Kinda ashamed to fess up but I was a country club kid and I made the most of it: By Memorial Day, my ass would be poking through the lounge chair vinyl strips, “until two days after Labor Day.” Oakwood was grand and its history was grand, founded as “a golf club for Cleveland Jewry’s successful merchants and professionals.”1 In those days, Jewish folks were not welcome at local clubs
Built in 1905, in WWII Oakwood served as headquarters for the U.S. Army’s 729th Military Police Battalion. By my parents’ generation, there was a golf course, of course, tennis and squash courts and swimming pool, even a bowling alley in the basement.
First, driving under the copper-roofed portico, you surrender your car to a black parking attendant. Now, I can’t believe that I didn’t think anything of it.
At the first doorway after entering, the elegant coatroom. Yes, even the coatroom was elegant, in shades of greens. Next, you approach the bar and order a drink—back then I preferred champaign. Now I would order Maker’s Mark—before walking into the elegant dining room where black attendants wait on you hand and foot. Now, I am mortified.
In the dining room, black waiters served vegetables and potatoes in silver serving vessels that rivaled Mrs. Potts in Beauty in the Beast.
I can’t believe I thought nothing of it.
Like many country clubs, Oakwood faced declining membership, going from about 600 members in 2000 to 350 in 2010, the year it closed.
There was a sale to dissolve items. Man, my sister and I really wanted to go but we lived too far away.
We both wish we’d gone.
In 2016, it was sold to Cleveland Hebrew Academy, an Orthodox Day School. And that, boys and girls, is irony: A lavish club becomes a place of learning.
