… Cleveland, Ohio. It’s where I was born. Where I was baptized. Where I went to college. And grad school. It’s where I worked for the first six years of my career. Until I left.
That’s the nature of the advertising business. It’s a big industry and there are always more opportunities away from home. I’ve lived in Chicago. Twice. I’ve lived in Los Angeles. I’ve lived in San Francisco. I live in Detroit. Well, Detroit-adjacent, anyway (or is it Detroit-adjacent-adjacent?).
I loved my time in Chicago. It’s a big, sprawling, majestic, old-school kind of city.
I loved my time in San Francisco. When I was there, it was the coolest place you could be in America. And it’s a beautiful gem of a city surrounded by even more beautiful geography.
Los Angeles? I could take it or leave it. Well, more leave it than take it.
Detroit-adjacent-adjacent? I absolutely love where I landed all those years ago. And there’s no place I’d rather be than my house (and, weather permitting, my front porch).
But Cleveland, well Cleveland is still the home in my heart. My home of homes.
When I go back to Cleveland, just driving through the neighborhoods or walking around Downtown feels different from any other place I’ve ever been. Many things have changed in the thirty years since I left, but many have not.
Yes, there are plenty of new buildings sprinkled throughout Downtown. A lot of new apartments. A lot more people on the street walking their dogs. Sherwin-Williams is finishing off its new world headquarters between Superior and St. Clair and West Third and Sixth. The Cleveland Museum of Art is more impressive than ever. There’s a casino where the downtown Higbee’s used to be.
And yet …
It still feels the same. Cleveland’s a gritty Rust Belt city long past its heyday, but working hard to create new magic for new generations.
I like to say, “Cleveland is Detroit is Pittsburgh is Buffalo is Milwaukee is Toledo is Akron is Flint is….” Because it’s true. The shores of the Great Lakes are studded with once-great manufacturing hubs now paying the long price of closed factories, crumbling infrastructure, persistent segregation, struggling school systems, generational poverty and lingering antagonism between the cities and the suburbs.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Rust Belt cities. And I don’t have a problem with that name, Rust Belt. There’s still truth in the description. And if someone says it, you still know what they mean.
I loved coming of age during the Cleveland of the 70s and 80s. I loved going to college Downtown. I loved working right on Public Square, back when Wyse Advertising was Ohio’s greatest advertising agency. To my eyes, Rust Belt cities have a beauty to them other cities lack. There’s a kind of rolled-up-shirtsleeves dignity – battled and bruised but not bowed – in all that old brick and stone and iron, the old factories and warehouses, the vintage apartment buildings, the neighborhoods (some fading, others flourishing), the architectural gems that have improbably lasted through the generations.
When I go back to Cleveland, no matter how much new stuff they have, there’s always more old stuff. And that’s the stuff that feels like home. Like my home of homes.
* * *
So what has me in such a thoughtful mood?
I’ve been looking again at a brochure we created at Factory for the Cleveland State University Foundation.
It’s a lovely piece of collateral, if you ask me. Elegantly and intelligently designed (shout out to Izabela Skonieczka). The purpose of this brochure is to give the folks from the CSU Foundation – their development team and board members – something they can put in the hands of people who might do important things for CSU. Big ticket donors, corporate executives, nonprofit leaders, government officials. People like that.
The brochure makes a case for why you, a rich and powerful Greater Clevelander, should invest your time, attention, corporate resources and money to Cleveland State University.
As the headline on the front of the brochure plainly states: “This Is Cleveland’s University.”
Cleveland’s University. That’s a line I came up with. I’m quite proud of it.
Not that there aren’t other universities in Cleveland. Sure there are. There’s even a great (or at least great-ish) university – Case Western Reserve University – just three miles east of CSU, a straight shot up Euclid Avenue.
But being a public university – a state university – CSU has a special relationship with the city and region around it. It enrolls, teaches and graduates more Clevelanders than any other college or university. And it’s got more alumni in the region.
There’s more.
Cleveland State, its colleges, schools, faculty, staff and students are plugged into more local governments, more corporations, more nonprofits, more foundations, more community groups, more everything than any other school. There’s a lot of work going on at Cleveland State focused on the wellness and prosperity of the region, the city, its neighborhoods, its people, its economy. More than any other college or university.
Cleveland needs Cleveland State in a way that’s different from even a Case Western Reserve or a John Carroll or a Baldwin Wallace or whatever. The more successful Cleveland State is in its mission, the better things are for Cleveland. So when it’s time to take a crowbar to your wallet or authorize a corporate partnership, supporting Cleveland State is an important way to support Cleveland.
* * *
So when did I become such a booster for Cleveland State University?
I do have history.
Bachelor of Arts in English, Master of Applied Communication Theory and Methodology. My senior year I was the crusading editor of the student newspaper, The Cauldron. In that capacity I was denounced by the university president at commencement. No, he didn’t say my name, but people who knew me understood he was talking about me. The joke, however, was on him … I’d skipped commencement, so I never had to hear it. (Ha ha!)
But the real story is, back in 2014 (I think it was), feeling nostalgic I sent a nice little donation into CSU. It was a couple grand, but it put me on their radar.
Before I knew it, I heard from a gentleman on CSU’s development team. Good guy. Before I knew it, he had me on what’s called a “visiting committee” for what was then the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences … CLASS for short. Good acronym. Factory did work to create materials supporting CLASS. I wrote more checks. And I established a scholarship fund to help students of lesser means close the gap between what they have and what tuition costs.
BTW, you too can support that fund. It’s called The Mark Lantz Next Step Scholarship. The focus is helping sophomores and juniors stay full-time students. There’s other financial support to help them get started and to finish their senior year, but those middle years are when students without means can fall off the radar and downshift to part-time status. Which is not good: Part-time students are less likely to actually complete their degree.
Two three-year terms on the CLASS visiting committee went by. The College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences went back to being a Collage of Arts & Sciences. And I was at loose ends, CSU-wise.
Then they asked if I’d be interested in joining the CSU Foundation Board of Directors.
I was. I did. But in chatting with various folks in the Foundation hierarchy, I explained that I was useless when it came to smilin’ and dialin’ (as my old friend Greg Sieck would put it), so if they needed a fundraiser, that’s not me. But if they needed someone to dig in to how the Foundations tells its story, I was their guy.
So I came to a meeting where they get to vote me onto the board. Which I suppose could have gone badly (“Hey, somebody told me this guy’s a huge jerk!”). It didn’t. But I was expected to make some remarks. Which also could have gone badly.
On the way to the podium (there was a podium) I gathered my thoughts and made this pitch:
Being on the Foundation Board was important to me because Cleveland State and Cleveland are important to me. The way I see it, there’s a handful of institutions with the ability to touch lives all across Greater Cleveland. The Cleveland Metroparks. The RTA. The Cleveland Clinic. And Cleveland State University. CSU is uniquely sited (in Downtown Cleveland) and structured (as a state university with a diversity of colleges, schools, programs, research centers and more) to make a profound difference on Cleveland as a region and for the people who call Cleveland home.
“If you care about Cleveland,” I said, “you have to care about Cleveland State.”
I meant it then. I mean it now. Because it sounds good. And it’s true.
* * *
We’re two years and change after that meeting. Factory’s created that brochure and a series of one-pagers to accompany it (29 so far). And we’ll be doing more. It’s a satisfying way to be of use to my alma mater. And to my home of homes.
But I have to say what’s even more personally satisfying to me as an ad guy is seeing that phrase, “Cleveland’s University,” downstreaming from the Foundation to the university itself. The folks who do the communicating on behalf of Cleveland State have recently been putting “Cleveland’s University” into speeches, website copy, social posts and more.
Why? Because it also sounds good. And it also has the virtue of being true. It’s a nice piece of copy, if I say so myself.
I may not ever live in Cleveland again, but it’s good to know even 200 miles away, I can still make a difference for a school and a place that made such a difference for me.
* * *
BTW, that t-shirt in the photo on top? We had a few dozen of those run off for the folks on the Board. The back says, of course, “YOU HAVE TO CARE ABOUT CLEVELAND STATE.”
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October 16, 2024
