From The Plain Dealer …
Published: Sunday, May 20, 2012, 3:00 PM
By Karen Farkas, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Charles Chapman arrived in Cleveland 50 years ago to create a college.
The first president of Cuyahoga Community College didn’t have a building, faculty or money. And most people had no idea what a two-year college was, he said.
Chapman, 97, recalled those struggles last week on a visit to Tri-C’s new Center for Creative Arts. It is a recent addition to a vibrant, nationally-known four-campus college that enrolls about 55,000 students in credit and non-credit classes.
“There is no way I could have imagined how the college would grow,” Chapman said. “I never dreamed of anything like this.”
Chapman returned to Tri-C to meet with employees, attend graduation and record an oral history for the college’s 50th anniversary next year.
Tall and lanky, with a dry sense of humor, Chapman has been back to campus several times since he left in 1973.
“This is his biggest legacy,” said his daughter Cindy, who traveled with him.
Chapman, who at one time managed a cattle ranch in Montana, began his career in education after serving in the Air Force during World War II.
He received his doctorate in education and sociology from the University of California at Berkeley and worked in Montana, Illinois and California.
By 1962, he had worked at community colleges for 12 years and was president of Barstow Junior College in Barstow, Calif.
“I got a call from Berkeley asking if I was interested in working for a community college in Kansas City or Cleveland,” he said. “I had no interest in Kansas City.”
The Ohio legislature had passed a community college bill in 1961. It was pushed by Cleveland legislators, who wanted to establish the state’s first public two-year community college in Cuyahoga County.
Chapman met with Cleveland leaders and the college’s newly appointed board of trustees. He explained how a community college offered academic and technical courses to anyone at a low cost.
Shortly after he returned home, Chapman got a one-year job offer and was intrigued by the challenge of starting a college from scratch.
“Something like this comes once in a lifetime,” he said.
He began work on July 1, 1962. The only start-up money was a $75,000 grant from the Cleveland Foundation, with no assurance that any other funds would come, he said.
Realizing that he had to publicize the new venture, Chapman said, he spoke to community groups, gave radio and newspaper interviews and was a frequent guest on Dorothy Fuldheim’s television show.
“I said this college offered educational opportunities to community – youth and adults- that do not exist at this present time,” he recalled.
The Cleveland school board agreed to lease the former Brownell Junior High School on East 14th Street to the college for $1 a year.
“It was an ungodly mess,” Chapman said. He helped raise several hundreds of thousands of dollars from foundations and businesses to remodel it, including getting the Glidden company to donate paint.
Chapman said one of his most vivid memories is lines of students snaking around the building on the first day of classes on Sept. 23, 1963.
More than 3,000 students enrolled for day and evening classes, the largest initial enrollment of any two-year college in history. Tuition for in-county residents was $300 a year.
The state provided an initial $200,000 for operations. But if the college was to survive, it needed to pass a property tax levy that year, he said.
Chapman went door-to-door to businesses on Euclid Avenue seeking endorsements. Students held a parade.
That levy passed in November. Chapman said it raised about $1 million a year. The college, now funded by two levies, has suffered only two losses since the first one passed.
Chapman said he always envisioned Tri-C having three campuses. Two opened during his tenure — the Western Campus in Parmain 1966 and Cleveland’s Metropolitan Campus in 1969.
He left Cleveland in 1973 to become superintendent of a community college district in Fresno, Calif., because he wanted to return to family and friends in the state, he said.
But he continued to follow the growth of Tri-C and kept in touch with its leaders.
“The role of community college hasn’t changed and it is coming into its own for really the first time,” he said of two-year degrees. He said the programs offered today at Tri-C and its relationships with businesses is amazing.
When asked how he would like to be remembered in Cleveland he said he didn’t know.
“Other people ought to answer that,” he said. “I don’t think in terms of ‘ego-ness,’ if that is such a word.”
Perhaps his legacy is reflected in those who benefited from Tri-C.
“I know so many who have come to a community college and it made such a tremendous change in their lives,” he said. He cited adults who persevered to get degrees, thus leading their children to realize they too could get a college education.
In one of his last days as president of Tri-C, he said, he was visited by a young man, whotold him that years earlier he and friends had been talking in their economically depressed Cleveland neighborhood and his friends said they were going to enroll in college.
“They said it was a new college and didn’t cost much,” Chapman said. “He went with them and graduated from Tri-C in two years. He transferred to Ohio State and received a degree in sociology. He got his master’s degree in sociology from Harvard University.”
Chapman said that man’s experience may not be as unique as some may think.
“There must be thousands of stories like this in the community,” he said.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:kfarkas@plaind.com, 216-999-5079