From spring to summer, gardens to baseball

By Doug Page | Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 03:45 PM

Sure as the tulips and narcissuses signal the start of spring, so follow the signs of impending summer.

Folks sitting on the patio of JD’s Frozen Custard across the street from Centennial Park in Englewood.

The thousands of bulbs in bloom in Clayton, bulbs given away two years ago by the city to mark its 10th anniversary.

The blooming pear trees along Main Street in Union morphing from white flowers to green leaves.

The turning of soil at the old Little League complex in Old Towne Trotwood. The old ball yard, once a community center, is now a community garden. Someday, perhaps given the hard times, a new center of the community.

The epicenter of youth baseball has migrated north to Englewood.

The spring nights have new lights from the glow of the Englewood Little League complex at Centennial Park.

The fields are verdant. The scoreboards bright. The fence and bleachers ready for the ping of the aluminum bat.

Old Towne springs and summers once were lit by the outfield lights, and the cicadas competed with the crack of the wooden bat.

The location and the equipment have changed over time. The game has not. A blessing that.

Youth baseball is still the home of the volunteers. Long hours are spent keeping the field in shape. The Englewood complex was designated a “Field of Distinction” by the Ohio Sports Turf Managers Association earlier this year.

Long hours are spent selling refreshments, teaching the game, shuttling wannabe Jeters and A-Rods and Griffeys from field to field.

In the midst of it all, fun is reported to be had. And a community is nourished.

Back in Old Towne, the ball yard has lain fallow for a couple of decades.

Neglect and abandonment turned the diamonds into waist-high jungles. Then volunteers returned. The weeds were cut. The soil turned. And families and churches started planting their garden plots.

Last year was the first of the rebirth.

Seeds were planted for a new community. It flourished like the okra and peppers, tomatoes and corn.

This season, like seasons past, the outfield lights will be on in Englewood.

And the evening fireflies will be out amongst the flowers and squash in Trotwood.

So spring has officially arrived, and summer is not far behind.

I expect we’ll be complaining about the heat by next week.

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Is forgetfulness a disease?

By Doug Page | Tuesday, April 28, 2009, 12:43 PM

The reason she forgot to pay for three blouses and a pair of pants, the 72-year-old woman told Englewood police, was her Alzheimer’s disease.

According to the police report, Meijer’s employees watched as the woman took the blouses off a rack and put them in her purse. The employees then saw her remove the pants from another rack, remove the hanger, fold them and put them in her purse, covering her purse with her coat.

She then picked up four boxes of cereal, which she place around her purse to hide it from view. She paid for the cereal and exited the store where employees stopped her.

“I have the start of Alzheimer’s, and I forget things sometimes,” she told police. “I would have noticed the clothes when I got home, and I would have brought them back.”

Under questioning, the woman said the disease does not limit her activities — she still drives and never gets lost — nor is she taking any medication for her disease.

When asked about taking the clothes of the hangers, removing their tags, folding the clothes neatly and placing them in her purse, the woman just shrugged her shoulders, according to the report.

Meijer’s employees said they suspect the woman had taken items in the past.

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Buses and Trotwood: The rest of the story

By Doug Page | Monday, April 27, 2009, 08:47 AM

Because of breaking swine flu news, portions of the story on the Trotwood bus controversy were omitted from the Monday paper. The Web has no such space limitations.

So here’s the rest of the story.

Residents of several Trotwood neighborhoods hoping to put the brakes on Greyhound moving its operation from downtown Dayton to Trotwood say they are protecting their suburban lifestyle.

Several citizen groups want the city or someone to stop the proposed move to the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority hub at the intersection of Denlinger and Shiloh Springs, just east of Salem Avenue (Ohio 49).

“We want someone to put a halt to this,” said Flora Northern, president of the Broadmoor I Neighborhood Association. “We want someone to say this shouldn’t be.”

Opponents contend the additional bus traffic will disrupt the neighborhood, destroy city streets and lead to an increase in crime. The bus hub, which opened in 2000, sits at what was once the entrance to the Salem Mall, one of the largest retail areas in the Miami Valley during the 1960s and ‘70s. The mall was demolished in 2006.

For the residential neighborhood just north of the hub, opponents said the additional traffic and diesel fumes from the 18 to 20 Greyhound buses would hurt residents along Denlinger Avenue and endanger pedestrians. Northern said there are several daycare centers and an assisted living center and nursing home farther north on Denlinger.

The RTA hub already handles around 290 of its buses daily.

City Manager Mike Lucking said the additional bus traffic would have little effect on city streets. Much of that traffic would be on Ohio 49 to Interstate 70. “Those roads are built to handle that type of traffic,” he said.

“We don’t have any concerns about safety and security because the Northwest Hub is a well-managed site and I really don’t see any of the negatives,” Mark Donaghy, RTA executive director, said at a packed City Council meeting April 6.

Lucking has asked Police Chief Quincy Pope to assess safety concerns at the RTA hub. Pope said Friday the data leads him to conclude there is little cause for concern.

“There is no evidence that if you ride a RTA bus or a Greyhound bus that you are more likely to commit a crime,” he said. Pope said his department has answered about 56 calls for service to the RTA hub each of the last two years, mostly to assist people rather than to investigate a crime.

The chief said his determination had nothing to do with being for or against the proposal. “As chief, my obligation is to offer the most fair and accurate advice. That advice is not always the most popular.”

Councilman Rap Hankins, whose 2nd Ward includes the RTA hub, said he understands that people are upset.

“RTA has a political and moral responsibility to hear and address the concerns of Trotwood citizens,” Hankins said. “At the same time, RTA has every legal right to have a Greyhound ticket office inside a terminal it owns.”

“The ball is in RTA’s court,” he said.

RTA executive director Mark Donaghy said Friday, April 24, the company is planning to meet with residents, either at a future City Council meeting or at the RTA hub.

Northern of the Broadmoor group said the RTA hub never should have been located where it is. “It’s a (residential) area. It is so inconsiderate to even discuss a bus terminal,” she said.

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Readers and colleagues remember Valryn

By Doug Page | Thursday, April 23, 2009, 05:17 PM

Valryn Warren’s middle child brought down the house April 19 at the reporter’s funeral.

“You just didn’t get between my mom and something she wanted to do or a story,” Andy Clericus told the 120 people at Kindred Funeral Home in Englewood.

Jim Dillon, Dayton Daily News local news editor, last week laughed when asked about Ms. Warren, who had worked within earshot of his desk for several years.

“I loved to listen to Val work her sources on the phone. She would bathe them in sweetness one second and rip them the next. She was an editor’s dream. She poured everything into her stories. She always got the information she needed.”

Her colleagues at the newspapers and her sources in communities she covered for 17 years remembered her for tireless pursuit of the facts, her attention to detail and the passion she gave her work.

Readers remembered her for her kindness.

A Huber Heights man commented on the newspaper’s Web site: “I did not know Val personally, but I had talked with her via e-mail during the turmoil regarding Huber Heights’ city manager’s firing.

“She was incredibly nice and helpful. She was really passionate about what she was covering, and we are lucky to have had her working to cover our city.”

A Tipp City woman sent condolences via e-mail: “I e-mailed her once just to thank her for her work. Glad I did that. From her response she seemed very smart, strong, kind.”

Another woman came to the visitation because Ms. Warren had written a series of stories chronicling her son’s death and the criminal trial that followed.

“Valryn was the underdog, and everybody roots for the underdog,” said Lou Grieco, a colleague and friend. “She fought her way into our newsroom, despite a non-traditional background — a background that was a strength, never a weakness, for her reporting, though not everyone realized that at first.

“She also rooted for the underdog.”

“If you were a public official,” Englewood Vice Mayor Tom Franz said, “and you weren’t looking out for people, she was sure going to point that out to you.”

“She was always working on a story, both sides of a story,” said John Applegate, Union city manager. “She never wanted to make anybody mad at her. But at the same time, facts are the facts. And she just wanted to make sure she had the facts correct.”

Her tenacity for accuracy was legendary.

Ben Sutherly, who shared an office with Ms. Warren when she worked out of the Miami County bureau, remembers a time when Ms. Warren found herself, one night, locked in a fenced-in playground after going out a rear door of the new Miami East kindergarten-grade 8 building.

“Valryn always dressed in a skirt and high heels for work, but that didn’t keep her from scaling the fence,” Sutherly said. And, of course, she told Sutherly about scaling an amazingly high fence.

The next day she returned to the school on another assignment and stopped by the playground in daylight. The fence was only 5-feet to 6-feet high, she later e-mailed Sutherly.

“I swear,” she wrote, “it seemed taller last night! I hate being inaccurate, even in my own personal stories, but it looks like this time I was.”

Another thing few people knew.

There may be only two reporters in the Miami Valley who have streets named after them: Erma Bombeck and Valryn Warren.

While Bombeck’s boulevard runs the length of Brown Street in front of the University of Dayton, Valryn Parkway in Englewood is tucked behind Good Samaritan North. It’s a short stub street along a local park and pond.

The pond was home to numerous geese. One goose was crippled and abandoned by the others.

Ms. Warren, well-known for her animal rescues and rehabilitation of birds, reptiles and other creatures, hand-fed cracked corn to Mr. Goose several times a week as she made her rounds.

The goose survived two winters with only Ms. Warren for companionship then disappeared, said Eric Smith, Englewood city manager.

“Mr. Goose was grateful for Val’s generosity, always watching out for the little guy both professionally and personally,” Smith said. “Mr. Goose was better for knowing her. So am I.”

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Regionalism works when it gives good service at a good price

By Doug Page | Wednesday, April 22, 2009, 03:38 PM

Will Englewood ever join the Montgomery County 911 dispatching center?

Yep.

But it may be a long while.

The city has a state-of-the-art, all the bells and whistles, dispatch center. It dropped around $3 million into its center in 2004-05. About $2 million of that came from Ohio Department of Transportation grants to install a fiber-optic network to control traffic.

“After the network was installed, the real value of the cameras became obvious,” said Eric Smith, city manager. The cameras became crime fighters, streaming images of intersections to the dispatch center.

By the end of the summer, the city will have 13 cameras around town. When a 9-1-1 call comes in, dispatchers can zoom in on the scene, or a fleeing vehicle or an escaping suspect.

The county doesn’t have that kind of technology, nor does it appear it will have anything comparable any time soon.

Englewood is one of eight localities that decided not to join the county system. Some leaders have complained privately about the political arm-twisting of county officials.

Smith and others have questioned the validity of the county’s original study on the possible savings under a countywide system. They wanted to see the system developed incrementally to work out the bugs and judge the efficiency of the model.

The major failing of the county system shows someone needed to listen to those cautious warnings.

Not everybody is unhappy. Trotwood and Brookville officials point to the savings they are realizing from paying the county for dispatch instead of expensive upgrades to their own dispatch centers.

The county will need to get its act together. Some localities were encouraged to join the system with rates as low as $5 a call. Projections now have those fees at around $12 a call in the near future. The Englewood center handled its calls for $8.54 a call.

That has some localities looking for another option. Already Englewood dispatches fire and police calls for neighboring Union, and fire calls for Butler Twp., New Lebanon and Farmersville.

Others are approaching the city to see what it would cost to shift dispatch from the county to Englewood.

Does this mean regionalism is dead or dying?

Not hardly.

It does mean for regional cooperation to work, it has to provide a good service at a good price.

“Once they convince us they can provide service as good as our citizens get now at a better cost, we’d consider it,” Smith said.

“But, right now, our dispatch service is better than the county’s.”

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It was all a matter of semantics

By Doug Page | Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 02:13 PM

Englewood police got an early morning call about a gentleman wandering on South Main Street at I-70.

They found the fellow acting “in a manner similar to a highly intoxicated person” and giving off a strong odor of alcohol. He was holding a blank piece of cardboard torn from a Budweiser beer carton.

When approached, he held out his hands to be cuffed, telling the officers, “You got me. You got me.” Given his impaired state, the officers transported him to the county lockup for disorderly conduct.

En route to the lockup, he asked what he was charged with. When told being drunk in public, he responded, “I was drunk in private.”

Because there was only one of him, I guess you can’t argue with his beer-fueled logic.

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A distinctive voice goes silent

By Doug Page | Friday, April 17, 2009, 03:02 PM

Valryn Warren, a distinctive voice for 17 years in the Neighbors section for communities from Piqua to Englewood to Huber Heights to Union to Vandalia and Union, died April 15.

It is fitting she died on her way to work at the Dayton Daily News.

One story tells it all.

She was suppose to be on sick leave following leg surgery. An editor sent another reporter, Kelli Wynn, to cover the trial in a fatal hit-and-run case about which Val had followed tirelessly. Kelli tells of a silent courtroom packed with the victim’s loved ones.

That silence was broken by a click, clank, click, clank as Val came into the courtroom, assisted by walker, and inched her way to a seat in the back row. After the proceedings, Kelli asked Val why she wasn’t home in bed as her doctors had ordered.

“She said, ‘I know, I know, but I wanted to make sure this was covered. It is important’,” Kelli says. “And she made me promise not to tell anybody in the newsroom.

“But, now, some secrets shouldn’t be kept.”

That was Val.

Just a couple more stories.

Jim Dillon is the city editor at the DDN. As such, he’s the traffic cop of the newsroom, keeping an eye on all the reporters and their stories. He keeps one ear on the police scanner, another attached to the phone, a third to what his bosses are telling him and a fourth to what his reporters are doing.

“I loved to listen to Val work her sources on the phone. She would bathe them in sweetness one second and rip them the next. She was an editor’s dream. She pour everything into her stories. She always got the information she needed.”

Jeremy Kelly switched from copy editor to reporter about a year ago and shared a pod with Val.

He remembers how Val would sweep into the newsroom in the late afternoon after a day out on the street working her sources.

“Her butt never hit the chair before her desk phone or cell phone or both would ring. She’d immediately be in strident negotiations with some city officials over the information she wanted. She always got what she needed.”

The only decorations on her paper-littered desk, files askew everywhere, are three small plastic monkeys in the classic “Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil” poses.

“She was always was working on a story, both sides of a story,” said John Applegate, Union city manager. “She never wanted to make anybody mad at her. But the same time, facts are the facts. And she just wanted to make sure she had the facts correct.”

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Denial is not just a river in Egypt

By Doug Page | Tuesday, April 14, 2009, 03:53 PM

Clayton police described the man as heavyset, slow of speech and profane of manner.

Witnesses describe him as one who could not keep his maroon Pontiac on the road.

Police responded late on a Saturday evening, April 11, to reports of a man driving erratically. Witnesses who followed the weaving path of his vehicle described how he hit a ditch, over-corrected and took out a mailbox on the other side of the street.

When an officer approach the Pontiac he saw front-end damage and a broken windshield, apparently from the mailbox. The driver was covered in broken glass. Even before reaching the driver, the officer reported the odor of alcohol.

When asked what happen, the uninjured driver claimed he had no idea. Then denied hitting the mailbox. Questioned about the shards of windshield glass littering his pants and shirt, the man responded he didn’t see any glass and the officer didn’t know what he was talking about, according to the police report.

The report goes on to describe in detail the man’s inability to follow directions for a field sobriety test, his need for support to remain standing and his admission he’d had “a couple drinks.”

Taken to the police station, he refused to take a breath test. The report said the man asked to use the bathroom, but had great difficulty hitting his target. Police cited him for operating a vehicle under the influence and failure to control. When the man was unable to contact anyone to come and pick him up, police gave him a ride to the county lockup.

No word on the fate of the mailbox.

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So just who are you again?

By Doug Page | Monday, April 13, 2009, 01:28 PM

Just before sundown earlier this month, Englewood police were called to a residence on a report of an unknown man trying to enter the house.

Cops found the gentleman a couple blocks away, glassy of eye and smelling of alcohol. The gentleman denied trying to enter the house, but did say he had spoken to the homeowner asking where another fellow might lived.

When asked, the gentleman said he’d had but one beer. He was “looking for his grandbaby’s grandfather’s house,” according to the police report.

After a few moments of thought, the gentleman corrected himself, saying he was looking for a friend’s house because “his grandbaby’s grandfather” was, in fact, himself.

Police arrested the gentleman for disorderly conduct. En route to the county lockup, the gentleman informed the officer he planned on pressing charges against the officer for violating his rights and harassing him.

One assumes he’ll get his grandbabies’ grandfather to represent him.

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Animal rights and Second Amendment rights

By Doug Page | Wednesday, April 1, 2009, 03:42 PM

Under state law, you can openly carry a legal firearm into the Englewood McDonalds with few exceptions. You have that right, unless the owner has put up a no weapons sign on the door.

You cannot, however, bring in your dog unless it is a service animal.

You can walk the streets of Englewood, or any other city in the state, openly carrying a legal firearm.

Your dog, on the other hand, has to be on a leash.

That, gentle reader, is an interesting juxtaposition.

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Regional cooperation: Some win, some fail

By Doug Page | Wednesday, April 1, 2009, 03:21 PM

Taking note of things that have happened:

Union is willing to sell water to Clayton. Regional cooperation on a small scale. Last time they tried it, Union wasn’t willing to waive its policy of no service outside its city limits.

Back in the day when annexation was a continuous turf war, the policy made sense.

Now that annexation laws have changed, the city was willing to change its policy.

The number of people affected is small, probably fewer than 100. Nor will you be seeing earth-moving equipment on Phillipsburg Union Road any time soon. Clayton residents who want to tap into Union water will also have to get sewer and pay for the lines.

Union and Clayton officials saw making city services available to the area as the right thing to do.

Clayton and Clay Twp. partnered up several years ago to form a joint economic development district to work together to get some jobs into the northwest end of the county.

One of the basics was water and sewer. Working with Montgomery County, water lines were run along National Road west past Ohio 49.

Now the county commissioners have applied on behalf of the joint district for a state grant to run sewer to the National Road/Ohio 49 intersection. The joint district has plans for an 80-acre commerce park on the southwest corner of the intersection.

If the grant comes through, the project might offer some relief for Phillipsburg, less than 2 miles up Ohio 49.

Call it another small step in regional cooperation.

Then there is the county’s spanking new Regional Emergency Dispatch Center.

Fail.

First day up, and it went down for the count, as has been detailed elsewhere in the newspaper and this blog.

The day before the dispatch center bellied up — hey when 9-1-1 calls go unanswered that’s bellied up in my book — Englewood dispatchers were tracking and helping apprehend a fleeing shoplifter with the help of their fancy high-tech traffic cameras.

The regional dispatch center has never been a favorite of everyone. Some localities, including Englewood, chose not to get on board, keeping its own dispatch.

You could almost hear the gleeful cackling in some quarters when the regional center bellied up.

Regional cooperation? Not so much.

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