About Me

I am an Ohio native. Springfield is my hometown, but I have lived in Westerville since entering Otterbein University as a freshman in the fall of 1969. I also worked at Otterbein for 31 years retiring as Registrar at the end of 2015.

My blog focus is local history (Westerville; Otterbein) which has not received much or any attention and the architecture of the Columbus firm Yost & Packard. Joseph Warren Yost and Frank Lucius Packard had national reputations (see Wikipedia on the web). Many designs are from a favorite period of mine in America, the Gilded Age, and they span 74 of Ohio’s 88 counties. Occasionally I branch off…the Flagler blog being once such instance.

Blogging began when I started (post-retirement) doing volunteer scanning for Otterbein’s Digital Commons and made note of a bunch of local history. That led to:

  • chairing a committee to get Westerville’s Uptown Historic District added to the National Register of Historic Places
  • researching buildings in this District and placing bronze history plaques on 37 of them
  • successfully placing Otterbein’s former Carnegie Library on the National Register of Historic Places
  • applying for and being awarded an Ohio Historical Marker for Olde Methodist Cemetery in Uptown Westerville; cleaning over 160 gravestones thus restoring readability
  • replacing the Benjamin Hanby Ohio Historical Marker on the Otterbein campus with one of expanded narrative and making it two-sided to include a bio of his father Bishop Willliam Hanby
  • obtaining (shared undertaking with my Flagler neighbors) a descriptive second gravestone in Bellevue (Ohio) Cemetery for Carrie Harkness Flagler who died at age 3 and whose ornate child-size gravestone was simply engraved “Carrie” (father was Henry Morrison Flagler, co-founded of Standard Oil

Blogging slowed in 2025 due to surprise triple bypass surgery (had no symptoms). Should be back up to speed in 2026. Future blogs include:

  • Packard designs early in his career
  • Y&P designs in the counties of Coshocton, Guernsey, Harrison, Jefferson and Tuscarawas
  • Y&P designs in the counties of Athens, Noble and Washington
  • Y&P designs in the counties of Gallia, Hocking, Jackson, Lawrence, Meigs and Vinton
  • Y&P designs in the counties of Ashtabula, Columbiana, Lake, Mahoning, Portage, Stark, Summit and Trumbull
  • Otterbein and its association with Henry Clay Frick
  • Otterbein and its two Native American football coaches of the early 20th Century