Editor’s note: The following article originally appeared in the April 2013 edition of Metro Monthly. It was published on the 10th anniversary of Youngstown Police Officer Michael T. Hartzell’s death. For more information on The Michael T. Hartzell Memorial Scholarship, visit the YSU Foundation or call 330-941-3211.
Mary Kay Hartzell remembers her son, Michael, as quiet boy whose smile could light up a room. “When he smiled, when he laughed, he made everybody laugh,” she recalled.
Ryan Philibin, a friend from childhood, remembers him as fun to be around. “My parents knew his parents before we were even born. I pretty much knew him since we could walk and talk. He lived on the street behind us. We did a lot together. When we were younger, we even waited together at the bus stop. I remember we would sit together for the bus and play air hockey at seven in the morning, but we were still laughing. He was just a fun, happy, easygoing guy.”
“Basically, he was kind of quiet,” said Michael’s father, Howard. “He played a little bit of football in eighth grade. He played basketball in the youth league at the Y. And he attempted a little bit of golf, but not overly involved in [that] too much.”
Howard and Mary Kay Hartzell said they were surprised when their son announced his decision to go into law enforcement. “He never really talked to us about his plans,” Howard Hartzell said. He said Michael attended Youngstown State University for a time, but ultimately chose to enter the police academy in Niles.
It was 14 years ago this month that Youngstown Police Officer Michael T. Hartzell was killed while running the license plate of a suspicious vehicle in downtown Youngstown. On the 10th anniversary of his death, family, friends and colleagues spoke with Metro Monthly about Michael’s life, legacy and the memorial scholarship that bears his name.
“I can remember it clear as day,” said Philibin. “I was still single at the time. I was teaching and I can remember my mom calling early in the morning.”
Philibin said he was in “complete disbelief” when he learned that his friend had been killed. “The fact that it was just so sudden and out of the blue made it that much more difficult to deal with, and knowing that he was in his mid-twenties and had his whole life ahead of him made it very difficult.”
“I tell you, I woke up that morning when it was going on and I was shocked,” said David Olsavsky. “I think it had to do with the reality of when was the last time something like that happened?” At the time, Olsavsky was working in Youngstown Municipal Court as a probation officer and bailiff. He said he frequently ran into Hartzell when the young police officer was tending to police business in the courts.
The pastor of St. Patrick’s Church, the Rev. Ed Noga, who serves as a chaplain with the Youngstown Police Department, was on call the morning Hartzell died. “I was on duty that day, so I spent the better part of that morning and quite a bit of the afternoon just at the family’s house. The house was just loaded. I met all kinds of people. The house was just loaded with people all day long.”
“It was a highly emotional day for the whole community because an officer had been killed,” Noga said. “Everybody who worked that day was on extra adrenaline, on heightened pitch looking for this guy.”
Earlier, police had been investigating a shooting outside the Casaloma Gardens on Youngstown’s West Side where Donell J. Rowe, 25, was injured during an argument. According to reports, Hartzell was the first officer to arrive at the bar following the shooting.
Hartzell and the shooting suspect, Martin L. Koliser Jr., 30, later crossed paths in downtown Youngstown in the early morning hours of April 29. At 2:19 a.m., Hartzell saw a suspicious vehicle, a gray Lincoln Continental, stopped in front of his cruiser near the intersection of West Federal and Chestnut. While Hartzell was running the plate, Koliser exited his vehicle and shot the Youngstown police officer.
Koliser fled the state, but was later apprehended in Florida following a multi-agency manhunt that spanned 1,100 miles. He was brought back to Ohio where he was tried and found guilty in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court of killing Hartzell and trying to kill Rowe. In 2005, while on death row, Koliser committed suicide.
Mary Kay Hartzell quietly recounted the night she lost her eldest son. “We were in bed. We were sleeping and the phone rang. And it was the hospital. And they said that we needed to come to the hospital. And all I kept saying is, ‘Is Mike alright? Is Mike alright?’ And they kept saying, ‘You need to come to the hospital.’ ” Searching for answers, Mary Kay pressed the caller. “I said, ‘Is Steph with him?’ … I kept saying, ‘Is Steph with him?’ The caller, a nurse, responded, ‘Who is Steph?’ “She’s his fiancee,” Mary Kay said. “Did you call Stephanie?’ And the nurse said, ‘No, your name is on the list of names to call first. And I said, ‘O.K.’ And they said, ‘This is St. Elizabeth’s Hospital and you need to get here as soon as possible.’ ”
“So, I woke Howie and called Steph right away and went down there. And still, I had no clue, I just thought he got hurt.” Mary Kay said that when she, her husband, and Stephanie arrived at the hospital, “there were policemen everywhere.”
“One of the police officers, a captain, was Capt. Robert Kane. He was a family friend. I’ve known him since, well, I went to grade school with him. We went all through St. Pat’s together. He was just a couple years older than me. He was walking up toward me. He said, ‘Mary Kay, I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry.’ And I said – we called him Bebop – I said, Beeb, ‘Is he O.K.? Is he O.K.?’ He couldn’t tell me. Finally, the light came on when I saw all the police officers and they were all crying.”
Michael T. Hartzell – Badge 1085 – was 26 years old and a three-year veteran of the city’s police force.
“They took us in a room and we were all by ourselves. And then Chief Bush was there. And they told us that he was dead on arrival. And they wouldn’t let us see him because he was too bad. And they didn’t want us to remember him with the gunshot wounds. So then we just started calling family. Our son, Kevin, was at Ohio State at the time in college. We had to call him, because I didn’t want him to hear about it on the news, on the radio.”
“I’ll never forget it, never. I can’t believe that it’s going to be ten years,” Mary Kay said in 2013.
A memorial page on Facebook still serves as a place for friends, colleagues and others to grieve and remember. There, the many layers of Michael Hartzell’s life unfold, revealing the extent of his friendships and associations. Some call him Mikey. Others call him Mike or Michael. Birthdays, holidays and the anniversary of his death prompt people to visit. Many posts are quiet and reflective, characteristically brief, but deeply personal. Many mention his laughter and smile.
Michael Hartzell’s decision to become a police officer surprised his family because it appeared to come out of nowhere. His mother, in particular, was apprehensive. Her father, a Youngstown police officer, had died while on duty. “My dad had a stroke and left my mom with four girls at the age of forty eight. She raised four girls all by herself. And it’s a hard life.”
“I did not want him to do it,” Mary Kay recalled. “And I always said, ‘I would never marry a policeman and I did not want my children to be policemen.’ And he made a liar out of me,” she said, laughing at the memory. “Everyone said, ’It’s in his blood’ and I said, ‘I guess it is.’ ” Despite reservations, she didn’t challenge her son’s decision. “I knew that’s what he wanted.”
Howard said when Michael was a sophomore, he wrote a paper where his stated goals were to “be a policeman and own a farm or some property with a dog.” “Although he didn’t get the property or a farm – one day, out of the blue, he said, ‘I’m going to the police academy,’ ” Howard recalled. “That was kind of a shock, but the idea was, go do what you feel you’re going to be happy doing.”
Howard said that prior to becoming a police officer, his son served as a volunteer firefighter with the Cardinal Joint Fire District. He was “totally involved in giving to the community,” Howard said. He recalled that Michael’s passion for fire fighting sometimes resulted in Austintown police telling his son to observe the speed limit, even though he was responding to a call. “He wanted to be the first one there and on that truck,” Howard said.
While working as a volunteer firefighter and paramedic, Mary Kay said her son was haunted by a crime that traumatized him. “Michael was involved in the case in Canfield where a mother drowned her two young children in a bathtub. Michael was one of the firefighters, paramedics, that went into that house. And he was just devastated. I’m not sure if Michael was on the police force yet. I think he was still at the police academy. And that was his first, I think that was his first scene.”
“They brought counselors in, they brought grief people in. And Mike went because he was devastated. He kept saying to me, ’Mom, how could a mother kill her babies? How could a mother?’ And I said, ‘Mike, she was sick. She was sick. I said, ‘mentally, something snapped.’ I said, ‘I don’t know what the answers are.’ “I think that was the first time he saw children die. He had to get them out of the bathtub and take them in the ambulance.”
Despite experiencing that tragedy, Hartzell continued to pursue a career as a police officer. “Yes, he did. Yes, he did,” Mary Kay recalled. “And I said, “Michael, why don’t you just – and I don’t mean just stay as a fireman? And he said, ‘Mom, I want to be a police officer.’ “He said, ‘I’m going to do both.’ And I went, ‘alright – as long as you’re happy in doing [that] with your life. That’s all that counts.”
“His mom’s side of the family has a history here (at St. Pat’s), said Noga. “I would see them, periodically, not really knowing their son was in the Police Department, although she may have told me. I would see them here and they still come. They’re still here for various events.”
Noga, who has volunteered as a police chaplain for 20 years, has counseled the victims of crime as well as the officers needing release from the incredible stresses of the job. The day Michael Hartzell died, both worlds flooded together. “The police officers were just as overwhelmed emotionally as the family. Especially those he worked with.”
“They needed counseling, they needed help. It was their brother who died. Not a blood relative, but they are brothers,” said Mary Kay.
“I wasn’t a cop, but I was a corrections officer and probation officer. It’s a brotherhood. It’s a job that everyone thinks they understand . . . but we’re kind of a lonely force,” Olsavsky said.
“Back then, we had pagers and I had a flashing light on my pager,” Noga recalled. “I went to the phone, I think Detective Kane was on the phone. He said, ‘We have an officer down and he died and it was Mike Hartzell’ and [have gave] the family’s address. I was kind of caught in this triangle. I was doing this as a chaplain. I was on [a] call that had to do with a family that had a history here – not in my history – a history here with St. Pat’s. When I see them [today] at church, usually they’re here at midnight Mass. I mean it is something, cause I’m sure she thinks every day about that whole thing. I’m sure he does, too, the dad … so that kind of added to all this. I just spent time at the house. There’s nothing you can say, there’s nothing you can really say at all.”
Out of that unbearably sad night, came a little good. A memorial golf tournament was established that allowed family, friends, and colleagues to honor Michael and his legacy. Although the tournament, which served as primary funding mechanism for The Michael T. Hartzell Memorial Scholarship, was recently retired, the funds raised continue to accrue value. In 2012, the scholarship fund reached $250,000. And on the 10th anniversary of Michael’s death, YSU had awarded its 66th scholarship. The memorial scholarship and fund are managed by the YSU Foundation.
The Michael T. Hartzell Memorial Scholarship is awarded annually to six YSU full time students who have attained a minimum grade point average of 2.5. The awards give special consideration to graduates of Austintown Fitch High School; students majoring in criminal justice; students who are children of police officers currently serving the city of Youngstown; students who are children of officers currently serving the police or sheriff’s departments in the tri-county area (Mahoning, Columbiana, or Trumbull counties); and YSU students who are enrolled in the YSU Police Academy Program. Gifts to the fund are also accepted. For more information, contact the YSU Foundation at 330-941-3211 or University Development at 330-941-3119.
The idea for the memorial golf tournament was proposed to the Hartzell family about a month after Michael’s funeral. Howard recalled, “They approached me or they approached Mary Kay and I a little hesitantly, knowing the situation and they asked, ‘Is it too soon to approach you about this?’ And I said, ‘of course not.’ ”
Howard Hartzell said the idea for the scholarship reached back even farther, pretty close to the day Michael died. “I guess the next day, there had been a group of fellas that had been playing golf at Countryside. Chip Olenik was the owner of it.” He said Youngstown Police Chief Bob Bush, Dan Rivers of WKBN, Olenik, and another unnamed police officer said, ‘We should do something.’ And one of them said, ‘We should do a golf outing to raise funds for a scholarship.’ It wasn’t long after that, someone called, I think it was Chief Bush. He asked if I would like to get involved. Being a golfer, and, once he told me what it was all about, I said, sure, I’d love to participate and be part of the golf outing.”
Mary Kay said she didn’t attend any of the early organizational meetings for the golf tournament, although she later played in it. “I never went to the meetings. That was Howie’s baby. That’s how Howie handled it. And that was a good thing for him. He needed that. I’ve always played in the golf outings, but I’ve just been going to the meetings and helping out the past couple of years.”
“I was at the first (tournament) and that one was still pretty raw, recalled Olsavsky. “The first one, it was still pretty tender, but I think it (the healing) even started then. Absolutely, even to this day. Communally, everyone remembers a good person, a good memory.”
“At the outing, you get to talk to people that knew him when he was little, that worked with him – all kinds of different people. It’s really good to talk and remember him,” Philibin recalled in 2013. He said it didn’t surprise him that the scholarship has been able to raise so much money. “The people who are organizing it – between Mike’s dad and friends and family – they do a really nice job with everything. I guess it really doesn’t surprise me that they were able to raise so much money for it.”
Although the Michael T. Hartzell Golf Outing ended its run a few years ago, the funds raised from the tournament allowed the memorial scholarship to become self-sustaining. In 2013, Catherine Cala, then Director of Development at YSU, said The Michael T. Hartzell Golf Outing raised between $20,000 to $28,000 annually. And since being established in 2004, the scholarship [as of 2013] had awarded over $60,000 to more than 66 students. “With the way college prices are going sky high, it gets more and more difficult for your everyday kid to be able to go to school. … I think it’s a great way to honor Michael, plus help out some younger kids in the process to help them to get where they want to be,” said Philibin.
Mary Kay added, “It’s heartwarming. It’s great to see these young people – I call them kids – that we can give them money to help toward the big expense of a college education. And they are just so thankful. And a lot of them, I know their fathers or their mothers. Two of the students, their father was a police officer in Canfield. I worked with him and he died in a parachute accident. Bob Magnuson. And two of his children got Mike’s scholarship. It just bought back memories of seeing Bob and working with their father. And they were just so appreciative. And so you get to meet so many people and Mike’s name does live on. And we don’t, I, personally, don’t want Michael to be forgotten. I know in our hearts and in our lives he won’t, but I don’t want the community to forget.”
For more information on The Michael T. Hartzell Memorial Scholarship, contact the YSU Foundation at 330-941-3211 or University Development at 330-941-3119.
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