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Robert A. Zoller, 74, engineer, fascinated by Soap Box Derby
Bay Village - Robert A. Zoller was an engineer with 16 patents, but he also had an intense interest in the Soap Box Derby. He found sponsors for young people so they could compete in the race and even helped some of them build their vehicles. He helped save the Derby when financial backing was lost in the 1970s.
Zoller died Tuesday at Fairview Hospital. He was 74.
His enthusiasm for the Derby was more than an individual passion. It was a family imperative. He came in second to his brother, Bill, in the 1941 race in Cleveland. Another brother, Dick, won the city championship five years later and was runner-up in the national race. Zoller's son, Bob, was the Cleveland champion in 1971. Daughter Peggy won it in 1973 and placed fifth in the national Derby. Two nephews also won Cleveland championships.
Zoller was born in Cleveland. He graduated from Cathedral Latin School in 1945 and then served in the Army as a radar technician in Panama. He received a degree in mechanical engineering from Case Institute of Technology in 1951. Zoller was a division manager for Standard Products Co., a maker of plastic and rubber parts for the automobile and appliance industries, when he retired in 1993.
Zoller was involved with the Soap Box Derby throughout his career. When he saw that participants who could not afford high-quality wheels were at a disadvantage, he worked with the Cleveland recreation division to provide wheels for contestants when they arrived at the race. He built starting gates for the city's Derby Hill in Brookside Park and used his engineering skills to ensure the accurate timing of the races.
When the 1973 discovery that some participants in the national race had secretly placed magnets in their cars to make them go faster prompted the national sponsor to withdraw, Zoller helped drum up support from local sponsors.
He recently worked for the creation of the new Soap Box Derby track in Cleveland near West 45th Street and the West Shoreway.
Zoller married
Ellen Lewis 50 years ago. They had lived in Bay Village since 1955.
In addition to his wife, Zoller is survived by daughters, Mary of Bay Village, Cathy Latham of Gahanna, Ohio, Margaret Booth of Bowling Green, Ann of Cleveland, and Elizabeth of Lakewood; a son, Robert of Fairview Park; two brothers; and seven grandchildren.
Services will be at 9:30 a.m. today at St. Raphael Catholic Church, 525 Dover Center Road, Bay Village.
Memorial donations may be made to the John B. Lewis Scholarship Fund, c/o St. Ignatius High School, 1911 West 30th St., Cleveland 44113; or to Park Works, 1836 Euclid Ave., Cleveland 44115.
Arrangements are by the McGorray Bros. Funeral Home of Westlake.
05/25/02
Michael Hobbs, former PD reporter
Brookhaven, Pa. - Michael A. Hobbs, 55, a former reporter for The Plain Dealer and Philadelphia Inquirer, who wrote a book about his experiences as a homeless man, died of complications from a stroke May 16 at the Crozer Chester Medical Center in Chester, Pa.
His family told the Inquirer that, at the time of his death, he was working on another autobiographical book about the consequences of drug abuse.
Hobbs, who was hired at The Plain Dealer in 1987, became homeless after leaving the paper in 1993. Two years ago, a former colleague found him staying at a homeless shelter and enrolled in a drug rehabilitation program with plans to go home to his native Philadelphia, get his life to gether and re turn to journalism. For the last year, he stayed with his father, Sterling, in Brookhaven.
Hobbs in terned at The Plain Dealer and worked for the Akron Beacon-Journal and the Camden (N.J.) Courier-Post in the early 1970s before joining the Navy.
In 1977, he landed a job as a reporter with the Inquirer. He was part of the reporting team that won the paper a Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for its coverage of the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant meltdown. In 1982, he was assigned to the Inquirer's Washington bureau.
According to his book, "Outcast: My Journey From the White House to Homelessness, " Hobbs had his first fling with homelessness after leaving the Philadelphia paper in 1983. He stayed on the streets in San Francisco, Los Angeles and finally New Orleans, where his articulate speech and typing skills got him a job at a homeless shelter.
It does not chronicle his return to homelessness in the 1990s.
In addition to his father, Hobbs is survived by a brother; and three sisters.
Services were private. Arrangements were by the Hunt Irving Funeral Home of Chester Township, Pa.
05/25/02
Charles B. Gardiner
Lakewood - Charles B. Gardiner, 80, former president of Steel and Wire Machinery Co., an industrial manufacturer's representative, died Monday at Lakewood Hospital. He was also a founding member of the Cleveland Cello Society and served on its board.
He was born in Cleveland. He graduated from Shaw High School in 1940 and enrolled in Case School of Applied Science, now known as Case Western Reserve University. His studies were interrupted when he joined the Navy during World War II. After serving with the Submarine Service in the Pacific, Gardiner returned to Case and earned a degree in civil engineering.
He joined his father-in-law's Steel and Wire Machinery Co., where he became president in the 1950s. In the early 1970s, he organized and hosted the convention of the National Wire Association that was held in Cleveland. Gardiner operated Steel and Wire Machinery with his son, Charles A. "Skip" of Newbury Township, until they closed the business in 1989.
He and his wife, the late Eleanor "Toby" Jones Gardiner, had lived in Shaker Heights for many years. Gardiner grew plants in their yard and was considered a "heather and heaths" expert.
Over the years, he had several boats that he sailed on Lake Erie.
He lived in Lakewood for the last year.
In addition to his son, survivors include a daughter, Nancy A. Larson of Newbury Township; two grandchildren; and a brother.
Services have been held.
Memorial donations may be made to the Cleveland Cello Society, P.O. Box 201894, Shaker Heights 44120.
05/25/02
John Betonte, 84, was star athlete at West High School, adult leagues
Palm Harbor, Fla. - John K. Betonte, one of the best athletes to graduate from the old West High School, died Tuesday at his home in Palm Harbor, Fla.
Betonte did not go to college because of family finances in the Depression, but he was a leading sandlot baseball and basketball player through the 1940s. Then he stayed on the ball field for another two decades as an umpire in Class A minor league baseball. He also worked behind the plate during the annual Cleveland Indians charity game against the Cincinnati Reds in Municipal Stadium. When he boomed "STRRIIKE THREE, " there was never doubt among the fans that the batter was out.
Betonte, 84, was born in Cleveland and grew up at West 65th Street and Tillman Avenue. He earned 10 high school varsity letters; three each in football, basketball and baseball and one in track. He joined the Navy during World War II and served on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific.
Betonte married
Mary Ann Knight 62 years ago. They lived in Lakewood for many years. He coached youth teams at First United Church of Christ.
Betonte worked for Midland Steel on Madison Avenue. In 1956, he won $900 in a Cleveland Press crossword contest. That enabled him to take his family on a 30-day camping trip to California.
Golf was another hobby. After he moved to Florida in the early 1980s, he worked for 10 years at Cove Cay Country Club in Clearwater.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by sons, John K. of Cleveland, James K. of Wilsonville, Ore., and Joel K. of Costa Mesa, Calif.; nine grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
Private services were arranged by the Curlew Hills Funeral Home of Palm Harbor, Fla.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Cleveland Baseball Federation, 601 Lakeside Ave., Cleveland 44114.
05/26/02
Earl V. Shaffer, three-time Appalachian Trail hiker
Lebanon, Pa. - When the Appalachian Trail was completed in 1937, its creators never envisioned that anyone would have the audacity, desire or toughness to hike all 2, 100 miles in a single effort.
The trail was intended for day outings or maybe a weeklong trip.
In 1948, a dispirited World War II veteran and aspiring poet stepped on the path in northern Georgia in April and didn't stop walking until he reached the imposing summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine four months later.
Earl V. Shaffer, the first person to walk the entire length of the Appalachian Trail, died May 5 in Lebanon, Pa., of cancer. He was 83.
Shaffer "through-hiked" the AT, as hikers call it, three times. In addition to his pioneering effort, he went the distance in 1965 - when he traveled north-to-south, the unconventional way of doing it - and again in 1998, at the age of 79.
In doing so, Shaffer helped usher in the era of long-distance hiking and proved it's still possible to disappear for extended stretches into what remains of the American wilderness.
Shaffer settled on a six-acre spread in the late 1980s in tiny Idaville, Pa., living in a cabin that was once a chicken coop.
He never had a steady job.
His 1998 hike became a media event, with reporters often joining Shaffer for stretches.
The publicity, in turn, helped fuel a boom in through-hiking on the AT and its equally difficult western counterpart, the 2, 650-mile Pacific Crest Trail, which extends from the Mexican border through the mountains of California, Oregon and Washington to Canada.
05/27/02
Paul Giel, football and baseball all-American
Minneapolis - Paul Giel, a football and baseball all-American at the University of Minnesota who could not replicate that success as a major league pitcher, died Wednesday in Minneapolis. He was 70.
Giel collapsed in his car while returning from the Minnesota Twins-Texas Rangers baseball game in the Metrodome to watch his 12-year-old grandson, Paul III, play in a Little League game. Giel suffered a heart attack and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, his son Paul Jr. said.
As a 5-foot-11, 185-pound single-wing tailback for Minnesota from 1951 through 1953, Giel (pronounced GEEL) received an athletic scholarship that covered only tuition, so he worked in a brewery to earn money for room and board.
Over three years, he ran and passed for 4, 110 yards and 35 touchdowns.
He was later elected to the National Football Foundation's College Hall of Fame.
From 1954 to 1961, with two years off for active duty as an Army officer, Giel was a right-handed pitcher for the New York and San Francisco Giants, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Minnesota Twins and the Kansas City Athletics. His career record was 11-9 in 102 games (11 starts), with a 5.39 ERA.
05/27/02
O.L. Weeks, 90, was leading rose breeder
Los Angeles - O.L. "Ollie" Weeks, who took a rented horse, a plow and an acre of land and became one of California's largest and most reputable rose growers, died May 11 at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. He was 90.
Weeks founded the business that became Weeks Wholesale Rose Grower in Santa Ana in 1937.
With his wife, Verona, he ran what became a multimillion-dollar enterprise, spread over 250 acres in the Kern County town of Wasco, for almost 50 years, until retiring in 1985.
A leading breeder who was partial to red-hued blooms, Weeks created many award-winning roses known for their beauty and robust growth.
05/27/02
