Roger Di Paolo, the Mark Price-like history maven of the Kent-Ravenna
Record-Courier, passed away Friday, June 18 at the age of 66.
He left the R-C after 40 years at the age of 62. His last 26 were as
editor (1991-2017).
Roger’s grandparents left Italy for America and a better life as teenage
newlyweds. Roger spent his entire life in Kent. He was as much a part of the
town as the trees in The Tree City.
Roger authored “Rooted in Kent: 101 Tales from the
Tree City”, “The Ravenna Record: The People and Events That Shaped a Community”
and “Greetings from Kent, Ohio: A Postcard Portrait of the Tree City.”
The Kent Historical Society named Roger its Historian
in Residence, thus my reference to the Mark Price similarity.
In 2017 the Old Northwest-Aaron Olmstead
Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution honored Di Paolo for
“Historic Preservation Through Journalism” for his books, “Portage Pathway” and
the “Ravenna Record” and his weekly column on local history titled, “Portage
Pathways.”
The Kent Historical Society created a Roger J. Di
Paolo Scholarship for Kent Roosevelt students pursuing history-related subjects
in college. Roger was a 1973 Kent Roosevelt High graduate.
Roger’s father, Kent lawyer Roger F. Di Paolo, once
saved an African-American man, Roland Metcalf, from a possible
death penalty for a murder he didn’t commit but, because Kent police beat him,
confessed to.
When Roger’s grandparents
came to America and Kent they had to live in The Flats, later renamed The South
End, because all other neighborhoods were off-limits to immigrants and African-Americans.
That was between Summit and Cherry streets, west of Water Street and east of
Mogadore Road. In 2020 the South End was designated an historic district.
Roger wrote a moving article about Gladys Montgomery, “The Mother of Kindergarten in Kent,”
who was his teacher at that age. Mrs. Montgomery was a Longcoy Elementary in
Kent for 41 years getting 5-year-olds off to a caring and amazing start on
their educations.
Later, Roger graduated
from Kent’s St. Patrick School, in 1969. The first Catholic mission in Portage
County was St. Joseph Church in Randolph in 1831 by missionaries from
Cleveland, according to Roger’s article on the subject.
Roger’s obituary:
Roger Di Paolo, a historian and journalist whose work
enlightened Portage County residents about their own community for over 40
years, died June 18 at the age of 66.
A Kent native who never strayed, Di Paolo edited the Record-Courier for
a generation while writing over 700 history columns, weaving threads of the
past into memorable narratives of the characters who shaped his city. He
compiled these stories into three books about Kent and Ravenna, including Rooted
in Kent: 101 Tales from the Tree City.
Friends say his mind was a steel trap, filing away names and
dates like a local archive, easily dispensing historical anecdotes to wide-eyed
cub reporters and captivated lecture halls alike.
This facility served him at the helm of a daily newspaper and
beyond. After the paper changed ownership and restructured him out of his job
in 2017, Di Paolo discovered new outlets for his talents. He served as a
community liaison for Family and Community Services and as the Historian in
Residence at the Kent Historical Society.
Di Paolo’s health loomed in his mind after surviving a heart
attack at 53. His heart remained healthy over the next decade until he was
diagnosed with prostate cancer, which began quickly spreading earlier this
year.
He is survived by his husband, Timothy Krasselt; his son, Brian
Di Paolo; and his sisters, Linda Di Paolo Prezioso and Betsy Soule.
Roger Joseph Di Paolo was born June 3, 1955, at Robinson
Memorial Hospital. His father, Roger Di Paolo, was a scrappy Ravenna lawyer who
would eventually become a municipal court judge, and his mother, Pauline,
worked in the Kent State admissions office, from which she retired in 1986.
As kids, Di Paolo and his sister shared few interests and had
little in common: Roger the pensive boy making sketches while mom cooked, Linda
watching football with dad.
Di Paolo was close to his mother throughout his life, Di Paolo
Prezioso said.
“The two of them could fight like cats and dogs,” she said.
Sometimes she would get phone calls from each of them after an argument
complaining about the other. “And then two days later, I’d call mom and ask
what are you doing, and she’d say, ‘Oh, Roger and I just finished a nice dish
of pasta.’ They never apologized, they just picked up where they left off.”
And he inherited her “steel trap” mind, his sister said. Friends
recalled Di Paolo was always one of the brightest kids in class. Coming from a
strict Catholic Italian family, he attended St. Patrick School and then went on
to Davey Junior High School and graduated from Roosevelt High School on his
birthday in 1973.
“Roger is my longest, dearest friend, going back to ninth grade
at Davey Junior High,” said Ernie Mastroianni, who also worked with Di Paolo as
a photographer at the Record-Courier. “I knew him then as one of
the brightest people in nearly all of my classes, even in art. I was drawn to
his talent in writing, knowledge of history and extraordinary vision in art
class.”
Di Paolo’s father wanted him to become a lawyer, but the family
always suspected he would become an artist. His writing side won out: After a
brief stint at Oberlin, Di Paolo went on to Kent State where he studied
journalism, a noble calling in the wake of the May 4 massacre and at the height
of the Nixon era.
He worked on the Daily Kent Stater and then
covered the university’s gym annex controversy as one of his first assignments
as a reporter for the Record-Courier. He spent months on the story,
in which protesters occupied the site of the May 4 shooting, refusing to let
bulldozers prepare the soil for an expansion of the gymnasium. As tensions
mounted, Di Paolo’s father feared his son might be putting himself in danger
and drove to the protest camp to find him. When he arrived, they both ended up
coughing through clouds of tear gas.
Materials from Di Paolo’s newsgathering at that time are now
part of the Special Collections and Archives at the Kent State Library as the “Roger J. Di Paolo Papers.”
In 1982, he became city editor, managing Kent coverage from the
paper’s former bureau on South Depeyster Street. In 1991, he was promoted to
editor of the Record-Courier, a position he occupied for the next
26 years.
Di Paolo was not the gruff newspaper editor barking orders from
inside his office. He occupied a desk in the newsroom alongside his team,
quietly preparing pages, fielding readers’ comments and drafting the paper’s
unsigned staff editorials, which represented the opinion of the newspaper on
all kinds of issues.
As the local paper in a college town, the Record-Courier served
as the proving grounds for a long succession of junior reporters, and he
relished his role as mentor.
“Roger was very low key and patient with new reporters — and
there were always ‘new’ reporters,” said Mike Sever, a longtime county
government reporter for the paper who is now retired. “When there was a major
error in a story and Roger got the blistering phone call, he never passed on
the invective. He’d quietly tell the reporter they had goofed and had to fix
it. He was very good at taking the heat off his staff.”
Several former colleagues described moments when Di Paolo seemed
as sensitive to their personal struggles as he was to their typos. One
reporter, Marilynn Marchione, who went on to write for the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel and the Associated Press, described a typical Di
Paolo story:
“When I was more than a week overdue with our first child and
grieving the loss of a man who was like a father to me, Roger took me in all my
giant belly’s glory to a new ice cream place in Kent and we got the biggest
gooiest concoction they sold.”
Di Paolo prized news stories that illuminated overlooked pockets
of Portage County. He said the best compliment he ever received was from a
reader who told him, “You cover news that nobody cares about.”
He lavished praise on his staff and found humor in life’s subtle
ironies. “Too funny,” he would say.
Di Paolo won numerous awards and even received a key to the city
of Kent. But he always said the best thing he ever did was become a father to
Brian, in 1994.
He recalled that day in a column he wrote for The Portager after
Brian’s wedding.
“As a nurse was checking him over after delivery, his mother asked
if he was OK — as in 10 fingers and 10 toes OK — and I told her, ‘No. He’s
perfect.’”
In the same column, he wrote, “I never found myself going
head-to-head with [Brian] like I did with my father; our time together was too
precious.”
Becoming a father and enduring a divorce seemed to give Di Paolo
new perspective on his own father, and the two grew closer, his sister
recalled. Di Paolo proudly told stories about his namesake, the young Italian
lawyer who couldn’t get a job at a firm because of his immigrant last name. So
he set up his own practice and took on the clients no one else would, who were
often Black.
In 1957, the elder Di Paolo helped a Black man avoid the death
penalty after he was falsely accused of a high-profile murder, a tale Di
Paolo described at a recent NAACP event.
Di Paolo’s father died in 2001. His mother died in 2015.
Still grieving her death and entering the twilight of his
career, the Dix family sold the Record-Courier to a national
chain that quickly began slashing costs. Di Paolo was laid off after a month.
He said it happened “like a bolt out of the blue” and that he
was given two hours to clear his desk.
“As I left for the last time, I got a standing ovation from my
staff,” he said. “It was like something out of a movie.”
Without any severance or health insurance, he worried about his
future. But he soon found a second career in the nonprofit sector, helping
Family and Community Services with community and public relations. Without the
pressure of newspaper deadlines, he told friends that he was finally enjoying
his work.
He also married Krasselt that year, kicking off a period of his
life that Di Paolo Prezioso believes was his happiest.
“He loves me more than I’ve ever been loved,” Di Paolo told his
sister in the weeks before their civil marriage.
Last year, Di Paolo became a board member of The Portager. He
resumed his history column, writing over two dozen stories in
less than a year, and appeared several times on The Portager podcast, where he
plucked facts from his vast mental catalogue. “I got my voice back,” he would
say.
Di Paolo said he always read the obituaries and frequently
shared his favorites on his Facebook page. He especially appreciated those that
spun a good tale, celebrating the ways ordinary people could make a profound
impact on those around them.
Remarking on one he particularly liked, Di Paolo wrote: “The
story of a life, so very different than news of a death.”
How Roger Di Paolo’s father saved an innocent African-American man from a
possible death sentence even though he confessed to a murder because the police
beat him till he did:
The Portager
March 4, 2020 ·
By Roger Di Paolo
The murder of John DuBois at his bookstore on
South Lincoln Street in Kent on the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 2, 1957, shocked
the Kent community. The 66-year-old businessman was widely known and respected.
Murder was a rarity in Kent. The quest to solve the killing was intense.
DuBois apparently had been shot during a
holdup. Actual clues as to what occurred were few. A plaid hunting cap had been
left at the scene. It contained a few hairs, presumably the killer's.
Police arrested a 21-year-old
African-American from the South End the following night while he was skating at
the Moon-Glo Roller Rink. Early in the morning of October 4, he confessed to
the murder of John DuBois, and affirmed his statement with a guilty plea in
Ravenna Municipal Court. Local newspapers applauded police for solving the
crime so rapidly.
The suspect, Roland Metcalf, may have been an
easy target for the police. He was no stranger to run-ins with the law, and his
confession sealed the case.
But he didn’t kill John DuBois. He had an
alibi to prove that he wasn’t even In Kent that night. Why he confessed to a
crime that put him in jeopardy of death in the electric chair is another story.
Mr. Metcalf’s mother, Robby Wright, knew her
son was innocent. She approached a lawyer at the courthouse and appealed for
his help. He was skeptical and asked why her son had confessed to the murder
and entered a guilty plea. “They beat him and made him confess,” she told him.
This wasn’t the Jim Crow South of the 1920s
and 1930s. This was a civil rights case in Kent, Ohio, in 1957, within my
lifetime and many of yours. And strong-arm police tactics, especially where
minorities were involved, weren’t unheard of.
The lawyer was moved by Robby Wright’s
appeal. As a former sheriff’s deputy he was aware that “there were many
occasions when overzealous or sadistic police beat helpless citizens when they
were attempting to force a confession from them,” he wrote years later.
“Besides, here was a mother whose son faced the electric chair and when she
asked if I would at least go talk to him, I felt it was the least I could do
for her sake.”
The lawyer was no stranger to being an
outsider. An Italian immigrant who came to Kent to go to college after World
War II, he worked his way through night law school as a railroad laborer, sheet
metal fabricator, steel worker and sheriff’s deputy. He even sold vacuum
cleaners door to door. When he graduated and passed the bar, he contacted all
of Ravenna’s lawyers to see about a position as an associate. There were less
than 20 in practice, but he was rejected by all of them – told by one to go to
Akron to practice there because there were too many lawyers in Ravenna. He
ended up renting an office for $25, drained his wife’s savings account of all
but $1.25 and set up practice on his own. Among his first clients were
African-Americans from Skeels, McElrath and the South End, who learned that he
would take their cases, unlike other white lawyers, and would handle their
legal affairs at minimal cost, or more often, free of charge.
The lawyer visited Roland Metcalf in the
Portage County Jail and listened to his story. Mr. Metcalf said he hadn’t killed
the bookstore owner, but had confessed because he had been “worked over” –
slapped and punched by detectives from Kent and Akron – and had pleaded guilty
“because I was afraid they would take me back to the Kent jail and beat me some
more.”
He also learned that Mr. Metcalf was 17 miles
away, in Akron at a football game, on the night of the murder – and had six
witnesses to back up his story – and that the powder burns on his hands that
were picked up in a paraffin test were because he worked at the Ravenna Arsenal
and handled gunpowder every day. And he said he never wore a hat. He also said
he was willing to take a lie detector test.
The lawyer interviewed the alibi witnesses,
who confirmed his story. He also interviewed a Record-Courier reporter, who
witnessed the interrogation – a common practice in those days – and confirmed
that the two detectives had used force to obtain the confession.
He contacted County Prosecutor Robert Cook,
who listened to the evidence and said he would dismiss the murder pleas if Mr.
Metcalf took a lie detector’s test. He passed it, and the prosecutor stood by
his word. He affirmed the alibi, noted that he had been “slapped around” to
coerce a confession (without access to legal counsel) and the hat at the scene
contained hair from a white person.
One week after confessing to a crime he did
not commit, Roland Metcalf was released from jail. Had he gone to trial before
an all-white Portage County jury, it isn’t unfair to speculate that he may have
gone to the electric chair.
I heard the “Metcalf murder story” repeatedly
as I was growing up from the lawyer who may have saved Roland Metcalf, my
father and namesake, Roger F. Di Paolo. It was one of the highlights of his
legal career. He went on to defend many African-Americans clients, including
several charged with murder, and was proud that none of them we ever were
convicted, He also cherished friendships with residents of Skeels, McElrath and
the South End. So do I.
Years after my father died, I came across a
letter he had saved that was among the belongings of our household that I
sorted through after my mother died. It was from an African-American woman in
Ravenna, dated Oct. 12, 1957, the day Roland Metcalf’s release was reported:
Dear Sir:
It is hard to put into words how I feel this
morning. To make a long story short, I want to thank God for a man like you. I
admire your courage and patience to help one of my people. So many would not,
even though they knew they were not guilty.
I just have tp thank God for a man like you that
has the courage to speak as boldly in the interest of brotherly love … I don’t
know this boy from Kent but they are my race, my people, … I hope every Negro
in Portage County that needs an attorney gets you.
Mrs. Dorothy Franklin
My Dad wasn’t much of a saver, but I’m glad
that letter survived him.
Roland Metcalf passed away in 1998. My Dad
died in 2001. He is buried in his judge's robes.
