Ralph Perk
Early life[edit]
Born to an ethnic Czech American family in Cleveland, Perk dropped out of high school at 15 and later took correspondence courses to earn his high-school diploma. He studied history, political science and mathematics at the Cleveland College of Case Western Reserve University and St. John's College in Cleveland.[1] During the Great Depression he worked as a patternmaker, then worked with his brother George in running the Perk Coal and Ice Company. He went on to work in real estate, but returned to patternmaking during World War II to aid in the war effort, after the military rejected him due to earlier health problems resulting from kidney stones.[1] Perk then moved into politics, becoming a precinct committeeman for Cleveland's Republican Party in 1940 and then assuming the leadership of the Southeast Air Pollution Committee tasked with fighting industrial pollution in the Flats.[1]
Personal life[edit]
Perk and his wife had six sons and a daughter.[1] His son, Ralph J. Perk, Jr., served as a municipal court judge in Cleveland from 1989 to 2003. Another son, Thomas Perk, is a council member in the village of Valley View in addition to being a fire fighter. Yet another son, Kenneth Perk, is a member of the Cuyahoga Heights Board of Education. His second-youngest son, Allen G. Perk, is the President and CEO of XLNsystems Inc. in Columbus, Ohio.
Perk was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the 1990s, and underwent treatments for the disease.[13] The treatment was thought to have been successful, but in early 1998 Perk and his family learned that the cancer had not only returned but had spread. Perk's children spent a year caring for their father at home. Five days before his death,[14] Perk was admitted to the Corinthian Skilled Nursing Center in Westlake, Ohio. He died there on April 21, 1999.[15] He was buried at Holy Cross Cemeteryin Brook Park, Ohio.[16]