Marshall County

Roger Umbaugh

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Easterday Construction lost another good friend last week. Roger Umbaugh passed away Thursday evening, August 5th. (Obituary here.) We completed several projects for Roger at his home on 12th Road, including a re-siding project with Mary Ellen Rudisell. That was one of those projects that could have become contentious as it seemed that every day we would find a new underlying problem that we couldn’t foresee. The home was a RT house that Roger’s father had constructed and that designer/builder had a reputation that his homes were guaranteed to leak. It was a cool home though! Roger and Carol took the odd construction discoveries and issues in stride.

Personally, I really became friends with Roger when we were tapped to start the Marshall County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) in 2007. Roger was asked to do this by Kevin Overmyer as a representative of Marshall County. I represented the town of Culver. At first meeting of the group, Roger forgot to invite me! He followed up, apologized, and we went out to dinner with our wives, Carol & Becky, so he could bring me up to speed. That went so well and we all got along so well, that it became a regular thing. We rarely went more than a month without a night out together and one year we vacationed with them at their cabin in Pagosa Springs, CO.

Roger and I shared a sense of pragmatism and impatience that fortunately wasn’t turned against each other too often. (No relationship is perfect, ha!) We both were officers for MCEDC nearly our whole tenure there. For better or worse, we went through 4 executive directors. In the end, the issues caused by the last one under our tenure became too stressful for Roger and he had to step down. I had stepped down a couple months prior to that and Roger said that played into his decision as it wasn’t as much fun without us there together.

Marshall County Philanthropy Center
Roger helped make this building possible.

Roger left a legacy at MCEDC as a founding member, but at times that legacy was as much in his support role as when he was out in front. He was my vice chair when I chaired the organization. When I wanted to gather the communities together to foster better understanding and cooperation, he worked behind the scenes to help me. That became the quarterly County Development for the Future (CDFF) meetings, which made Culver Stellar designation and Marshall County Stellar designation possible. I don’t know that I could have made those county meetings happen without his help. He was also the one that made the New Market Tax Credit project happen. Without him, the financing of the pool and the new building for the Marshall County Community Foundation (MCCF) would never have happened. It was his knowledge and contacts with the State that made it viable. These are just a couple of the things that I was closely tied with and can relate. I know there are many others. But Roger wasn’t one to want credit. He was just happy to see the groups he supported succeed.

We remained friends after MCEDC, kabitzing from the sidelines. We also served on the MCCF Investment Committee together, so our civic service together continued to the end. We continued to have nights out together though the last couple of years they were fewer due to Covid and Roger’s health issues. Both of these fueled his impatience. He never liked dealing with things he couldn’t affect!

Thanks for all the great times, wonderful support and unending wisdom, Roger!

Kevin

Pony Barn

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The Pony Barn before it got it’s new roof in 2017

This is another installment of Easterday Lore. Those that have been to our office have probably noticed the old barn adjacent to the main building. Internally this is referred to as the Pony Barn or the Red Barn (though it’s only vaguely red anymore). This is dates back to when this property was part of Great Grandpa (Russell) Easterday’s farm. At that time the property was at the edge of town. Back then there were a couple of cattle barns on the site as well. One had been swallowed up by nature back in the seventies and the other was replaced by a pre-engineered steel building around that same time.

Hereford Bull
By User Robert Merkel on en.wikipedia – US Department of Agriculture, Public Domain

In the early days, the Easterday farm included the property extending from the current site of Easterday Construction up to highway 10 and across 10 to 17th Road. In the 60’s, Russell’s Hereford cattle would graze in pasture at the end of Slate Street. Up until the construction of the high school in 1969, kids would ride their bikes up to the end of Slate Street to pet and feed the cattle grazing on the other side of the fence. The field behind the baseball and little league diamonds and the farmland directly north of the Culver Middle/High School are all that remain of this farm owned by descendants of the Easterday family. This is all leased property now. The working parts of the farm were sold off over time.

The Pony Barn truly housed horses & ponies in the day. Russell’s grandson, Larry Berger, had a pony housed there when he was a kid. Russell owned and rode a beautiful five-gaited horse that was also stabled there. (That was before the offices actually moved to that location from their original location in the State Exchange Bank. That’s another story for another time.) At that time, Russell and his wife, Wanda, lived at 309 Ohio Street. Between the farm and the construction company, Russell was successful and always drove a Cadillac. But as a farmer and contractor, that Cadillac was a working man’s car. There was often grass caught in the bumper and cow manure in the wheel wells from when he’d driven it through the field to inspect the cattle. And the day Grandpa Easterday bought his grandson Larry a pony… that pony road home in the back seat of his Cadillac!

Easterday Lore

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I thought I would stick some “Easterday Lore” up here occasionally. Some of this will be history, some of it will be stories, some of it will be tips… ALL of it will be suspect, based on hearsay and things passed down through the oral history of the Easterday Family, blood or otherwise. We also have a page here which is more direct history of the company.

Shiny copper sheets from Solitaire Overseas

Today’s tidbit may be a tip, but I cannot personally attest to its veracity. In the early days of Russell L. Easterday Construction and Supply Company, we did a lot of construction at the Culver Academies, then Culver Military Academy. That has continued throughout the decades. One of the early projects included some copper work. New copper comes bright and shiny like a new penny. This project was an addition to an existing building and the new shiny copper stood out next to the older existing metalwork. My great grandfather, Russell Easterday, received this as a complaint and was a bit flummoxed. There was nothing wrong with the craftsmanship, but the new addition looked too new… an unusual complaint at that time. As always, there was an event coming up and they didn’t want to wait for the copper to obtain a naturally aged patina.

Culver Academies Black Horse Troop

Grandpa talked to painters, some paint suppliers and finally contacted some old-country sheet metal workers he knew. One older gentleman who had been in the trade forever said, “Ack, that’s no problem. Just douse it down with some horse p*ss!” Easterday Lore is that this worked. I’m sure the Black Horse Troop was the source, but there was no discussion of how it was collected!

Update on The Paddocks 5-20-20

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Fieldstone facade at The Paddocks

Progress has continued on The Paddocks Apartments and Townhouses over the past month. The first building erected was a townhouse building. The exterior is not complete with the exception of the garage doors which are scheduled to be installed within the next week. We upgraded the initially specified faux stone facade accents to actual fieldstone. It looks great! This also follows Culver’s Charrette recommendations for continuing a fieldstone theme on new construction in Culver wherever possible. The driveway base is in place and we are working on scheduling asphalt. Paving may have to wait until the second drive is complete, but Phend & Brown is looking at ways to expedite this for us.

Kitchen with Prime Paint

Inside the townhouse building, the walls have been insulated, drywall has been hung & finished and painting is underway. We are expecting delivery of cabinets in the next day or two. Things will be changing rapidly there as we move through finishes.

First Apartment Building Insulation Underway

The three apartment buildings are all under roof and are at various stages of completion for infrastructure. We are currently waiting on siding to arrive for installation to begin on those exteriors. All interior infrastructure is in place on the west apartment building and insulation is underway this week. Drywall installation should follow shortly.

Preparing for Slap Pour tomorrow

The second townhouse building at the far end of the site has footings, frostwalls and underslab infrastructure in place. All of the wall panels are on site and framing should begin as soon as the slab has been poured. We expect that to happen yet this week.

The other exciting news here is the finalization of a landscape plan. This project is going for NGBS Silver status and part of that point system requires a Sustainable Landscape. We have contracted with Cardno to provide this for us. We asked them to include a presentation to the Culver Town Council, since some elements differ from current ordinance requirements. That presentation was made on the 12th. You can find more on that, including a short video of that presentation in a previous post here. The plan will go through some additional tweaking, but we have a great start here. We hope to have plantings completed by the end of this year.

Draft Sustainable Landscape Plan as of 5-1-20

We’re pleased with how things are coming together and the kind comments we’re receiving about the project. We continue to feel that this will be a great addition to the Culver community and our proud that this is our contribution to Culver’s Stellar designation.

New Culver Information Sign

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Marty Oosterbaan gave an Stellar Update to the Culver merchants on the weekly Zoom call Friday. The item that caught my attention was the community sign project. I remembered that from the Stellar presentation and I think it’s a good idea. Basically, the plan is to establish electronic signs in all of the Marshall County communities, similar to the existing Lions Club sign in Culver, where community and regional messages can be displayed. This would be a just another form of communication supplementing internet and newspapers. Community events can be listed and can be cross-listed between the communities to promote local events.

I am working on a similar project for the Francesville Salem Township Public Library so I shared some of those cost estimates. (An electronic sign runs between $25k & $35k per Vanadco Sign) I have a few more thoughts on how this sign should be handled in Culver, so I thought I would share them here:

Fieldstone facade at The Paddocks
  1. I would like to see Culver follow the Charrette recommendations when they think about this and continue the fieldstone theme. The Chamber and the Second Century Committee really pushed this early on and I think it’s worth carrying forward. Their efforts resulted in the fieldstone theme for the Culver sign at 10 & 17, the Lion’s Club sign at the Depot and the stone wall at the turn across from The Root Beer Stand. We’ve gotten away from this, but I think things like that make a statement. We’re using fieldstone accents on the townhomes at The Paddocks for that reason. Personally I was very disappointed when the Firemen went with the faux stone in lieu of the fieldstone that was proposed for their memorial.
  2. The Chamber of Commerce thought long and hard about the sign at the corner of S.R. 17 and S.R. 10. Other communities were putting up the smaller plastic signs. Marshall County Tourism was giving away some of these and they were installed at three of our other entrances to Town. The Chamber wanted to make a statement with the sign they installed and they wanted that sign to be something substantial and permanent. Stellar should consider this permanence too. Culver should consider kicking in money if the budget is too tight. We should make this one of the things that commemorates the Stellar effort for decades.
  3. I think there needs to be a lot of care in decisions about where we place this:
    • While the best visible place might be above the above mentioned wall on the Lake Shore Drive turn, it should not be placed where it detracts from the Lake, Park or other current picturesque views and vistas.
    • The Lions Club sign already serves this function to some extent, so providing some separation to expand the audience, and frankly, space out the visual clutter, would be preferable.
    • We have a sign ordinance and while this would be a municipal sign and therefore exempt, those criteria were memorialized in the Zoning Ordinance for a reason and should be considered.
    • We should not get hung up on this being a free standing sign. There are options for placing this on buildings where it would be highly visible and such a location would be more cost effective if it work.
    • The Francesville Library wants to use the sign to communicate to their community about the library, but then will put community messages on it at other times. Maybe Culver Union Township Public Library is another potential partner?
  4. There have been efforts in the past to create information kiosks in town. The cost has always turned out to be prohibitive, but this might be an opportunity to combine things like this. Even if it’s not part of the original project, if access to the electrical service can be made available for future uses, that expands the bang for the buck.
  5. Because this will draw some electricity, working with the various utilities up front may garner free service if they get some accolades. I know NIPSCO and IMPA give economic development grants for things and this could be applicable.
  6. And a final caution that we do our best to make the back-end bullet proof or as much so as possible. I have been working with Good Oil and they just recently told me about how a kid had figured out how to hack into their network from his cell phone and patch in porn on the TV’s at one of their stores. If you are going to set this up so that the message can be programmed remotely by MC Tourism or other, then it has internet connections and is a target for hackers.

I think this is a great idea and has a lot of potential. As always, the Devil is in the Details. Good luck, Marty!