Ninety-somethings steal show at Ohio National Guard event
Side by side they stood, the soldiers and civilians alike, as the 98-year-old veteran with the American flag blanket covering his lap waved from his wheelchair.
This ceremony was supposed to be, at least in part, a celebration of the 229th birthday of the Ohio National Guard (formed as the Northwest Territory Militia). But it was three World War II veterans who stole the show, each having served with the Guard’s 37th Buckeye Division, a storied and decorated unit that celebrates its centennial this month.
So as about 300 people gathered Tuesday on the drill floor of the Guard’s Maj. Gen. Robert S. Beightler Armory Headquarters — named for the Buckeye Division’s revered WWII commander — attention turned to the oldest of the Buckeye soldiers in attendance.
There were 93-year-olds Gerald Shaner of Westerville and Wayne Morr of Beavercreek. They saluted and waved as they were introduced, and the applause thundered.
Then came Edgar Moorman, whose son wheeled him to the front so that he could help to cut the cake using a World War I-era bayonet to commemorate 100 years ago when the Buckeye Division was formed and prepared to deploy in battle. The crowd took to its feet.
Moorman said the whole event overwhelmed him a bit.
“I’m at a loss for words,” he said. Then he smiled and found some. “It was a great honor to serve during World War II and people can’t forget what it was like back then.”
The Buckeye Division (whose descendant unit today is the Buckeye Division 37th Infantry Brigade Combat Team) is legendary. Organized on July 8, 1917, the 37th fought in France and Belgium during World War I. But it was World War II when the division really made its mark.
Commanded then by Beightler, a Marysville native, the 37th engaged in continuous combat for almost 600 days. It lost 1,891 soldiers in its Pacific campaigns and seven men earned the Medal of Honor.
In its history, the Buckeye Division has also sent soldiers to the Korean War, and the modern wars on terror. Even now, about 100 soldiers from the 37th are deployed to Kosovo, set to return later this week.
Ohio Army National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Joshua Mann, also the Guard’s historian, went through the rolls Tuesday of some of the soldiers lost to battle over time.
“Are they forgotten? No,” he said, then he pointed to those assembled before him. “They’re living, right out there. And they’ll keep on living as long as the 37th lives. The faces may change, the names, but they’re here. They’re the Buckeye, now and 50 years from now.”
Col. Kevin Lochtefeld, the rear brigade commander of the 37th Division troops who are not deployed in Kosovo, spent time with each of the three World War II Buckeye Division veterans at the ceremony. He said he listened with reverence to the ceremony as the history he knows so well was recounted.
“The history of this division is a point of pride. Through our challenges, our obstacles, our missions — both overseas and here at home — that is what keeps us going,” Lochtefeld said. “If we ever fail, we fail all of those who went before us. “
Moorman, who served five years and was a radio operator, said being a part of the Buckeye Division was something special. Through those 592 days of continuous combat, as the men islandhopped through New Zealand and Fiji, Guadalcanal and New Georgia, the Solomon Islands and the Philippines, he thought many times that the day at hand would be his last.
“I was sort of set for it, I guess,” he said of death. “I felt if I go, I go. It’s what you had to do.”
When the United States dropped the atomic bombs at Hiroshima to end the war, the Buckeye Division troops were being readied to head to Japan.
“We wouldn’t have survived more combat. We were very thankful,” Moorman said. “It was like a veil had been lifted from our eyes. We could see home.”
ECOT will slash COLUMBUS — its spending for the upcoming school year by more than $56 million dollars and lay off 250 employees in order to repay $60 million in overpayments it owes at the same time its enrollment shrinks.
Administrators at the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow online charter school apparently approved a $75.5 million spending plan for the current 2016-17 school year, according to discussion at a meeting Tuesday evening. But ECOT Superintendent Rick Teeters said after the meeting that he didn’t have a copy of the budget to share with The Dispatch, and it also wasn’t available publicly on the ECOT board agenda website.
Discussion at the meeting indicated that ECOT would spend more than the $58.5 million it anticipates getting from the state this year, and it was using bank deposits to help get through the year.
The board was told by a representative of Altair Learning Management, the for-profit company owned by ECOT founder William Lager that helps run the school, that enrollment this month is down 12.4 percent year-overyear, to 13,804. That’s about 500 students less than the 14,200 that ECOT billed the state for this month, netting $6.15 million on July 13 after repaying $2.5 million as its first claw-back payment to the state.
ECOT spokesman Neil Clark said he couldn’t immediately comment on the difference between the enrollment that ECOT reported for its July payment and what the administration reported to the board Tuesday at its South Side headquarters. Clark said by email that he would look into it.
The difference between the two enrollments is about $300,000 a month in state funds to ECOT.
Both figures are vastly higher than the 6,800 students that a state Department of Education hearing examiner determined ECOT was ultimately entitled to for the 2015-16 school year, adding up to about $44.6 million. ECOT had claimed 15,300 students that year, but lacked documentation that students were participating in daily schoolwork.
ECOT has, in effect, claimed that its students don’t have to perform work for it to get paid; the school only has to make available “learning opportunities” to the students. A string of court losses has refuted that notion, and the Ohio Supreme Court is expected to decide the matter. The ECOT board held a closeddoor executive session with its attorney, Marion Little, for about half an hour Tuesday to discuss pending litigation.
ECOT also briefed the board on its recent layoffs. ECOT Chief of Staff Brittny Pierson told the board that ECOT had notified 250 employees, about half of them teachers, they are being laid off by the end of this month. About 65 employees were laid off from the ECOT help desk and call center, Pierson said.
About 43 percent of the laid-off employees have accepted the company’s severance package: two weeks pay, 75 percent of remaining vacation time, and 25 percent of remaining sick days. The remainder have 20 more days to decide. ECOT considered offering more severance to employees who had more years of service with the school, Teeters said, but were advised against it by its outside legal counsel.