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Our greatest community asset

Organist Maxine Sutherland, who has been in the Trinity music program for 55 years, plays the new Tokai piano.

Our country is reportedly experiencing a population migration toward bigger cities. Jobs and convenient amenities seem to be the attraction to the heavily populated areas. Smaller communities are searching for ways to reverse the trend. One approach is to look inwardly to analyze their own assets. Among the top assets found in this community is the generosity and compassion of the people of the upper Ohio Valley. The experience of the Community Center fully supports this conclusion.

First and foremost, the community learning center is able to benefit the greater East Liverpool area because of a very generous and unselfish gift by the Trinity Church congregation. All of its land and buildings in February 2016 were given to create the Center. Then many local businesses, individuals and Founding Patrons donated funds to be used to renovate, improve, add to and operate the facilities.

This week we will feature some of the donations made to the Center that make the Center more meaningful to our visitors and that are available to would-be visitors on a daily basis. Last December, a beautiful Tokai baby grand piano was added to the other six other pianos already at the Center through a gift. This donation has inspired the Center to pursue a means of offering piano lessons to youth of the area. Some young people visiting the Center are interested in music but lack the means to pay all or even any of the cost of piano lessons. Potential volunteer teachers may not have space available to give lessons in their homes. They are welcome to use our facilities and pianos.

Through the generosity of Mr. & Mrs. Marion (Jean) Perkins, the Center received a player piano last year. Many young visitors are fascinated to learn that a piano can be played simply by pedaling. It has already provided the opportunity for several families visiting the Center to enjoy a group sing-along to piano music powered by pedals.

Other gifts to the Center include several Hans Hacker paintings that now hang in the Hans Hacker Exhibit Hall. This past week, Mr. & Mrs. William (Judy) Auger gifted a signed Hacker print that will be first shown at the Legacy & Legends Lecture on March 7 at the Center. A missing Hacker Festival plate needed to make a complete collection had found its way to Columbus, Ind. It is now being returned by a former resident of Wellsville. A foosball table arrived this week and will be placed in the Teen Zone area. An air hockey game was offered last week and will join a donated Wii Game in the new Teen Zone. An anonymous donor recently presented the Center with a 10-pound bag of coins. He had collected a few dollar bills and the coins over many years that were sent to him soliciting his donations. He was waiting to find a worthwhile charity and decided to donate it to the Community Center.

Community Center volunteer Tracy Adkins sorts through coins donated to help with Center programming expenses.

There have been a number of gifts offered the Center that simply did not fit into the plans and purpose of the community center. It is hard to believe that with all of the rooms at the Center that we are starting to run out of space.

The generosity of the community is not limited to tangible gifts. Businesses such as ROF’s Dale Wynn, PC Doctor Brian Kerr and website specialist Amy Hissom have donated services and some materials. Pizza shops have offered healthy discounts to benefit neighborhood youth who have worked and are then fed at the Center. Volunteers give graciously of their time to tend the desk in the Hospitality area, to mentor students, teach classes, lead programs, and as speakers addressing educational programs. The Ohio Wine Growers Association donated the proceeds from a wine tasting class offered last fall.

The HHH Foundation does not have a monopoly on generous gifts to benefit residents of the area. There is an abundance of wonderful community organizations that have been the beneficiaries of gifts and services to this community over the years. We as a community are blessed to have so many generous, committed and dedicated friends and neighbors. If you are not part of the team of volunteers and donors serving others, you should consider joining. All such organizations are deserving of your support and depend of their volunteers.

Events on our schedule near term include a Hans Hacker Exhibit and Lecture, a fly fishing class led by Craig Wetzel, and the annual Easter Pageant. Future articles will discuss these events in detail.

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