9 minute read
FILLING LIFE’S CANVAS
Mark Bollinger with his wife, Debbie, and their dog, Abby.
photos and story by Amy Barnes
He would never be accused of fitting a stereotype.
Mark Bollinger’s interests and talents stretch into as many different directions as there are brush strokes on a canvas.
His first job, at 15 years old, was the usual type of jobs one gets at that age: washing cars and doing yard work. However, he worked at a less-thancommon place, his family’s funeral home in Cleveland.
Classmates at Fairview High School were well aware of what his family did, partly because of the annual tour that the school’s Contemporary Thought class took through the funeral home each year to learn about the care of the deceased.
There also was no missing that Bollinger drove a converted hearse. He smiles when recounting how much his friends enjoyed cruising with him in it.
The funeral home was founded by Bollinger’s grandfather in 1937 and was handed down to Bollinger’s father. When he decided it was time for the next generation to step up, most of Bollinger’s
paintings by Mark Bollinger
siblings, including Bollinger, wanted to pursue other careers.
One of Bollinger’s older sisters wanted to take the reins, but their father told her, no. It was the 80s, but he did not feel it was proper for a woman to run a funeral home.
With the remainder of his four siblings steadfastly refusing to take over the business, Bollinger said he stepped up because he felt the business should stay in the family.
Bollinger was attending the University of Cincinnati and continuing his track career that he had started in high school. Pole vaulting was his specialty.
The decision to take over the family business, however, meant he needed a degree in mortuary science, which was not offered by UC. After only a year at UC, he transferred to Xavier University and gave up track. He graduated from college in 1983.
In 1988, Bollinger took over the family business. He was only 26 years old.
“It’s never been what I wanted to do,” Bollinger said, matter-of-factly.
His dream was to be an orthopedic surgeon. He theorizes that dream may have had something to do with the numerous broken bones he suffered as a much younger, scrawnier self.
He often suffered broken bones from being involved in sports, such as football and pole vaulting, and from fighting. He recalls a time when he broke his
hand during a fight but declines to discuss the reasons for the fights.
Following his college years, he stayed involved with sports by coaching pole vaulting, high jumping and long jumping at Highland, Fairview and North Olmsted high schools. He currently plays softball with a Medina 50-and-over league and with a traveling team that recently participated in a sevengame tournament. Bollinger’s attention turned to law school in 1993. He worked days, went to school at night, and with his wife, Debbie, was a parent to five children.
Having always found school to be easy A’s without ever having to study, he was not prepared for the amount of reading and work he would have to do in law school.
After a year, he decided law was not for him and that he had no great desire for a law degree.
He shakes his head as he says how much respect he has for those who pursue a law degree and successfully become lawyers.
In the mid-1990s, Bollinger sold the Cleveland
painting by Mark Bollinger
funeral home and worked instead for other funeral homes in the area. By then, he and Debbie had six children and it was not feasible for him to return to his dream of becoming an orthopedic surgeon.
He was the general manager at Riverside Cemetery in Cleveland for three years after being an assistant manager for a year.
While his focus in high school was far from painting or art, he found himself pulled toward creating and discovered he was very good at sketching reproductions of cartoon characters.
“I drew a lot at first.” Then he decided to try painting what he was sketching.
“I wanted to see if I could do it,” he said.
He started with oil paints but did not like the long drying times. He said that an oil painting he painted in the late 90s or early 2000s is still tacky.
It was his distaste for the way sketch lines would sometimes show through the paint, especially through yellow, that was the incentive to try a different approach. He wondered if he could skip the sketching and go straight for painting on the canvas.
“If I could do it with a pencil, I could do it with a brush,” he says, with the same quiet confidence with which he approaches life. When the state went into shutdown in an attempt to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus, Bollinger took advantage of the time off from the office to turn his attention to painting and posting pictures of his finished works on social media. He says with a laugh that he calls the pictures he has painted during the shutdown his “Corona Period” paintings. One of them, a lion, he painted a second time for a woman who wanted to purchase it.
Bollinger does not come across as someone who pauses to consider, or even notice, any obstacles that may be in his path. He wants to try something, gain a new skill, expand his horizons, and he simply does it.
Always looking for ways to increase his knowledge and skills, his venture into the world of cheesecakes started with his sweet tooth.
One day, Bollinger wandered into the kitchen in search of something sweet to enjoy. When he did not find anything to his liking, he realized he really felt like having cheesecake. He started going through cookbooks, found a recipe for a marble cheesecake, and baked his first cheesecake.
That first cheesecake was close to 30 years ago, and 37 different flavors of cheesecake were to follow. He says that his wife, Debbie, “can make them almost as good as I can.”
He freely admits, however, that Debbie is the one who has the decorating skills that make their cheesecakes beautiful.
Soon, they were selling cheesecakes to area restaurants between 2008 and 2013. Before Debbie Bollinger’s favorite of her husband’s paintings. even being asked, Bollinger will firmly say that his cheesecake recipes are not where the deceased are directly cared for and something he shares. embalmed.
As well as sharing the kitchen, the Bollingers both Mark Bollinger also is involved with several area work in the family business. charitable organizations, such as the Free Masons,
Debbie works at Bollinger Funeral Goods and the Brunswick Eagles and the Brunswick Lions. Services in Brunswick, which serves as a showroom He joined the Free Masons when he was 23 years and planning location. No decedents are ever at the old. Bollinger said his father was a very active Free Brunswick location. Mark spends most of his working Mason, achieving 33 rd degree status. hours at his Wyers-Bollinger Funeral Chapel in Elyria, continued, Page 8
Debbie and Mark Bollinger in the kitchen where they have made so many cheesecakes.
Bollinger also achieved 33 rd degree status through the Scottish Rite and has been an officer for the Free Masons, as well as a district officer.
He said the Free Masons is the oldest and largest fraternity in the world and it acts primarily as a charity with the motto of “making good men better.” He said the name is a reference to stone masons and how a building is constructed; the organization encourages members to build upon themselves.
Bollinger also has been a post potentate for the Al Koran Shrine of the Shriners. Al Koran covers 16 counties. One of the things he enjoys the most about the Shriners is that members get to meet the children they are working to help.
“It was just so rewarding (meeting the children),” Bollinger said. He is a member of the 22 nd District Association of Free Masons, which covers Cuyahoga and Lorain Counties.
Bollinger said that after World War II, it was much more common for people to join civic organizations. Now, those organizations struggle to recruit new members.
“All of them struggle to get members,” he said.
In the 1940s, the Free Masons had 200,000 members, now it has approximately 80,000 members.
He said that one of the reasons the Masons in particular have trouble gaining members is because current members are not allowed to recruit or discuss the organization.
“It’s not a secret organization, it’s an organization with secrets,” Bollinger said.
There has been an increase in interest from younger people in recent years, and he theorizes that it is because so much information is now available on the internet that anyone interested in the organization can easily learn about it. He said he also thinks it is because more people are looking for in-person connections with others.
“You can’t live with all of this electronic stuff,” Bollinger said, adding that people need to have contact with others.
Bollinger said that several organizations contacted him recently, asking him to join or to take the lead, but, at age 58, he has been reevaluating his life.
During the months of the COVID-19 shutdown, he said he has discovered that he does not always have to be busy. He has learned the value of enjoying quiet time at home.
“This has kind of taught me that it’s OK to sit back and relax,” Bollinger said.
Mark Bollinger astride his Honda Shadow.
Besides painting and baking during the shutdown, the Bollingers have had time to pursue additional interests
They both enjoy short rides on Mark’s Honda Shadow motorcycle, complete with handlebar fringe. Debbie enjoys assembling puzzles, Mark is captivated by Sudoku puzzles.
Last February, just before the shutdown took place, they adopted Abby, a rescued Shih Tzu dog. Abby makes it clear how much she enjoys having her family home with her.
No one seems happier than Debbie, though, who expressed dismay over the numerous social media posts from women during the shutdown exclaiming aggravation at having their husbands home so much.
Debbie gently kisses the top of Mark’s head as he lounges on the sofa and says how happy she is to have him home more, and she is enjoying sharing so much time with him.
