they see and put “sorry” notes on every vehicle windshield. Rinse and repeat until they feel clean again. It may take a while.