Lewis Charles Cross

1929 - 2023

News Story
By Mark Zaborney
Blade Staff Writer

Lewis Charles Cross, a teacher, coach, and administrator who closed his quarter-century Toledo Public Schools career as principal of Waite High School, his alma mater, died Thursday at StoryPoint Knoxville West, an assisted living facility in Tennessee. He was 94.

He had congestive heart failure, his daughter Jane Long said.

Formerly of Bowen Road in West Toledo, Mr. Cross and his late wife, Jeanne, lived for 22 years in Bradenton, Fla., and then in Germantown, Tenn. He moved to Knoxville last year to be near his daughter, Jill Cross Stem.

Mr. Cross retired as principal of Waite High School in 1982 and was affiliated for much of the next decade with Laurel Hill Swim and Tennis Club, becoming general manager in February, 1983.

He came to the Toledo schools in 1956, after three years of teaching physical education and history and coaching basketball at Metamora High School. At Woodward High School in Toledo, he taught, became a counselor, and then an assistant principal.

"He wanted to give back to students everything he knew," Mrs. Stem said. "He was an impassioned educator."

He was principal of DeVilbiss High School from 1966-72. After a stint as the school system's director of secondary personnel, Mr. Cross in 1974 became principal of Waite High School. He was a 1946 graduate of the school.

"It meant everything to him to be back at Waite," Mrs. Stem said. "He was in his own element back at Waite."

Mrs. Long said: "Those were the best years of his career."

Before he retired, the students surprised him with an assembly based on the old television show, "This Is Your Life," and presented him a gold watch, engraved to show it came from Waite students of the 1981-82 school year.

"People talk about management by walking around. My dad did that before it was a phrase," Mrs. Long said.

Throughout his career, he remembered the names of students, colleagues, faculty, and staff - and called them by their name.

"He attracted a lot of people to him, because he was such a pleasant, optimistic, happy person," Mrs. Long said. She recalled being with him at a restaurant when the owner, a former student, came over and said to Mr. Cross, "'If it weren't for you, I wouldn't own this restaurant.' This has such an impression on you as a young child."

He was born Jan. 24, 1929, to Etha and Lewis Everett Cross. He grew up in East Toledo's Peanut Hill neighborhood, near Oakdale Avenue and Oak Street. That's where he first learned to play baseball. He pitched for sandlot teams and, later in his teens, for a team in an area amateur baseball federation.

He played baseball at Bowling Green State University, taking a year off to play for a Chicago Cubs' farm team in North Carolina. He received a bachelor of education degree from BGSU in 1951. He later received a master of education degree from the University of Toledo.

He'd been a first lieutenant in the Air Force and served stateside. He remained in the Air Force Reserve until 1966.

He was a past president of the northwest district board of the Ohio High School Athletic Association and a former president of the Toledo Administrators and Supervisors Association.

He'd been an elder at Hampton Park Christian Church in West Toledo.

He and the former Jeanne Marie Lauber married March 10, 1951. She died Sept. 19, 2020. Their daughter Jenny Cross died in 2003.

Surviving are his daughters Jill Cross Stem and Jane Long; two grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

A private family service will be held next year.