Judge Michael Ryan
Juvenile Court Judge, and now author, Michael J. Ryan.
(Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer)
Judge Michael J. Ryan hears stories every day in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court. Stories of disadvantage, poverty and hunger. Stories of violence, broken families and broken laws.
But he has a story of his own that can match even the worst of those. It's his own story of disadvantage, poverty and hunger. Of violence, a broken family, and broken laws.
Ryan, 43, attended 11 schools before the 12th grade. He lived in poverty in Cleveland's Longwood Estate "projects." His biological father wore an inmate's number and his stepfather was a wife beater and a drug abuser. His mother, who had him when she was 14, was a heroin addict, too, and a prostitute. She died when Ryan was 13. And then some idiot stole her ashes because he thought the plain box contained riches.
This is his story, but it is not the whole story. Because his -- and his younger sisters' story, too -- is a tale of triumph, of deliverance through faith and education, and of taking none of the excuses for failure applied to so many of the young people who stand before him.
"I have this sense of tough love for a lot of the kids that come into the court, especially the ones who come from the same neighborhood I did," the judge said recently. "I am not going to allow them to use this as an excuse to misbehave. They have options like I did. And the choices you make can cost your life physically or they can cost you the life you expected to have."
It's a powerful message made even more powerful when he shares the specifics of the life he lived. But he feels an obligation to share the story beyond the courtroom. He moves audiences to tears with speeches about his life, imploring listeners to never settle and to overcome whatever obstacles they may encounter.
Now, he's written his story in a book with harrowing detail about his childhood and his ascension to the bench. It's a hefty self-published memoir, "The Least Likely: From the Housing Projects to the Courthouse." The book is for sale on Amazon ($19.99) and he hopes to have book signings around town.
It is brutally, tragically real:
About domestic violence: "I then watched his tightly clenched fist explode on her tiny face. I saw his arm swing back like a rubber band about to recoil and then as his open hand with his fat fingers spread wide he slapped my mother in her face, and my tiny ears heard a sound that was similar to a gun shot. I remember my mother's body jerking violently as a result of the massive blows she received to her torso with his clenched fists."
About his parents' drug use: "Our neighbor right below us would come into the house and head to my parents' bedroom and then the door would shut. A few minutes later this horrible stench would begin to permeate the tiny apartment. ... A few moments after the smell dissipated, the people who were in the room alighted from it and seemed as though they were in a zombie-like state."
About one day disobeying his parents by entering their room: "What did stand out was the leather belt that was curled up on the dresser, next to a spoon, a lighter and a package that had a small amount of brown residue left inside and a hypodermic needle. I began to understand what that horrific smell was and why my mother and father's arms and eventually their legs had all of these marks."
About school meals sustaining him and the trouble with weekends and summers: "We were forced to just bear it to the next day. There were many nights I simply cried or rocked myself to sleep to avoid thinking about eating."
About a nighttime visitor you never want to see:
"I saw a rat jump out of the linen closet onto the bathroom floor and scurry from the bathroom floor to the carpet in my bedroom. Then it climbed up the bed and ran towards me. I screamed, 'Ahhhhhhhhhhhh" as I simultaneously placed my right hand, which was outside the overs, onto the rat, which was underneath the covers, as he ran near my thigh. I then with a vast amount of adrenaline squeezed the rat with my right hand for approximately 30 seconds. My grandmother yelled ... by the time she made it into the room I had jumped out of bed and was standing against the wall with the dead rat and its blood and guts on my sheets."
There was a long time, Ryan said, when he didn't talk about his childhood, when it was too hurtful or too awkward or too embarrassing. His wife, Robin, helped him to open up. It helps him to tell his story and he hopes it helps others, too.
"I think it really helped me heal from some of the things I had been going through, by being so open and transparent about it," he said.
"There's two perspectives for me in this book: You can walk away, if you experienced some of the things you read in the book or maybe your life was even worse than that, knowing that there's hope," Ryan said. "The second thing is, this is a book that says there's no excuses. You can still use your wherewithal, ability and energy to seek after your goals."
Ryan's wherewithal was developed in school, where he was driven by the philosophy that average wasn't good enough. School was a refuge. "I wanted to excel because I was losing in all these other areas of my life. But I could control my studying. I could control my behavior." His energy was derived from books from the Cleveland Public Library's mobile RV unit, from the Christian faith he developed when his aunt took him to church and from athletics, as he excelled in football and track and field, first at John Adams High and later at Cleveland Heights High.
His goal: Go to college and escape the life he lived.
On his devotion to learning:
"When our lights were cut off, I used the light from the street corner to illuminate the pages of the books I was reading. When the gas was turned off, I did my homework as soon as I got home instead of waiting until later in the evening, when it would be colder inside the apartment and uncomfortable to do homework. ... I saw the distractions that surrounded me like worrisome fruit flies, ones that annoy you but can't really disturb you to the point that you become frustrated and refuse to continue with your appointed tasks, and I simply shooed those fruit flies away."
On the more difficult curriculum at Heights High, which he entered as a junior when he moved in with his grandmother in Cleveland Heights: "Instead of complaining, making excuses or throwing my hands up and saying that I couldn't do it, I simply altered my routine. I change my routine by talking less and studying more during my study hall."
On the importance of a college degree in allowing him to overcome his past: "If you look at my situation and compare it to many children who have had similar circumstances, I was more likely to be dead, or a high school dropout, or in prison, on drugs, or a deadbeat dad. I instead wanted to break the cycle of failure that seemed to follow those closest to me. The college diploma was a symbol of faith and hard work fulfilled."
He got that college diploma from Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, a bachelor of arts in English, with the help of various scholarships and his grandmother, in 1993.
He got his law degree from the Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University and worked in the city law department and private practice before being elected to the Cleveland Municipal Court for a term beginning in January 2006 and to Juvenile Court in 2012.
"People ask me, 'What's your dream job?' I'm doing it. I love coming to work every day," he said. "The things that happened to me in my life have brought me to this point and allowed me to have a huge, effective impact on everybody I see at Juvenile Court. The families I see, the kids who are part of these families and the kids involved in delinquency."
He beams when he considers the lives of his two children, Lauren, a graduate of Hathaway Brown High School and Allegheny College who is studying for her master's degree at Baldwin Wallace, and Michael, a high school senior and one of the stars of the St. Edward High School basketball team. (He's tall, like Ryan's biological father. Much taller than the judge.)
"What I do I do for my kids. I didn't want to put my kids, ever, in the same position and predicament I was in," Ryan said last week. "I always wanted Michael and Lauren to be challenged academically as I was. I knew they would be better off as adults. They balked at me, but they worked hard. I tell them, 'It's going to pay off, I promise you, look what it did for me."'