Trumbull County African American Achievers banquet is Feb. 28

Staff report

WARREN

The 30th annual Trumbull County African American Achievers Association Hall of Fame Induction Dinner will honor six new inductees and two scholarship winners starting at 6 p.m. Saturday at DiVieste Banquet Hall, 754 North River Road.

This year’s inductees:

Rhonda Bennett is a 1979 graduate of Warren Western Reserve High School and a licensed phlebotomist and past chairwoman for the U.S. Department of Justice Warren Weed and Seed Program.

She also is a board member of New Freedom Missionary Baptist Church, Trumbull County Action Program, Greater Warren-Youngstown Urban League and former president of the Southwest Neighborhood Association.

During her presidency, SWNA acquired a grant to buy playground equipment for Southwest Park on Palmyra Road.

She has worked on projects with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and hosted the Hoyt Street Community Block Party the past three years. She is married, has two adult daughters and is office manager of Family & Friends Homecare LLC.

Tim Callion is a lifelong Warren resident, attending Warren and Champion schools, where he graduated in 1977. He has worked 25 years for the Plumbers and Pipefitters No. 396 and is in his second term as its business agent.

He has served on various boards and was a three-time delegate to the Democratic National Convention. He is president of the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, Trumbull County Chapter, where he has been a member 14 years.

He has worked on numerous local and national Get Out To Vote campaigns and has coached Little Flashes football for six years. He is married had has two children and three grandchildren.

Frederick Harris is president of Harris Consulting Group and former safety service director for Warren. He also served as the city’s minority business enterprise director.

His consulting firm worked with minority businesses, specializing in international trade. He was co-founder and past president of the Mahoning Valley Minority Business Association, was a member of the board of directors of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber and participated in many other organizations and boards.

Pastor Todd Johnson is a 2000 graduate of Warren G. Harding High School and became pastor of Agape Assembly Church in 2012 after serving as minister at age 19 and church elder at 25. He also served as associate pastor.

He leads the church in outreach-focused ministry, including the Agape Summer Youth Program, Free Fall Gospel Skate, Back to School Sunday and “Invasion of Hope” festival.

He founded the Warren City-Wide Youth Choir in 2011 and is a member of the board of the Mahoning Valley Hope Center, member of the Warren Civil Service Commission, member of the Core Pastors Group for Teen Straight Talk and vice president of the Trumbull County Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance.

He is an employment counselor with the Trumbull County Department of Job and Family Services. He and his wife have three children.

Heather Wells, 23, of Howland was Miss Ohio in 2013 and competed in the Miss America pageant. She is a graduate of Kent State University with a degree in broadcast journalism and is working on a master’s degree in nutrition, hoping to have a career as a health correspondent.

She was a competitive dancer for 13 years and performed across the United States. She has been an advocate for children of divorce.

Cheryl Saffold is a Western Reserve High School graduate who studied journalism at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and served as intern in the U.S. House of Representatives.

She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Cincinnati and worked in marketing and research for Procter and Gamble, then worked as account executive for WHHH Radio in Warren and for the Houston Astros in Major League Baseball. She appeared in a Fox made-for-television movie, “Alien Nation.” She has written articles for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and other publications and met or interviewed Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson and U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes. She has met President Barack Obama twice.

She also has a law degree from Texas Southern University and worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services. Following in the footsteps of her sister, U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge of Cleveland, she has been Warren’s 6th Ward council member since 2009. She is employed as career development facilitator with the Oh-Penn Manufacturing Collaborative.

Ariana Shannon and Delwaun Miller are the student scholarship recipients.

Shannon is a student at Warren G. Harding High School and Kent State University at Trumbull with a 4.1 grade-point average at Harding. She is captain of a Relay for Life team and plays clarinet in the high-school marching band. She also is a madrigal singer and is a member of her high-school volleyball team and the Thunder Club Volleyball team.

Miller is a member of the Warren G. Harding Robotics Team and plans to attend college to study engineering or 3-D graphics and animation because of his interest in technology. He has a part-time job at the Warren YWCA.

Tickets cost $30 and are available by calling 330-898-4352. Speaker will be Vince Peterson, of the Trumbull County Adult Probation Department, who is a frequent speaker and senior pastor at Providence Baptist Church in Akron.