Surrounded by the unfamiliar names of Jewish families, Jan Davis walked through a 110-year-old cemetery for the first time in her life in the West Akron neighborhood where she grew up.
She was there to explore the meaning of Sherbondy Hill — the name that Akron’s residents and leaders have given to Lane-Wooster, which harkens to old Samuel Lane School, the hill above it and makes more sense to Davis.
Craig Flury, there overseeing preparations for a funeral in an hour, rolled down a window in his black luxury vehicle to chat as Davis left footprints between tombstones.
“This cemetery was probably here before any of these houses,” said Flury, looking beyond the snowflakes melting on his windshield, past the beautiful headstones and the barbed-wire fencing that separates the Hebrew cemetery on White Avenue from aluminum-sided homes in a historically black neighborhood.
Davis, a retired health care manager, told the man that she works part time at nearby Stewart & Calhoun Funeral Home. The kippah-wearing undertaker, on the other hand, buries four or five Jews a year at old Sherbondy Hill, one of many names for the cemetery.
“So this is going to be Sherbondy Hill again?” said Flury of the city neighborhood’s renaming.
“This is Sherbondy Hill?” responded Davis, who until that moment had been unaware of a such a “sacred” place in an otherwise familiar neighborhood.
The deep and rich histories of old and emerging neighborhoods were not something Akron Planning Director Jason Segedy took lightly when renaming, or naming anew, the city’s now 24 neighborhoods. A native of Wallhaven who bikes to work to take in the city each morning, Segedy reached out to residents for six months before quietly releasing a new map of Akron this month.
A new Akron
Redefining the neighborhoods had as much to do with respecting history as future development.
From his fourth-floor, corner office overlooking downtown Akron, Segedy ran his finger along the new map, talking about a neighborhood downtown that once anchored a thriving community that disappeared in the long decline since Akron’s booming 1940s and 1950s. His finger slides an inch in any direction and he’s talking about a landmark, a natural or man-made boundary, a historical event or how the neighborhoods mingle like clashing and complementing personalities.
The new Akron has noticeable changes.
Lane-Wooster is Sherbondy Hill. West Hill is no longer hidden inside Highland Square. Between Northwest Akron and Merriman Valley, there is now Merriman Hills — home of the richest homes and residents.
Cascade Valley — a contemporary reference to housing beneath the Y-Bridge and the name of North Akron in its early days — has replaced Elizabeth Park Valley. Annexed by Akron in 1983, a residential, misshapen neighborhood that juts north has borrowed the name of a nearby development: High Hampton. And the city’s southernmost tip, including a golf course and metro parks annexed in 1985, is Coventry Crossing, like its housing development.
Ellet or Goodyear?
Bob Hoch grew up on what teasing kids south of the Little Cuyahoga River called the “wrong side of the tracks.”
His childhood home was west of Darrow Road. After he was elected to City Council, his ward was redrawn with new population figures. It now includes all of Ellet and his old neighborhood.
But Hoch always considered himself an Ellet man. He attended Betty Jane Elementary — a former Tallmadge school in the Ellet cluster.
But the new city map affirms that he came from Goodyear Heights.
“You’re not getting thrown out of Ellet,” Hoch said, knowing how tempers flare when boundaries are adjusted, or just reconsidered. “To some people, it doesn’t matter. To some, it makes a big difference.”
Hoch was in junior high as Interstate 76 came through Akron in the 1960s. He remembers watching teenagers drag-race along the freshly poured concrete. It’s that nostalgia, not artificial boundaries, that ties people to places.
“People that have grown up in Ellet and have stayed are pretty territorial, as are people in Goodyear Heights or in any part of Akron,” he said. “You’re very aware and cognizant of the boundaries.”
“That feeling and connection is all still there. That area of town is part of your history.”
Davis, who lives in West Akron now, doesn’t think other local African-Americans, especially those under 50, will recognize the linkages to her childhood in Lane-Wooster.
Or the meaning of Sherbondy. The Sherbondys were one of 10 families that settled Akron, buying 368 acres on a hill nearly a decade before Akron was founded in 1825.
The Sherbondys’ Diamond Rubber Co. filed numerous patents on pneumatic tires — the industry of Akron’s future. Jewish settlers filled in the area with grocers and other stores.
Times have changed.
Google Maps plops Sherbondy Hill in the parking lot of Spring Hill Apartments, better known as a place where LeBron James once lived.
Across from Sherbondy Park, Davis calls it Wooster Hill. It’s the best, not the safest, place to hop on a trash can lid, sled or cardboard box and careen down Wooster Avenue, which was renamed Vernon Odom Boulevard in 2002 after a civil rights and Akron Urban League leader.
“The neighborhood had everything,” Davis said, pointing to where dollar stores now stand.
A Sparkle Market grocer. Three fish markets. Live chickens for sale (her grandmother would personally wring their necks). A shoe store. Pastries with thick frosting from Rockefeller’s Bakery and the Isaly Co.’s ice cream.
“Miss Margie” sold delicious pies from a red wagon and served chitterlings or pigs feet on Friday nights. Saturdays, “Heavy Duty” fried her “world-famous” shrimp at the late Bill Perkins’ Hi-De-Ho Lounge.
That was the neighborhood. Much of it burned in the race riots of 1967 and 1968. Then the “West Side Projects” went up and businesses moved out.
“If this neighborhood could go back to the way it was,” said Davis with a newfound admiration for her history, and that of the neighborhood that came before her.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug .