Engagements_____________________________

Schmidt – Kassmann

Kristin Janna Schmidt of Durham, North Carolina is engaged to be married to Brent Adam Kassmann of Durham, North Carolina.

Kristen is the daughter of Jeri Jervis of Oakwood and John Schmidt of Kettering.
Brent is the son of Barbara and Edward Kassmann of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, formerly of Rochester, New York.

The bride-to-be is a 1999 graduate of Oakwood High School and a 2003 graduate of Miami University with a degree in Marketing and Decision Sciences. She is currently employed by the State Employees Credit Union of North Carolina.

The groom-to-be is a 1998 graduate of McQuaid Jesuit High School and attended the University of Dayton with a major in Visual Communication Design. He is currently employed by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro, North Carolina City Schools.

A June 2007 wedding will be held in Dayton.

Shearer - Lewis

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lewis of Kettering, Ohio, are proud to announce the engagement of their son, Aaron Lewis to Donna Shearer, daughter of Timothy and Elizabeth Shearer of Tucson, AZ.

The groom-to-be is a graduate of Clemson University with a degree in Civil Engineering. He graduated from Oakwood High School in 1998. He is currently a navigator for the United States Air Force, stationed in Tucson, AZ.

The bride-to-be is a graduate of the University of Arizona. She graduated from Sahuaro High School in 2000. She is currently teaching math at St. Ambrose Catholic School in Tucson.

The wedding will take place in Dayton on September 22, 2007.

Alan Watton gives $30,000 to Sinclair

Oakwood resident Alan Watton, Ph.D., has given $30,000 in recognition of his teaching Mechanical Engineering Technologies (MET) and Heating, Ventilating and Cooling (HVAC) to Sinclair Community College in his desire to invest in faculty and students teaching and learning in those areas.

The funds will create the Allan Watton Endowment for Engineering Technology Design (EDT) and HVAC. Earnings from the endowmwnt may be used for funding faculty education, training and development experiences as well as scholarships for student majoring in ETD or HVAC.

Watton, who turned 91 this year, gained a great deal of  experience working as an engineer at Wright-Patterson  AFB in controls for turbo-prop engines and electronic instrumentation involved with negative feedback, an early predecessor for closed loop controls.

His lifetime in engineering continued when he retired from Wright-Patterson in 1975 and began working part time at Sinclair.

Hawthorn Hill visit

Harman School fourth graders were given the wonderful opportunity to visit Hawthorn Hill, the Wright Brothers’ home this past week. Amanda Wright Lane, great grandniece of the famous brothers, spoke with the fourth graders about her great, grand uncles and their many adventures and accomplishments. In the foreground is great grandnephew Stephen Wright’s dog, Macy. Many thanks to the Wright family for making this field trip possible.

OHS’ Dan Rasor receives award at GLATA

Dan Rasor, MST, ATC received the GLATA Dedicated Service Award, March 9, 2007 at the Great Lakes Athletic Trainers’ Association annual meeting in St. Charles Illinois. Dan is the Athletic Trainer at Oakwood High School, pictured above with his wife, Alice.

Volunteers needed at Glen Helen

Glen Helen needs volunteers to staff The Nature Shop and Trailside Museum on weekends.  Volunteers work 1-2 times per month in 3-hour shifts greeting visitors, ringing up merchandise, promoting events and sharing their love of the Glen.  If  interested, please call Cindy at 769-1907 to schedule training.

Oakwood officer hanging up hat after 31 years

It has been 31 years since Lt. Bill Thompson walked into the Oakwood Safety Building to start his first day as a rookie on the force. He retired last week after a long and distinguished career and was recognized for his many contributions at a luncheon held at the Safety Building last Thursday in his honor.

“It feels great and a long time coming,” Lt. Thompson said.

The Thompsons are currently on their 35th year of marriage. “We got married about three years before I started the job,” he said. His wife, Pamela, is a school psychologist supervisor with Miami County Schools. They have two children, Jason, 24, who is a security specialist in Tampa, Florida, and a daughter, Rebecca, who will be graduating from Kent State University with a degree in fashion design.

Lt. Thompson hails originally from Louisville, KY and attended Eastern Kentucky University where graduated with a bachelor degree in Criminal Justice and followed up with a master’s degree in Public Administration at the University of Dayton.

He counts as one of the more significant arrests during his career was when he spotted a man pedaling down Harman Avenue on a bicycle. Stopping and doing a check on the man, he found the suspect had a felony warrant out for his arrest. When searching him he found the man was carrying 10 pairs of handcuffs and had a loaded handgun hidden in a gym bag.

Serving as a firefighter, he recalled being first on the scene of a huge fire at the 1100 block of Runnymede Road and being assigned the duty of fire commander. While waiting for reinforcements to arrive, four windows blew out. The home was fully engulfed in flames and during the course of combating the fire, a whole wall of the building collapsed, almost taking a half-dozen firefighters with it. The fire crew finally got the blaze under control and in gratitude for their efforts, the owner of the home offered the men bottles of vintage wine he managed to have rescued from the flames. They politely declined.

His largest count of DUI arrests was 26 in 1985.

His future plans involve working around the house, playing tennis, bicycling, being part of an “old man’s softball team,” taking care of his aging mother and last but not least, taking a half-dozen trips with his wife Pamela to such diverse locales as   Australia, Mexico, Europe, South America and the Mediterranean. Bon voyage Lt. Thompson!

The Great Dayton Flood: a time to remember

Editor’s Note: Oakwood resident and history expert Tom Cecil wrote this story and sent it to us for publication in remembrance of the Great Dayton Flood which happened 94 years ago this week.

The place: Dayton, Ohio, where one of the worst floods in U.S. history broke levees on March 25, 1913.

On that Easter weekend in 1913, adverse weather conditions joined hands with Dayton’s peculiar geography to deal the city a crippling blow. Three great air masses, from diverse parts of the country met over western Ohio. One, a cold current, originated in Canada; another, a warm current originated in the Gulf of Mexico; the third was the tail end of a cyclone that devastated Omaha, Nebraska before proceeding eastward. The water-laden masses collided over 3,000 square miles of ground known as the Miami Valley. Already the melting of ice and snow followed by several light rains had caused the ground to reach its saturation point so that the heavy rains, dumped by the turbulent air masses, ran into ditches, streams and rivers instead of being absorbed into the ground. The swollen rivers converged in Dayton.

Churning, swirling, raging, the waters of the Dayton Flood moved over an unsuspecting and unprepared city and for 361 Daytonians the flood proved fatal.
The stage had been set for Dayton’s disaster at the time its rivers came into existence. In the low downtown area four rivers converge, with the suburbs rising in all directions like the sides of a gently sloping bowl. Almost as if by some outlandish mistake, the upstream channel of the Miami River where it enters the city is 800 feet wide and where it exits the city, after being joined by three other rivers, it is 500 feet wide.

The Dayton Flood found its hero in John H. Patterson, president of National Cash Register (NCR). Daytonians had received a warning through seven previous floods commencing in 1805. The city responded to its prior floods by building a system of levees in an attempt to contain its unpredictable rivers.

In the early morning of March 25, Patterson made his personal inspection of the downtown Dayton area. Climbing one of the levees he observed a river gone berserk. With the rain still pouring down, the river rose higher and higher swishing by just a few inches from the top of the levee. Later estimates concluded that the water rushed through the river channel at the rate of 156,621 cubic feet per second.

Patterson’s gaze settled on hundreds of spectators, peeking out from under umbrellas laughing and joking, not particularly concerned with the disaster that, to Patterson, seemed inevitable. Scrambling back to street level Patterson settled in his car and remarked to his chauffer, “The fools! The incredible fools!”

A few minutes later, Patterson returned to the NCR which he had purposely built many years before on the flood-safe ground of the suburbs. With all of his executives together, he transformed NCR into an organization known as “The Dayton Citizens Relief Association.”  Patterson converted “The Cash” from manufacturing cash registers to building boats and planning rescue operations barely an hour before the levees actually broke. He began by ordering his woodworking shop to make 175 wood rowboats and oars.

Four levees in separate parts of the city broke at about the same time, sending massive waves of water into the city. As the first levee broke, the reveling onlookers were chased down Main Street followed by a wall of water. Grasping and clutching for trees and lampposts and running into buildings, some of them reached safety and some drowned.

At its peak, the Miami River reached 29 feet above its low water mark. From the rooftops of the homes, from the second stories of buildings and from the higher grounds of the suburbs, Daytonians watched in stunned disbelief as their beloved city was transformed to an uncontrolled ocean, with water and waves licking and lapping at their homes and buildings.

In the flood most of the stranded victims were plucked from rooftops, from second story windows, from floating debris and from trees and poles. By the evening of the third day of the flood more than 4,000 people were rescued.

On the fourth and fifth days the floodwater dissipated, leaving both high water marks and grim statistics. Three hundred sixty one people had died. Fourteen hundred horses lay dead in the streets and 2,000 other animals perished. Property damage was close to $75,000,000 and 133,600 wagon loads of debris were hauled away. As Daytonians started to rebuild their city they vowed they would never tolerate another flood. To the reminder of “Remember the Promises You Made in the Attic”, they pledged more than $2,000,000 in seed money for construction of five large dams.

Mankind today is relatively safe from floods. Dam construction, improved weather forecasts and the ability to warn great numbers of people by mass media greatly reduce the risk of death by flood in all areas of the world.

And Dayton residents can be thankful that John H Patterson was on hand to manufacture boats and lead the rescue operation.

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