50 Fascinating Alumni: Cleveland State University
The 50 Fascinating Alumni project began in 2015 and features biographies of outstanding Cleveland State University graduates from around the world. This project was conceived as a part of CSU’s 50th anniversary celebration when the alumni association decided to recognize 50 fascinating alumni as part of the effort. Nominations were sought from a variety of sources, Elizabeth was commissioned to write several of the alumni profiles.
MARGUERITE HRABAK
BA ’74
Retired Engineer
INTERDISCIPLINARY EDUCATION IS THE YARDSTICK OF SUCCESS
Marguerite Hrabak (née Jost) started at Fenn College of Engineering in 1947 and was one of two women enrolled in a class of 700. There was never a doubt she would study engineering.
The eldest daughter of parents who had emigrated from Germany, she attended Notre Dame Academy and excelled in science and math. Her father had a small tool and dye shop and needed help. Since there were no boys in the family, she became his “only son” by default and began helping him in the shop when she was 13 years old. She learned to read blueprints and run milling machines, lathes and drill presses.
Because her parents were of the Depression era, they insisted she have a back-up plan to ensure her success. Plan A was to study to be an engineer. Plan B was become a teacher, the usual career for women at the time.
Hrabak rode the streetcar to school from East Cleveland for 10 cents, and attended classes in Fenn Tower and the YMCA. After class, she participated in the cooperative education program, calculating figures for NASA and counting money for Halle Brothers Department Store to help pay her tuition. With all of her practical experience, she flourished in the challenging academic environment at Fenn.
“It was a great time … especially coming from an all-girls school. The guys were older and treated us like little sisters. I was good in math, so I always had someone who was interested in my help. We sat alphabetically because that’s how the instructors could keep tabs on the GIs who had to have an attendance record to earn their stipend. Fortunately, I always sat next to this guy named Frank Hrabak. Over time, we learned to get along, even though at first, he was quite sarcastic about this girl in his classes,” she recalls.
Frank and Marguerite eventually married. She left Fenn College in 1949 and went to work in her father’s shop in order to save money for a house. Frank graduated in 1951, went to work at Brush Electronics as a teacher, and later took a job at Reliance Electric as a teacher in charge of trainees, where he stayed until his retirement. The husband-and-wife engineering team designed and built their first home in Euclid and subsequently had five children.
Although her father wanted her to take over his business, the couple decided instead to have an auxiliary business at home. They received referrals through Reliance, and Hrabak worked on small contract projects while the kids were taking a nap. Over time, her contract work evolved into a much larger engineering business which included making custom electronic controls and test equipment for Procter and Gamble and Alcoa.
When her last child went to kindergarten, she realized that she needed to go back to school and finish her degree if the couple was going to earn enough to put five children through college. She returned to Cleveland State 25 years after leaving and graduated with a degree in engineering science in 1974.
Soon after graduation, Hrabak was attending a reception at Cleveland State and a reporter from the Cleveland Press was interested in her story. The paper ran a full-page spread about her determination to finish her engineering degree despite a 25-year lapse. Soon after the article appeared, she received a call from Lincoln Electric, offering her a position. She started in methods engineering and was promoted to purchasing a year later. She worked for Lincoln Electric for 10 years until her husband contracted Parkinson’s disease. They spent their remaining time together concentrating on their home business.
“For many years, I felt like I had to apologize for my degree in engineering science because no one really knew what it was,” she says.
“Engineering is like a yardstick. If you have a specialty, you study an inch wide and a yard deep. However, engineering science is a yard wide and an inch deep because we interface with government, with business, with banking, with everything. It is a very valuable skill … more so now than ever before.”
Today, Hrabak lives on the 117-acre farm in Chardon that she and her late husband refurbished over the past 35 years. She works part time for the township in a variety of roles, including as zoning secretary and grant administrator. She also sits on the county planning commission.
VINCE MENTI
BBA ’89
Owner, Family Learning Center for Music
CAREER ADVICE HITS THE RIGHT NOTE
Nearly 30 years after graduating, Vince Menti walks around his Twinsburg, Ohio, music store and remembers the prophetic words of a CSU career counselor who suggested, "Maybe we can prepare you to own a music store."
What seemed like an unattainable goal at the age of 18 became a reality.
It was 1985 and Menti was taking introductory business classes as a CSU freshman when he met with a career counselor for the first time. He knew he wanted a college degree, but was unsure of the major he should pursue. He had purposely chosen Cleveland State to stay local and had a full life outside of the classroom, performing in local bands and teaching guitar at the music store in his hometown.
As the counseling session progressed, his passion for music became clear and the career advice he received that day would prove to be instrumental in uniting his passion with a purpose.
Menti graduated from Cleveland State in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in business administration. After college, he settled into a long career with the Sherwin-Williams Company, holding a number of positions over 25 years.
All the while, music remained a constant in his life as he continued to entertain area rock and jazz enthusiasts with his solo, duo and ensemble acts and teach guitar in his free time.
He was giving lessons at the Glitter Picker String Factory in Twinsburg when he learned that the owner was putting the business up for sale. He and his wife LuAnn purchased the store in 2012 and renamed it the Family Learning Center for Music.
Today, he continues to work for Sherwin-Williams as a tech agent and helps his wife manage the store and their staff of 12 employees. They give 200 lessons a week, including string, wind instrument, piano and drum instruction, voice lessons, music theory instruction and adaptive music lessons. They also sell a wide variety of musical instruments and offer instrument repair.
After hours, Menti can still be found in the spotlight of performance venues ranging from local clubs to larger gigs in the Flats and the Lake Erie islands. He has done television and radio appearances and has opened for Badfinger, Country Joe and the Fish, Pam Tillis, Reverend Horton Heat and the BoDeans. He also is an avid collector of left-handed guitars, with a current collection of 35 vintage and interesting pieces.
He still can hear those words from his counselor: "Maybe we could prepare you to own a music store."
"Between my real world experience with Sherwin-Williams and my Cleveland State business background, I am well-equipped to market, manage and troubleshoot this fun and rewarding business. You just never know where your education experience will lead you," he says.
ERIC & AMY SWINDERMAN
BA '05
BA '01
Filmmakers
A MATCH MADE IN CLEVELAND
More and more production companies are making movies in Cleveland, drawn to the North Coast by the Ohio Motion Picture Tax Incentive. But these tax breaks do not benefit local filmmakers. Just ask Eric and Amy Swinderman of 1031 Films, who succeeded in producing Made in Cleveland, the largest independent film ever shot in the city, solely through local grassroots fundraising efforts.
"It was a huge undertaking," recalls Eric. "We had to scrape together every nickel of our $50,000 budget. Fortunately, we were able to inspire the local community to donate more than half the money because they believed in us."
This wasn't the first time that Cleveland played a role in the success of this couple.
Eric was a 19-year-old film student attending Walsh University in Canton when he wrote a screenplay set in the city. "I always had a love affair with Cleveland. Whether it was going to Indians games or the Cleveland Museum of Art, I loved the culture of the city," he says.
After an injury cut short his college baseball career, he transferred to Cleveland State, where he became known as "the film guy" on campus.
Eric was the first person in his family to go to college. He not only credits CSU for helping him learn about film and television production from mentors such as Austin Allen, Alan Byrne, Laine Goldman and Jack Powers, but feels that his college experience also helped to prepare him for the real world. While attending CSU, he was a writer for The Cauldron student newspaper, member of the University Judicial Board and the Advertising Club, and worked for Conference Services.
Amy says she is as "Cleveland" as you can get. She was born and raised in the city, attended Cleveland Metropolitan Schools and penned her first story, Poochie the Crab, at age seven. A high school essay about writing that story won her a full college scholarship from The Plain Dealer.
When her acceptance at another university was misplaced, she enrolled at CSU, commuting from home for her freshman year and then moving into Viking Hall.
“My first year, I bought all of my family Christmas presents from the college bookstore," she says. "I was the first person in my family to attend college and I wanted to share my excitement with all of my relatives."
As soon as she hit campus, the journalism major went to the Cauldron office to inquire about a job. Soon she was writing for the News, Opinion and Culture sections, later had her own column, and by her sophomore year had become news editor. By chance, Amy interviewed Eric about the film he was making. They started taking classes together and have been inseparable ever since.
They both agree that the making of Made in Cleveland has been the highlight of their careers. What started out as brainstorming ideas over pizza with colleagues resulted in a heartwarming and funny anthology of 11 short films about life, love and the pursuit of happiness in the city of Cleveland. The film was written, directed and produced by people with connections to the city and features a cast and crew of current or former Clevelanders, as well as non-locals who have made a name for themselves on television -- Busy Phillips of Cougar Town and Gillian Jacobs of Community. Made in Cleveland premiered in 2013 at the locally owned Atlas Cinemas and was nominated for Best Picture at the Great Lakes International Film Festival that same year.
"We're really proud of what we were able to do and we can't wait to start working on other projects and see where the next adventure takes us. We know that whatever we do, we will always be indebted to CSU for bringing us together and getting the whole thing started,” they say.
“We would love for CSU to take on the challenge of providing the training, production assistance and practical help that local filmmakers need to make meaningful projects. We really believe that Cleveland could become known as the new hot spot for independent films, and that we could create a viable, sustainable industry -- not to mention hundreds, or thousands, of much-needed jobs -- if we had a capable entity like Cleveland State to help build that kind of infrastructure."
Eric is a creative services producer at WEWS-TV, responsible for writing, producing and editing in-house promotions and client commercial spots. Amy is a freelance writer/editor at Swank Media and a regular contributor to Inman News. The couple lives in Lakewood with their two cats. Their next film is slated for production in 2016.