Local professor, student inducted into Dayton Walk of Fame on same day

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They both have Wright State roots, Beachler as a film student and Reichert as a professor with 28 years at the university under her belt.

And they both are proud Daytonians.

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"To come back to Dayton in fact is such an important thing for me because I was so supported here," Beachler, one of Reichert's students at Wright State, said before accepting her award at the Dayton Area Region Walk of Fame Luncheon today.

She dedicated her award to her father, the late Mark Beachler, an architect.

Her production design work on “Fruitvale Station” “Moonlight,” “Miles Ahead,” “Creed,” and Beyonce’s “Lemonade” has received high praise.

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Stones bearing Beachler’s and Reichert’s names have been added to the walk of fame located on the sidewalks on both sides of West Third Street between Shannon and Broadway Streets and on Williams Street.

Originally from New Jersey, Reichert said she was nurtured in Dayton. She said the community helped give her flight even though friends in the film industry encouraged her to move to New York or Los Angeles.

“This place, this town, its streets, its back roads, its farm fields, all the crazy corners of this particular area is actually where I found my voice,” Reichert said.

She continued, “My next door neighbors were not artists or filmmakers. They were just men or women. They were teachers. They were just regular folks.”

Reichert's first film "Growing Up Female," was selected for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Her 1976 film "Union Maids "and 1983's "Seeing Red (1983)" were nominated for Best Feature Documentary Academy Awards.

“Last Truck,” her 2009 film with her partner Steven Bognar,  was nominated for an Academy Award.

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The 2018 honorees also include Major General George R. Crook, a U.S. military leader and civil rights activist; nationally acclaimed sculptor Robert C. Koepnick, Dayton police Sgt. Lucius J. Rice and his wife police officer Dora Burton Rice — that department's first black detective and sergeant and its first black female officer, as well as Dr. Richard A. DeWall. 

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Diane DeWall accepted the award for her late husband, the inventor of the DeWall Bubble Oxygenator. It was the first workable, portable heart-lung machine.

Mr. DeWall, a founder of the Wright State University School of Medicine, initiated an open-heart surgery program at Kettering Hospital, where he performed the first successful open-heart surgery in the Dayton area.

“Dick Dewall loved a party,” Mrs. DeWall said, adding that the luncheon was a good party.

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Mrs. DeWall said her husband would be pleased with students at Wright State’s medical school and with the honor granted to him at the luncheon.

“He would be very humble and proud at the same time,” she said.

Mary Matthews, a trustee of the Dayton Region’s Walk of Fame and an area resident since 1981, received special recognition.

At the end of her speech, Reichert thanked those who helped encourage her through her film career and gave high hopes for the city’s future.

“Dayton’s history has always been one of invention and reinvention,” Reichert said. “Let’s never lose sight of that. Invention and reinvention. That is us and we are doing it again right now.”