Humans of Cleveland — Lee Clarion

For this week's installment of Humans of Cleveland, we headed inside a few local establishments to celebrate the unique entrepreneurs who call Cleveland home. It was also pouring down rain outside, and these folks were sweet enough to chat with us while we waited out the storm.

Nadya and Freddy Mora, Mora's Antiques

The back and forth between these two was adorable.

"I always liked to antique and go to small towns, and I met his mother at her shop in Georgetown. She told me that he was teaching ballroom dancing lessons, so three months later when I visited his shop I called him and set up an appointment."

"I thought she was a good girl and I didn't want her to get involved with somebody like me, I was a black sheep."

"Oh, you were not. A week later he asked me out to lunch - "

"It was just lunch, how harmless is that?"

" - And then a week after that he asked me to go hiking on a Saturday afternoon. So we started out as friends."

"Because you're not supposed to date your students."

"Oh we broke that rule, I don't follow rules."

" Yeah, she was pushy."

"I was not!"

Harry, Harry's Watch and Clock

"When I was 21 years old I moved from Albania to New York, in 1958. I met my wife at a dancing hall; I used to go dancing five nights a week. I was crazy, but I was a great dancer. She loved the way I could move. I did it all, the tango, foxtrot, pasodoble, all those all dances you probably don't even know about anymore. Before I met my wife, I was dancing there and there were about 150 people all around, and I ask this girl to dance with me, because I love to dance with someone who really knows how to dance. I didn't care if she was young or old or what she looked like, she just had to dance, that's what pleased me. She was light as a feather; I would swing her up in the air and she would spin like a yo-yo! And the whole floor emptied until it was just her and me, and everyone there sat down to watch us dance. I'll never forget that night."

"How did you get into the watch and clock business?"

"Well, it's a long history. My grandfather was a clockmaker, and my father was in the business for 85 years, so it's a family trade. He was a cracker jack too, there was nothing he couldn't make or couldn't do. Even with doctors - my father used to beat the doctors at their own trade. One time my mother was sick, and she had a very soft skin, white as snow, couldn't see any veins. That's just the way she was born, she was a very delicate girl, so when the doctor tried to take her blood he couldn't find a vein. He was sticking her and sticking her with the needle, and finally my father gets angry and says to the doctor 'Give me the needle!' And he found a vein on the first shot. One shot! My father was a genius."

"I hear a lot about divorces, a lot about separations, and it doesn't make me too happy. You know, marriage is for better and for worse. When you stand in front of a priest or rabbi and you say those words, you mean what you say. I was married almost 60 years to the same girl until she left me, until she passed away. But I kept my promise, and she did hers. A marriage is a marriage, and you've got to take the good and the bad."

"Do you have any love advice?"

"Beauty is nothing. It's what a person does, and how they act, that's what counts."