It was heartwarming to see the elementary kids out helping plant trees at the High School this morning. Kudos to Karen Shuman, School Superintendent, and Kevin Danti, Town Manager, for leading the effort with shovels in hand. Jud Dillon would be proud!
The property has a history with my family, as it was formerly part of my Great Grandpa Russell Easterday’s farm. When I was 7 or 8, I remember riding my bike to the end of Slate Street to give treats of carrots to the members of Grandpa Easterday’s herd of white-faced Hereford cattle that were brave enough to come see me at the fence. At one time, the Easterday farm extended all of the way down to Easterday Construction. Before the office building was built in the 50’s, there were cattle barns and the red barn on the property was known as the pony barn where grandpa kept horses. Russell and Wanda Easterday lived in the brick house on the west side of the north end of Ohio Street.
Arthur Judson “Jud” Dillon and Grandpa Easterday were friends. Like my grandfather, Jud was a farmer that moved on from farming to better support is family. In both cases they became teachers. Grandpa moved on to construction while Jud moved from teacher to guidance counselor to High School Principal. Jud’s farm surrounded the intersection of 10 & 17 at the entrance to Culver from the north. If you look up old deeds in that area, you’ll see that the town lots in that area are part of the Dillon Addition.
When the high school was built, there were few, if any, trees in the pasture. All of the older trees you see around the high school were planted by Jud. Since the high school was built in 1969, and the first Earth Day was in 1970, it’s hard to say if those trees were tied to Earth Day or not. As Jud’s son, Gary, relates it (Stories and Stones ’25, 17 min mark), Jud had an affinity for trees and was responsible for planting them all around Culver while Gary was responsible for watering them.
It’s nice to see the legacy continue. The school property definitely needs a few more trees!
This is mostly a historic reference piece from my memory. I can’t find much in the way of documentation. Forgive me if I misremember and as always, I’ll update it if better documentation comes along. Out of curiosity, I checked Judy’s history page and there wasn’t even a mention of the Second Century Committee, but I know her focus is on older things.
I served on the Culver Chamber of Commerce board of directors from 1990 to 2002, holding every office except chairman. John Thompson worked at the Culver Academies and served on the board and as board chair for several years in the mid 90’s. Jim Dicke II‘s purchase of properties around Culver had not gone unnoticed by the Chamber. He had purchased, demolished, and cleaned up multiple properties around town, but there hadn’t been any movement towards development. (To this day, there are several vacant properties that he still owns.)
Through his connections at Culver Academies, John arranged a meeting with Jim in New Bremen, Ohio. A delegation from the CCC went, including John Thompson, Erik Freeman, Pam Fisher and myself. Jim was a gracious host, giving us a tour of his company, Crown Equipment Corporation, their offices in downtown New Bremen and a general tour of the Town. Over a lunch at a New Bremen restaurant, Jim shared what he had done with New Bremen.
The Village of New Bremen is very much a Crown Equipment Corporation Company Town. Crown Equipment is the main employer in the area and it was in Crown’s best interest for New Bremen to thrive. But as a small town with only one large employer, this was difficult. This was made more challenging by their rural location without direct connections to any major highways. Jim made the decision to invest in the community. Houses were purchased and renovated as Bed & Breakfasts for use by Crown Equipment visiting guests and consultants. A downtown block was purchased, preserving the facades to maintain the local charm, but completely rebuilding everything in the back half to serve as corporate offices, bringing Crown employees and visitors into the downtown. An older car dealership in the downtown was purchased and moved to the edge of town, to allow for more appropriate use of the downtown streetscape. The restaurant we were meeting in was upgraded and kept viable through subsidies in order to be there when Crown Equipment needed a place to take guests.
It was during this meeting that Jim made what I considered an iconic statement, which I have repeated for decades now: “Towns are either growing or dying. They can’t stay the same.” I don’t know if this was an original statement, but I’ve not seen it anywhere else. (There is a version of it from Lou Holtz about individuals that I found, but I’ve always attributed the town version to Jim.)
Jim said his vision of Culver was to see Culver Academies become more integrated into the community as Crown Equipment had done with New Bremen. He said he wanted to see the town of Culver thrive, as he thought it was important to the Culver Academies. You can see his fingerprints on this through the move of some Culver Academies administrative offices to the former Mr. T’s Drug Store at 820 Academy Road and to the former Culver Community School’s administration building at 222 North Ohio Street.
John asked the big question, “What would it take for you to invest in Culver like you’ve invested in New Bremen?” Jim responded that obviously he already had, through some of his property purchases and clean-up, but there wasn’t a clear path for Crown Equipment to have a Culver location. He did say he was happy to continue his efforts to involve Culver Academies in the Town of Culver and would support efforts to bring more industry to Culver. But he added the caveat: the town needs to show they are organized, have a plan and are ready for changes.
Our group was pensive on the return trip to Culver. While we felt we had made progress with the things the Chamber of Commerce was doing, Jim had pointed out some community shortfalls, the most obvious being a lack of collaboration. From this discussion, the Culver Second Century Committee was born. Culver Academies was going through their 1994 centennial celebration. The Town of Culver was previously named Marmont and changed its name to Culver in 1885 to honor Henry Harrison Culver, founder of the school. It seemed fitting that our new group reflect change as the Town of Culver entered its second century.
The Culver Second Century Committee (SCC) was created as an offshoot of the Culver Chamber of Commerce (CCC). This allowed SCC to exist under CCC’s 501c(3) status. This also gave the CCC some oversight and responsibility for the group, but allowed other groups to participate without direct CCC membership. There were no membership dues or other impediments to participation. We actively recruited participation from the town government and other civic groups such as the Lions, Kiwanis, Tri Kappa and others. The goal was to start a dialogue and create some synergy between the groups and to have some common projects in lieu of each group raising funds for similar efforts.
The group formed a steering committee consisting of four members. It intentionally recruited a mix of Chamber members and non-Chamber members for the steering committee to reinforce the collaborative goal. I did not serve on the initial steering committee, but did serve for a time after the initial member’s terms expired. The group began having quarterly lunch meetings which resulted in a true collaborative spirit. Town government representatives were involved as well, so we had a wide spectrum.
The first major thing tackled by the group was the Community Needs Assessment and Recommendations conducted by Mary Means & Associates, Inc. out of Alexandria, Virginia. (I believe the Town of Culver has copies of the original document, but I couldn’t find it online to provide a link. I do have a copy if anyone would like me to share it.) The Community Needs Assessment was completed in October of 1997. This was not a deep diving document, but it did gather public input and act as a catalyst for next steps. Even back then housing was an issue mentioned. There was also a recommendation for updates to the Comprehensive Plan and the Zoning Ordinance.
SCC continued to meet and push for changes. The next piece to come out of the Needs Assessment was the Culver Community Charrette lead by Ratio Architects. This resulted in the Culver Community Charrette Handbook presented in November of 1998. Ratio Architects built on and expanded the ideas in the Needs Assessment, defining some of the themes of Culver to expand upon. An example of this was the use of fieldstone throughout Culver, which lead to the Chamber sponsoring the new sign with fieldstone columns at the 10 & 17 entrance to town and the covering of the Lakeshore Drive wall across from the Root Beer Stand with fieldstone. Sand Hill Farm used this theme with the entrance sign on Sand Hill Boulevard. The Paddocks used this theme with the fieldstone facades on the townhomes in their development.
Welcome to Culver Sign at intersection of 10 & 17
After the charrette, Ratio Architects was hired to update the Culver Comprehensive Plan. That version of the plan incorporated many of the themes from the Needs Assessment and the Community Charrette. While this was a Culver Plan Commission project, the Second Century Committee remained involved. But unfortunately, as the ownership of the project transitioned to the town, some of the collaboration and commitment to SCC waned.
Over time, the SCC steering committee became less of a guiding group and started becoming more of an action group. I was no longer part on the steering committee, but still attended the meetings. Unfortunately, in this time frame, the meetings with the larger group ceased and the underlying groups had less stake in SCC. Culver Chamber was going through some transitions as well, so SCC was mostly on its own.
For a while the SCC steering committee was taking on different projects. For example, Dick Brantingham was on the steering committee for years and shepherded the sidewalk program, working to pair residents and/or businesses on the same block with the town’s replacement assistance program in order to maximize the impact. There were other projects like that as well.
In 2011, the SCC made another change in direction as it became part of Indiana Main Street and got rolled into the Visitors Center and/or one of the other organizations. To the best of my knowledge, the Second Century Committee didn’t make it through the first quarter of Culver’s new century and if there are remnants, it no longer functions as intended.
While never an actual employee, Jackye was an integral part of the ECC supporting cast. She would run errands, pick up supplies, help with entertaining clients and hosting company gatherings. While Larry Berger ran the company, Jackye was a stay-at-home mom. Larry was fortunate to be able to walk home for lunch most days, so he was able to spend lunch hour breaks with her. She served as a reassuring break from what was often a stressful job.
As outlined in her obituary, Jackye was also very involved in her community, volunteering and and serving on multiple boards and service entities. Her willingness to give of her time, knowledge and talents had an outsized effect on the Culver community.
Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease and the ECC family was saddened to watch her decline.
There will be a Celebration of Life this Summer when Larry returns to Culver, date yet to be determined. For those so inclined, her family requests in memoriam donations to the Alzheimer’s Association.
The previous version of our website was at least 17 years old, since that’s when the first blog post went up. Hard to believe. The website and the blog are as much my way of tracking time as they are a marketing tool.
In any case, Andrew Baker of Baker Technology Services LLC got our site updated before the host pulled the plug on the unsupported items. We’re still on WordPress, but we have a new theme and some new plugins. If you’ve experienced any connection issues, they may be due to Andrew taking the site up and down as he works the bugs out. If you run across broken links, missing pages, etc., let me know and I’ll try and clean those up. As usual with these things, they turn out to be harder than initially anticipated, so this has been a lengthy process.
The site has a slightly different feel and addresses somethings a little differently, which I’ll need to learn. Andrew was able to add a few tweaks, like the Easterday “E” in your browser tab when you are on the site. (I a m sure that has a name that I don’t know…) Some things are gone for now, like some of the slide shows, but I’ll get those figured out eventually.
I’ll try and get back to a more regular schedule of posts as we slide into 2026. Hate to let my lurkers down! Here’s hoping you all have a Happy, Healthy & Prosperous New Year!
This post fully embraces the “rant” designation, so scroll on if you don’t want my political opinion piece. Listening to the back and forth over the past month and a half has been tiring and frustrating. The Democrats’ position has seemed pretty untenable, considering they (Democrats while in power) passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) without Republican support, they (Democrats while in power) passed the Covid enhancements to the ACA, which included the sunset provision that’s upon us, without Republican support and now, while not in power, they (Democrats) are demanding the Republicans fix it. In response, the Republicans have proposed paying everyone during the shutdown, despite the fact that the whole reason for the shutdown is there’s no money appropriated to do so. In typical Federal Government fashion. the only solutions either side seem to be able to see is to throw more money at problems.
Every time there is a government shutdown, they seem to put more rules in place to make the next one less painful… somewhat defeating the whole point of it. Why do a shutdown if no one is going to notice? After one of the last shutdowns, things were changed to assure that government employees would be reimbursed for lost wages, even though they weren’t working. No business could survive that way… The latest enhancement to that is that government employees will not even have to wait until the end of the shutdown to get paid! The ones laid off are already getting a paid vacation, but if the current proposal goes through, they’ll get a regular paycheck while off. I guess, “Why not?” All the Senators and Representatives got their check!!! They still managed to collect taxes though…
Side Note:Everyone should have an emergency fund, because it’s rare to have a 100% guaranteed income, but if you work in an industry (government) where these shutdowns occur regularly, it’s even more important. There is no question of IF there will be another government shutdown, only when… I have a hard time working up a lot of sympathy for those that were surprised by this.
James Stewart as Jefferson Smith filibustering on floor of the Senate
There was some talk about changing the Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster. It may be on the way out the door anyway, as there was an attempt to eliminate it in the last Democrat controlled Congress, but was stopped by just two moderate Democrats. And they’re not in office anymore… I am fully against its elimination. I think the minority party should have some vehicle to slow and bring to attention bad legislation, but it shouldn’t be painless. Otherwise, like this time, it’s just obstruction for no benefit. There was no pain for Senators in this latest shutdown filibuster. Sometime in the 1970’s the rules were changed to allow a filibuster to only require an objection. Yes, that’s a simplification, but accurate. Before that time, a Senator or group of Senators would have had to speak continuously on the floor of the Senate to keep the filibuster in effect, a la 1939 movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. There was pain for all involved as the Senate had to stay in session and those filibustering had to hold the floor for hours on end, speaking into the record. The new rules are lazy and painless. If you want to take a stand against something, you should have to actually stand!
With very few exceptions, most Americans didn’t feel any effects of the shutdown, as most things continued as is. Only “nonessential” workers were furloughed. It wasn’t until the SNAP program began to run out of money and the airlines began to feel the air traffic controller pinch that anyone really perked up. Senators cared about SNAP, because those are actual voters affected. They didn’t care about not paying air traffic controllers, until it escalated to the fear of constituents complaining about not getting to fly home for the holidays.
In my opinion, pain and risk form the answer. Senators should feel some pain when they determine something should be filibustered and their constituents should feel some pain during a shutdown in order to get their attention. Senators should have been afraid of their actions getting their constituents attention for something that resulted in nothing. As is, the whole thing was low cost theatre that had very little effect on anything.
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