“I am a researcher at Cleveland State University who focuses on the issues of city building, emphasizing how cities come to live, die, resurrect, or stay dead.”
This is Richey Piiparinen’s opening line of his book of essay called Octopus Hunting. Richey was a father, son, brother, uncle, friend, and writer. Richey was our Cleveland prophet who died from a terminal brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme.
Richey’s cosmic eye was laser focused on Cleveland and other Rustbelt cities like it. His educational degrees in sociology, psychology and urban planning delivered human-centered storytelling and data science grounded in love and care. Richey was a truth-teller and never passed judgment. He could not stomach quick-solution policy by shareholders or civic leadership who wanted to copycat what other cities were doing. Richey was a connoisseur of Rustbelt dualities … misery and majesty, pride and shame, the haves and have nots. His life’s work was to intimately tell stories that impacted the daily lives of people who work, play, live and die here.
Richey’s gift is his clear and soulful writing about the order and movement of change in our cities and how they affect our most important asset — our people. Richey was raised playing hockey, he ran the streets of Collinwood, and would religiously bundle up for Browns games. He also had to wear suits, rub elbows with mayors, county executives. foundation and Greater Cleveland Partnership leaders, to make sense of their strategy whimsies that could’ve would’ve should’ve moved this town forward beyond the current narrative. For a while, in the early 2000’s, Richey contributed his thoughts and writings to CoolCleveland.
In an intimate reading at Mac’s Backs of his book of essays, he spoke passionately about the number one public policy success that has to happen here in Cuyahoga County, which is population growth (followed by tech growth, and innovation).
“If we miss the metric, we miss everything,” he said. If we have the wrong outcomes, we are shooting in the air. Politicians are not getting the right outcomes.
These civic institutions of Cleveland have been around since the 1900s and they don’t want to change. They only have one master to serve and these are the civic spaces that have been invested in by past dependencies. Richey’s ideas in Octopus Hunting change the entire aperture of how we can see these other proposed outcomes more clearly as a connected and unified community.
Richey believed in new goalposts, benchmarks and setting targets for change to happen. When Richey was diagnosed with brain cancer, he became hyper-fixed on the inequities and challenges repeating themselves here in Cleveland’s healthcare sector. He saw our frontline healthcare workers, who he considered our greatest asset, struggling to eke out a living in the very same neighborhoods that our most notable world-class healthcare systems are gobbling up.
Richey writes, “Nothing is separate, and nothing is together. Everything is contextualized, and nested. Everything flows into everything else and then exits the same way it enters. An atom is part of a molecule, a molecule part of a cell, a cell part of an organ, an organ part of a body, a body part of a household, a household part of a neighborhood, a neighborhood part of a city, a city part of a state which, in turn, is part of a nation-state which, in turn, is part of the geopolitical body politic we call globalization.”
The conversations we shared did not waste any breath on lakefront development, or the likes of where the Browns new stadium would reside but we concentrated our talks about the social determinates of health, how to diminish the region’s traumas: poverty, inner city violence, opiate overdoses, and immigrant resettlement. He was a student of history and people-centered generational cycles that never resolved the tornados of trauma that adversely affect our most vulnerable populations. This is the hard and painful stuff he wanted to fix through his explanations, research, endless keynotes and op-ed pieces to anyone that would listen. He was both a preacher and town crier. He captured Clevelanders’ hearts and minds through his emotional, honest and visionary writings.
Richey saw abundance in Cleveland where nationally others saw blight and deficit. An example of this was investing in the healing economy where tech can innovate and support our human capital here. Richey wore what he called the “guillotine necklace,” the duality of living in both a heaven and hell, of having limited time on this planet. How do you make the most of those moments of a terminal diagnoses? Richey knew more than anyone about these dualities and found moments of being a present and exceptional father, a friend, a seer of a place he loved.
Richey knew America doesn’t like talking about death, illness or trauma — but he went there and unraveled his experiences and the unspeakable feelings on our behalf. Richey and I share the same tattoo, which was a woodcut I did years ago depicting two guys boxing with the words that say “Cleveland Is Tough.” My brother Todd died of the same cancer known as the Terminator, and that’s what brought Richey and I together. The two boxers duking it out with this ominous deadly monster and taking that hutzpah with them into the Afterlife.
Richey literally got into my skin and on my body and will be my traveling companion at Six Shooter Coffee in North Collinwood (where we often met), the stadium that I drive by everyday, and the Happy Dog in Detroit Shoreway, where I first met him. Richey is Cleveland stardust. My Cleveland ink.
2 Responses to “Richey Piiparinen: Rustbelt Philosopher by Liz Maugans”
Suzan M. Sweeney
Thank you for that beautiful tribute.
Colleen eisnaugle
Insight into the soul of Richey piiparinen, thank you Liz maugens Richey will be missed and had been so loved ❤️💪🏼