On her final day as superintendent of Yellow Springs Schools, Terri Holden found herself surrounded by imitators: several staff members were dressed in colorful sweater vests, an affectionate approximation of Holden’s style.
The gesture was a playful, gentle end to a seven-year tenure that, as Holden told the News last week, was, in a word, challenging — but also marked with successes for the district, and in the end, rewarding.
Holden stepped into the superintendent role in August 2019 with nearly three decades as a teacher, principal and administrator behind her. She did so, she said, with the knowledge that she had been hired, in part, to help address the district’s aging facilities after a failed levy campaign the previous year, and to update the district’s strategic plan. Having left a position as executive director of teaching and learning at Winton Woods School District near Cincinnati, she expected to roll up her sleeves and get to work doing what she was hired to do.
What she couldn’t have expected, though, was a global pandemic less than a year into the job. On March 17, 2020, Gov. Mike DeWine mandated that schools across the state be closed — initially for a period of three weeks.
A few days after the original mandate, DeWine announced the schools would likely be closed for the rest of the year. Holden, like superintendents across the country, was faced with a number of questions.
“How do I keep school going and keep staff safe, students safe, the community safe?” she said.
The questions kept coming, and they changed almost weekly. How would remote learning work, and how long would it last? When would students and staff return to school, and when they did, how would masking, quarantines and vaccines work? Holden recalled a day when she live-streamed a district Q&A session, fielding those questions, and others, from families.
“Watching the questions roll up on the screen, that was hard — I was talking to people about things I didn’t expect to be part of my responsibility,” she said. “I learned more about vaccines and social distancing — it was a lot. But for the most part, people gave me grace and were highly supportive.”
She noted that she and 30 other first-time superintendents enrolled as a cohort with the Buckeye Association of School Administrators “didn’t even get to finish” their planned year-long transition program.
“That was rough — I think it bonded us in a way that we wouldn’t have been bonded prior,” she said. “But we were figuring things out, and then doing all the things nobody could ever have imagined. … You make the best decision that you can at the time.”
YS Schools remained operating via remote instruction through February of 2021, with the exception of “learning pods” — on-campus, masked and socially distanced remote instruction for students whose parents or guardians had returned to in-person work during the school day. Local schools reopened in March 2021 under a hybrid model after more than 90% of school staff had received the first of two vaccination shots. The following month, the schools reopened in full, with all students and staff required to wear masks, with social distancing in place and outdoor tents erected to move more activities outside.
“I think we came together well; the staff was incredible, and really kind of coalesced around supporting kids,” she said. “I think the learning pods were helpful to some parents who didn’t have the means to stay home, so I think that was a good decision.”
YS Schools required masking longer than most other area districts, and COVID-19 case numbers within the schools were consistently under the state and county averages. Still, Holden said, she wonders if YS Schools kept students away from their teachers and classmates “a little too long,” and how that time away might have shaped their social-emotional development.
“I think it was the right thing to do, but if I had to do it again, I probably wouldn’t have kept us out quite that long,” she said. “I think, in the end, our kids paid the price for that.”
The pandemic put a pause on the initiatives Holden had hoped to pursue, including the district’s work around project-based learning, an educational philosophy she championed before arriving in Yellow Springs.
“COVID stopped the progression, but we’re still committed to it and firmly believe in it,” Holden said. “This past year, the whole district had a PBL training from High Tech High in California, and that helped us do a reset — I think we’re on that path again.”
Connecting with other schools as a matter of course is a part of Holden’s work that didn’t receive the same type of fanfare — or criticism — as the COVID years, but she said she’s proud of the district’s admission to the League of Innovative Schools, a national network that allows educators to visit and learn from districts across the country. For a small district, she said, those connections have been invaluable, as administrators and teachers have visited schools around the country, observed different approaches and brought ideas back to the village.
“When I came, we were so insular, but we’re part of a larger microcosm, and we needed to use that,” Holden said. “I think it’s been really helpful; first of all, we brought in new curricula, because these teachers were working their tails off [building their own curricula] — I’ve never seen a group of teachers as dedicated as the ones in Yellow Springs. So we brought in some really good [English language arts] and math curricula.”
And state ratings went up, too — where previously YS Schools had been rated a “C” on the previous rating scale, which changed to a star rating system in 2022, the schools have averaged 4.5 stars over the last several years, which would have been “A” and “B” ratings on the previous scale.
Other “unseen successes,” Holden said, were the expansions of administrative and support positions within the district, moving former part-time athletic director Jeff Eyrich to a full-time operations manager position and later hiring Sean Herbert as full-time athletic director, and bringing Corina Denny from Winton Woods to serve as communications director.
Still, when Holden’s tenure is remembered, it will likely be the facilities project that looms largest. She said she learned, in semi-frequent chats with villagers over coffee ahead of the pandemic, that part of the failure of the 2018 proposed facilities levy was that it would only have updated the middle and high school at East Enon Road.
“That gave me some insight, and I heard from the school board and documents that were left for me that we should address both sites, and that was the premise of the 2021 ballot initiative,” she said.
Ultimately, the $36 million 2021 levy proposal — which would have erected a new K–12 school on East Enon Road — failed at the ballot that November.
“I think what hurt us was COVID,” Holden said of the levy campaign, which faced criticism over both cost and the loss of Mills Lawn as a school. “We couldn’t do much discussion face-to-face.”
By the following year, however, face-to-face discussions — at meetings, work sessions and community comment sessions — began again in earnest, and were held regularly and often as the district dug in deeply on finding a way to balance the district’s needs with what the community would support at the polls in 2023. It wasn’t an easy balance to strike, Holden said, as the Board of Education and ad hoc Facilities Committee were often split on whether to pursue another K–12 facility or a plan that would upgrade facilities and keep them at both extant campuses.
“Before it was even on the ballot, I was worried that we wouldn’t even get board approval, because there was some fracturing there,” she said. “When the board approved a plan to go on the ballot, I thought, ‘OK, that is the first hurdle — now it’s in the hands of the voters.’ But we accomplished what we set out to do.”
In November 2023, 52% of voters approved the bond issue for a $55 million project featuring renovations to Mills Lawn Elementary for preschool through fourth grade and consolidation of grades 5–12 at East Enon Road with a combination of renovation and new construction. Holden was there the following February when the project broke ground, and has seen the facilities project through nearly its entire run — and though she’s toured both campuses through every phase and bid the Class of 2026 farewell in the new YS High School gym in May, she won’t serve as superintendent with the buildings fully open later this year. Nevertheless, she said she plans to be there when they do.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” she said, adding that she is excited for the community to finally get a look at the high school’s new performing arts facilities.
“Our theater is going to be the best in town … and not only an amazing theater space, but a designated scene shop, a choir room that’s choir-appropriate and a new band room,” she said. “This is an arts town, and we ought to have a space that our children can use as they grow and develop their skills, and that the community can use — I think it’s going to be fantastic.”
As she prepares to step away, Holden said she feels confident leaving the district in the hands of incoming Superintendent Megan Winston, who has spent the last year serving as assistant superintendent. Winston’s familiarity with both the schools and the community, Holden said, gives her an advantage.
“She was elementary principal, she’s from Xenia, and her younger sister went to Yellow Springs Schools, and I think that familiarity with the community is an asset for [Winston],” she said. “Her being able to follow me this year has been helpful, and I think she’s able now to just run — and that’s a good thing, because we have a lot going on. I mean, I bet 75% of my time this past year was spent on the building project and legislation, and I think that has really positioned her well.”
As for what’s next on the horizon, Holden said her plans are, by and large, nebulous at the moment: “I am going to do something — I don’t know what, and I don’t know when. I’m going to take this summer and just relax.”
She added that she and her wife, Holly Smith-Conway, will do some traveling this summer, and she’ll attend to “tasks at home.”
“But I also feel like I need purpose and belonging; I don’t know if it will be in education,” she said. “Maybe, maybe not.”
One thing she’s sure of for now, she said, is that she and Smith-Conway have carved out their own space in Yellow Springs over the last seven years, and they’re planning to stay in it.
“We love our home, we love our neighbors,” she said. “We have what I would call a small, strong group of friends. … Now it’s time for me to be a community member.”
The Greene County Beekeepers Association will host its annual Honey Harvest on Saturday, June 20, 11 a.m.–3 p.m. at Glen Helen’s Camp Greene, 3452 Grinnell Road.
Anyone interested in learning more about honeybees, pollination and beekeeping is invited. The family-friendly event will feature a display of beekeeping equipment, a demonstration of honey extraction, the opportunity to ask questions of experienced beekeepers and craft, product and food vendors.
Local honey will be available for purchase as well.
The Greene County Beekeepers Association is a nonprofit group of beekeepers, from hobbyists to professionals, dedicated to fostering and promoting apiculture in and around the county.
For more information, go online to http://www.gcbeekeepers.org
In the community room of WYSO’s new Dayton Street station, radio history came back home.
On Wednesday, May 13, the HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) Radio Preservation Project held a return ceremony for Central State University’s historic radio station, WCSU 88.9, celebrating the formal return of digitized archival audio from the Wilberforce station to the institution that created it.
Gathered for the celebration were WYSO and HBCU Radio Preservation Project staff, Central State representatives, WCSU alumni and community members.
The HBCU Radio Preservation Project team collected 11 oral history interviews with folks connected to WCSU, and gathered and reformatted more than 24 hours of audio from the station’s archives, collected from reels, cassettes, CDs and other media. The digitized audio was loaded onto a hard drive, which was presented to WCSU General Manager Charles Fox.
Before the hard drive changed hands, though, Fox’s voice filled the room as part of a sound montage composed by HBCU Radio Preservation Project Assistant Audio Producer Olivia Green, who introduced the piece as “a very brief window into the soundscape, the music, the students, the community” that shaped the station.
“[WCSU] is the first federally licensed HBCU radio station in the nation,” Fox said in the montage. “I can’t imagine the joy that people must have felt hearing intellectual thought and sounds of entertainment that reflected their experience.”
Fox’s words echoed with the heft of the questions that form the nucleus of the HBCU Radio Preservation Project’s mission: Whose voices are heard? Who gets to speak for a community? What happens when those voices are saved?
These questions have their roots in another, originally asked within WYSO’s own archive by local resident Jocelyn Robinson.
Robinson, founder and project director of the HBCU Radio Preservation Project and director of WYSO’s Center for Radio Preservation and Archives, told the News last month that the first inklings of the project’s work go back “over a decade.”
Before the HBCU project existed, Robinson — a 2013 alumna of WYSO’s Community Voices program — was working with WYSO’s historic audio collection. At the time, Robinson was near the end of what would ultimately be eight years as Central State University’s Title III director, and found “a lot of Black voices, and very important Black voices” in WYSO’s archival collection from its time associated with Antioch College — Maya Angelou, Stokely Carmichael, Alice Walker and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as well-known local artists Virginia Hamilton and Willis “Bing” Davis, among others. The recordings had been pulled by archivist Deanna Ulvestad to be digitized.
Personally “steeped in Black history and culture” and having a career background in the same since the 1980s, when she worked for the National Afro American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, when Robinson came across the recordings, it sparked what she called the “big research question.”
“If a little progressive liberal arts college in the middle of the cornfields has voices like this, what might our HBCU radio stations have?” she said.
By 2017, Robinson had begun trying to answer the question. From her years as Central State’s Title III director, she knew that about a third of the nation’s then-107 HBCUs had operated radio stations, including WCSU, though some no longer exist. Like WYSO, which was once tied to Antioch College, those stations could become vulnerable if their parent institutions faced financial pressure.
She started compiling a list of HBCUs with radio stations and developing a survey to learn more about them. A small early grant helped her begin administering the survey, traveling to stations and building relationships with people who knew the stations’ histories.
Robinson conducted a case study oral history with David Linton, now program director at WCLK at Clark Atlanta University. Linton, she said, had been trained at the “seminal” WSHA at Shaw University — formed in 1968 as the first radio station owned by a Black university, and sold in 2018 — and later helped start WRVS at Elizabeth City State University before spending years in the recording industry and returning to HBCU radio.
“There are so many stories like that that are woven together,” Robinson said.
The work also grew alongside WYSO’s own archival development. Robinson said WYSO had recordings, posters, program guides, photographs and other materials, but that “a bunch of stuff does not an archive make.” Building the Center for Radio Preservation and Archives at WYSO meant creating a model for how to identify, care for, search and preserve those materials — a model other stations and institutions could potentially use.
“It’s showing others how you do it,” Robinson said. “How you prioritize, how you get the training, how you talk about it with others, that they understand the importance of this primary source being preserved.”
The model now steers the work of the HBCU Radio Preservation Project, which got off the ground after Robinson presented the idea publicly, built connections in the radio preservation field and connected with the Northeast Document Conservation Center, or NEDCC. That partnership helped bring to fruition a $5 million Mellon Foundation grant.
Robinson said the project developed in response to what she learned from stations: that each HBCU, each radio station and each surrounding community — “from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Langston, Oklahoma, to Tallahassee, Florida” — is different, and that preservation requires trust, institutional relationships and a shared belief that radio should be saved.
“Which is difficult, because radio is ephemeral,” Robinson said. “You turn the knob and it comes out and goes out into the ether and travels on to infinity — so you create a mindset that is necessary to understand that [radio] is something important and worthy of preservation.”
The HBCU Radio Preservation Project identified 30 radio stations whose audio archives could be preserved — eight, including WCSU, have had their audio and oral histories compiled — and the rest are in varying stages of what Phyllis Jeffers-Coly, assistant director of administration and outreach for the project, called the project’s “life cycle.”
It begins with reaching out to station managers, librarians, archivists or other campus contacts. Then comes a site visit, when the team begins to build relationships and assess what materials exist and where they are housed.
“We ask, ‘What do you got, and who has it?’” Jeffers-Coly said.
Sometimes an institution has a trained archivist on staff; sometimes it doesn’t. At Central State, Jeffers-Coly said, the team worked with Keith Perkins, director of alumni relations, to connect with alumni who carried institutional memory. That was important, she said, because current WCSU leadership was newer to the station.
After an initial visit, the team returns for a preservation visit. Public historians conduct oral history interviews while preservation staff inventory materials and prepare them for digitization.
The technical side of the project’s work is led by the NEDCC, where Bryce Roe serves as director of audio preservation. Roe said WYSO leads the project, while NEDCC focuses on preserving historical recordings found at stations. Chinyere Neal, a field archivist with NEDCC, described their work as “on the ground, hands on.”
“Sometimes it’s literally digging through boxes that are presented to us, digging through closets, looking at desks,” Neal said. “The thing I like to do at every site is find the filing cabinets and look in the backs of those.”
Roe added that stations are not typically set up to archive their own material, since their job is to produce programming and get it on the air, so NEDCC asks questions aimed at getting to know the folks who work there — questions that build trust and, more often than not, lead to finding recordings.
“We’re not coming in and saying, ‘Where is your archive?’” Roe said. “We’re saying, ‘Hey, what was your favorite time at the station?’”
Once materials are identified, they’re packed, shipped to NEDCC, digitized and inventoried. After that, the project works with institutions on next steps: how to preserve the digital files, how to integrate them into campus collections and how to make them discoverable or accessible through repositories such as the American Archive of Public Broadcasting or the HBCU Digital Library Trust.
Oral history, too, is a central part of the project’s work; as Will Tchaikirides, assistant director of public history and programming said, the project team looks for former station managers, volunteers, alumni, community listeners, students — folks who can explain what a radio station’s audio recordings meant in context.
“We believe that memory is as important as sounds when it comes to archiving history and communicating historical narratives,” he said. “It gives context, it gives color, it fleshes out the historical record.”
Malik Perkins, a former WCSU staffer, was one of several who contributed his voice to the historical record. A student at Central State from 2010 to 2014, he told the News he went to school intending to pursue television, but found his way into radio after doing well in a production class taught by Edwin Clay, who was then general manager of the station. His first assignment at WCSU was digitizing music, which helped him learn the station’s library, and soon opened him up to what would become his first media training ground.
“I didn’t know I was going to be on the air,” Perkins said with a laugh.
Perkins hosted “Jazz at Sundown” from 6 to 8 p.m. on Fridays during his junior and senior years, playing contemporary jazz. Around the same time, Perkins started working part-time behind the scenes at WHIO Radio. After signing off at WCSU, he would nap, then work overnight at WHIO. Shortly before graduation, he moved into multimedia news reporting with WHIO, where he worked for nearly five years.
Working at WCSU, Perkins said, helped him learn to adapt to a quickly shifting environment — critical for a news reporter — not only when things were going well, but when they weren’t.
“You know, in a textbook, things don’t go wrong, but when you’re out in the field, whether it’s newspaper or TV or radio, something can go wrong,” Perkins said. “You have to learn how to rebound and think on the fly.”
That preparation stayed with him as he moved through broadcast journalism and into his current work as a communications specialist at Ohio State University, and he aims to continue independent journalism and storytelling work in the near future, building on a career that began at WCSU.
“I think it’s incredible to have [WCSU’s] history archived for other people to learn about, to preserve the legacy and the innovation of these universities,” Perkins said.
Perkins’s voice joined Charles Fox’s as part of the montage that was played at the May 13 return ceremony for WCSU; Jeffers-Coly said the return ceremony is a relatively new addition to the HBCU Radio Preservation Project’s life cycle — a celebration meant to send a message.
“In response to a condition where our histories are being erased, we have to make decisions about showing up and showing out and making sure that we’re not erased,” she said. “So I suggested last fall that we do official returns, versus just returning the material in a more technical way — adding the celebratory, ceremonial, sacred part to it.”
“My contention is that HBCUs are hallowed ground,” Robinson said, echoing Jeffers-Coly. “HBCU radio gives voice to community that may not otherwise have a voice that is directed by Black folks.”
At the May 13 ceremony, Robinson called the return of WCSU’s digitized archive a full-circle moment: Yellow Springs and Wilberforce, she said, have long been connected by community, education and shared movement work.
“It’s not just about radio, it’s about people,” Robinson said.
And in a moment when Black history is being challenged, rewritten or erased, Robinson said the work of preservation is also a form of resistance.
“We will not be silenced, we will not be erased, we will not be deterred,” she said.
For more on the HBCU Radio Preservation Project, go to http://www.hbcuradiopreservation.org
Longtime villager Sam Wildenhaus had a busy spring.
When he’s not putting in time at his family’s carpet store or doing miscellaneous handyman jobs, he’s at home, taking care of his aging parents. What time the 27-year-old can eke out for himself, he’s reliably in the ring, sharpening his hooks and quickening his footwork.
The professional boxer has been training doggedly for his next big fight, set for Saturday, June 13, at Middletown’s Land of Illusion. Wildenhaus is up against a formidable opponent — 38-year-old firefighter and seasoned boxer DeAndre Ware.
“He’s probably the bigger, stronger guy,” Wildenhaus said. “But I’m convinced I can beat him. I have other tools than size or strength. I’m sharper than he is. And people say I have more of an arsenal — that I’m the better puncher.”
Wildenhaus spoke with the News last week from his Polecat Road garage, where several Spalding bags hang from the rafters — the villager’s home gym for when he can’t make it out to Dayton to spar or train.
Next Saturday’s fight will be the first for Wildenhaus since February, when his near-pristine professional career took a bit of a hit when he got his first draw. Before that, his record was 13 wins and four losses, rendering him 292 out of 1,932 professional boxers worldwide in his light-heavy division. Still, February’s draw was defeating for Wildenhaus.
“That’s one of the most challenging parts about boxing — coming off losses, not being too hard on yourself,” he said.
He added: “You don’t want to glorify what you did right, and at the same time, you don’t want to vilify what you did wrong,” he said. “And that’s hard to do — to not think little of yourself when you fail and not think too big of yourself when you win.”
Wildenhaus hasn’t just been hitting the bags in preparation for this fight — he’s been doing his homework, watching videos of his upcoming opponent’s past fights and learning his moves.
“He’s like me: a pressure fighter. I come forward right away to try to dictate the pace and to force guys to find the outside,” Wildenhaus explained. “This guy is also a pressure fighter.”
But aside from packing a bigger punch, Wildenhaus said his guiding philosophy steers him in the ring — and outside, as it turns out.
Photo courtesy of Tapology.com
“It sounds strange, but you can be too prepared for some situations,” he said. “Yes, it’s important to be prepared for anything, but that can sometimes keep you from thinking on your feet. There have been so many fights that I’ve gone into with a strategy, but I was forced to update almost right away.”
The worsening health and mobility issues of his father, William Wildenhaus, was one of those unexpected hits, the boxer said. So while the son’s daily training — not infrequently twice a day, he said — helps condition his cuts and jabs, it also helps him lift and move his dad around the house.
“He’s my coach,” he said.
And the elder Wildenhaus has assumed that role since he took Sam to his first boxing exhibition around the time he was 10. Like many wannabe boxers, the young Wildenhaus got stars in his eyes when he first saw the “Rocky” movies. Soon after, his parents signed him up for “kids in mits” classes in Dayton. Wildenhaus had his first spar at 13, and not long after, his first real fight.
By the time he was 20, Wildenhaus ascended his amateur status and went pro.
For much of his career, Wildenhaus has been motivated by the allure of one day becoming world champion, but he said that over recent years, that dream has faded into the background — nowadays, he fights for the simple love of the sport.
“It can be brutal, but it’s also a thinking man’s game — some people compare it to chess,” he noted.
Along those lines, Wildenhaus said the ring allows him to pursue an intellectual pet interest of his: psychology. Boxing, he said, is a fast-paced chance to plumb the depths of his opponent’s mind — the way he deals with fear, problem-solving and expressions of negativity.
“It’s the most honest sport there is. There’s no hiding who you are in the ring, so you can really see your opponent deep down,” he said.
And he invites all his village neighbors to see him in all his boxing honesty laid bare at Saturday’s fight. Wildenhaus’ brawl with Ware is the main event of a series of earlier skirmishes.
“We’ll see if it goes all eight rounds,” he said. “I’m not going to walk out without some scars or bruises, but I think I can win this.”
The event is sponsored by Rising Star Boxing and is part of the Prizefighter Series.
Doors to the event, which will take place at Land of Illusion’s outdoor pavilion stage, 8762 Thomas Road, Middletown, Ohio, open at 7 p.m., and Wildenhaus’ fight begins tentatively at 8 p.m. T
ickets start at $80 and can be purchased through Wildenhaus by calling or texting him at 937-212-4770.
The area chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, recently debuted a new Yellow Springs-based series titled “Connection and Care,” which meets the second Monday of each month, 6–8 p.m. The next is June 8.
Sessions cover such topics as understanding mental health, coping with stress, reducing burnout and strategies for self-care. The free series, led by trained facilitators, is designed to provide tools, support and community for anyone looking to improve their mental wellness. Registration is not required.
A Yellow Spring-based Family Support Group, for those who love someone with a mental health condition meets the second Thursday of the month, 6–7:30 p.m. The next meeting is June 11.
Both groups meet in Rooms A&B at the John Bryan Community Center. Email info@namicgm.org, or call 937-322-5600, for more information.
Support groups also meet during the day Wednesdays at the Vernon Center in Springfield. This drop-in center at 222 East St. offers a variety of services and activities Monday–Friday, 8:30 a.m.–3 p.m. Transportation to the Vernon Center is available Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to Yellow Springs residents who live with a mental illness. Call 937-505-9435 between 8:30–9:30 a.m. to be picked up.
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