Our Neighborhood News & Resources

Volume 15, Issue 16
Published August 22nd, 2007

This article can be found at: http://www.freetimes.com/stories/15/16/the-good-fight

The Good Fight

Preacher-activist The Rev. George Hrbek Reflects On Sacrifice And Satisfaction

By Rick Perloff

It is a resplendent Tuesday in late spring, warm but not humid. On the lawn next to City Hall, two dozen people - graying veterans of '60s rallies, young mothers with children in tow, folks holding signs pronouncing "God Loves Poor People Too!" - have gathered to protest state indifference to the poor and indigent. Passersby on Lakeside Avenue smile and nod, but do not stop.

The Rev. George Hrbek stands quietly in the back, unfazed by the lack of attendance. "You got to do it, to be faithful to yourself, to your vision, to continue to be a voice crying out in the wilderness," he says, chuckling.

PHOTO (left) 1971 Reverend Hrbek shortly after moving to Cleveland

Hrbek is a legend in activist circles, a change agent who organized civil-rights activities in Selma, Alabama and Chicago during the 1960s and knew Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson and Fred Hampton, the Black Panther gunned down by police in 1969. He is the preacher known in poorer Cleveland neighborhoods during the 1970s as "that minister, a good cat," the long-time advocate at Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry who launched innovative community re-entry programs for ex-offenders and helped to persuade East Ohio Gas to provide financial assistance for people who could not pay their bills. He was the first ombudsman of Cuyahoga County, champion and friend of the homeless at the downtown men's shelter.

When the robust, white-goateed Hrbek takes the bullhorn to speak to the protesters standing on the lawn outside City Hall, he has the mantle of authority of a religious orator addressing a crowd of hundreds of congregants. His voice cascading with emotion, he struts back and forth. "Do not balance the state budget at the expense of those whose challenge to hold life and limb together in this state is the most difficult. Let's not, through the budget, give to those who already have and take away from those who have not. Everyone say amen to that?"

Amen, the crowd chants in unison. Amen.

"STUDYING FOR THE MINISTRY was my way of rebelling against my family," Hrbek confides in his office at the Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry in Ohio City. At 76, he has come to an understanding of how he came to develop his religious commitment to social change. He grew up in New Jersey in a family of social activists. His Czech grandfather was a Marxist, a union organizer, and his father not only worshipped Franklin D. Roosevelt, but as an architect, helped design one of FDR's houses in Warm Springs, Georgia. But like many secular progressives of the 1930s, his relatives were not enamored of religion.

Home life was warm, but Hrbek found school stultifying, even oppressive. He rebelled, defended himself with his fists, once slugging a teacher who hit him. Searching for a way to reconcile the contradiction between home and school, he attended a variety of church services, coming across a Lutheran mentor who related a message that made a lasting impression: Each person is gifted, and these gifts cannot be taken away.

Intrigued, Hrbek enrolled at Concordia College, a Lutheran school in Fort Wayne, Indiana. After graduating from seminary in St. Louis in 1958, he received his first assignment - to start a Lutheran church in Selma, Alabama.

The site of Martin Luther King's storied march across the bridge in 1965, Selma was an old, affluent cotton town, with beautiful antebellum homes, a genteel veneer and racist mores, says J. David Ellwanger, a lawyer who worked with Hrbek in the 1960s, grew up in Selma and recently retired to Dallas. Unwritten law dictated that whites could fraternize in black establishments, but "Negroes" were strictly forbidden from mixing with whites in their homes or places of worship.

Hrbek broke the law.

PHOTO (right) FUTURE FIREBRAND - Hrbek, age 5, Warms Springs, GA

He invited a number of African-American worshippers to attend the dedication of the new church. The police raided the service. Hrbek was not arrested, but it would not be the end of his troubles with the town establishment.

One evening, Hrbek heard a knock on his door. He was surprised to see Ed Fields, the middle-aged, balding editor of the Selma Times Journal. Hrbek invited him in. His wife Gertrude and young children were sitting around the house. Hrbek and Fields sat down at the kitchen table.

"I have your letter," Fields said, and Hrbek knew immediately what he meant. A Baptist minister had recently delivered a keynote speech at a barbecue for white high school students brazenly entitled, "Better Dead than Intermarriage." Hbrek had submitted a letter criticizing the preacher, stating that his comments were not representative of the Christian faith and pointing out that there were a lot of light-skinned people of color in Alabama.

"I want you to take your letter back," Fields told Hrbek. "Because if you don't take it back, I'm going to print it. If I print it, I'm concerned about you. I really like you, and if I print this letter, your life is going to be at risk."

A big man with a '60s-style crewcut, Hrbek looked more like a football coach than a preacher. Repulsed by what he'd seen in Selma, he refused to retract the letter.

Fields printed the letter on the front page. Within a couple of days, another letter appeared on the front page, this from the White Citizens Council, Selma's racist elite, excoriating Hrbek. Shortly afterwards, a cross was burned on his lawn and the White Citizens Council pressured church officials to fire Hrbek. In a testament to Hrbek's growing moral influence, church leaders flatly refused.

CHICAGO, 1968. The Leopold Mansion in Hyde Park has been transformed into a place of nonviolence. It is Hrbek's base of operation, used to organize community workshops on institutional racism, the site of '60s-style, guitar-accompanied Sunday morning worship services, part of a larger human relations project funded by a national Lutheran organization.

One Sunday morning as the service begins, three young African Americans show up and ask if they can speak. Breathing the fire of the growing black power movement, they announce that if the Lutheran group is serious about fighting racism, they should bequeath the building to them. But the pastor who would not let white racists intimidate him in Selma will not give ground to black power advocates in Chicago. Hrbek listens politely, then says: "My two-word response is fuck you. But after the service we can sit down and we can talk."

The crowd is stunned. The men leave, return and discuss the issue with Hrbek. He gives them space in the building.

By the end of the decade, Hrbek's radical politics and unconventional style have attracted attention, pleasing liberals, but upsetting the church hierarchy. The regional division of the national Lutheran organization claims that his radical activities are inconsistent with the precepts of the church, and he is ordered to appear before a church governing council. He avoids conviction when an African-American member of the group defends him and the whites recognize they will appear racist if they vote to convict.

Hrbek keeps his vestments and ministerial cloth. But the church fires him, removing him from the human relations project in Hyde Park. He relocates to Cleveland in 1971, hired to work on an avant-garde project coordinated by a newly formed community religious group, the Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry. With a staff of just four, including a secretary, the future is uncertain.

PHOTO (left) CHICAGO, 1969 - Hrbek protesting the Vietnam war.

But the years of work have taken a toll on Hrbek's wife Gertrude and their three daughters and son, and the 20-year marriage disintegrates. Gertrude had courageously stood by Hrbek and had worked in a Chicago school to help defray their children's tuition costs. There were good times and fond family memories. But Hrbek, increasingly preoccupied by his work in the community and venerated by his followers, falters.

When the divorce becomes official, some Lutherans complain, saying that it is not right for a man of the cloth to bear the stigma of divorce. Hrbek immerses himself in his work, but their comments, and the pain of divorce, affect him deeply, and he comes to recognize that he must reflect on his experiences and become a better person.

"WHAT MOTIVATES THIS GUY?" Charles See mused, hoping to get a fix on Hrbek. It was 1973. See, who had recently joined the staff at Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry, had known a lot of white people who gave lip service to helping the poor, but Hrbek seemed different: "He seemed to genuinely be concerned about the plight of folks that he was working with. He would sit down and listen to what individuals had to say and then really went back to try to help folks solve problems."

The two, along with the late Richard Sering, the organization's inspirational leader, worked on an innovative program called Probation Friends, which provided an alternative to prison for convicted felons. They were placed on probation and worked in tandem with a community volunteer, who would offer social support. Joe Thornton, an early Probation Friends participant, worked with elderly residents, escorting them on walks and protecting them from thugs. He credits the program with helping him gain confidence in himself. Although community re-entry programs do not always work - the sociological literature on the topic is complex and multifaceted - they are generally regarded as constructive alternatives to more punitive approaches.

Yet three decades ago, the idea of community activists working with prisoners was novel and irked some. Around 1976, Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry staff co-sponsored a bail-bond ball at Franklin Castle in Ohio City to raise bail money for prisoners in the county jail. It was a merry event, with music, dancing, and much beer and wine, until the police came, 30 of them, with guns drawn. A couple of police officers grabbed Hrbek, twisted his arm behind his back, kicked him and hauled him into a police car. He was arrested and thrown into a cell, charged, along with several others, with disturbing the peace and serving liquor without a license. (The event's sponsors had procured a permit to serve beer and wine.) Hrbek and others in the cells belted out gospel hymns.

He was subsequently released and the charges were thrown out. Pressed to bring charges against the policemen, Hrbek demurred. He told friends, "I want to take those policemen out to lunch." And that is just what he did.

Hrbek found himself increasingly enamored of Ohio City. He liked its rough authenticity, its earnest attempt to transform itself into a unique multi-layered, multi-ethnic part of the city. "There was something about this area that was different," he reflects. "In a city that was divided by the river politically, racially and academically, it wasn't here. You had the world here, a diversity and hospitality." And so he made it his home.

In 1978 Hrbek married Stephanie Morrison. Hrbek had mentored Morrison's older sister Melanie, then a college student, in Chicago. Hrbek became friendly with Melanie's family, who were pastors in a Michigan church. He met her younger sister Stephanie, and in the late 1970s encountered Stephanie again while on vacation in Virginia. He and Stephanie hit it off, and in 1978, the recently divorced Hrbek married her. Hrbek pledged to himself that he would not make the mistakes he had made the first time around. He and Stephanie had two sons, and Hrbek worked hard to involve them in his religious and social protest activities, striving to keep himself in tune with the daily rhythm of family life.

There was a stability to his routine during this period. He could walk from his Ohio City home to the Lutheran Metro Ministry office. He enjoyed the quiet hospitality of the neighborhood. The intensity and chaos of Leopold House had given way to the urbane calm of a modest but artfully decorated house on West 31st Place.

By 1981, the advocate who bristled at the suggestion he was involved in anything less than systemic change had an office and a title and, to outsiders at least, had become that least radical member of contemporary society: a bureaucrat. Recognized for his skill in bringing different sides together, Hrbek was appointed Cuyahoga County Ombudsman. It happened serendipitously. The county commissioners, impressed by a Lutheran Metro Ministry nursing home ombudsman program, asked the ministry to explore models for creating a county ombudsman office. Hrbek played a key role in the two-year research project that culminated in the creation of a citizens ombudsman office for Cuyahoga County. He was subsequently selected to be the first one.

Hrbek found himself at the vortex of conflicts between East Ohio Gas management and community organizers who were concerned with the company's indifference to the plight of low-income customers who could not pay rising heating bills. He knew the issues well; a couple years before he had organized the protests.

PHOTO (right) Ohio City, 1983 - Wife Stephanie, son Seth and Hrbek at home.

Bob Varley, manager of consumer affairs at East Ohio in 1982, credits Hrbek with creating an environment in which both sides could understand each other's position. A series of reforms emerged from the discussions Hrbek coordinated, including the formation of a community advisory board and a series of assistance programs to help low-income customers pay their bills.

Another change also materialized, emblematic of an evolution in Hrbek's approach to social activism. He took up golf with a passion, as David Abbott, executive director of the George Gund Foundation, who worked with him in the 1980s, relates. The adolescent pugilist - Hrbek had boxed in high school - became a middle-aged linksman. He replaced the reflexive weapon of self-defense with the strategic precision of the chip shot.

In the early 1990s, the Virgil E. Brown Center was often seen as an austere glass-encased, unyielding artifice, Kafka's bureaucracy-ridden castle transplanted to 17th and Payne. The Cuyahoga County Department of Human Services would be an odd place for Hrbek to work, and he thought long and hard about whether he should accept the offer to become interim director of human services. The county commissioners had become familiar with Hrbek's high-profile role as ombudsman, and one of the commissioners surprised Hrbek by calling him at home and offering him the job. He would be working in "the belly of the beast," as he put it. Charles See, who had risen to become Metro Ministry's director of community re-entry, told him, "It's a travesty if you don't go. We have been struggling to get people in these positions who see the world the way we see it." Hrbek took the job.

He was put off at the outset by the punitive nature of the organizational culture. The department's emphasis on punishing the bad apples rather than rewarding the good ones, as he articulated it, was diametrically opposed to his own approach of focusing on people's assets. For starters, clients had no privacy. Case workers took personal information from clients on topics ranging from drug dependence to spousal abuse in a room where new applicants sat right next to them, filling out papers.

Soon after Hrbek became interim director, several case workers asked if they could meet with him clandestinely to explain this problem. They asked if they could restructure the space to give clients more privacy. Hrbek liked their plan. He said, "That's great, do it."

"We can't," one of the case workers replied. "We suggested this to our supervisor and our supervisor won't let us."

Hoping to instigate change, Hrbek walked over to the supervisor's office. "'You know," he said, "the workers have come to me and they make sense. Why don't we just go ahead and do this?"

The supervisor replied, "We can't. The coordinator won't let us. And once the coordinator makes up his mind, that's it."

Recognizing the intransigence of the culture, Hrbek took a page out of his mediation handbook. He arranged a meeting with the coordinator and told him, "I really am going to give you an opportunity to be a hero." Two days later the room was arranged exactly as the workers wanted it.

It was vintage Hrbek, notes David Reines, who got to know Hrbek when they worked together in the department of human services.

"He did things in a very non-threatening way, but you could tell that there was steel to him," Reines notes.

PHOTO (left) Hrbek today - Still instigating change.

In some instances, Hrbek's approach caused him problems. When he worked in the human relations department, he became concerned that the county would lose over $1 million in federal grants because it was not managing workforce development programs properly. "I had to do something quickly," he recalls. "So I did something illegal."

Hrbek knew of a Cleveland-based company that specialized in program management. "Without putting out bids and without doing a request for a proposal, I just recruited this company and said, "Do it,' and they did it," he says, almost gleeful as he recalls the defiance. "The state wanted to nail me," Hrbek admitted, but by the time state officials discovered the problem, he said, the company had successfully managed the county's projects and everyone was happy.

Hrbek acknowledged that his action was not kosher and could have placed the county commissioners in a difficult position. More fundamentally, it exemplified the type of patronage he had opposed as interim human services director and might have criticized as a young activist.

"There's a streak of independence," Hrbek said. "It bodes well for me sometimes, but perhaps not so well other times."

After working in human services, Hrbek moved back to Lutheran Metro Ministry, where he helped to develop detailed procedures by which the ministry could coordinate the men's homeless shelter. His wife, Stephanie Morrison Hrbek, marvels over how much Hrbek loves the men there; it amazes her how he is able to transform a situation that others might find "crushing and devastating" into one that showcases triumph and hope.

Hrbek says he is drawn to the men at the shelter and is impressed by the resilience they display. He makes it a point to have lunch with the men at least once a week.

His two sons from the second marriage are grown now and live in Cleveland; the youngest just graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art. The four children from his marriage with Gertrude are settled in their professions, each reflecting varying degrees of their parents' social activism philosophy. The celebrated Cleveland advocate has slowed down in recent years, but not much, dividing his time among the shelter, community re-entry work at Metro Ministry, and neighborhood development activities in Ohio City.

"What impels me," he says, "is this sense of participating in a little leaven, keeping alive this vision of right relationships and being part of a movement that in whatever small way, in the midst of so much brokenness and tragedy and injustice, values people."

Asked how he keeps from feeling discouraged, he turns the question around: "Who says I'm not discouraged? I get discouraged by disappointments like everyone else," he says. But Hrbek says his inspiration comes from two sources: people's refusal to surrender their spirit in the face of injustice, and a radical vision of Christianity.

"Jesus was a radical in the midst of his society. He rubbed shoulders with the outcasts. He talked of a community in which people are in respectful relationships, he gave expression to a counterculture. There have been people like that throughout the ages who have kept the dream alive, kept it bubbling. That's what the social justice movement is about, and I've been privileged to make a contribution in whatever small way I could."

cover@freetimes.com

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