By Jim Keogh
ADVANCING CLARK
Peter Kole connects Clark to Albania
T
spring 2012
HE BOY WAS 15 when his mother grabbed a shovel, went into
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the yard, and dug up a can of gold coins. She shook the coins into his palms and those of his three brothers, telling them it was time to leave Albania. Her sons would soon be drafted into the Turkish army where they would be treated as little more than cannon fodder, and she would not allow that to happen. So they left. Judging by the measured tone of his voice, it’s clear Peter Kole has told this story many times before. The boy was his father, who departed Albania in 1913 and made his way to the United States via Marseilles and Montreal. He would return to his native country years later to take a bride. They would have a son, Peter, who came to the U.S. in 1938 with his mother, passing through Ellis Island, to rejoin his father who had settled in Cleveland to work at a GM plant. Peter Kole’s is an American success story. This son of immigrants purchased a small metal-stamping company in 1963 and from that he built a network of six companies under the umbrella of Paramount Metal Products. For 20 years Paramount produced metal seat frames for six of every 10 GM automobiles. At its peak the company employed 300 people. (He has since sold off five of the companies and retains the original business, Paramount Stamping and Welding.) Despite his achievements, Kole remained passionate about his native Albania. For years he and other Albania supporters watched as the nation’s freedoms and progress were strangled under the communist rule of Enver Hoxha. “He had gulags for his own people,” Kole says. “Hoxha destroyed churches, mosques and temples. You would go to jail if you had an English-language book or newspaper; he despised Americans. It was a deplorable empire.” The regime collapsed in 1990 and was replaced by a republic in 1991, but the country remained in severe economic distress. In May 1990, Kole made a humanitarian trip to Albania where he was devastated by the conditions he witnessed. On the trip he met fellow traveler Dr. Lambi Adams ’33. “I didn’t know anything about him, and he didn’t know anything about me,” Kole recalls with a chuckle. “He wanted me to contribute to Clark, but I didn’t even know where Clark was.” He learned soon enough. Thanks to Adams’ intercession, Kole over time grew acquainted with a number of Clarkies, include Dr. Dennis Dimitri ’75 and Tom Dolan ’62, with whom he became good friends. He accepted the invitation of President Richard Traina to visit Clark, where he found himself particularly impressed by the University Park Campus School. “My father could not read or write; my mother had an eighth grade education. The importance of education was ingrained on me, my sister
and my brother. We all went to college because this is America, and this is what you must do,” he says. Kole had returned from that 1990 trip determined to make a difference in Albania. He became a leading member of the New England Relief Organization (NERO), an Albanian charity. He established three major libraries in the country — including the largest library in the Balkans and the Library of the Supreme Court in Albania — overseeing the shipment of hundreds of thousands of English-language books into the country. Kole rebuilt a decrepit school in his father’s home village, and coordinated the shipment of equipment, furnishings and fixtures from a decommissioned U.S. hospital to an Albanian hospital. His commitment to Albania, and his connection to Clark, have led to the establishment of the Peter Kole/Pogradec Endowed Fund, which benefits students of Albanian descent; the Richard Traina & Peter Kole [a] and the Nancy & Peter Kole-William Holmes Education Scholarship; McGuffey Award. He notes that learning never stops, and as an example he looks to his own mother. “She went to night school to learn English and earn her citizenship,” Kole says. “Education has lifted me up, and lifted my family up.” Kole has been to Albania five times, and he remains confident the country will continue to make strides. “The Albanians are very aggressive people, and the country is night and day from when I went there in 1990,” he says. “At that time there were practically no cars in the capital of Tirana. Government officials were living better than the Romans did. It was disastrous.” Albania’s president, Dr. Bamir Topi, a former scientist and professor, and its prime minister, Sali Berisha, a cardiologist, are good men, he says, and committed to reasonable government and intellectual pursuits. Peter Kole knows both these leaders on a first-name basis — an incredible coda to a story that began with a can of coins buried in the Albanian soil.