The Observation Deck

A small social distance crowd gathered to dedicate St. Charles Green to Bernice Pyke Park. Mayor Meghan George reading an article about Bernice Park written by her father for the Lakewood Observer

Lakewood Sends First Female Delegate To A Democratic Convention
by Thomas George
On September 3rd until September 6th the 2012 Democratic Party National Convention will be held in Charlotte, North Carolina. There will be delegates from each state, including hundreds of women delegates.
But on June 28, 1920 when the Democratic Party convened in San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium, there was one lone woman delegate…...Lakewood’s Bernice Secrest Pyke.
According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Pyke, a member of the Lakewood Board of Education, was the first female to be a delegate to a National Democratic Convention.

Read the entire story here: http://lakewoodobserver.com/read/2012/0 ... convention


Councilman Tristan Rader kicks off the festivities. Rader helped to see this project through to completion. It was started by ex-Councilman Sam O'Leary.


State Representative Michael Skindell presents Mr. Pyke one of Bernice's ancestors a resolution.


Mayor George speaks about Bernice Pyke, as Councilman Rader, Mr. Pyke, and State Senator Nickie Antonio look on.




The official presentation.

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Bravo

John Pyke, Jr. offered some memorable vignettes about his grandmother, in addition to her "headline" accomplishments (which make a long list by themselves).

Bernice Pyke didn't initially envision any kind of public role, but as a young woman, her own father encouraged her, saying that with her education and ability she owed it to society to contribute. Upon joining local suffragists who promoted their cause outside the polls, on Election Day in 1912, she "never looked back" according to John Jr.

Thereafter Bernice Pyke was a dynamo—founding, leading, advocating—and during her mayoral campaign she told voters that she would be a full-time mayor, every day, and city hall wouldn't need to install a time clock to check on her.

Pyke was a full-time, nearly omnipresent candidate as well. But she also had fun with running for office. John, Jr. said that on one occasion, she hired a ventriloquist to bring a dummy stand-in for the incumbent mayor.

Pyke's biggest regret about her campaign for mayor was probably an entirely different instance of exuberance. On the Saturday before the election, she led a great parade of her supporters across the entire length of Lakewood. Upon seeing the energy behind her campaign, the other challengers to the incumbent mayor all dropped out and endorsed him. (I presume that Lakewood had no mayoral primary at the time, but in any event this is such a classic story of what the pursuit of elected office is really like.)

Delightful hearing from John, Jr. today. Most of the remarks emphasized Bernice Pyke's headline accomplishments, as does the article I have written for the paper; if people only learn a handful of things about Bernice Pyke it should be for those things. But if these more personal stories are recorded, elsewhere, I don't know if they're in any online resource, so I wanted to share them here.