Top stories of 1997
SOME PLANS WENT ASTRAY
BUT REGION CAN BE PROUD OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS

   Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
   It was like that in 1997 as the Dayton region passed its 201st birthday, gazing hopefully down the road toward the millennium and then the centennial of powered flight in 2003.

The stadium that might have been -- an artist's conception of the baseball stadium once envisioned for Downtown Dayton.

   There was steady progress in many areas, notably a prosperous overall economy. Yet in terms of what caught our attention, the year seemed to be defined by things that didn't happen.
   That was not all bad, however. Sometimes there was a qualifying, optimistic "Yes, but ..." focused on the future.
   Minor-league baseball did not arrive in 1997. Yes, but it may still be on the way - to Trotwood if not Dayton.
   Development of the downtown riverfront, a goal that surfaces as often as the flotsam of a spring flood, didn't quite get started either. But the Five Rivers MetroParks district and the Downtown Dayton Partnership began a detailed planning process. They are asking the state for $5 million.
   Elder-Beerman Corp. did not go belly-up in its painful bankruptcy, and the troubled downtown store did not close. The former Rike's-Shillito-Lazarus block was not redeveloped as had been hoped. Central State University took deep budget cuts, but did not disappear from Ohio higher education.
   Anthony Capizzi did not get elected mayor of Dayton. Mike Turner did, a second time. And in the typical way that Dayton makes news without much fuss, Mary Wiseman became one of the first two openly gay candidates to win election to public office in Ohio history. (City Commission also will have its first black majority.)
   More people escaped from the Montgomery County Jail, but most of them didn't.
  

U.S. Rep. Tony Hall was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in the cause of world hunger. He's shown with an orphan whose mother died of malnutrition in North Korea.

Thirty-two Oakwood High School students did not get away with their scheme to produce phony driver's licenses with computer help. Some were fined; all were admonished, especially for misspelling "licence." In Xenia, a popular teacher was disclosed as a fraud in his claims of being a graduate of Harvard and MIT, and put on leave. And Frederick Gies, a former Wright State education dean, pleaded guilty to felony corrupt activity for using university funds to promote his own publication and other activities.
   U.S. Rep. Tony Hall did not succeed with his proposal that Congress formally apologize to black Americans for the horrors of slavery, but he got some discussion. (He also got nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, for his efforts in the cause of world hunger.) Racial tensions in Kettering, and a cross stuck in the ground near the National Afro-American Museum at Wilberforce, reminded everyone that race is a persistent issue.
   Ohio State did not beat Michigan.
   People did not stop mistreating each other in often tragic ways. Sadly, little India and Cody Smith of Champaign County were found dead Sept. 6 after they disappeared from a stepfather's care at their rural home July 9. No one has been charged in their deaths.

   Things did happen, too.

   As usual in Dayton, good people did good things. The Dayton Foundation reached $100 million in assets stored away for worthwhile community projects. The 2003 Committee announced a people-oriented, $10 million capital plan for the Wright flight centennial celebration. Carillon Historical Park launched a $2 million drive for a new visitor center. The Dayton Art Institute opened its gorgeous, $20 million museum addition.
   When the Ohio River rose in the worst flooding of that valley since 1964, Dayton remained safe behind its Miami Conservancy District dams, but many local organizations and individuals sent personal or material assistance to their neighbors downstream.

Virginia Kettering

Marie Aull

   Two of the region's grandest dames, Marie Aull and Virginia Kettering, celebrated landmark birthdays: Mrs. Aull was 100; Mrs. K. reached 90. And a woman hardly anyone knew about, Oakwood's Virginia B. Toulmin, graciously disclosed that a gift in trust to Georgetown University Medical School has appreciated to a value of $60 million.
   On the moral front, a Dayton prostitute with AIDS became the first in Ohio to go to prison for soliciting sex while inflicted with HIV. And local governments scurried to cover their codes after Luke Liakos and associates opened strip clubs in Washington Twp. and Troy. So far, lawyers have had the best dance cards: The Washington Twp. Diamonds club kept its liquor license by cleverly suggesting a whole strip of businesses be considered for a dry vote. In Troy, in December, a county judge said the city could revoke the zoning permit of Total Xposure because officials weren't told it would operate as a nude club.
   The Job Center, Montgomery County's ambitious initiative to train welfare recipients for work, opened in June. The center could be pivotal to recipients in danger of losing their benefits under new state and federal rules. The 30-year-old Montgomery County Community Action Agency, on the other hand, collapsed under a mountain of debt.
   Housing developers and retail megastores continued to gobble up vast tracts of land in the region, but there was also a promising combination of new and rehabbed housing offered in the Wright-Dunbar neighborhood of West Dayton, modeled upon the city's successful historic districts.
   Two Greene County judges and a local state representative all face hearings this year before the Ohio Supreme Court regarding ethics complaints filed against them by the Ohio State Bar Association.

John Garland of the University of Virginia came back to become president of his alma mater, Central State University. CSU took deep budget cuts, but kept its doors open. BILL REINKE/DAYTON DAILY NEWS

   Greene County Common Pleas Judge M. David Reid and Greene County Domestic Relations Judge Judson L. Shattuck Jr. are charged with violating the Code of Judicial Conduct. Reid's former wife, state Rep. Marilyn J. Reid, R-Beavercreek, is also charged with ethics violations. All the charges stem from a series of stories about the county's justice system published by the Dayton Daily News in 1996 and 1997.
   The Montgomery County Common Pleas Court has a first - a woman as presiding administrative judge in the person of Judge Barbara P. Gorman. And Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 104 elected Ohio's first female lodge president, Sheriff's Deputy Shirley Doran.
   In education, the Dayton schools were exploring the idea of letting a private corporation run some buildings on a contract basis.
   At Sinclair Community College, provost Ned Sifferlen became president Sept. 1 after David Ponitz retired. John Garland of the University of Virginia came back to become president of his alma mater, Central State University. Wright State President Harley Flack took a leave of absence to receive cancer treatment.