Fairfield Focus November 2020

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HOLIDAY SHOPPING Page 6

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NOVEMBER 2020

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LOCAL HOLIDAY SHOPPING

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THANKSGIVING 5K moves

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LEADING THE CHORUS

Fairfield Five: Holiday Shopping.......................................................................................................................................06 Thanksgiving 5K Moves to Marcum Park........................................................................................................................10 DJ Wyrick: Fairfield Basketball........................................................................................................................................12 History: From Forest To Farm To City Center..................................................................................................................16 Leading the Chorus: Dr. Scott Wyatt...............................................................................................................................18 Holiday Recipe: Pineapple Cranberry Jello Salad.............................................................................................................21

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NOVEMBER 2020

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SEPTEMBER 2020

Typically this time of year we look back and gasp at how quickly the months have flown by. Not 2020 though; this year has been devastatingly slow. Luckily the holidays are just around the corner to sprinkle in some cheer before we change the calendars. If you’re looking to help celebrate the holidays locally, here are five shops to get your holiday shopping in.

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NOVEMBER 2020

Miller St. Boutique

Whether you’re looking for the perfect outfit for your next date or you’re shopping for the perfect shirt that fits your personality, Miller St. Boutique has it. Located in the 700 block of Nilles Road, this charming boutique is owned locally and close to home. As one reviewer said of Miller St., “Everything a gal could need in one stop! A special gift, that cute outfit, great jewelry, a unique piece to fill a special spot at home... Love this place!”

Whether you’re trying to finish that shopping list, or getting a little ‘to me, from me’ gift, Miller St., with their cute decor, clothes and jewelry will have you covered. You can check out their inventory online at millerstboutique.com.

Vintage Gifts and Antiques Are you someone that can shop for hours, looking for that one item that makes the day worth it? Well Vintage Gifts and Antiques might be the spot to stop by. They have a large array of antique furniture, holiday decor and collectibles-- all at fair prices. That’s why you absolutely have to stop by this holiday season. Located on Dixie Highway in the 4800 block, near Subway, they’re open seven days a week between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.

Symmetry Boutique & Gallery

With a vast catalog of jewelry, bags, gifts and knick knacks, Symmetry Boutique and Gallery represents a great way to spend your time-- and your money. With products ranging from earrings, wedding cake knives, dinosaur shaped coin banks and everything in between, if you can’t find something you like in this shop then, you simply didn’t look long enough. You can check out their inventory at symmetryboutiqueandgallery.com.

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The Toy Department

Do you have a steadily growing Funko Pop collection?

Then it’s imperative that you stop in at The Toy Department. Located at 6600 Dixie Highway, they have everything a toy collector could ever want: old toys, rare toys, new toys, blue toys. If you have some older collectables that you are wanting to get rid of, they will pay cash for your toys. You can check out their wares on the interweb at toydepartment.net.

Keva Jewelers

Imagine this: it’s Christmas day and you’re at a family party, your wife opens up a gorgeous pair of diamond earrings and all the sudden whispers rush around the room. You faintly hear your in-laws say, “He went to Keva.” That could be you. Take one step inside of their storefront which is located near Jungle Jims, and you’ll be astonished by the level of customer service and the affordable prices.

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NOVEMBER 2020

Thanksgiving 5K moves to Marcum Park

BY MANDY GAMBRELL Since 2015, thousands of Hamiltonians and more have been walking and running on Thanksgiving Day in support of a group called YoungLives. That effort will not stop this year despite the COVID-19 pandemic that has caused other activities to be canceled.

YoungLives is an affiliate of Young Life, a nondenominational Christian organization that serves high school students. Volunteer coordinator Faye Meyer says YoungLives provides mentorship to teen moms, helps to build relationships and offers guidance in matters of faith.

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“YoungLives provides a community to young moms who are typically isolated from their high school peers and gives them hope for their future. This investment of time and heart has empowered positive, sustainable change in the lives of these beautiful families,� Meyer said.

Her friend Katie Powers invited her to join her in creating the Thanksgiving 5K for YoungLives to support the cause and involve locals, helping shed light on the ministry.

For 2020, the race will look a little different: There

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will be corrals of up to 75 people with staggered starts every 30 seconds. This will allow participants to cross the starting line and avoid colliding with the first finishers. And there is a cap of 2,000 participants in total.

More about the 2020 live race safety plan may be found online at hamiltonthanksgiving5k.org/safety.

There is also a virtual option: Participants may run the race on their own between Nov. 25 and Nov. 29.

Results will be submitted online.

This race will begin at 9 a.m. at Marcum Park in Hamilton. Prior to that is a free Kids Fun Run — a

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mini-race for children younger than 5, ages 5-7 and ages 8-10. Kids who participate will start in front of the Courtyard Marriott. They will receive a treat and there is a prize for the top male and female.

When participants finish at the park, there will be music with a DJ, pre-packed food and awards.

“As the only Thanksgiving Day race in Butler County, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of growth from year to year. It’s exciting to welcome back so many repeat participants and meet new people from all over the country who come to participate with their families,” Meyer said.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE Visit www.hamiltonthanksgiving5k.org to sign up and look for volunteer opportunities.

The deadline to register is Nov. 26.

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NOVEMBER 2020

DJ Wyrick Fairfield Basketball

After playing four years for Tyrice Walker at Miami Hamilton, DJ Wyrick knew he wanted to go down the path of coaching-- and what a path it’s been thus far. “(Walker) is really one of the reasons I wanted to get into coaching,” said Wyrick. “He was a great coach. He was really good at developing relationships with players.

That lit a fire in me, to want to become a coach… That relationship (with Walker) made me think about a career in coaching.”

Now, over a decade later, Wyrick is in his second season at the helm at one of Ohio’s biggest high

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schools: Fairfield.

After playing at Miami Hamilton, Wyrick began a graduate assistantship at Wright State University under Brad Brownell (who currently is the head coach of Clemson). Wyrick spent two years as a GA at Wright State, then transitioned into an assistant coach for the Raiders which he held for five years.

In 2015, Wyrick was 29 years old, married and wanted to start a family. So he made the move from college assistant to high school.

“In college, you can’t be a really good dad and a really

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good assistant coach,” said Wyrick. “It’s just not going to happen.”

The young coach started looking around and found himself as the head coach of the Aviators at Vandalia Butler-- as Wyrick put it ‘the rest is history.’

His first year at Butler, the Aviators won just four games. Which doubled their total from the year before, but was an upgrade from the two-win benchmark set the season before he got there. He didn’t have another losing season at the helm, as averaged 17 wins over the next three winters.

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Now that he is at Fairfield, he is drawing from experiences with his college mentor to get the Indians to the next level. “(Walker) had a great feel for presenting what everyone’s role is on the team or what everyone needed to do to help the team succeed,” said Wyrick. “Honestly, that’s a big challenge right now at Fairfield, is getting our guys to buy into that. That’s a challenge for every high school coach.”

The Indians went 7-16 last year, with their hallmark win coming in the form of beating their rival Hamilton on the road and at the buzzer. Though the overall season was not where they wanted to be, they still improved their GMC win total from five to six. Wyrick knows there is plenty of work to be done.

“Hopefully we will continue to improve on that, especially this year,” said the head coach of the Indians.

“We have talent this year, there is no doubt about it.

We need to get our culture together, we need some leadership and we need to handle adversity.”

It’s not just Walker that Wyrick has learned a great deal from. Brownell was instrumental in his basketball education.

“From an X’s and O’s standpoint, I’ve never been around anything like that,” he said. “Those years under him was like getting a doctorate in basketball. (Brownell) was on a different level.”

Wyrick has the background, the experience and the track record to get the Indians back to where they were early last decade when they went to state and won the Greater Miami Conference. It’s only a matter of time before he does it, but it’s not about the wins and losses for him-- it’s about the players.

“Coaches have a huge responsibility because we can really impact kids,” he said. “You have a big-time duty to hold kids accountable in all aspects. Whether that’s their grades, or being on time or doing the right thing.

But I like that part of it because they may not listen to the teachers all the time, or mom and dad but they’re going to listen to their coach. It’s a great responsibility to have.”

2021 will be an exciting season for the lauded GMC, and Wyrick plans to have his team right in the thick of things as they hope to vastly improve from last year.

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From Forest To Farm To City Center History of the McCormick Farm and Family

W

hile some of Fairfield Township was open prairie before the arrival of white settlers, when Judge John Cleves Symmes made the famous Symmes Purchase, the area that is now the heart of Fairfield was covered with forest.

The proximity of native earthworks suggests that there may have been small clearings created by the local natives, and General Arthur St. Clair’s army followed an Indian trail through the area.

On August 25, 1796, Judge Symmes granted a deed of a little less than 107 acres to Cornelius Hurley for a little more than 33 cents, but it’s not clear how much time, if any, Hurley actually spent there. A year later, he sold most of the land to Patrick Moore for $65, garnering quite a profit. In 1799, the price was $248 when Moore sold the tract to David Beatty, an early Butler County settler who would by 1805 own 885

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acres in Fairfield and Hanover townships, including some adjacent land. The land changed hands several times within the Beatty family until 1836 when John Hart purchased 138 acres that was still then known as “the Old Beatty Farm.” Around that same time, the turnpike came through, roughly along the eastern border of the parcel, close to but not quite where Pleasant Avenue runs through the city now. This allowed for the development of Symmes Corner, carved out of surrounding farmland.

None of the owners up to this point ever lived on the land, but likely rented it out to tenants who cleared the land and began tilling the soil. Neither did the next owner, Samuel Houston, who bought the parcel from Hart for $7,000 in 1838. In 1847, Hueston gave it to his daughter Lucinda Ann and her husband John Pottenger as a $9,000 advance against his estate. The

NOVEMBER 2020 first recorded house was built there in 1853, but it was still tenanted property until 1865 when the Pottenger’s daughter Elizabeth Jane and her husband John Cleves Hunter lived there.

Upon the death of Lucinda Ann Pottenger, in 1896 the family sold it to Tevillia Rieser for $12,636. In 1898, a traction line followed the turnpike route, making the area even more accessible to Cincinnati and Dayton, yet development in that part of the township was mostly north of the farm, which Ms. Rieser rented to George Vogel in 1900, to John Kehr in 1910.

Then in 1922, William A. McCormick, a World War I veteran and third-generation Fairfield Township farmer, took over operations. He was born on his parent’s farm on River Road. His great-grandfather John P. McCormick came to Fairfield Township from Putnum County, New York, in “1831 or thereabouts,” according to the 1882 history of Butler County.

John McCormick was a paper-maker by trade and worked at Graham’s paper-mill in the township for ten years, then rented a small farm of 20 acres and commenced to raise broom-corn. His grandson Algernon (born 1866), Bill’s father, also raised broom corn and made brooms.

Bill McCormick remained a tenant on the farm through more changes in ownership back to the Pottenger family until he and his wife Rachel took ownership in 1944.

When he retired at the age of 91, he had lived on the farm for 65 years. He started with horse-drawn plows and had one of the first tractors in Butler County. He put in his last crop of corn himself, but hired someone to harvest it.

In an interview with Ercel Eaton of the Journal-News upon his retirement, he said that when he moved there his farm was surrounded by seven or eight other large farms with Symmes Corner in the center.

At one time he operated the farm as a dairy with 20 Guernseys, selling his milk to a Cincinnati dairy. He was an avid motorist and had driven his first wife Rachel (died 1958) and second wife Pearl and his Model Ts and

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Hudsons to all 48 lower states.

Bill McCormick was also a founding member of the Fairfield Township and City fire departments. He also drove a school bus for 22 years and so was well known to several generations of Fairfield children.

He said that another favorite diversion was fox hunting, where 30 or 40 area farmers would gather nearly every Saturday during the winter. “We’d take our trucks and line men up on four sides making a square.

Then we’d move in from all sides, hemming them in. No dogs. Just men and guns.”

He died in 1987 at the age of 93.

Developers bought the remaining farm land in December 1996 for $1.36 million and began residential development of portions of it, and the site blossomed as Fairfield’s city center.

Bill’s brother, Orval Payne McCormick, better known as “O.P.”, was also a prominent Fairfield Township resident. He, too, was born on the farm May 25, 1889.

When he was 20 years old, he moved to Crescentville in Hamilton County to work on a farm and fell in love with the farmer’s daughter, Carrie Edythe Runyan. They married August 2, 1909. In 1911, they moved back to Fairfield to work the William Rieser farm and stayed there for 17 years.

Both O.P. and Edythe took an active part in township affairs, and agriculture-related county and state activities. McCormick was a founding member of the Butler County Farm Bureau and served on the search committee to hire the first county agent, Walter D. Hunnicut. As a leader in the 4-H Pig and Dairy Club, he took many county champions to the Ohio State Fair. The Fairfield Township Farm Bureau’s executive committee held its first meeting at their home in January 1924.

In 1928, O.P. won election to the Ohio Legislature and served three years, driving back and forth to Columbus each weekend in his Model T Ford. In 1930, he served as vice president of the Butler County Republican club.

He died in 1993.

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LEADING THE CHORUS Dr. Scott Wyatt named new choral director of Butler Philharmonic

BY MANDY GAMBRELL

r. Scott Wyatt has been a part of the local symphony for more than a decade, and now he’s leading the chorus.

He has recently been named choral director of the Butler Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus alongside newly named orchestra director Dr. Scott Woodard.

His participation with the Butler Phil, previously called the Hamilton-Fairfield Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, began in the early 2000s after he met the symphony’s former maestro Paul Stanbery.

“I was the choral director of the Florida College Chorus and we were touring through the Midwest and stopped in Cincinnati to give a concert. It just so happened that Paul had a niece performing in my choir.

I had composed an A cappella arrangement of Puccini’s ‘Nessun Dorma’ from the opera ‘Turandot.’ The chorus was backing me up on beautiful ‘oohs’ and aahs’ while I sang the famous aria. Paul came up to me afterward

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and asked if I would consider coming and singing with him and his orchestra at that time,” Wyatt said.

In 2008, he was granted a full scholarship and teaching assistantship at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. He joined up with the Butler Phil at that time.

When Stanbery fell ill last year and had to step away from conducting the BPO Chorus’ annual Open Door Pantry Choral Concert, he asked Wyatt to step in — with one day’s notice.

“It went extremely well. Paul decided it was time to retire and he and the BPO board of directors asked me if I would step in as interim director for a time, to which I agreed. After several rehearsals together and considering some other choral directors in the area, they asked me if I would be willing to be their new conductor,” he said.

His history with music dates back to the 7th grade when taking a Spanish class elective wasn’t going

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well. His parents told him to take choir instead.

“A boy soprano at the time, my choral teacher was enthralled with the talent God had blessed me with and began entering me in competitions right away.

From that point forward, music was my life.”

Wyatt has a serious music schooling background.

He was a voice major as an undergrad, and by then he was a tenor, at Illinois Wesleyan University. He has a Master’s degree from Arizona State in vocal pedagogy and a Doctorate in vocal arts from the CollegeConservatory of Music at UC. “Between my master’s and doctorate, I had a fulltime professional international opera and symphony soloist career. I still perform the occasional opera gig,” Wyatt said.

COVID-19 has certainly put a damper on the Butler Phil as far as canceling its performances and rehearsals, but Wyatt has big hopes for the group’s future.

“I would love for the Butler Philharmonic Orchestra

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and Chorus to rival that of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the May Festival Chorus. Before COVID-19 struck, both the orchestra and the chorus were thriving numerically. The choir, just before we had to shut down, had 85 members and was growing every week! They were sounding fabulous and we were on course to give a stellar Spring concert,” he said.

The Butler Phil has plans to perform a scaleddown Christmas concert and caroling event at the Liberty Center in December. About 35 members will participate, he said.

“I see great things in this choir’s future. We are returning to Carnegie Hall in the summer of 2022 to sing Paul Stanbery’s world premiere ‘The Golden Door’ and we are planning a European concert tour in 2023. Can’t wait!”

The Butler Philharmonic includes an orchestra, chorus and youth orchestra and has been around since 1951. Learn more about it at www.butlerphil.org.

“I would love for the Butler Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus to rival that of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the May Festival Chorus.”

– Dr. Scott Wyatt

Director, Butler Philharmonic

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NOVEMBER 2020

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P in ea pple Cranb er r y Je l lo Salad

Ingredients

Directions

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1 box (6 ounces) lemon jello 1 cup boiling water 8 ounces ginger ale 1 cup crushed pineapples, drained well 1 can (14 ounces) jellied cranberry sauce, lightly mashed 1 package (1.3 ounces) Dream Whip 1/2 cup cold milk 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 4 ounces cream cheese, softened 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

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Lightly grease a 9 x 13 dish with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine gelatin and boiling water. Stir until gelatin is completely dissolved.

Add ginger ale and stir well.

Allow to partially set (but not firm). Add cranberry sauce and crushed pineapples. Stir until combined.

Pour mixture into prepared pan and cover with film. Chill in the refrigerator for about 1 to 2 hours or until firm.

In a bowl, combine Dream whip, milk, and vanilla. Beat with a hand mixer on low speed until blended. Beat on high speed for 3 to 4 minutes or until thickened and forms peaks.

In a bowl, beat cream cheese on LOW speed until smooth and fluffy.

Gently fold in whipped topping into cream cheese until incorporated Spread cream cheese topping on the set gelatin mixture and sprinkle with chopped walnuts.

Cut into squares to serve.

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