Max Ratner was a legendary businessman and community leader whose family emigrated from Poland in 1920 and settled in Cleveland. He went to law school at night and worked in the family lumber business during the day. He practiced law briefly and then decided to focus on his family’s lumber business, which grew into Forest City Enterprises (now Forest City), where he served as president and later as chairman of the Board. In service to Cleveland, he was president of Park Synagogue, president of the Greater Cleveland Growth Association, and generous donor to many local organizations, including Cleveland State University College of Law, where one of its largest scholarship funds bears his name.