Marty Uhle
CEO, Community West Foundation
All roads lead back to Rocky River for Marty Uhle and his wife, Laura, who have lived in six different homes in neighborhoods throughout the community since 1986. After moving away for career opportunities a couple of times, “Rocky River was always the place we called home, no matter where we were living,” says Uhle, who is CEO of Community West Foundation.
Longtime friends stay connected, and the couple finds new friends at every turn, whether dining out at Market or frequenting businesses along Detroit Road. “You can leave for two years, come back and run into a friend at Heinen’s, and it’s like you never left,” Uhle says. “The community couldn’t be more welcoming.”
The Uhles are high school sweethearts, married 39 years, and their very first home was by the Rocky River Public Library. They raised their children in River and have played an active role in city life.
Since Uhle retired from a business career 15 years ago, he has poured his energy into service, including acting as the superintendent for Lutheran West and East for three years, and supporting the Community West Foundation board for a decade before being appointed its CEO in 2020.
“It’s quite a mission,” he says of the foundation, which was formed when Fairview and Lutheran Hospitals merged with Cleveland Clinic in 1997, resulting in an unrestricted endowment that has grown to $125 million.
Community West still assists those hospitals with fundraising and allocates financial resources to benefit communities from Downtown to throughout the West Side and into Lorain County. “We support organizations that provide basic needs like food, mental health and addiction services, prisoner reentry and support for refugees and immigrants,” Uhle says. “It all hits home.”
In Rocky River, Community West Foundation supports a wide range of nonprofits, churches, departments including parks and recreation, the historical society, hockey boosters and more. “We try to help with anything we can in Rocky River that aligns with our mission, and it’s such a generous community here,” Uhle says.
Ken Long
River PhotoCraft
A community brimming with inspiration stokes ideas for photography subjects, mostly nature, and serves as an endless supply of material for Ken Long, a local artist who creates fine art by altering images with software.
“I’m really more of a curator,” says Long, whose digital photography serves as a base for accentuating textures, details and forms by manipulating images with a technique called neural style transfer.
“I might take a photograph plus an image of tree bark with its colorful brown-orange-yellow hues and transfer some of those attributes,” Long describes.
“It’s trial and error,” he adds. “I might try 50 different styles to find one that works, and then combine four or five versions of that photo-style blend to produce the final image.”
It’s a digital mashup that combines analysis, which is how Long spent his career in publishing, retiring from Freedonia Group, a market research firm where he prepared in-depth industry reports.
Long was attracted to photography when it went digital. “I was never really into it before because of the time delay of taking the picture and then developing it,” he says.
Working in real time is a different story, along with social media exposure and a growing audience that is interested in his work. Long has had a solo gallery show the last two years at Cleveland Metroparks Rocky River Nature Center. His studio business, River PhotoCraft, has participated in the West Shore Arts Council juried show the last two years, where he won first-place awards for his digital photography. His work has also been displayed at Rocky River Public Library, and he’ll hold a show at The Gathering Place in 2025.
A favorite Rocky River spot for this self-taught artist? Rocky River Park, a relaxing walk from his home.
In Long’s works, try to spot his favorite tree. “I’m always looking to capture something that draws out emotion and stops the viewer — makes them look at the image and think, ‘That’s really interesting — I didn’t look at it that way before,’” he says.
You can see examples of Ken's work at facebook.com/riverphotocraft.
