New Airway Heights park honors teacher

Cleveland Park named for late Sunset Elementary teacher, ceremony also recognizes Arbor Day

By RYAN LANCASTER

Staff Reporter

Blustery weather didn't prevent scores of former students and neighborhood residents from attending the dedication of a new city park honoring former Sunset Elementary School teacher Terry Cleveland on Saturday, May 1.

Last summer's contest to label a new park in the Sunset Crossing development revealed “Cleveland Park” to be the landslide winner after city Parks and Recreation director J.C. Kennedy received more than 60 e-mails supporting the name in a 72-hour period. A group of Cleveland's former students had rallied to pay tribute to their teacher while revisiting the city during a class reunion.

Following a 22-year career in the U.S. Air Force, Cleveland retired as a lieutenant colonel and went back to school to earn a teaching degree from Eastern Washington University. He taught sixth-grade at Sunset from 1966 to 1986, receiving the Spokane area teacher of the year award in 1986.

Two years before retiring he became the first inductee into Eastern Washington University's Robert Reid Laboratory Teachers Hall of Fame. In a Spokane Chronicle article of the time, then EWU President Dr. H. George Frederickson gave Cleveland praise. “He could have retired – probably fairly comfortably, but he chose to dedicate his life in his mature years to teaching young people, and I think the results of that show.”

Among Cleveland's former students are Airway Heights council members Charlotte Lawrence, Don Mitchell and Matthew Pederson. At the dedication ceremony Pederson remarked on how, for many, it wasn't the academic instruction they remember most from Cleveland's classes, but his lessons on personal honor and respect for others.

“He typically strayed from the curriculum to make a point about a certain life lesson,” Pederson said. “It's those life lessons that each one of us remember and have carried forward.”

In 1986, just months after Cleveland retired from teaching, he passed away at the age of 68. “I think he just missed his kids too much,” his son, Chuck Cleveland, said. “My dad had pictures of every one of his sixth-grade classes on his study wall. These kids were his family, he loved them more than anything in the world.”

Also present Saturday was Rich Baker, a member of the Washington Community Forestry Council who presented Airway Heights with its seventh annual Tree City Award. The city gave away 75 tree starts and raffled off several larger trees in recognition of Arbor Day during the dedication ceremony and barbeque.

Ryan Lancaster can be reached at [email protected].