Lorain Road parlor used for training area firefighters
By Grant Segall
Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
Copyright 2007 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio — The undertaker folded his arms Sunday and watched the firefighters burn his parlor.
A firefighter turned and asked the undertaker who he was. “I am the owner,” Mark Kacirek replied. Then he corrected himself: “I was the owner.”
A boarded window burst open on Kacirek’s big white colonial on Lorain Road in North Olmsted. Smoke streaked the blue sky.
“Whew,” Kacirek said. Then, typically upbeat, he added: “With all the firefighters here, I hope they get good training. It’ll be important for them and fire victims.”
In 1957, when Kacirek was 5, his family moved into this house, built in stages from the 1920s. Seven years later, his father, a longtime Cleveland undertaker, turned the place into Kacirek Funeral Home.
But the house had long been slated to make way for Crocker-Stearns Road, joining Crocker Road to the north and Stearns Road to the south.
Four years ago, when the road work appeared to be a sure thing, Kacirek and his family vacated the parlor’s second floor for a nearby house. Last December, he closed the parlor and moved his business two doors away, sharing space with Chambers Funeral Home.
Soon, crews cleared asbestos from the parlor and trees from the woods in back, where Kacirek and his friends used to play. The crews held off razing the building to give firefighters a chance to practice their craft.
The firefighters liked the challenge of the solid old house of wood, plaster and lath, with an upstairs hallway as snaky as ladders are straight.
They spent the past couple of weeks practicing searches, rescues, ventilation and more.
A month ago, Kacirek took a last peek inside. “I saw where they were pulling things down and said, ‘This is enough.’ ”
For the past three days, firefighters from five departments lighted fires, doused them and lighted more. The Kacireks watched on and off.
“My bedroom!” cried Quinn Kacirek, 11, as smoke poured out her old window.
Meanwhile, her dad wondered what his late parents would think of sooty strangers trotting through the parlor. “My mother’s probably saying, ‘Are you guys wiping your feet?’ ”
On Sunday afternoon, the firefighters lighted a last fire and let it go. But the Kacireks were watching no longer. They were at a South Euclid restaurant, ironically named the Melting Pot, celebrating the 13th birthday of the older girl, Kalli.
Soon Kacirek plans to bury another piece of his past.
North Olmsted has agreed to give him a plot in a city cemetery for some 40 urns of unclaimed ashes, dating to the 1920s from different parlors where his father worked. Either survivors turned down the ashes, or the dead left no instructions.
The undertaker hopes to feel relieved after all these partings. “As hard as it’ll be, it’ll have to bring a finality and a closure.”