ThisWeek Community Newspapers Bexley
February 17, 2011
As it were
By JEFF DONAHUE ThisWeek Community Newspapers
Columbus’ rivers did not provide a useful waterway With the opening of the Scioto Mile, the Scioto River will once again be an attraction that will draw people both to downtown and the city as a whole. After all, people were drawn to the forks of the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers a couple of centuries ago because the water was clear and clean. And it was widely believed that a place where two rivers came together would soon be a center of profitable river trade. The water was clear and clean and had been drawing people to its banks for several thousand years. Native Americans lived here for centuries and built large Indian mounds nearby. Mound Street is named for one of them. Thousands of deer came down to the river to drink in molting season and covered the water in a blanket of shedding deer fur. With a wry directness, Native American gave the stream a new name — “Hairy River.” But the profitable river trade the pioneers expected to undertake with huge cargo laden flatboats was not to be. The river was too narrow in many places and the current too treacherous. The pioneer settlements of central Ohio were rather isolated for a number of years. Until the canal came. Canals are not a new idea. One can find them at any number of places in the ancient world where people needed an artificial waterway. But canals are expensive to build and costly to maintain. For that reason they are often built by governments. As the land across the Appalachian Mountains began to be settled after the American Revolution, men like Henry Clay began to argue that government should finance “internal improvements” like roads, canals and river work to “open the West” to com-
merce. And all of this should be financed by the federal government. Many people in the East were not ED thrilled with the idea that LENTZ their taxes should subsidize public works that would help the Ohio River valley compete with their own commerce. So canals were more a dream than a reality for a number of years. Then the extraordinary success of the Erie Canal linking the East to the Great Lakes captured the imagination of the country in the years after the War of 1812. Soon many Ohioans were talking about canals and building one in the state. But talk was really the only result. Like many other times in the state’s history, forceful leadership was needed to bring canals to Ohio. In this case, that leadership was provided by Ethan Allen Brown. As early as 1816, Brown, a Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, had written to Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York seeking information about the canal system of that state. When Brown was elected governor in 1818, he proposed building a canal and continued to press for its construction. In the end the Ohio General Assembly agreed and studies were made as to possible locations. Two major canal systems — the Miami and Erie in the west and the Ohio and Erie in the east — were built with the support and supervision of a number of people as committed to the project as Gov. Brown had been. Important among them was Alfred Kelley. Kelley had come to Columbus in 1816 to represent Cleveland in the assembly. He served for the next several decades, eventually
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representing Columbus as well. As a member of the Canal Commission he personally supervised the construction of much of the canal. When the economic depression of the 1830s threatened Ohio’s ability to pay interest due on its canal bonds, Kelley would pledge his own home as collateral to ensure payment on the bonds. Through the efforts of Kelley and many others, Columbus was linked to the main line of the Ohio and Erie Canal by a Feeder Canal that entered the city near the place where Bicentennial Park is today. The canal and the recently arrived National Road transformed Columbus. As late as 1832, Columbus was a frontier village of a few thousand people. By 1834, Columbus was a city of 5,000. The canal and its people captured the imagination of the city. Longtime resident Emily Stewart later remembered, “The first canal boats seemed like fairy palaces. They were painted white and the windows had green shutters and scarlet curtains. The inside panels of the cabins contained pictures and mirrors. The officers of the passenger boats were gentlemen. The cabin was a dining and sitting room in the daytime, but was converted into a sleeping apartment at night. There were staterooms at each end for the ladies, whose comfort was further promoted by the attentions of a polite and diligent stewardess. For years after the canal was opened, the boats always came in with a band of music playing on board. The captain of the boat usually played the clarinet for the entertainment of the passengers…” But all of this growth and success came with a price. The riverfront between the Main Street Canal Basin and the Broad Street Bridge came to be filled with docks for canal boats and canal warehouses soon lined the waterfront. The river, once clear and pristine, soon became little more than an open sewer. The golden age of the Ohio and Erie Canal lasted for less than 30 years. By 1850, the first railroad had arrived in Columbus and the canal began a long, slow decline.
When Matt Lampke returns from military deployment in the Middle East, his seat on Bexley City Council will be waiting for him. In December, council President Jeff McClelland said he was considering the possibility of naming a temporary replacement for Lampke during his deployment. On Feb. 8, McClelland announced that after investigating the issue
he had decided to leave Lampke’s city council seat open until he returns. “We have discussed in Matt executive sesLampke sion and I have also had some individual conversations with various council people about a replacement for Mr. Lampke,” McClelland said. “It is my current intention to defer, or
not to take any action to appoint a replacement for that position.” Lampke could be absent from city council meetings for as long as a year. The three-term councilman announced in November that he was being deployed to Iraq. Lampke is a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve. He received only a seven-day notice that his unit was being deployed. At the time of Lampke’s deployment, councilman Mark Masser learned that he might have to
undergo surgery. With two members missing, council members expressed concerns about having a quorum for meetings. Masser later chose not to have the surgical procedure, so the quorum issue never materialized. This is the second time in Lampke’s career that he has had to temporarily vacate his city council seat for military duty. In 2003, he was mobilized for a 5-month period. jdonahue@thisweeknews.com www.ThisWeekNews.com
Schools’ health, wellness summit produces short, long term goals By TARA STUBBS-FIGURSKI ThisWeek Community Newspapers
Guest column
New BMS assistant principal looks back on first semester
I have just completed my first semester as assistant principal at Bexley Middle School and I feel very fortunate to work with such a talented and passionate staff. Just as I am excited about the staff I work with, I cannot say enough good things about our students. Each day, they come to school ready to learn and willing to meet the challenges set before them. Whether it is through our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) projects, community service days, fine arts or core curriculum, our students consistently amaze me with their knowledge and skills. Bexley Middle School is proud to be an International Baccalaureate (IB) school. We were the first Middle Years Program in the state of Ohio and continue to be considered a model school for others looking to add this program. IB gives our school a framework for everything that we do. From scheduling, to course offerings, to instruction time, to community service; it helps us to stay true to our mission statement: Dedicated to educating the middle level child for academic excellence, developing informed, responsible, Ed Lentz writes a history column respectful, and productive global for ThisWeek.
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Lampke will retain council seat
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ThisWeek Community Newspapers Bexley
February 17, 2011
citizens. We are currently in the process of preparing for a site visit from IB as part of our program evalJASON uation.The CAUDILL staff has been collaborating diligently to establish our strengths and developing proposals for improving our school. The site visit will help to validate the practices we have implemented over the past four years and provide us with an opportunity to share our growth. Moving forward as a community, we have some very real educational challenges ahead. It is more important than ever that every child leave high school with the option of pursuing whatever career they choose. The societal cost of not having a competitive work force is great and we as a community have a moral obligation to each and every
child: we must prepare our students for what lies ahead. They will not be expected to simply be vessels of knowledge, but rather they will be expected to be critical consumers who know how to find, interpret, and communicate information in a way that others can understand. We as a staff recognize that what we do during a student’s middle school career has a very real impact on the rest of their lives and we look to make the most of every opportunity. While the challenges of preparing all students for the unknown may seem daunting at times (and impossible at others) there is no place I would rather be. This community has time and again shown its support for education and I know that together we will continue to meet challenges head on and give students the education they deserve. Jason Caudill has been Bexley Middle School’s assistant principal since August 2010.
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A health-and-wellness summit held by Bexley City Schools has generated ideas to improve student health across the district. The summit, held last month, featured breakout sessions on a variety of topics, including school lunches, locally grown food and exercise. A session on school lunches featured representatives from Ohio Action for Healthy Kids, an organization whose goal is to promote healthier children, exercise and eating in schools, Bexley City Schools board member Marlee Snowdon said. “That can be a hot topic that can bring some negative responses,” Snowdon said. “It was really a very positive group. They kept coming up with ideas on how we can change things to make things healthier.” One of the group’s recommendations was having an economist take a survey to determine what kids will eat, what can be served for lunch. There is an economic reality to the school lunch program, Snowdon said. “You can’t just put Brussels sprouts out every day and think you can make any money,” she said. Pediatrician Mary Lynn Niland said the group generated some good ideas and it was good for educators, parents and the community to sit down together and discuss helping children become healthier. “I sat in the school lunch subgroup,” she said. “The first step is looking at school lunch as a business. There are economics involved.” Her group was interested in trying some small changes in the lunch menu to see if
students would embrace them. The school district has been making small changes to its menu for awhile now. “We want to continue to be able to look at introducing healthier foods into the menu on the lunch line that kids will continue to buy and eat,” Niland said. The group also came out of the breakout session wanting to offer more education for families and children. She said if you teach the parents how to make healthy choices, they teach the children how to make healthy choices. A third idea was to start doing tastings in the cafeteria once a month or every other month. School officials could put out a healthier food for students to try and students would vote on whether they would like to see it featured on the lunch menu, Niland said. She took an interest in pediatric obesity about two years ago when it started to gain a lot of media attention. Now she’s interested in what kids eat and getting children more active. “It all sort of ties together,” she said. “Our kids are not eating healthy. Everything is processed.” Michael Jones of Local Matters led a breakout session on “locally grown goodness/farming/gardening.” Bexley residents Diane Grosser and Barb Newbig who lead Bexley’s community garden also participated. “We had some elementary school teachers interested in gardening for the school,” Snowdon said. “Laura Robertson Boyd, a local chef, came up with some neat ideas for short- and long-term goals and getting kids more into the earth.” Some ideas generated by the group include
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creating gardens at each of the schools; having students make rain barrels in class; composting; and using produce grown in gardens in the cafeteria. Another group looked at classroom celebrations. Some suggestions were posting a chart of healthy drinks and snacks, an extra recess rather than food for a celebration and creating healthy celebrations by donating a book for the room. “They had all sorts of ideas for different classroom celebrations and different awards,” Snowdon said. The group looking at exercise suggested introducing a proposal to the board of education to incorporate 60 minutes of daily exercise, a running club for elementary school children at recess and family activity nights sponsored by the parent teacher organization. Another idea that came from the summit was a program called “Eat like a Caveman.” The week-long program encourages students to eat minimally processed healthy food, things that a caveman would eat, give up television for a day (a caveman wouldn’t have one) and walk to work or school (a caveman wouldn’t have a car). “It is a community program we are encouraging the schools to embrace,” Snowdon said. Health and wellness is such a large concept it is difficult to get your arms wrapped around the entire concept, Snowdon said. She said the summit was a starting point that produced action plans which will take time, energy and volunteers to implement. tstubbs@thisweeknews.com www.ThisWeekNews.com
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