A Hidden Memorial by Michael Ceraolo

Euclid Creek Book Four

          A Hidden Memorial

Even when the leaves have fallen

you can't see it from the streets:

                                                 the trees,

and an earth mound,

                                block the view

Nor, for some reason

                                (probably

some ridiculous zoning regulation),

is there signage by either of the drives

entering the center's parking lot

David Berger grew up around here,

                                                    then 

went away to college and earned

bachelor's and advanced degrees,

all the while competing as a weightlifter

He finished fourth in the Olympic Trials,

just missing making the team

for Mexico City in 1968

Soon after graduation

he emigrated to Israel,

                                  and

he did make the Israeli Olympic team 

and competed in weightlifting

in Munich in 1972

He was one of the eleven Israelis

taken hostage, and then killed, by terrorists

In 1973

the David Berger Monument Committee

commissioned David E. Davis,

a sculptor who came from Romania

as a teenager in the 1930s,

to create a monument

Davis devised a work

using the five Olympic rings

broken in half

It would be completed and installed

at the Cleveland Heights Jewish Community Center

in 1975,

             and designated

as a landmark by Cleveland Heights

on October 28, 1979

That was not to be its only recognition

Public Law 96-199,

approved March 5, 1980,

was enacted

                      "to establish

the Channel Islands National Park,

and for other purposes"

One of those other purposes

was covered in Section 116 of the law:

"The Secretary of the Interior

shall designate the David Berger Memorial

located at the Jewish Community Center

in Cleveland Heights, Ohio,

as a national memorial

The significance of the memorial in preserving

the memory of the eleven Israelis athletes

who were assassinated at the Olympic Games

in Munich, Germany, in 1972 is,

by this designation, recognized by the Congress"

A second JCC,

                       the Mandel JCC,

had been built in Beachwood in the mid-1980s,

and when the Cleveland Heights JCC

closed in 2005,  

                       the memorial

was moved out to the Beachwood site

and re-dedicated September 10, 2006

On my recent visit it was raining,

which somehow seems appropriate

in the same way I've always thought

it should be raining at funerals

                                               But

the rain and other weather

has done its damage:

                                  the metal

has rusted in many places

and needs to be re-painted,

                                         and

hopefully will be restored

when the weather permits