Area schoolchildren help RCH
kick off “buy a mile” fund raiser

            About 40 children from Citizens Academy and Holy Rosary Montessori School gathered on the lawn of the Cozad-Bates House Nov. 14 to help Restore Cleveland Hope Inc. Executive Director Joan Southgate kick off the group’s first major fund-raising campaign.

With a goal of raising $250,000, Joan will “complete the circle” she began back in 2002 by walking 250 miles from St. Catharines, Ontario, back to Cleveland. In 2002, Joan, then 73, walked from the southern Ohio River town of Ripley to Cleveland to honor the courage and creativity of freedom seekers and conductors who participated in the Underground Railroad. In 2003, she continued on her inspirational journey to St. Catharines, which had been conductor Harriet Tubman’s Canadian base of operations.

In Their Path 2009! is set to begin May 1 and will mark Joan’s 80th birthday. RCH hopes is challenging supporters, friends and community groups to form teams to raise $1,000 to “buy a mile” of Joan’s journey. The money raised will be used to help restore the Cozad-Bates House, the only pre-Civil War-era building still standing in the University Circle area, and to allow RCH to continues it educational programming and community outreach efforts.

Leading up to the kickoff celebration Nov. 14, Joan had visited the schoolchildren at Citizens Academy and Holy Rosary to share her vision of an Underground Railroad educational center housed in the Cozad-Bates House and to talk of her past walk and her plans for In Their Path 2009! The children and their teachers, who had walked from their schools in University Circle and Little Italy to the kick-off site, planted daffodils, tulips and hyacinths outside the Cozad-Bates House and in several flowerpots to welcome Joan back from her walk in late spring.

Before the planting began that balmy fall morning, the Rev. Terri Young of Euclid Avenue Congregational Church, where RCH currently meets, blessed the bulbs. The Cozads and their neighbors and friends, the Fords, who are documented Underground Railroad conductors, helped found the EACC. The church has pledged to sponsor the first mile of Joan’s walk.

After planting dozens of flower bulbs, the children took time to enjoy the lush lawn of the historic home, playing and raking leaves into a giant pile that invited jumping. The children and RCH members and supporters attending the fund-raising launch then walked across the street for a snack of cookies and cider and a brief reception at the Abington Arms. Over the years, many residents of Abington Arms have developed a fondness for and interest in the long-neglected Cozad-Bates House.

Ndeda Letson of University Circle Inc., which was given the Cozad-Bates House in 2005, told of UCI’s support for the RCH fund raiser and celebrated the goal of RCH operating its educational center out of the back section of the historic home, which dates to 1853. Virginia Mook, an RCH Board member and one of the original founders of the group, showed the schoolchildren a picture of her grandmother, Mary Augustus Ford, and told of her ancestors’ role in the Underground Railroad. It is her goal that the picture someday hangs in the RCH educational center inside the Cozad-Bates House.