ICYMI: Five uplifting stories from the Miami Valley this week

Olivia Bowman, from Dayton, skates around Riverscape in the sun Monday afternoon. Bowman said skating is her COVID-19 strategy.

Credit: JIM NOELKER

Credit: JIM NOELKER

Olivia Bowman, from Dayton, skates around Riverscape in the sun Monday afternoon. Bowman said skating is her COVID-19 strategy.

Here are five headlines you might have missed from this past week.


Miami Valley Meals is giving back to Dayton on its 1st birthday

Miami Valley Meals chefs Mac Haynes and Angela Abnett sort and stack produce and other food items. CORNELIUS FROLIK / STAFF

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It’s been a year since former Dayton colleagues in the culinary field came together to serve the hungry during a time when their community needed them most.

Miami Valley Meals was established at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and began helping to serve the House of Bread as emergency culinary support.

To celebrate one full year of serving the Miami Valley, the organization will provide 200 meals to guests at House of Bread throughout this week.

Currently, the organization provides more than 4,500 meals each week, according to a Miami Valley Meals release. In its year-long effort, Miami Valley Meals has served 123,000 meals, with much of the food coming from The Foodbank, Inc.

READ THE WHOLE STORY HERE:


How a piece of Wright brothers history is set to fly again — on Mars

A NASA rendering of the Ingenuity helicopter flying from the Perseverance rover.

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A small piece of Wright brothers history is on Mars, being readied for another historic flight — this time, on the red planet’s surface.

A swatch of material from the 1903 Wright Flyer will be attached to a new rotorcraft that NASA hopes to free from its Mars Perseverance rover no later than April 8.

In more than 100 years, the cloth has traveled from Ohio to North Carolina, back to Ohio and now to Mars.

Dayton’s Carillon Historical Park donated the postage-size piece of cloth from the plane’s bottom left wing at NASA’s request, said Brady Kress, president and chief executive of Dayton History.

READ THE WHOLE STORY HERE:


Miami Valley council welcomes their first group of female Eagle Scouts

Liesl Carter, left, and Dasha Crocker, left, after receiving their Eagle Scout award. The girls are the first two female Eagle Scouts in the Miami Valley Council. CONTRIBUTED

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When the Boy Scouts of America opened to girls in February 2019, Liesl Carter and Dasha Crocker knew they wanted to become Eagle Scouts.

They started a girls BSA Scout troop – 5237 in Kettering – and set to work, not only working to grow the troop but on their Eagle Scout awards. They are now the first two female Eagle Scouts in the Miami Valley Council.

“Dasha and I had worked through all six of the Scouting ranks at the same pace and had encouraged and supported each other throughout the process,” Carter said. “It just didn’t feel right for one of us to be the ‘first’ female Eagle Scout in the Miami Valley Council and the other to be the second.”

READ THE WHOLE STORY HERE:


Head-turning national commercial for Old Spice filmed at Miamisburg car wash

Star City Car Wash, located at 415 E. Central Ave in downtown Miamisburg, was selected to be the set for a recent Old Spice commercial that was filmed in February.

Credit: CONTRIBUTED

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Credit: CONTRIBUTED

A semi-truck-sized sculpture of a human head prompted a sudsy sensation recently in Miamisburg.

Star City Car Wash, located at 415 E. Central Ave. in downtown Miamisburg, was selected to serve as the set for an Old Spice commercial that was filmed in February. The production was Hollywood-level elaborate, and it drew quite a crowd downtown on a frigid Friday in the “Burg,’” according to the car wash’s owner, Bill DeFries.

The agent said their team had been looking unsuccessfully in Ohio for months for the perfect car wash to shoot the commercial. But when the commercial’s New York-based director came across photos and videos of the Miamisburg car wash on the internet, the director said it would be the perfect set.

READ THE WHOLE STORY HERE:


‘Amazing lady’ celebrating 103rd birthday in Hamilton today

Eunice Murphy will celebrate her 103rd birthday today with residents at Bradford Place in Hamilton. She was born just outside Oxford on March 24, 1918. SUBMITTED

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Eunice Murphy has “seen it all,” said Redina Smith, activities director at Bradford Place in Hamilton.

Murphy, who turns 103 today, said she has witnessed plenty of historic moments in her life, but she’ll never forget July 20, 1969 when astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

And she can’t figure out smartphones.

“They just amaze me,” she said. “I don’t have one, but I see people talking into them and getting all their information.

READ THE WHOLE STORY HERE:


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