“Because of the economy the way it is, a lot of people need help,” said Paula Young of Elmore, a committee chairman.
The community event, she emphasized, isn't intended to make anyone feel bad about accepting a warm holiday meal. “We do not want them to feel we are saying, ‘Oh, look at them.' We want people to feel good about coming and spending time with others,” Ms. Young said. “Everybody is having a hard time right now.” Several area businesses have laid off workers, and other businesses have closed, Connie Frey of Lindsey said. Her family has felt the sting of the economy's wallop on wage earners. She lost her job in May. Her husband, Mark, was laid off in August. She has returned to work, but the family has no health insurance. “My daughter had swine flu and I had bronchitis,” Mrs. Frey said. Despite all that, she believes in reaching out to others, such as volunteering to help with the community dinner project.

Making Thanksgiving placemats

“If I am able to give, I believe that I should,” she said. “Sometimes I think, ‘Boy, this is bad, this is really terrible,' but there is always someone worse off, someone who does not have a roof over their head or food to feed their kids.”
Civic organizations, schools, churches, and businesses have pitched in with the project, and later this week volunteers will get cookin' at the high school cafeteria — turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie. Serving time is 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday. In addition to holiday decorations, the cafeteria setting will feature 500 place mats made by students at Woodmore Elementary.

Transportation will be provided to those who need a ride, and residents in the six townships are asked to call a hot line, 419-866-9924, if they plan to attend.
That way, organizers can get a head count. However, if someone decides at the last minute to drop by the school, it won't be a problem, Ms. Young said. “We'll say, ‘You're more than welcome. Come on in.'” Feast in Perrysburg A similar spirit of caring and sharing abounds in Wood County, where residents are invited to a community Thanksgiving feast at Zoar Lutheran Church in Perrysburg. The first-time community holiday meal held at the church a few years back drew 11 people, said Connie Teare of Perrysburg, who organizes the annual event. In 2008, there were 150 people. “I know we will have lots more this year,” Ms. Teare said. Serving starts at 2 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day in the church auditorium. Organizers ask that people call the church by Monday to make reservations. It's an ecumenical event with other churches involved, said Ms. Teare, who piled on praise for the many volunteers who are helping to prepare and serve the meal of turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, baked apples, salads, cranberry sauce, and pie.

“Everything is homemade,” Ms. Teare said. “The potatoes come from a farmer's garden.” Another farmer donated squash.
The meal will have a down-home feel beyond the homemade food and homespun atmosphere. No plastic sporks or paper plates here. “We will have real silverware, china, and glasses,” Ms. Teare said. “We do it up real nice.” Meal time in Toledo In Toledo, the Cherry Street Mission Ministries expects to serve or provide holiday meals to between 3,300 and 3,500 people. The organization has ramped up its outreach effort for the holiday because more people are seeking assistance, said Rodney O. Schuster, vice president of development. An estimated 1,300 to 1,500 meals will be served at mission facilities, compared to 1,135 last year. Many of the meals will be served from 1 to 3 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day at the Erie Street Market. This year for the first time, hot meals will be delivered to households, about 100 of them, on Thanksgiving Day, he said. Other families will receive food boxes filled with fixings for holiday dinners, such as cans of yams, corn, and chicken broth, gravy and stuffing mix, and a frozen turkey. On Tuesday, volunteers will deliver the food boxes to 500 households, up from 300 last year. Lots of people can cook their own Thanksgiving meal, but “they cannot afford to buy the food,” Mr. Schuster said. Giving thanks The aroma of holiday food cooking will waft through the South Toledo home of Sonja Patillo and her family this week, but she said that just a short time ago, she was sad about the approaching holiday. “When we get money, it all goes to bills,” she said, leaving precious little for a turkey and other traditional Thanksgiving food. But a heavy burden was lifted, she said, when she learned her family would receive a food box. “It kind of overjoys your heart,” Ms. Patillo said. “The Lord keeps blessing me. I see it as a blessing to have assistance at Thanksgiving. You can't ask for anything more. You really can't.”

Her 10-year-old son, Caleb Simpson, said the holiday is a time to be thankful. “You thank God for what you have,” he said. “You thank other people for helping you get ready for Thanksgiving.”
Workers at the MLK Kitchen for the Poor on Vance Street are getting ready for the holiday early with plans to serve food from noon to 1:30 p.m. Wednesday to 400 to 500 people, up from the average of 300. “We've seen such a big increase in people losing their jobs,” said Juanita Savage Person, executive director. Donations continue to come in, even though “a lot of people are struggling themselves,” she said. “People's hearts are softened during the holiday.” “People reflect back. They want to give at Thanksgiving. They want to give back. They might not be able to be rich, but they are able to share.” Contact Janet Romaker at: jromaker@theblade.com or 419-724-6006.

]]> http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091122/NEWS14/911229966/-1/RSS WASHINGTON — A bruising debate on health care awaits the Senate after Thanksgiving now that the historic legislation has cleared a key hurdle over the opposition of Republicans eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama.
The bill would extend coverage to roughly 31 million who lack it, crack down on insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care nationally. In the final minutes of a daylong session, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused Republicans of trying to stifle a historic debate the nation needed. The Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said the vote was anything but procedural — casting it as a referendum on the bill itself, which he said would raise taxes, cut Medicare and create a "massive and unsustainable debt." Two final Democratic holdouts, Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, announced they would join in clearing the way for a full debate. "It is clear to me that doing nothing is not an option," said Landrieu, who won $100 million in the legislation to help her state pay the costs of health care for the poor. Landrieu and Lincoln, who faces a tough re-election next year, both stressed they were not committing in advance to vote for the legislation that ultimately emerges from next month's debate.

Of particular contentiousness to moderates is a provision for the government to sell insurance in competition with private companies, subject to state approval — a part of Reid's bill expected to come under significant pressure as the debate unfolds.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the president was gratified by the vote, which he says "brings us one step closer to ending insurance company abuses, reining in spiraling health care costs, providing stability and security to those with health insurance, and extending quality health coverage to those who lack it." The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance and provide subsidies to those who couldn't afford it. Large companies could incur costs if they did not provide coverage to their workforce. The insurance industry would come under significant new regulation under the bill, which would first ease and then ban the practice of denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. Congressional budget analysts put the legislation's cost at $979 billion over a decade and said it would reduce deficits over the same period while extending coverage to 94 percent of the eligible population.

]]> http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091122/NEWS02/911229995/-1/RSS A Toledo man is in jail after confessing that he robbed a West Toledo bank Saturday, police said.
Tim A. Hill II, 25, of 2665 Tremainsville Rd. was arrested at his home Saturday afternoon. Under questioning, police said, he admitted that he had entered the Huntington Bank branch at 2310 West Laskey Rd. shortly before 10 a.m., handed a teller a note demanding money, and fled with cash.

He was booked into the Lucas County jail on a charge of robbery, a second-degree felony. The robbery was investigated by Toledo police and the FBI’s Northwest Ohio Violent Crime Task Force.

]]> http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091122/NEWS02/911229994/-1/RSS MONROE — A woman who could have faced a life sentence in the drug-related death of a Monroe man in November, 2008, has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.
Teisha Wandt, 23, of Monroe County pleaded guilty Friday before Judge Michael LaBeau in Monroe County Circuit Court to delivery of less than 50 grams of heroin, said Jack Simms, the county’s chief assistant prosecutor. In June, she was charged with one count of delivery of a controlled substance causing death. That charge followed the heroin-related death of Jacob Zubkoff, 22, who was found unconscious Nov. 16, 2008, in his home. He died from heroin abuse, the Wayne County medical examiner ruled.

Wandt was arrested, after the autopsy findings were released, based on witness statements and evidence at the victim’s home. Her trial on the original charge was to begin Monday.
She is to be sentenced Jan. 7. She faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. While she is unlikely to get that, “we’ll ask for as much as we can get,” Mr. Simms said. Wandt’s lawyer, Jarod Calkin, could not be reached for comment last night. Wandt remained Saturday night in the Monroe County jail, where she has been since June.

]]> http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091122/NEWS02/911229993/-1/RSS Toledo police continue to investigate the armed robbery of a convenience store clerk outside the Stop & Go on Upton Avenue early Friday, less than 12 hours after an employee at another Toledo carryout was shot and killed.
Two masked men approached an employee of the convenience store at 3045 Upton Ave. at about 7 a.m. when he was arriving for work, police said. The men pointed handguns at him and demanded money. According to a police report, the employee told the men that he did not have access to the safe. They then threatened to kill him if he did not produce money, police said.

The employee was able to give them more than $4,600 in cash from the store and surrendered a 45-caliber handgun that he had in the back of his waistband. The men also took $500 from the employee’s wallet.
The incident occurred just 10 hours after Bassam Kanouh, an employee of the Lewis Carryout, 4252 Lewis Ave., was shot and killed during an apparent robbery. Police had made no arrests in either case as of late Saturday.

]]> http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091122/NEWS04/911229990/-1/RSS University of Toledo President Lloyd Jacobs wants to interview professors up for tenure to learn more about them, but faculty members say that would be an abuse of power and is not needed.
Recommending a professor for tenure to the UT board of trustees is a million-dollar decision that affects the institution for decades. As a result, Dr. Jacobs said that adding the 30-minute interviews would help him to make those decisions. “I take that very seriously. It’s a decision that changes the institution for 20 or 30 years,” he said. “Your children could be taught by the same person I approve for tenure. It has an impact for decades.” The interview would not supersede the review of the portfolio of teaching, research, and service now used to approve tenure but would be in addition to it, Dr. Jacobs said. But faculty say such face-to-face interviews are not needed and would add too much subjectivity and too many personal biases. “Dr. Jacobs is on record talking about how he’ll be able to judge people on the basis of gestures, intonation, and other things,” said Harvey Wolff, president of the UT chapter of American Association of University Professors. “Those things are not part of the contract. We don’t believe he has that power or responsibility.” Tenure is continuous employment by a university that can be terminated only for just cause. It helps protect academic freedom and retain talent.

The current process for tenure relies only on the portfolio, called a dossier, which goes through layers of review before reaching the president.
It contains specific items, such as a resume and teacher evaluations, but there is discretion too, UT Provost Rosemary Haggett said. “A person puts in their dossier why they are really good at what they do,” she said. Dossiers can range from a single binder to multiple boxes of information and could include grant-funded research projects, music compositions, and more, Ms. Haggett said. An average of about 20 people a year are up for tenure and most take the full six years allowed to apply, but a few apply early, she said. The tenure process starts with review of the dossier by a department personnel committee. It then is reviewed by the department chairman, the college per-sonnel committee, the college dean, and the universitywide personnel committee. It goes to the provost’s office next and then to the president, who makes the decision whether to recommend that the board grant tenure. The professors’ union contends that adding an interview with the president at the end of the process would violate the union contract with faculty. The contract language notes that “evaluators shall make their judgments based on the file as presented,” meaning that the dossier should be the only source of information, said Mr. Wolff, a tenured professor in the math department. “It’s always been interpreted this way,” he said. But Dr. Jacobs said he thinks of it differently because the same clause also states that evaluators can request clarification. “These interviews should be looked at as a clarification of dossier contents,” he said. Again, there is a discrepancy between the administration and the union. Mr. Wolff said clarification is to be requested in writing, not in an interview. He said faculty members recalled that other presidents had tried to do something similar but didn’t because of the possible legal consequences. “It’s been tried before and it’s not been appropriate,” he said. “We think it’s a violation of the contract. Most people do not feel this is a very good idea.” If Dr. Jacobs were interested in adding interviews to the process, he should have brought it up in contract negotiations, but he did not, Mr. Wolff said. “I don’t see any problems, and I’m not sure why all of a sudden this is coming up.” The union is looking at its options, Mr. Wolff said. Any time during the process that an administrator or committee does not recommend tenure, the applicant can ask for reconsideration, which includes identifying in writing specific errors in the evaluation. The reconsideration process also includes the right to a meeting with the evaluator. Although that could be an interview-type setting, Mr. Wolff said that’s a different situation because it’s requested by the candidate and occurs after the evaluation is made based on the dossier. Dr. Jacobs rejected the contention that adding an interview would allow for more prejudices and called it “a bad argument.” He said that if he let biases affect his decision, he already could with information gleaned from the documents submitted. “However well intended, that view is incorrect. I have a responsibility to interview thousands of people for various things,” he said. “If people think I am biased, they should fire me and not keep me from doing my job.” The UT Faculty Senate recently passed a motion recommending that the president reverse his decision to interview tenure candidates. The discussion began with condemning his intended action, but the senate decided to be more positive in asking him to reverse his decision, said John Barrett, chairman of the faculty senate and a tenured law professor. Faculty believe that the plan goes against UT’s practices and those of many other universities. “Interviewing can be intimidating at the end of the process. It’s your whole career, and if you don’t get tenure, you lose your job,” Mr. Barrett said. “Faculty discussed options like if the president really wants to get to know faculty, he meet with them a year before.” Dr. Jacobs responded to the faculty senate motion, saying that he’s not considering these interviews lightly. “I always take into account input from all different directions and if they ask me to do that, I will take that request into account and think about it,” he said. The tenure review process is in the early stages now. The dossiers usually come to the president in the spring, so the decision on whether interviews will be part of the process would need to be made soon. Contact Meghan Gilbert-Cunningham at: mcunningham@theblade.com or 419-724-6134.

]]> http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091122/NEWS16/911229989/-1/RSS Chess was the name of the game Saturday at Owens Community College, as almost 400 students competed to be the best in the 2009 Ohio Grade Level Chess Championships.
The young chess players also had the opportunity to bring home honors for their school teams. Holland Elementary and Montessori School of Bowling Green were two area schools to take home first-place prizes. The students, in kindergarten through 12th grade, came from 42 schools across the state. They sat at rows of tables peering at their square-checkered boards, lost in thought. Each played five matches, with no eliminations. A match could last up to 90 minutes. Play lasted all day. Saturday's competition was the first time in 20 years the statewide event has been held in northwest Ohio. The sponsors were the Great Lakes Chess Association, the Montessori Chess Boosters Club (of Bowling Green), and Owens. Connie Karcher, whose son, Colgan, 9, competed, said chess is a constructive force in her son's life. “What I like about chess is the fact that the child is challenging his mind,” the Perrysburg resident said. “It's far better than sitting in front of a TV or video.”

During the matches, no cheering fans or anxious parents were in sight. In fact, parents were not even allowed in the room, lest they revert to some of the obnoxious behaviors sometimes on display at youth athletic events.
Not having Mom or Dad around also relieved stress on the players, explained Dan Dlugas, a volunteer floor monitor. “Some kids are pretty intense,” he said. “One lost a game and started crying. I had to take him aside.” The tournament featured impressive players such as the Clinton brothers — Jonathan, 12, and Jason, 13 — of Cleveland. Both are in the ninth grade, their father, David Allen, said. Jonathan is the top-ranked player in Ohio for his age and grade, and is the 30th-best player for his age in the United States, his father said, while Jason ranks third in Ohio for his age and 65th in the country.

Mr. Allen, a Life Chess Master as designated by the United States Chess Federation, said he is ranked 10th in Ohio and taught the boys how to play.
“They've really caught on. They rarely play against other kids. Most of the time they play adults. Jon is good. He's pretty steady. Jason is up and down, but when he's up, he's deadly. When he's playing well, he can beat anybody. He beat one of the best players in Ohio last week, an adult,” the proud father said. Jonathan and Jason go to Horizon Science Academy, a charter school, where, respectively, they have 4.0 and 3.9 grade point averages, Mr. Allen said. Chess is valuable for his sons, he said, because it imparts skills that carry over into other aspects of life. “It builds mental skills. It teaches them to reason. They have to sit and figure things out. It teaches them that when you make a move, you're responsible for what you do,” he explained. Mr. Dlugas, who taught math at Maumee High School for 32 years, said in his experience, the best chess players often were musical and good at math. “Those abilities seem to go with chess,” he said. Contact Carl Ryan at:carlryan@theblade.comor 419-724-6050.

]]> http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091122/NEWS14/911229965/-1/RSS GREENSBURG, Pa. — Bankrupted by the country he helped create and forgotten by a history he set on its course, Arthur St. Clair lies on a hillside in this western Pennsylvania community, discarded beer cans littering his patriot grave.
“He is one of the most important figures in American history and it really is amazing how he is forgotten,” said Stanley Klos, a historian of the early colonial period who counts St. Clair among the 10 “lost” presidents: men who served as head of the U.S. government under the Articles of Confederation, the code of law that served before the Constitution took effect in 1789. Ambitious, rebellious, and controversial, the Scottish-born St. Clair's life spanned the colonial era, from the Plains of Abraham, where he helped seize Quebec for the British, to Yorktown, where he stood with George Washington in the final battle of the Revolutionary War. St. Clair saved the post-revolution Congress from an uprising by mutinous troops in 1783. Three years later, on Feb. 2, 1786, he was named president of that same body, the country's government before the Constitution supplanted it three years later. He shepherded the Northwest Ordinance into law, opening what eventually would become six new states.

Later, as the highest-ranking official in the postrevolution government, he pressed the Confederation Congress to put itself out of business, persuading them to change not one word in the new Constitution sent to them in 1787 by its framers meeting in Philadelphia. The move also put St. Clair out of consideration for the new presidency. The Constitution he pushed to adopt precluded all but native-born citizens from the office.
“His role in 1787 was second to none except Washington, who was president of the Constitutional Convention,” said Mr. Klos, who has written two books on the subject. Yet, in a nation that begins its political history at 1776, then skips ahead to 1789 and beyond, St. Clair is as lost as the places he dwelt. Visitors to his monument — arguably the most important pre-20th century grave in western Pennsylvania — recently found beer cans and an empty whisky bottle scattered by the stone. The site of The Hermitage, his home in the Ligonier Valley, was sold off at bankruptcy centuries ago and now houses, among other things, a junk yard. On the mountain between the Westmoreland County villages of Darlington and Youngstown, along the original route of the Forbes Road, the tavern St. Clair opened in his late, impoverished years is a dilapidated farm. The study from The Hermitage survives, saved in the early 1960s and moved inside the museum at Fort Ligonier. After his death, a few places were named in his honor, including Upper St. Clair in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and St. Clairsville, Ohio.

Little of St. Clair's own history has been preserved in school curricula or the historical canon.
“As important as he was, there is no biography of him today,” said Martin West, director of the Fort Ligonier Museum. How did a giant of his time shrink from the history he helped make? St. Clair possessed a combination of brilliance, ambition, and hard luck, say historians. Coming to America Born in 1734 in Thurso, Scotland, the young St. Clair studied medicine and purchased an officer's commission in the British Army. Sent to North America during the French and Indian War, he gained fame on the Plains of Abraham, where Gen. James Wolfe led a force storming the fort at Quebec City. The young Lieutenant St. Clair grabbed the battle flag from a fallen soldier and rallied the troops to a victory. He rose in rank and esteem. Eventually, he was sent to the western portion of Pennsylvania as an agent of the Penn family, which appointed him king's magistrate of Bedford County. As a hero of the late war, he was awarded thousands of acres. At the time, Bedford stretched from the center of the colony through present-day Westmoreland County and several adjacent areas that would later become counties as well. When Westmoreland was split off from Bedford, St. Clair became its magistrate, acting as the arm of the Crown. It was as king's magistrate that St. Clair took a fort almost single-handedly. In the mid-18th century, Pittsburgh was disputed territory. Both Pennsylvania and Virginia laid claim to the fort at the headwaters of the Ohio. The British, heavily in debt from the French and Indian War, withdrew their garrison and, in the confusion, a Virginian named John Connolly seized Fort Pitt and rechristened it Fort Dunmore, in honor of the Virginia governor who had given blessing to the seizure. St. Clair marched in from the Westmoreland village of Hannastown. “He came over and marched into Fort Pitt without arms, said, ‘I am the king's magistrate' and arrested Connolly and took him to Hannastown. This ended Fort Pitt's occupation by Virginians,” said Mr. Klos. Governor Dunmore, deprived of his eponymous fort, wrote angrily to Governor Penn and demanded St. Clair's removal. In the politest go-to-hell letter of colonial America, Governor Penn responded that he considered St. Clair a gentleman, although perhaps a bit rash, but begged forgiveness “for not complying” with the request “which you will allow me to think not only unreasonable, but somewhat dictatorial.” A year later, St. Clair's fingerprints appeared all over a document declaring the rights of the colonists to equality with British citizens. After the confrontations at Lexington and Concord, Westmoreland's leading citizens gathered in Hannastown to draft the “Hanna's Town Resolves,” pledging “our lives and fortunes” to resisting, by arms and militias, any royal encroachments on “our just rights.” “They stopped short of declaring independence, but they did say they were willing to fight to protect our rights,” said Lisa Hays, director of the Westmoreland County Historical Society. A year later, St. Clair was willing to take the next step. The military officer Commissioned a brigadier general in the Continental Army, he took up arms for American independence. He was sent to a familiar place: Quebec, the scene of his earlier heroics for the British. A ragtag army of colonials had been beaten by British forces there and St. Clair moved north, where he reorganized and rescued the group. A grateful Congress promoted him to major general. He accompanied Washington's forces across the Delaware and into Trenton. Washington became St. Clair's sponsor of sorts and credited the general with the advice that led the Continental Army into Princeton for another victory. St. Clair's reputation was growing. Congress dispatched him to Ticonderoga to secure the region in northern New York. It was thought impregnable, but St. Clair found it in poor shape and when the British arrived, he made a decision to pull out. “The right decision, but controversial,” said Mr. West, the museum director. “His evacuation of Fort Ticonderoga saved part of the American army that later caused the British to surrender at Saratoga. But you don't win wars by evacuations. You're not remembered for that sort of thing.” John Adams called for St. Clair to be shot. Congress demanded an explanation. St. Clair demanded his own court-martial, if only to clear his name. The court found that St. Clair, outnumbered 3 to 1, with his men ill shod and underfed and British cannon surrounding the fort, made the right call. The victory at Saratoga and the presence of St. Clair's troops, still alive and fighting, bore it out. The Marquis de Lafayette wrote a celebratory letter. John Paul Jones, a fellow Scotsman, wrote to him: “I pray you can be assured that no man has more respect for your character, talents, and greatness of mind than, dear general, your most humble servant.” Consigned to an advisory role by political leaders that no longer trusted him fully, St. Clair spent much of the war on the fringes, finally rejoining Washington at Yorktown, where the war ended with American independence. Changing roles After the war, St. Clair took on another post: president of the Congress of the United States Assembled. Under the Articles of Confederation, this was the highest office in the land. It was there that he pushed through the Northwest Ordinance. Becoming obsolete when the new Constitution made his friend Washington the first president under the new government, St. Clair took on the job of governor general of the Northwest Territories. It would prove a disaster — politically, militarily, and financially. First came the uprising by the Miami Indians in 1791. St. Clair, still a general, led a force of troops deep into the territory to defeat the uprising. It became the worst rout by native Americans in American military history, surpassing even Little Bighorn. More than 600 men died, the troops scattered, and it remained for a Pennsylvania officer of lesser rank, “Mad Anthony” Wayne, to quell the rebellion in 1794. Ensconced in the territorial capital of Cincinnati, St. Clair financed most of his life out of his own pocket, handing out the requisite gifts, bribes, and tributes to the tribes as he sought treaties. He had assumed the new government eventually would reimburse him. He was wrong. As the first of the new territories, Ohio, came up for statehood, St. Clair opposed it, saying it wasn't ready. It was a fatal misstep. At the time, St. Clair was virtually the only remaining Federalist in a position of real power in the new Democratic Republican government of President Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson sacked him. Hard times St. Clair returned to Westmoreland County, politically finished, without a real military victory to his name, and deeply in debt. His creditors sued. His estate, The Hermitage, was sold off, his possessions were seized, and St. Clair moved 10 miles to the west, to a mountainside outside the Ligonier Valley, overlooking what is now Latrobe. The former president of his country, bankrupt and ignored, opened an inn and took in strangers traveling the Forbes Road. In August, 1818, St. Clair tumbled from the back of a wagon and died. Fellow members of the local Masons Lodge paid to bury him on the grounds of a Greensburg park now carrying his name. The original stone crumbled and, in 1913, another was erected. Its inscription reads: “The earthly remains of Arthur St. Clair are deposited beneath this humble monument which is erected to supply the place of a nobler one due from his country.” Nothing more was ever built. A few years before he died, said Mr. West, a visitor to the area wrote to a friend: “I saw a relic of the revolution today serving ale at a tavern,” he said. “It was Arthur St. Clair.” Block News Alliance consists of The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Dennis B. Roddy is a reporter for the Post-Gazette. Contact him at:droddy@post-gazette.comor 412-263-1965.

]]> http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091122/NEWS13/911229991/-1/RSS James F. Mohn, 78, a retired administrator in the Washington Local Schools and a longtime Washington Township trustee, died Friday in Hospice of Northwest Ohio, South Detroit Avenue, from complications of refractory anemia.
He was a longtime resident of the Shoreland area of the township. He lived the last nine years in South Toledo with companion Louise Spitulski. He ran unsuccessfully for Toledo City Council in 2006 and 2007. Mr. Mohn retired in 1988 after 32 years as a Washington Local employee, starting as a physical education teacher. He was Whitmer High School head football coach in the 1962 through 1964 seasons. He also coached track. In 1965, he left coaching to become Whitmer’s adult education director. He later was principal of Horace Mann, Hopewell, Jackman, and Monac elementary schools and of Washington Junior High School. He was associate principal of the Whitmer Vocational Center in 1980 when he became principal of Jefferson Junior High. “He was a man of great integrity,” said George Baker, a retired principal of Greenwood Elementary School. “He was always very straightforward, and you could always count on Jim. [He] was there because he had a great love for education and especially for helping young people.” In an era of dramatic change, he remained steadfast, even to his crew cut.

“He would certainly listen to what people had to say, [but] he was very black and white at a time, the late ’60s and early ’70s, when not everything was black and white,” said his son, John, who is head of the English department at Whitmer. “He was somehow able to still get along with kids and have a sense of humor and get along with teachers.”
Mr. Mohn was named a Washington Township trustee in 1968 to fill a vacancy and served through the late 1990s. His father, Frank, had been a Lucas County commissioner. He entered politics to preserve his school district. The township, once the largest in the county, became one of the state’s smallest after most of it was annexed into Toledo in the 1950s and ’60s. He knew the district by law could not exist without the township, however small. “He worked tirelessly to make sure services in the township were good so that people weren’t interested in being annexed,” his son said. Mr. Mohn was a Whitmer graduate. He received a bachelor’s degree from Central Michigan University; a master’s from Eastern Michigan University, and a specialist degree from the University of Toledo. He began his career in Mason Consolidated Schools. His wife of 44 years, Beverly, died in 1996. Surviving are life partner, Louise Spitulski; son, John; sister, Judith Murphy; brother, Frank, and three grandchildren. The body will be in the David R. Jasin-Hoening Funeral Home after 2 p.m. Monday. Services will be at 11 a.m. Tuesday at St. Michael’s In the Hills Episcopal Church, Ottawa Hills, where the body will be after 10 a.m. The family suggests tributes to Hospice of Northwest Ohio or St. Michael’s in the Hills, where he was a member.

]]> http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091122/NEWS16/911229999/-1/RSS He is the son and grandson of men legendary for their care of animals at the Toledo Zoo. Ultimately, he was forced to resign his own job amid cries that he killed too many animals.
There was a harsh irony at the surface of Lucas County Dog Warden Tom Skeldon's resignation announcement last week after more than 22 years in office. Yet a broader look at Mr. Skeldon's journey from helping his father at the zoo to becoming northwest Ohio's most outspoken dog warden shows how his vigorous law enforcement often put him at odds with evolving notions of animal compassion. All the while, he was carrying the legacy of the Skeldon family name. “I know he cares about animals,” said Karen Pilche, a second cousin of the warden. But, as she wrote in a letter calling for his resignation, Mr. Skeldon presided over “a horrendous disregard for life at the Lucas County Dog Warden's facility.”

“He can say, ‘I'm doing what the law says,' which is what he's doing,” she said in an interview, “but it may not be the moral thing.”
Mr. Skeldon, 61, announced his early retirement effective Jan. 31 in a letter to county commissioners Thursday, citing how “recent unjustified attacks” were tough on his family and that his leadership was becoming “an increasing distraction to this community.” His resignation met with celebration among local animal rescue groups, which long have criticized the dog pound for high euthanasia and low adoption rates as well as for the warden's policy not to adopt out to “all-breed” groups aside from the Toledo Area Humane Society. But many of his supporters felt a sense of injustice with how the warden was ostensibly chased out of office. Protecting people David Blyth, Jr., a former county deputy warden, said the warden was merely doing the job outlined for him in state and local law and carrying out his office's mission: protecting people.

“He took his job seriously and he was doing everything in his capacity to keep the community safe from vicious dogs,” Mr. Blyth said. “The problem is there are far too many dogs who enter the pound than there are people to adopt them.”
Mr. Skeldon would not grant an interview for this story. One thing both sides agree on is that Mr. Skeldon was passionate in carrying out what he believed were his job's responsibilities. Sandy Isenberg, a former county commissioner who voted in 1987 to appoint Mr. Skeldon warden, said he did a good job in the late 1980s of addressing the serious problem of roaming packs of dogs. For that accomplishment, he earned a great deal of popularity among bite-weary gas and electric meter readers as well as among worried parents. “As a person, Tom is very intense, very sincere. He felt very strong and I'm sure still does about wild dogs running in the street and biting kids,” she said.

A stubborn side
Ms. Isenberg is an aunt of current county Commissioner Ben Konop, one of Mr. Skeldon's most vociferous critics. She said she never had big problems with the warden, but said that he was known for being stubborn if it involved changing the way he ran his department. For example, Ms. Isenberg said Mr. Skeldon was very resistant in the 1990s to suggestions that he begin checking dogs for implanted microchip identification. Not until 2007 did the warden relent, after much insistence from Mr. Konop that microchipping was a service the community demanded and needed. Growing up The eldest of 11 children, Tom Skeldon grew up with big footsteps to follow. His father, Phil Skeldon, was director of the Toledo Zoo from 1953 to 1980, following a path blazed by his own father, Frank Skeldon, who headed the zoo from 1922 to his death in 1948 and was a business editor of The Blade. Young Tom started accompanying his father to the zoo at age 8. He worked there every summer through his high school years, helping out with concessions and later caring for a baby elephant. Ms. Pilche also worked summers at the zoo and recalled how Tom and his baby elephant were inseparable. “He just adored that elephant,” she said. “That elephant was like attached to him.”

Tom Skeldon was a nephew of Ned Skeldon, the long-serving county commissioner and Democratic Party stalwart.
In his resignation letter last week, Mr. Skeldon said he was tendering his resignation “with a great deal of pride in the Skeldon family and the role we have played in Lucas County and the city of Toledo.” Heading overseas A couple years after graduating in 1966 from Central Catholic High School, Mr. Skeldon was drafted and joined the Air Force. He was placed in a new dog handler course in which he learned to train German shepherds for patrol in southeast Asia. He arrived in Vietnam in 1970 and served one year as military police officer using sentry dogs to guard the perimeter of an air base in Bien Hoa in southern South Vietnam. Mr. Skeldon still wears on his dog warden uniform the Purple Heart he received for wounds suffered in a night rocket attack on the base. After his military service, he received his bachelor's degree at Ohio State University, where he majored in animal science with a minor in zoology. Looking to follow his father with a career in zoos, he then joined the Peace Corps and was sent to the Philippines, where he met his wife, Fanny.

The couple returned to America, and Mr. Skeldon picked up a job in the late 1970s as zoo director in Wilmington, Del. Mr. Skeldon has said he figured he would proceed on to larger zoos, but he and Fanny felt the pull of the Philippines and signed up for another two-year stint in the Peace Corps.
Along with his brothers Peter and Barry, he started a company in the Philippines that provided guard dogs for a gold mine and other businesses. Tom and Fanny Skeldon returned to Toledo in 1985, and two years later, Mr. Skeldon became dog warden. A Blade profile explained how his uncle, Ned, put in a good word for him. A high profile Although Mr. Skeldon was not in an elected office, his public profile exceeded those of many local politicians as he sought out media coverage of the more visual aspects of his warden job. Over time he gained a reputation as an expert in matters related to vicious dogs and was regularly called to testify for various legislation. In 2000, he spoke at the Statehouse in favor of a bill making it illegal to own surgically silenced vicious dogs such as those popular in drug dens for use as weapons against police. “I think that he was probably what I would term the leading proponent of that legislation,” said Lynn Olman, a former Republican state representative. “He was probably considered at the time to be one of those who had as much information about vicious dogs and about dealing with vicious dogs as anyone in the state.” ‘Pit bull' controversy Back home, Mr. Skeldon stoked the ire of rescue groups and some dog owners as he stepped up efforts to rein in a growing “pit bull” population in Toledo but refused to adopt out even well-behaved “pit bulls” to anyone. Although Ohio law considers all “pit bulls” vicious regardless of behavior, it was the warden's own policies that restricted their adoption and led to higher “pit bull” euthanization rates. Of the 2,483 dogs put down last year by the dog warden, slightly more than half were “pit bulls.” Altogether, the warden euthanized 77 percent of all dogs that entered the pound last year — one of the highest kill rates in Ohio. Even some of Mr. Skeldon's own deputies were disheartened to see him kill so many healthy “pit bulls.” Mr. Blyth, who retired in August, said he disagreed with the warden's stubborn insistence to exclude all “pit bulls” from adoption, even by responsible rescue groups. “Of course, that's easy for me to say because I'm not the one in the hot seat if a dog that was adopted ends up tearing some kid to shreds,” Mr. Blyth said. “So I kind of understand why he erred on the side of caution.” Ledy VanKavage, an attorney with Best Friends Animal Society, a nationwide animal advocacy and shelter group, criticized as antiquated both Mr. Skeldon and Ohio's breed-specific legislation targeting “pit bulls.” “Profiling really doesn't work, and in the case of dogs, it really is behavior that you want to target — not a look or a type of dog,” she said. Ms. VanKavage also said Mr. Skeldon's gung-ho attitude toward animal control is counterproductive and has given him and Lucas County a bad reputation across the nation. “Under Skeldon's regime, I think he's alienated the community and you don't want to do that. You don't want people to live in fear that animal control is somehow going to deem your mix a ‘pit bull' and take it and kill it.” But the warden's “pit bull” policies also won him some support. Last year, DogsBite.org named Mr. Skeldon Dog Warden of the Year. “Tom Skeldon is nationally recognized as an expert regarding the enforcement of ‘pit bull' laws as he has advised and provided testimony for jurisdictions from Colorado to Canada facing their own epidemic of ‘pit bull' attacks,” Colleen Lynn, the organization's founder and co-president, said Saturday in an e-mail. ‘His mindset' Ms. Pilche, the warden's cousin, said that in recent years, she and Mr. Skeldon have been in deep disagreement over “pit bulls” and dog rescue groups. She ran an animal rescue operation in California before her recent move to Glouster in southeast Ohio and tried to convince him that he could save space, money, and animals' lives at the pound if he were to allow “all-breed” groups to adopt out dogs. She also tried to convince him to adopt out healthy and friendly “pit bulls.” But neither effort was successful. Mr. Skeldon was just too set in his ways, she said. “I really think he has his mindset — this is the way ‘pit bulls' are and rescues are not good,” Ms. Pilche said. “It seems to me that for him, that was the way it was when he started in 1987 and that's the way it has to be today.” She added, “But things have changed a lot.” Contact JC Reindl at:jreindl@theblade.com or 419-724-6065.

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