Howland resident bids goodbye to public service

By Ed Runyan

The 32-year trustee veteran ‘loves Howland,’ the township administrator says.

HOWLAND — Dick Orwig, an 84-year-old retired cabinetmaker, has been part of some interesting times as a Howland resident and public official over the last 52 years.

He’s seen the township grow from 7,000 residents in 1950 to nearly 20,000 in 1990.

And he’s had a front-row seat.

From 1957 to 1977, he was a member of the township’s zoning appeals board. From 1961 to 1977, he was a member of the Howland Board of Education. Since 1978, he’s been a township trustee. Altogether, he’s served the township 52 years.

But Orwig attended his last meeting as township trustee Monday after finishing third in the November election in an eight-person race for two seats. He’s been a trustee the last 32 years. He was admitted to Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital with undisclosed health problems Tuesday but is expected to recover.

In the 1950s, Orwig, a father of two boys and a girl, wanted his kids to play baseball, so he and others formed the Howland Athletic Club in 1955.

But the club needed baseball fields, so Orwig got himself elected to the board of education, in part so he could help the club get the space it needed for ball fields, he explained recently.

During his time on the school board, the athletic club got permission to build fields on land behind Mines Elementary School on Howland-Wilson Road.

Orwig was a member of the board while Howland was in a great period of growth, when new elementary schools were built at Howland Glen, North Road and Howland Springs and expansions were done at the high school and middle school.

After 16 years on the board, Orwig decided it was time to “move on” to the board of trustees to continue the work he had started as a member of the zoning board of appeals.

In fact, Orwig says, zoning and land-use issues were of great interest to him since just after he returned to Howland in 1946 after serving three years in the Army during World War II.

Howland, located on the edges of the two largest cities in Trumbull County — Warren and Niles — has historically been Ground Zero for annexation efforts by the two cities.

Orwig, a 1943 Howland graduate who grew up on Henn-Hyde Road, was part of an unsuccessful legal battle in the 1960s to keep land along U.S. Route 422 near state Route 46 from being annexed to Niles. In 1969, the Cafaro Company built the Eastwood Mall there.

“We fought annexation,” Orwig says. “We fought them all, every one, but as long as the people signed the petition and the commissioners voted it in, it went in,” Orwig said.

Orwig admits the Eastwood Mall has been good for the county, even if annexations in general have reduced the land area of Howland by nearly half.

Annexation also has produced some strange-looking boundary lines where Howland, Niles and Warren come together, with boundaries that sometimes look like a smile with some of the teeth knocked out.

Though annexation issues have abated in recent years, land-use issues are still important in Howland, Orwig said.

For example, he has opposed changing zoning on the east side of Route 46 near the mall where two car dealerships would like to build car lots.

Orwig says the Route 46 corridor is busy enough already and doesn’t need the additional traffic.

Howland has lost revenue from some notable employers in recent years, such as Delphi Packard, and seen a drop in its population since 1990.

Orwig says he and trustees Rick Clark and Sally Wehmer have cut expenses by buying vehicles less often than in the past and eliminating training sessions and conventions that trustees attended in the past.

“We watch the money real tight,” Orwig said.

Darlene St. George, township administrator and a Howland native, has known Orwig since 1965, when Orwig handed St. George her high school diploma. St. George also served with Orwig when she became a township trustee in 1994. She agrees that Orwig always has been careful with Howland’s money, but he’s also been township historian and its great friend.

“We are losing a big piece of our history in the township,” she said. “Mr. Orwig has always been there to promote the history and help us to make good decisions.”

There have been many times over the years that Orwig left his Stillwagon Road home in the middle of the night, put on his boots and cleared fallen trees or assisted residents with flooding problems.

“He truly loves Howland Township,” St. George said.

runyan@vindy.com