Steve Kelleher was only 21 years old when he decided to dedicate his future to Barberton’s past.
It was 1974, and he’d never gotten over the feeling of watching bulldozers take down the mansion of town founder Ohio Columbus Barber. The home — hailed as the most opulent residence between New York City and Chicago when it was completed in 1910 — was razed in 1965, when the city and the mansion’s owners couldn’t agree on terms to save it.
As a boy who grew up in the mansion’s neighborhood, Kelleher was determined to never feel that helpless again. He surrounded himself with like-minded advocates, formed the Barberton Historical Society, and spent the next 40 years restoring crumbling icons and teaching an entire city how to treasure its history.
The folks he pulled along in his wake will have to continue that work without him. Kelleher died Friday after a short struggle with sudden health issues. He was 63.
Those who knew Kelleher say Barberton had no greater promoter, nor more passionate steward of its assets.
“He was a strong leader, a great deal-maker, and he devoted himself full time” to his mission, said Bob Snyder, the society’s vice president.
O.C. Barber built the 3,000-acre Anna Dean Farm that was unique in the country, focused on progressive techniques in more than 40 colorful, heated barns that resembled small castles.
After his death, many were razed, others burned down. More still sat vacant, collecting cobwebs and waiting for Kelleher and his company to grow up and come to the rescue.
Snyder met Kelleher over a childhood baseball game, and said his friend was socially conscious even in high school. Barberton City Council had decided to remove a World War I cannon from Lake Anna, and Kelleher wasn’t about to let that happen.
“We shared how we had played on it and fell off it many times as kids,” Snyder said. “So we decided we were going to collect petitions to block this.” They succeeded.
Kelleher’s fledgling activism took a huge leap in 1973, while he and Snyder were both students at the University of Akron. Kelleher learned a developer intended to tear down one of the few remaining Barber barns to put up a nursing home. Kelleher rallied his friends, and they made headlines in their monthslong battle to stop it.
Again, they won, and eventually that barn was renovated into the world headquarters of the horticultural company Yoder Brothers.
“People wanted us to get out of the way, saying we were just kids. But we said we’re not going to get out of the way,” Snyder said.
Not then. Not ever. The year after that victory, the historical society was born.
Today, the society owns five of the seven Barber buildings still in existence. The last one, a piggery, was purchased for $268,000, with Kelleher paying for nearly half the cost out of his own pocket.
Some barns are actively used. One is a day care center, another hosts weddings and a farmers market and spent a few seasons as a haunted house.
Other barns are still waiting for their next chapter to be decided, but Kelleher adopted a policy he’d heard from someone else: If you don’t know what to do with a historic structure, at least wrap it up and save it for a smarter generation.
Today, most Barbertonians couldn’t imagine the city without its beloved Barber barns. Developers have even used elements of their special Beaux Arts architecture in many east side office buildings, retail stores, an apartment complex and the neighborhood elementary school.
“It was like suddenly, the city caught Barber fever,” Snyder said.
Sharing his knowledge
Kelleher was an extraordinary storyteller.
Every spring, he would lead as many as 1,000 people on a three-hour walking tour on the city’s east side, weaving them through a dozen locations while painting a picture of what the Anna Dean farm must have been like in its heyday.
Every fall, he and society member Bernie Gnap would accompany third-graders on a local history field trip, regaling them with tales from their great-grandparents’ era.
“When he was a boy, there were so many influences he picked up that he wanted to pass on,” Gnap said. “He saw it as planting seeds.”
When Kelleher wasn’t talking, he was writing. He authored or co-authored numerous books. History books. Period cookbooks. Nostalgic picture books. All for the sole purpose of raising money to maintain the society’s acquisitions.
His gift for writing extended to social media, where he posted daily musings on the Barberton Historical Society’s Facebook page.
His colorful recollections, many of them personal stories about growing up in Barberton, turned the page into a proverbial water cooler where hundreds of current and former residents gather regularly to laugh, mourn, scowl or share pride in their hometown.
Gnap remembers the day he met Kelleher: July 12, 1970. They ran into each other while both were trying to salvage parts of Barber’s north gate house as it was being torn down.
The two often chuckled about their daring efforts to preserve history. In the 1980s, when they spotted some kids trying to pull a date stone from a dam on the former Barber property, they chased them off, then helped themselves to the stone to protect it.
Many years later when the site was being developed into an office complex, Kelleher and Gnap convinced the willing builder to restore the dam, and presented him with the 1910 date stone to complete the renovation.
Ready, willing to fight
Years of fighting to save historical structures — especially in the early years when many city officials and residents saw them as decaying eyesores — helped formed Kelleher’s personality as a bold force to be reckoned with.
He had little patience with those who didn’t share his passion or support the society’s efforts, and his tenacity and blunt opinions earned him his share of detractors.
Snyder said his friend seemed to be channeling Barber himself, an industrialist known to be contentious in his pursuit of progress and what he believed to be the greater good.
“Steve was like that. He seemed to like a fight. He loved to get out there and take on the powers that be to promote this cause,” he said.
He didn’t always win. Last year, Barberton City Council had Kelleher removed as the city’s volunteer representative on the Barberton Community Foundation, arguing that he wasn’t qualified because he didn’t live in Barberton.
While Kelleher spent most days in Barberton involved with society work, he slept in an 1884 Victorian home in Jackson Township that he and his wife, Chris, rescued and moved when it was threatened with demolition some 25 years ago.
He also failed to win over many critics regarding the historical society’s sale of the Erie Depot. The Barber-era train depot sat vacant for years before the society acquired it, using grant money and a small army of volunteers to renovate the property.
When a Medina County couple offered to buy it and turn it into a sandwich and ice cream shop, the society agreed. Kelleher spent months defending their argument that it benefited the city to have a business employing people and paying taxes. The shop opened this summer.
But for everyone offended by Kelleher’s brash ways, someone was made the richer for having known him, friend Ron Boldry said. Kelleher liked to collect people, and was always on the lookout for folks he thought to be underused and underappreciated.
“He would bring them along and teach them leadership skills and get them to see what they had to offer,” Boldry said. “I think that’s probably one of Steve’s greatest attributes. I saw [volunteers] come and go, but when they left, they were always better.”
Continuing his legacy
Kelleher’s wife and high school sweetheart, Christine, said she knows one of the biggest concerns the community will have about her husband’s passing is the fate of the historical society.
Don’t worry, she said. They got this.
“We’re looking toward carrying on what Steve started. Steve was the figurehead, and he was so good at it, but all of us — the board, all our members, all our volunteers — made it possible for the historical society to accomplish all these things.
“We’re going to continue on, and we’re going to look to the next phase of the historical society and taking it to the next level,” she said. “I just want everyone to know the society is strong.”
Kelleher is also survived by his son, Jeff Kelleher, and daughter Carrine (Jim) Grasso, both of Euclid.
There will be calling hours at Campfield-Hickman-Collier Funeral Home, 566 W. Park Ave., from 5 to 8 p.m. Monday. Tuesday’s funeral will start with a prayer at Campfield-Hickman at 9:30 a.m. and continue with a Mass at 10 a.m. at St. Augustine Church, 204 Sixth St. NW in Barberton. Interment will be at Holy Cross Cemetery in Akron.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Barberton Historical Society at P.O. Box 666, Barberton OH, 44203.
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.