A Century of Bumbling

The panic prompted President Dwight Eisenhower to create a civilian organization that united all space-related efforts under one umbrella -- the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It was based on a plan drafted by officials at the Cleveland laboratory.

Despite centralization, animosities existed among the missile and rocket programs. There were, for example, differences of opinion over liquid hydrogen. Light and powerful, it clearly had the capability to lift large loads into space, but was opposed by German scientists working for the Army, who were still smarting from the explosion of the hydrogen-powered Hindenburg in 1937.

Cleveland remained central to the Apollo project, the plan to put men on the moon. The first NASA administrator was T. Keith Glennan, president of Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University); the first head of the Apollo program was Abe Silverstein, then director of the Lewis Research Center, as the organization was known before its name was changed to NASA Glenn.

The budget in Cleveland burgeoned. Hundreds of scientists and engineers were hired. The facilities expanded. Liquid hydrogen would make moon landings possible, a feat the Russians would never be able to duplicate.

"There was a window there, when Cleveland could have reached out and taken a major part of the space program," a retired NASA official says. "We needed some luck and some astute politicians in Washington, but it could have been done."

Yet, then as now, the key Cleveland figures in Ohio's congressional delegation were no match for this challenge. U.S. Senator Frank Lausche and Congressmen Michael Feighan and Charles Vanik were more inclined toward ethnic festivals, award dinners, parades, and immigration issues. After all, the golden rule of ethnic politics holds that it's better to do nothing than to risk failure by doing something. Adhering to that rule has always been the chief requirement for reelection in Cleveland.

To a Cleveland politician, the concept of space meant a large office in Washington, D.C. But a Democratic senator from Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson, saw space as reaching for the stars, with a payoff of money, power, and jobs.

One day in 1960, T. Keith Glennan received a call from Congressman Albert Thomas, a Texas Democrat, who headed the appropriations committee reviewing NASA's first budget request. Thomas appeared to be acting for Johnson. A passage from Glennan's diary dramatically illustrates the political liability Cleveland faced.

"Now look here, Doctor, let's cut the bull," Glennan quotes Thomas as saying. "Your budget calls for $14 million (for a new laboratory), and I am telling you that you won't get a god-damned cent of it unless that laboratory is moved to Houston."

Cleveland politicians apparently didn't have the juice, or the knowledge, to launch a counterplay. When Johnson became vice president, Glennan privately informed disappointed Ohio officials that the Manned Space Center would be built in Houston. To justify the move, Johnson explained that Houston was closer to the moon.

Today, NASA Glenn is something of an afterthought, its future uncertain as the agency fights for its annual budget. Some with ties to the center say it is a miracle that the laboratory has survived this long.

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The most visible symbol of Cleveland's decline is Euclid Avenue, once celebrated as one of the world's great thoroughfares. Over the years, it has gone from Millionaire's Row to something resembling an urban cemetery.

A $168 million project is under way to revitalize the avenue and join it to University Circle by a new transportation link. City officials are depending heavily on this effort to reverse downtown's decline. Some think the project a boondoggle-in-waiting.

Donald Grogan's family once owned a considerable amount of downtown property on and around the avenue. His father, the late Timothy Grogan, was a major civic figure and real-estate magnate.

From the time he was a teenager, Don's neighborhood was Euclid Avenue. He could name the places where illegal liquor was stored during Prohibition and told stories about the penthouse atop the Hanna Building, which concealed the nocturnal activities of a city father and the actresses he seduced.

In the early 1950s, the county passed a bond issue to build a subway between Public Square and University Circle. The subway would have linked a then-vibrant East 105th Street shopping area with downtown, making urban living an attractive alternative to the suburban exodus, which was in its early stages. But the subway caused great concern among executives at the Higbee Company, a department store located on Public Square, which was locked in heated competition with rival Halle Brothers Company. Higbee feared that Halle Brothers, with a store on Playhouse Square, would capture shoppers from the affluent eastern suburbs before they reached the Public Square subway stop.