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People making a difference in 2015
By Denise Dick
Some did it in a positive way; others, less so.
For better or worse, 10 people – one long dead – made a difference in the Mahoning Valley in 2015. The list was compiled by The Vindicator newsroom staff.
The person who made the biggest difference did so in a bad way.
1 Robert Seman is accused in the March 30 arson that killed three.
Corinne Gump, 10, and her grandparents, William and Judith Schmidt, who were deaf, were living in the Powers Way home that Seman, 46, of West Calla Road in Green Township, is accused of torching.
The girl and her grandparents were killed the night before his trial on charges of raping Corinne was set to start. Seman was the boyfriend of the girl’s mother.
He is in the Mahoning County jail, charged with aggravated burglary, aggravated arson and 10 counts of aggravated murder. If convicted, he could be sentenced to death.
The crimes dominated the news for weeks with makeshift memorials created and candlelight vigils observed at the site. City crews demolished what was left of the home.
2 The Kellys – Warren native Kelly McCracken, and her spouse, Kelly Noe, both of Cincinnati – were plaintiffs in the landmark case on which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June, making same-sex marriage legal across the U.S. The high court struck down state bans on same-sex marriage.
McCracken also is the lead singer of the Kellys. The couple have a young daughter.
3 Jim Tressel, Youngstown State University president, and his wife, Ellen, recently pledged $1 million to kick off the university’s capital campaign. The gift will create the Ellen and Jim Tressel Student Work Opportunity Endowment Fund.
Tressel, the former football coach at YSU and Ohio State when both teams won national championships in their respective divisions, was named YSU president in mid-2014.
Tressel was inducted in December into the College Football Hall of Fame. He was the first YSU player or coach inducted.
In 2015, the university saw the beginning of one privately owned student housing project and the approval of another.
Tressel selected “macte virtute,” or “increase excellence,” as the university motto since his appointment. During his second year in office, Tressel wants to create a “culture of community” among students, faculty, staff, administration and the community at large.
Your views of the positive or negative impact of the next two people on the list likely depends on your opinion of the Youngstown Plan.
4 Brenda Kimble, president of the Youngstown Board of Education. The school board filed a lawsuit against the state to get the Youngstown Plan declared unconstitutional.
The plan, approved in late June by the state Legislature, creates a new academic distress commission for the city schools. That commission will appoint a chief executive officer to manage and operate the city school district.
Kimble, as school board president, was charged in the law to appoint a teacher to the commission. She appointed a retired principal who works as a substitute administrator in the district.
That prompted more legal action from the teachers’ union, contending the appointment should have been an active city schools teacher.
“I am surprised,” Kimble said of her selection to the difference-maker list.
“When I do the things that I do, I don’t do them because of me,” she said. “I do whatever I think needs to be done to move this district forward.”
The students and what’s in their best interests are her main priority, Kimble said.
5 Tom Humphries, president and CEO of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, gathered the panel of education, community and business people who met and devised the Youngstown Plan.
The plan grew out of several behind-closed-doors meetings of the panel dubbed the Youngstown City Schools Business Cabinet.
The next two people on the list are connected to the ongoing corruption probe stemming from the Oakhill case.
6 Dan Kasaris, an assistant Ohio attorney general, who is prosecuting the Oakhill criminal-conspiracy case.
Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally; Michael Sciortino, former Mahoning County auditor; and Martin Yavorcik, an attorney who ran a failed campaign for county prosecutor, are charged with multiple offenses. Kasaris also is lead prosecutor in the separate Sciortino and ex-probate judge Mark Belinky cases and also helped with the conviction of former state Rep. Ron Gerberry.
The Oakhill case deals with Mahoning County’s purchase of Oakhill Renaissance Place, the former Southside Hospital. The county Department of Job and Family Services moved into the building, vacating the Cafaro-owned McGuffey Plaza on the East Side.
7 Harry Strabala, a Youngstown political consultant, is a prosecution witness in the Oakhill case.
The Oakhill tapes, the subject of defense vs. prosecution wrangling, were secretly recorded by Strabala during his conversations with some of those involved in the case.
8 Doug Duganne, Barry Dyngles owner. His Austintown tavern drew crowds last summer and fall during its Queen of Hearts game.
Crowds overflowed, prompting some complaints from motorists and surrounding businesses of traffic jams. A Warren woman won the $1.8 million jackpot in October.
9 Ashley E. Orr of Columbiana, a YSU senior, is among 32 American men and women chosen as Rhodes scholars to pursue postgraduate studies at Oxford University in England.
Orr, who is double majoring in mathematics and economics, is the first YSU student to earn the prestigious scholarship.
Orr, who also is president of YSU’s Student Government Association, studied at the London School of Economics, and has worked as a research analyst intern at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
2In August 1915, The Vindicator gave two full pages to Rogers, who laid out his fervent opposition to the construction of sewers through the park.
“The idea of bringing all the sewage for about six and one-fourth square miles, now in the city, and as much more later perhaps from Boardman to the center of as valuable a park as our Youngstown Mill Creek park, as a sanitary proposition, is so abhorrent and so destructive to the highest benefits that the people are entitled to enjoy, that I am sure those who suggest this plan do not do so understandingly,” wrote Rogers, 68 at the time.
His concerns proved prophetic.
Honorable mentions go to Mahoning County Auditor Ralph T. Meacham; developer Dominic Marchionda; Jim Cossler and Barb Ewing of the Youngstown Business Incubator; Annie Hall, who runs the East Side Crime Watch Building; and the Rev. Steve Popovich, a priest paralyzed in a 2013 traffic accident who continues to lead worship services at the rehabilitation center where he lives.