The Battle of State Road Park (and Howard Johnson's Too)

Front page photo from the 6/25/79 edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Veterans Memorial Park in Parma is usually a very peaceful place.  Visitors can stroll by a pond, play disc golf, or take in a softball game (the park has even hosted several national softball tournaments).  My brother and I spent a fair amount of time there (when it was known as State Road Park) during our childhood years in Parma.  Our house was at the corner of W. 44th and Longwood, directly across the street from the park's northern entrance.  All sorts of adventures, from biking, to sledding, to capture the flag, were waiting in what was essentially our front yard. On one sunny afternoon in the summer of 1979, however, the usual calm of the park was broken: Nazis had decided to come to town and they had picked our park to invade

T'was Sunday, June the 24th (not quite a week after my second birthday, so my memories of the event are sketchy at best: my family remembers it all very well though) and a group of Neo-Nazis attempted to have a rally there.  I say attempted because the locals pelted these wannabe SS guards with rocks and bottles before one racist word could be uttered.  The projectile throwing was so intense that the Nazis had to run out of the park while Parma cops tried to keep the crowd at bay.

After the Nazis vacated the premises, a group made up of various Communists/anti-fascist elements marched into the park waving red flags.  This congregation was apparently not chased out. 

Later that day, down in Independence at the Howard Johnson's on Brecksville Road, the Nazis attempted to have a press conference.  I say attempted because a group of about a dozen young Jewish men who had been at the State Road Park demonstration burst into the hotel meeting room with baseball bats and improvised flame throwers. The Nazis had an even narrower escape in Independence: the anti-fascists managed to set a car on fire that belonged to one of the White Power Party members.  

The Nazis, under the direction of National Socialist Party of America leader John Collin, may have been inspired to come to Parma because of a discriminatory housing case the city was fighting. As the Plain Dealer's editorial page put it, perhaps the Nazis thought that Parma was "fertile ground" for white power sentiments (6/27/79 page 24-A).  But, as the same PD editorial pointed out, the Nazis failed to do further research about the city. Parma was home to a lot of folks with names like Boyko, Szabo, and Wisniewski; folks whose opinion of National Socialism was low at best and who had very likely lost relatives to the Nazis during World War II.

Furthermore, the Nazis had failed to realize that VFW Post 1974 (my great-uncle was once commander of this particular post) was less than 400 feet away from the park's boundaries.  [I like to imagine the scene like this: a gang of WWII vets (who would have still been pretty hale and hearty in 1979) are hanging out at the bar, listening to the Indians game on the radio. All of a sudden, some neighborhood kid comes running into the club, breathlessly yelling "Nazis. . . in the park!" Already in a foul mood because the Tribe was losing to the Yankees, these gents would have loved nothing more than to thrash some Neo-Nazi butt.  For God's sake, look at the man in the foreground of the image below: you know he wishes he had his old BAR in his hands right now.]  All-in-all, the Nazi's had seriously misread the room.

From the front page of the 6/25/79 edition of the PD.

The letters to the PD in the wake of the incidents reflect a range of opinions. Some writers felt that the Nazis deserved what they got (and should have gotten worse), while other armchair commentators expressed sympathy for the devils.  This is America, they argued, and everyone is entitled to their opinion no matter how nasty it is.  Oh, and throwing rocks at fascists is bad (PD 6/28/79 and 6/30/79).

Overall, the discussion about allowing Nazis a chance to speak hasn't changed much in the ensuing 40-odd years. Parma itself has changed, however.  Most of the old-timers with first hand memories of WWII are gone now and the city (especially the southern portion) has drifted more to the right politically.  Does this mean that Parma is finally the "fertile ground" that John Collin was hoping for in 1979?  Probably not, but that doesn't mean I'm not worrying about the future of my old home town.

Location of Veterans Memorial Park.

     

Detail of the park: note location of the VFW post; our old house is under the yellow circle.