Neumann may be a sightseer but he is no stranger to Cleveland. He and his group
are volunteer docents at information booths operated by the Cleveland Convention
and Visitors bureau. If anyone should know the city they should. But familiar
does not always mean intimate. And last week, a man named Karl C., Johnson introduced
Neumann and seven other docents to his "Walking Tour of Cleaveland," a service
he started this summer. After dropping off his brochures at the booths, Johnson
wanted the docents to know what he was up to. Turns out it's more than a tour.
Johnson lets people savor the city's details, consider its fate and listen to
the opinions of one of its greatest fans — him. For example, standing
in the parking lot behind City Hall, Johnson talks about the new, $124 million
Browns football stadium, adding that it will be used only 12 times a year.
"And our schools are going into the sewer," he says with emphasis. He says he
also feels bad for Browns fans who have remained loyal but are being asked to
buy a seat license before they can buy a ticket. Everybody in the group had
an opinion on that, of course, and teamlike conversation followed. Sometimes
Johnson delivers information with its own message. After explaining the 1916 underground
disaster in which Garrett Morgan rescued people with his new gas mask invention,
Johnson points out that Morgan had to hire a white salesman to market it. "Some
people couldn't believe that a black man could invent such a thing." And sometimes
he just delivers the bracing facts of history: That the construction of Terminal
Tower required the razing of more than 1,000 buildings and "in its day was an
engineering feat second only to the Panama Canal. Not a professional scholar
or educator, Johnson, 64, worked as a staff assistant for the Cleveland Board
of Education in the 1970s. He recently served on the board of the Ohio City Near
West Development Corp. and sells alternative energy products. He is no stranger
to public speaking. Because he has always given family tours of the city, his
wife, Elyria school psychologist Ruth Johnson-Straub, suggested he do it professionally.
He immediately liked the idea. "I love people," he says. "And I love the city."
Research and life experience He went to the library to learn the basics, framing
the information in the "life experience" of this childhood in Glenville and his
later years in Shaker Heights and Ohio City. "I wanted a tour that was not
architectural but humanistic," he says. "It's not a Gray Line tour."
So when Johnson explains the grand Group Plan that created the county courthouse,
City Hall, the library and post office in the early 1900s, he doesn't act like
a know-it-all. "My son, the architect, tells me this is the Beaux Arts style,"
he says. For old-timers, he shakes memories loose in a folksy style, recalling
the Pennsylvania Station at Euclid Ave. and E. 55th St., "a dandy building with
a peaked roof." For those too young to remember, he explains that the sandstone
structures on the west side of the Veterans Memorial (Detroit-Superior) Bridge,
now county engineer storage, were once part of a bustling streetcar station.
Johnson often talks in a snappy fashion that people can remember. On Cleveland
industrialist John D. Rockefeller: "A friend tells me that in today's money, Rockefeller
would be way ahead of Bill Gates." On the date when Terminal Tower was completed
" Babe Ruth hit his 60th home run and the Dow Jones average was 200. I believe
this morning it was at 8,000."
And on another city inventor: "Thomas
Edison discovered electricity, but it was Charles Brush of Cleveland that electrified
the street light."
Then there's his list of city "firsts": First city
to teach foreign languages in elementary school, first to have home mail delivery,
first to have airmail.
Johnson's tours last two hours and if people walk
fast enough, he includes the interior of Old Stone Church, St. John Cathedral,
the arcades and the new Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library. The
same is true of his Ohio City tour, which can enter the West Side Market, a coffee
and spice retailer and a law office in a deftly restored Victorian mansion.
Because Johnson lives in Ohio City, he can even tell you who lives in certain
homes and how many different houses they have restored.
It's truly a
front porch view. Johnson meets clients under the Terminal Tower clock at Public
Square, or in the lobby if the weather is bad. When people see his company sign
hanging from his chest, they sometimes think he's a protester.
It's even
better: one man with a view of the city that is alive and kicking. | 
