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.

“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.

Great Council State Park will host a Heritage Celebration on Saturday, June 6, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. as one of the Ohio Department of Natural Resource’s America 250 events.

The free, family‑friendly festival will include artisans, living‑history presenters, community exhibits, guided tours, hands-on activities and immersive experiences that highlight the rich heritage connected to Great Council State Park and the surrounding region.

Visitors can try fried fish samples at the Wild Ohio Harvest Kitchen, from 11 a.m.–1 p.m., or purchase food from an on-site food truck.

Some of the day’s featured programming will include:

• Chief Glenna, Eastern Shawnee Tribe, 10:30–11 a.m.

• Author and historian Peter Cozzens, remarks and Q&A, 11 a.m.–noon.

• Girl Scouts Badge Reveal, noon–12:15 p.m.

• Interpretive Center guided tour, noon–1 p.m.

• Gov. Mike DeWine, remarks and Doug Hall painting unveiling, 1–1:30 p.m.

• Living History: Daniel Boone, portrayed by Robert Alvin Crum,  2–2:30 p.m.

• Interpretive Center guided tour, 2:30–3:30 p.m.

• Absentee Shawnee Tribe presentation, 2:45–3:15 p.m.

• Terracon archaeological exploration, 3:30–4 p.m.

Parking will be located at Xenia High School, 303 Kinsey Road, with a free shuttle to and from the park.

Go to http://www.ohiodnr.gov/america250 for more information.

The old has become new and the broken will work once again at Golden Goods Thrift and Repair, Yellow Springs’ newest downtown storefront.

Equal parts vintage thrift store and small appliance repair shop, Golden Goods plans to open its doors at 252 Xenia Ave. — the site of the former toy store — on Friday, June 5. Tentative hours will be Wednesday–Sunday, 11 a.m.–7 p.m.

Since assuming their lease earlier this month, proprietors and Kettering residents Nicole Cornett and Austin Wireman have spent the last few weeks packing Golden Goods with all kinds of treasures of yore.

Bright faux fur coats and camouflage crew necks are among the myriad textiles on the racks. Beyond the old wooden end tables, wicker couches and brass furnishings staged in the front are shelves of innumerable odds and ends — sheet pans, blenders, saucers and snowglobes to name a few.

All the way in the back is Wireman’s little workshop, where he’ll fix whatever “walks through the door,” he said.

“He’s just the handiest person,” Cornett beamed. “He can fix anything.”

And that means just about anything — from stalled ceiling fans and busted Sawzalls to suitcase wheels that stopped rolling and vacuum cleaners long kaput. House calls for bigger jobs like washing machines and gas-powered chain saws are also in Wireman’s wheelhouse.

“So, how can we be of service?” Wireman asked. “What do you have in your life or your home we can help you with? What would be beneficial to be rid of? Or can we give it a second life?”

Though not yet open, Golden Goods is already accepting donations — old clothes, baubles and domestic bric-a-brac. Cornett and Wireman requested that folks contact them first before cluttering the Xenia Avenue sidewalk with bags and boxes of whatnot.

“We don’t want this to become a dumping ground,” Cornett said.

As with any thrift store, one would expect prices to be reasonable, but Golden Goods takes it a step further. All items in the store are “pay what you can” — prices are customer determined.

“Everybody values things differently,” Wireman said.

He continued: “And let’s say you come in looking to furnish your house, but don’t have the means to. By all means, we got you. Come and pick out what you need and take what you will.”

Doing business this way is less a money-making approach and more of an ethic for Wireman and Cornett. They said that what brought them into the thrifting business was their lasting dismay with consumer culture, planned obsolescence and waste writ large.

“This is environmental work — saving the world by not throwing each and every thing away all  the time,” Cornett said. “These days, things are built to break. There is just so much that can be repurposed or reused.”

Her partner pointed to the textile industry specifically.

According to the United Nations Environmental Programme 92 million tons of textile waste is produced globally every year. Production doubled in the first decade of the new millennium, while the duration of garment use decreased by 36%. An identified 11% of global plastic waste comes from clothing and textiles, with only 8% of textile fibers made from recycled sources in 2023 — the most recent statistical date.

Bearing in mind that grim data, Cornett said she welcomes all kinds of clothes into her shop — holes and stains are no matter. She’s constantly doing laundry, steam cleaning, power washing, sewing, mending and more.

She and Wireman have been at this kind of work for quite a while. They’re no strangers to social  media market places and online auction websites. They also run another business — Giving Peace — where they help people clean out their cluttered homes, organize closets and prepare for estate sales.

“Our home has basically become the town trading post,” Wireman said with a laugh.

“Right,” Cornett added. “We’ve been operating out of our garage … even our neighbors’ garages, and the kids have started complaining. They’ve been looking for a place to put their bikes for some time, so we figured we needed a thrift store.”

And for the couple, their new Yellow Springs storefront is a longtime dream come true — one that harkens back a couple generations.

“My grandparents had two upholstery shops in Dayton way back, furnishing businesses and homes all throughout the city,” Wireman said. “I grew up watching their relationship and the love they had together and that was something I always wanted — to be in love and to have a business of my own and to work side-by-side with my person.”

“And this is it. We did it,” Cornett said.

Golden Goods Thrift and Repair will open Friday, June 5, 11 a.m.-7 p.m., with those being their regular hours Wednesday-Sunday.

For more updates on the store, search “Golden Goods Thrift and Repair “ on Facebook or Instagram. Donation or repair inquiries can be made via email at info@giving-peace.com or by calling or texting  513-227-5015.

A weeklong series of events centered on immigration and community connection is coming to Yellow Springs this week, anchored by a June 5 speaker event featuring journalist Jose Antonio Vargas and author and University of Michigan public health professor William Lopez.

The programming — organized under the banner “Immigrants Feed America” — grew out of the inaugural YS Speaker Series, produced by Mad River Theater Works. The speaker series — created in collaboration with the YS Library Association and YS Community Foundation — has, thus far, featured writer and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib and poets Ross Gay and janan alexandra.

In convening a third iteration of the series, Mad River Theater Works Director Chris Westhoff said he hoped to again platform writers whose work converges with human connection and social justice, particularly as nationwide crises involving immigrants have come close to home with the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to force Haitians in neighboring Springfield, and elsewhere in the U.S., out of the country.

“I wanted to keep in the direction of bringing alternative or marginalized voices that speak to national and global issues in some kind of way that is also relatable and local,” Westhoff said. “Following everything that was happening in the country with ICE and the way in which it was manifesting itself in our neighborhood in Springfield, that seemed to me something that was worth pursuing.”

The planning phase for the event led him to William Lopez’s recent book, “Raiding the Heartland: An American Story of Deportation and Resistance,” which examines the impacts of immigration raids in Midwestern communities through the lens of public health. Westhoff also hoped to include a second speaker in order to broaden the conversation.

“[Lopez] is coming at it from the perspective of public health, which is really interesting, but I wondered how we could relate it to the humanities — I didn’t know what that was,  so I asked Lopez if I could work on coming up with a pairing that might fit,” Westhoff said.

Westhoff said he reached out to a group of folks that included local resident Jalana Lazar and Village Council member and MAZU owner Angie Hsu for ideas. Fortuitously, Lazar had a family connection to Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder of the nonprofit Define American. Famously, Vargas publicly revealed in a 2011 New York Times essay that he was living in the United States as an undocumented immigrant — a fact he had concealed since childhood. He later expanded on that experience in his memoir, “Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen.”

“[Vargas’] perspective is super unique,” Westhoff said. “And Define American is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, so he’s looking for ways to lift that up.”

At nearly the same time, Westhoff added, Lopez had already separately contacted Vargas seeking support for his forthcoming book tour, so the project was already on Vargas’ radar.

“[Lopez and Vargas] both were just immediately like, ‘Great, let’s do it,” Westhoff said. “They want to talk about the bigger picture and the role of writing, what that means, how they do it, how they maintain their energy and their spirit and the creative impulse that is also behind the activism.”

Community connectedness had already helped shape the speaker series event, and so more ideas began percolating for growing awareness and participation beyond a single evening. Hsu said she was already familiar with Vargas’ work: “I remember reading his New York Times piece and being so moved by it, and I always say my  first piece of activism was when I was 15 years old, and I went to Boulder City Council to speak in support of Dreamers and the Dream Act.”

With activism and connection in mind, Hsu, Lazar, Westhoff and Vargas began imagining what it might look like to build an entire week of programming around the themes of immigration, identity and cultural exchange.

“[Vargas] said, ‘Well, I would love to support work that’s happening in Ohio — how can we make this not just a talk but a bigger event?’” Hsu said. “It was important to us that these events are about sharing and learning about what is happening in immigration today, but also a celebration — that the work and the coming together are still joyful, still with great passion and hope.”

That philosophy stretches across the week’s lineup, with events including an international recipe exchange, a West African dinner to benefit AfroMeals Foundation and Miami Valley Meals, a week of rotating specials at MAZU prepared by immigrant chefs, a screening of Vargas’ documentary “Undocumented” with Q&A at the Little Art and an all-hands-on-deck community art project. (See sidebar for the full schedule of events.)

Hsu said the mural — planned for Kieth’s Alley — will build on existing immigration-themed artwork created by muralist Pierre Nagley over the last few years. The mural will function essentially like a giant paint-by-number project, allowing community members to pick up a paintbrush and leave something of their own hearts and minds behind on the artwork.

“It’s going to be fully interactive,” she said. “We want kids to come out — we want anybody to join us.”

After the paint has dried, community members will be invited to come back to Kieth’s Alley for a street party, featuring food trucks, the unveiling of the mural and music, including from Haitian producer and performer DJ XLOAD, known for spinning up high-energy remixes in the Haitian music scene.

“I’m in touch with the Haitian Support Center in Springfield … so we also wanted to have an opportunity to invite the Haitian community to come celebrate with us,” Hsu said. “So DJ XLOAD is awesome, and he’s going to be playing — and his wife used to work at MAZU, so when we were trying to figure out a DJ, there was that connection.”

Alongside the public events, organizers are also planning a smaller gathering between local immigration advocates and Vargas and Lopez, aimed at creating space for deeper discussion about immigration issues affecting the region.

The growth of the event from a single evening’s talk into a week of conversation, food, art and just being together has become part of the project’s meaning, Westhoff said — par for the course in a small town, and perhaps a touchstone for how people are coming together all over the U.S. to ward off division and isolationism.

“The degree to which [these events are] utilizing strong centers or anchors in our community and outside of our community to create conversation between activism and art and culture, fundamentally represented by food and storytelling, is amazing,” he said.

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