It seemed safe to assume Gordon Safran would want to take it easy after he sold his optical business in 1996. The former owner of Burton’s Red Maple Inn and founder of Middlefield’s DDC Clinic never wavered in his desire to play a pivotal role in the community even in his final years before he passed away on March 25.
“We are really not sure where my Dad got all of his drive but he just cared about everyone,” Mindy Davidson, Safran’s daughter told The Weekly Villager. “It was not a special group of people. Even though the Jewish community was very near and dear to his heart, he just really wanted to make people’s lives better and he did it and cared so much about people.”
Despite being a resident of Cuyahoga County, Davidson said her father developed a love for the country in Geauga County. He and his wife Evelyn of 67 years had a second home in Burton for several years and after he sold his optical business, began a new business venture by opening the Red Maple Inn, a bed and breakfast in the heart of Geauga County’s Amish community.
In addition to his success running a chain of optical stores across Ohio and Pennsylvania, Safran had a diverse business background. He had also served as the Board President of the Mandel Jewish Community Center and helped transition the facility’s move from Cleveland Heights to Beachwood during its capital campaign.
According to Davidson, her father was driven by a sense of community and wanting to bring people together.
“I would be in a meeting with him or I would be in a discussion with him and there were different opinions and my Dad would usually be the one who said, ‘Listen we all do not agree on this but we have to agree on this and we have to go down the middle to get this done,” she added. “He really brought people together in figuring out on how to do things even though there were many different opinions in figuring out how to do it.”
Safran’s magnetic personality was also beneficial in finding the right people to work with him, including hiring inn keepers when he opened the Red Maple Inn in 2000.
According to Gina Hofstetter, former manager of the Red Maple Inn and Geauga County Community and Economic Development Director, it only took one meeting with Safran to know she wanted to become a part of the Red Maple Inn family.
“I call it love at first sight,” she told The Weekly Villager. “Our chemistry was there, we were compatible and we just got to know what the project looked like and what his needs were and as a family running an inn and not knowing anything about the industry.”
According to Hoftstetter, Safran treated every member of the staff like family.
“If he knew somebody on the Red Maple Inn’s staff was in need of something, he would go to that person and he would find out more,” she said.
Safran owned the Red Maple Inn for 20 years before selling it in February of 2020, only a month before the global pandemic.
Even after opening the Inn in 2000, Safran played a key role establishing the Middlefield DDC Clinic, a center for special needs children.
Davidson said her father was inspired to help raise funds to build the DDC Clinic when he saw several Amish children with special needs get on school buses.
Although Safran came from a much different world than the one the Amish community lived in, he successfully blended the two cultures.
“My Dad from day one felt comfortable,” Davidson said. “He did not bat an eye. He used to take me to Amish auctions, and we were literally the only two people not Amish at these auctions. He had such a fascination and interest in this community and not that people are afraid of the Amish but we can’t talk to them and they do not want us to take their pictures but when you get to know them, they are people like everybody else and I think he really taught a lot of people about the Amish.”
Safran led fundraising efforts to build the DDC Clinic through a capital campaign and the facility officially opened in 2004.
In addition to owning the Red Maple Inn and being a founding member of the DDC Clinic, he also served on the Kent State University Geauga Campus board and was a member of the Geauga Tourism Council.
“He just loved being out at the Red Maple Inn and loved being in Geauga County and he loved the Amish community,” noted Davidson. “He would take me on drives and knew every backroad in that community. When I go the Board Meetings at DDC Clinic, everyone still tells me stories about my Dad which I never knew.”
Although Safran is gone, he is not forgotten and Davidson is continuing his legacy by remaining as a Board Member of the DDC Clinic.
