Former Trumbull commissioner dies

Staff report

HUBBARD

Margaret Gillmer Kroehle Dennison, the only woman to serve as a Trumbull County commissioner, from 1978 to 1984, and three-term member of the Ohio House of Representatives in the 1960s, died at her home on Warner Road on Friday. She was 90.

Her husband, David S. Dennison, was a congressman from 1957 to 1959.

Trumbull County Probate Court Judge Thomas A. Swift said one of his most distinct memories of her time as county commissioner was how well prepared and knowledgeable she was.

“She drew on her experience in college and in the General Assembly,” Judge Swift said. “She seemed to have a great interest in a number of things,” he said.

“She was a remarkable woman in that she had a wealth of experience and a keen eye and ear for the facts. She did her research and was always on top of the issue,” he said.

She attended Warren public schools and earned her high school diploma from Branksome Hall, Toronto, Canada. She received an A. B. degree in 1942 from Bryn Mawr College, where she studied American and Modern European History.

She served in the American Red Cross in England during World War II and later, at the end of the war, in Germany where she was stationed at the Dachau concentration camp, which had been converted to a center for displaced persons and German prisoners of war after liberation.

She ended up in Ohio and married her lifelong best friend, David Short Dennison, in 1946.

She worked with her husband on his successful bid for the 11th District congressional seat in 1954 and subsequent campaigns.

She worked as an editor for The Rotary, the in-house paper of her family’s business, the Peerless Electric Company.

She was elected to the Ohio Legislature in 1962. She held this post until 1968, when she decided against running for a fourth term.

In 1970 she ran unsuccessfully for the congressional seat long held by Mike Kirwan.

She bought the Austintown Leader newspaper, which became successful under her care.

She eventually sold the paper to the Niles Daily Times and worked for the Niles Times as editorial page editor for the Niles Times weeklies.

In 1978, she was appointed to fill the unexpired term of Trumbull County Commissioner Lyle Williams. She won successive terms at the polls until 1984.

As commissioner, she focused on improving the county’s water and sewer system and worked to establish an orderly department budget process, improvements in the county administrative procedures and other benefits.