Each day at North Royalton Middle School, a 250-pound Black Bear stares out at students walking through the atrium to their next class. Her large display case offers a much different view than the deep woods of Quebec, where she once roamed 50 years ago.
Some students give her a glance as they hurry by, while others pay no attention to the beast that, in her lifetime, likely mothered cubs and used her long claws to tear apart food, climb trees, paddle through freshwater and trek the dense Canadian wilderness. From her sturdy atrium display case, she now stands guard over a different sort of Bear Country.
But for anyone who ever has wondered about the Black Bear in the display case at North Royalton Middle School, her story has roots in Canada, where lifelong North Royalton resident Gene Acker frequently hunted with his friend, Jim Rollins, who owned Hinckley Outfitters & Rollins Taxidermy Studio, till his retirement in 2018. Rollins died in 2020. He frequently led hunting excursions in Canada, where it is legal to hunt Black Bear.
One spring day in 1971, Acker, now 91-years-old, stood with Rollins at a baited site, a popular way to hunt Black Bears in Canada. There, with large pots of boiled honey, the 250-pound female bear lumbered over from the trees. Black Bears have a keen sense of smell and can sniff out food up to seven miles away, Acker explained during a recent phone interview.
Acker took successful aim and had his prize-winning shot stuffed and mounted by Rollins and displayed in his North Royalton home. When he and his wife downsized to a smaller residence in 2005, he asked the city schools if they’d like to have the bear as a donation.
“I figured it’s the North Royalton Bears after all,” he said.
Acker said the high school kept the bear for a time until the middle school took ownership some years later.
Acker and his wife still reside in North Royalton, but he no longer hunts. Born in 1929 (“I was one of those ‘Crash babies,’” Acker said, referring to his birth during the Stock Market Crash of 1929), he attended the city schools and met his wife there. He worked 35 years as a telephone lineman for Ohio Bell. As a youth, Acker walked the North Royalton woods each day hunting rabbits and pheasants. He started hunting at ten years old and frequently traveled to Canada, Colorado and Wyoming to hunt in his later years.
He never named the female Black Bear but enjoyed seeing his prize each day at home. Her presence at the middle school also brings delight and a sense of curiosity for where she came from and her history, notes Principal Jeff Cicerchi.
“The bear, along with pictures of each month’s Pride of NRMS recipients, is located in the atrium of NRMS on display for all students and guests to see as they enter the school,” he said of her location in a case that proudly lists the names of students who demonstrate outstanding citizenship, cooperation and concern for others.
From her display, she’s quite at home with her fellow Bear Country inhabitants, and just like them, she’ll always be remembered for her intelligence, wit, adaptability and curiosity about the world around her.

By SARA MACHO HILL
Contributing Writer