Cleveland street of mass murders tries to get back to normal with attention shifted to the courtroom

CLEVELAND - As it does every year, spring has come to Cleveland's Imperial Avenue with a flourish of flowers. Only this year, this is the first spring since the nationwide attention the street received as police uncovered the bodies of eleven women in and around a house on the street.

At the corner of Imperial and East 126th Street, the tulips are in full bloom. They yellows and reds accent the green of a neatly-trimmed lawn which is lush, especially for so early in the season. A few doors away, daffodils sway in the breeze. Spring arrived early as it did throughout northeast Ohio with unseasonably high temperatures in the early days of April. The sound of lawn mowers is in the air and some residents are busy in their yards.

On Imperial Avenue and on neighboring thoroughfares in Cleveland's Mount Pleasant neighborhood, the residents are working to find a normal footing again. It has been a long autumn and winter of discontent because of the bodies found in the home owned by Anthony Sowell.

With the news media gone, no longer camped out in front of the house, things are much quieter. Even the police are gone with the exception of a single car where an officer sits, guarding the house, which is evidence in the prosecution's case against Sowell. There is a 10-foot chain-link fence surrounding the entire property to keep away would-be souvenir hunters from a house which notorious for the secrets of violent death it hid.

"Basically, the people in the neighborhood are trying to get together and continue on," said neighborhood resident William Thomas. His comments came as he walked, aided with a cane, along Imperial Avenue.

Thomas said people speak of the evils which took place inside the house, but the people in the neighborhood are trying to deal with their own everyday issues of raising children, paying bills and staying employed. Parents can be seen pushing their children in strollers through the neighborhood.

The postman still delivers mail door-to-door. There are still people who walk to the corner convenience store and buy the products they need.

Two blocks away, Larry Vaughn trimmed shrubbery at a friend's home. While he cut through the evergreens, trimming it away from the friend's front window, he spoke matter-of-factly.

"I think the people are much closer," he said, reflecting on how the neighborhood people seemed to have grown philosophically from the time of the big police presence. "I think the people are looking out for each other. Something that should have been done all along." He sighed as he uttered his words and then returned to his landscaping work.

Across the street from where he labored with the shrubbery cutters, workers of an asbestos-removal company were inside the old Lafayette Elementary School. The school building was closed years ago. One of the workers said someone wanted to buy the land for future development.

"That's what we need for this neighborhood," said the worker. "We got to improve everything around here."

A block away, Stephanie Perry waited for her grandchildren to come home from school. She stood inside the chain-link fence surrounding the property owned by her daughter.

"I get the house prepared for them to come home in the afternoon," she said. When asked how the children were doing in light of all the crime a few blocks away on Imperial, she said the children "were doing great."

Perry did admit she had to talk to the 9-year-old grandson, who had asked many questions about the charges against Sowell and the 11 bodies found in his house.

"I just explained to him that there are bad people in the world and that he has to grow up to be a good person," she said.

It is obvious many in and around Imperial Avenue, which runs between East 116th and East 131st Streets, are trying to find a normal footing again. The tragic story that unfolded in the Sowell house rocked the neighborhood for several weeks. There were constant reminders of the enormity of the crimes with vigils in front of the house, demonstrations, a massive police presence and the probing eyes of the news media.

But once much of the attention shifted to the courtroom where Sowell, dressed in orange jailhouse coveralls, periodically appears in hearings, Imperial Avenue had to get back to the business of living. It is doing that. One observer noted spring "is a time of rebirth."

In some ways, the street is in its own rebirth as it savors the spring sun's shine on the avenue's face. It has been a long autumn and winter.

The new season's warmth brings neighbors out to the sidewalks again where they are looking toward each other, finding a quality in their togetherness.

Imperial Avenue is celebrating spring, perhaps as it has never done before.