Dr. Darrel Scott, DDS, class of 1970, was nominated by Tim Tarbet, class of 1971. While a student, at Minerva High School, Scott was active in football and named the MVP in 1969. He was a district qualifier for wrestling in 1970. He was captain of both football and wrestling teams and a member of the National Honor Society.
After graduation, he enrolled at Kent State University. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in biology in 1974 and married Debbie Emmerling that same year. He went on to The Ohio State University's College of Dentistry and graduated in 1977. From 1977 through 1980, Scott served in the United States Air Force and obtained the rank of captain. He received the Air Force Accommodation Medal as well.
After serving in the Air Force, he purchased an existing dental practice in Loudonville, Ohio. The practice had three employees and 800 patients at that time. Over the years, the practice has grown to employ fourteen people and care for approximately 6,000 patients.
Scott has served his profession well by serving as president of the Ashland County Dental Service, president of the Central Ohio Dental Society, and vice president of the Ohio State University Dental Alumni Association. He is currently a delegate to the American Dental Association and has represented sub-district 6 of the Ohio Dental Association covering Delaware, Ashland, Morrow and Stark Counties.
He has volunteered in many civic and community projects. These include: president of the American Cancer Society, board member of the Loudonville Recreation Department, and member of The Ohio State University President's Club. Dr. Scott also started and academic boosters group to recognize outstanding students. As president of the Loudonville Booster club, he managed a fundraiser for the construction of an all-weather track, which raised $175,000. He also developed the "Asylum" (Adult/Student/Youth/Loudonville in Motion) program which functions as an after-school youth center. Scott participates in the "Options" program and in the "Give the Kids a Smile Day," providing free dental care to qualifying patients. He is a member of both the Minerva and Loudonville United Methodist Churches. Tim Tarbet wrote in his nomination letter, "Doctor Scott is committed to his patients and his community."
Dr. Scott and his wife, Debbie, have two sons, Travis (Jennifer) Scott of Medina, and Tyler (Paola) Scott of Wooster. They also have five grandchildren. Tyler completed dental school and joined his father's practice in 2009.
Walt Shaw, class of 1957, was nominated by Rosemary Lutz Vandegrift. While a student at Minerva High School, he was active in band and dramatics. After graduation attended Asbury College and graduated in 1963 with a bachelor’s of arts degree in chemistry. He received his master’s of science in physiological chemistry from The Ohio State University in 1966. In 1973, he received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Alabama.
Walt worked as a research associate at the Medical College of Virginia after receiving his master’s degree. He served as president and owner of Avanti Biochemicals, Inc. in Pelham, Alabama. In 1980 his growing company moved to Alabaster, Alabama. As president of Avanti, it became his responsibility to provide suitable equipment and allocate resources to facilitate completion of projects in a timely manner.
From 1992 through 1995, Shaw was chairman of the Alabama Section of the American Chemical Society. He also served as an officer of the International Lecithin Society.
Shaw was a finalist in the Birmingham SBA Person of the Year in 1990. In 2004, he received the Novel Approaches in Oral Drug Delivery Award from CRS-Eurand. He has authored many research publications relating to cancer and cystic fibrosis.
He feels that the best business training he received was from his paper route in Minerva when he was a teenager. “A paper route is a microcosm of a business. You have customers whom you have to satisfy, you have to make a profit, you have to handle finances.”
Walt met his wife, Rowena, at Asbury College. They moved to Ohio when he attended Ohio State. When they moved to Alabama, Rowena took on management of Avanti’s daily operations and is currently the vice president.
Avanti now has 75,000 square feet of manufacturing and office buildings on over 25 acres. The Shaw’s son Trevor has jointed the family business, but daughters Renee and Melinda have chosen other careers.
Because of Avanti’s commitment to quality and willingness to help customers, lipid researchers view the company as “more collaborator than supplier,” says Daniel Raben of Johns Hopkins University, who heads the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Research. In line with its philosophy of always thinking of customers, Avanti is a generous supporter of the ASBMB. Beginning in 2013, the ASBMB’s Lipid Research Division presents an award in Walter Shaw’s name.
Fundraising for Asbury College’s science department, contributing funds to worldwide scientific organizations, and First Nazarene Church of Birmingham are some of Shaw’s community interests.
The Shaws are grandparents of Addison, Savannah, and Preston Underwood; McKenzie and Mason Lowry; and Bennet, Mae, and Caroline Shaw.
Twila Stackhouse Carman, Minerva High School Class of 1924, was nominated for the Hall of Fame by her son, Dale, and by Marilyn Bartley. Dale listed her occupation as wife, mother, nurse, writer and broadcaster.
Twila was born on her family's fruit farm near Kensington. After her marriage to Chalmer Carman, who was also a member of the Class of 1924, she worked for Dr. Taylor at his clinic in East Rochester. Following the birth of her two sons, Dale and Don, and during World War II, she assisted Dr. Whiteleather when he performed home baby deliveries.
Next, Twila became the Minerva correspondent for The Canton Repository and continued this until her death. She also wrote feature articles for publications such as The Ford Times. She published a book of poetry called A Miracle for Breakfast that was published in 1948 and a pamphlet called "Buried Treasures in Ohio? Yes." As a newspaper writer, she made the AP news with "Miracle, the Asbestos Cat."
In 1953 she became affiliated with radio station WAND in Canton. Later she moved to WSOM of Salem and did a daily newscast from Minerva and about Minerva until her death in 1986. As a broadcast journalist, she turned out 100,000 words per year. Three of the people who substituted for Twila in her broadcasts, Richard Brock, Thomas Carnahan and Roger Bartley, all second her nomination, as does Carol Whiteleather Thomas.
Two tributes to her life were and are as follows: "Our number one citizen," said former Mayor Dick Mount, "she was not only active in developing the city, but in boosting all our citizens.”
“She was the most caring and understanding person I ever knew," said Harold Wunderle.
"Twila was an innovator, a journalist, a writer of prose and poetry, one never afraid to scan new horizons, a world traveler who would never foresake her modest home, her hometown, and her myriad friends," said Bartley.
Her interest in flying dated from her childhood on her father's Carroll County farm. When she would see planes flying overhead she wished they would land and take her with them. Her first flight was in 1927 in a barnstormer's plane, and she went on to log more than 127,000 air miles traveling to Alaska, Africa, the Holy Land and Hawaii. In 1983, to salute her interest in the frontier of the sky, two hundred of her friends surprised her with $1,645 to go to Florida to cover the launch of the first woman into space, Sally Ride, on the Challenger STS-7 for The Canton Repository.
In all her travels and experiences, Twila said, "My favorite place is right here. This is what gives me my biggest thrill." The Canton Repository chose her as the first person in the series of important contributors to the area. Twila was an institution in Minerva. A visit to her home could be something of a tour of an art gallery (she was an oil painting student of Jean Callerdine Browne), perhaps a history lesson, or it could mean the perusal of a chapter of the latest book she was putting together. You could count on it being a porch swing, apple pie, and ice cream type get together.
Twila is very proud of Minerva and her roots in Minerva, pointing out that the town was founded by the Whitacres and Taylors. Her mother was a Whitacre.
Karl Summer, Sr., Class of 1927, was nominated by Dr. S. L. Weir and Marilyn Bartley. Summer was a person who helped many people, both financially and spiritually. After high school graduation, he furthered his education at McKinley High School machine shop classes and attended Akron University, taking courses in plant and employee management. Later he was awarded an honorary degree in tool engineering.
In 1930 Summer worked the entire year at Liberty Bell Manufacturing for nothing but the experience. In 1958 he was able to purchase the Liberty Bell building.
During World War II, Summer was called to Washington, D. C., and worked at the Navy yard where he was involved in making torpedo tubes. After three and a half years in Washington, he was called home to set up the tool shop at the E. W. Bliss Co. in Canton to make more equipment for the U. S. Navy.
In 1937 Summer became a member of the Minerva Masonic Tubal Lodge. He also belonged to the Scottish Rite in Canton and the Tadmor Temple Shrine in Akron.
The Classic Travelers Club was an important part of his life. Along with his family, he made several trips across the United States in his 1913 Overland. They made the trip from Seattle to Philadelphia in the 1908 EMF.
Summer was a member of the Bayard Methodist Church and served on the finance committee, was a trustee, and as a member of the building and improvement committee.
It was well known that if you needed money, Summer would give it to you, but in return, you were required to give something. This he called, "good faith." Karl Summer, Jr. tells how his father would go to someone whose house had burned and give that person the money in his wallet. That was during the Great Depression when not many people, including his father, had much.
Summer co-founded Monarch Products Company with Glenn Lautzenheiser. This company made precision tolerance parts which were made for the automotive industry, and Superior Tool Company which was the die plant.
An exchange student from Norway, Borge "Bud" Yetterstad, became part of the Karl Summer extended family. The Summer family attended Bud's wedding in Norway, and Bud came back to Minerva twice.
In her nomination Bartley states, "Karl took his influence in the manufacturing and tool and die business into the community. From the beginnings in a backyard garage in Bayard to three companies employing local people, Karl has make an impact on the economy of the community With the three corporations operating today and his guidance to those he helped with his Christian conduct and belief, he has made the Minerva area a better place for us to live today.
Dr. Paul M. Sutton, Class of 1939, was nominated to the Minerva High School AlumniHall of Fame by Dorothy Hawkins Cole and other members of the MHS Class of 1939. Upon graduation from Minerva High School, he attended Harvard University on a four year full-expense National Scholarship, graduating Magna cum Laude with a Bachelor's of Science degree in physics. War duty in the U. S. Navy followed, then a return to academics. From 1946 to 1951 he continued his education at Columbia University where he earned both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in physics and served as a graduate instructor and research associate in the physics department.
On active duty for three and a half years, during and after World War II, Sutton served a total of eleven years in the U. S. Naval Reserve, culminating in service as Training Officer for Division 3-72, 3rd Naval District, New York City, during the Korean War. In World War II, following officer's training, he spent five months learning the operation and maintenance of a Top Secret acoustic homing torpedo, a successful weapon used against German submarines. He and his crew operated from Ascension Island, a volcanic cone in the center of the South Atlantic. The crew served a Naval B-24 squadron, VB-107, and, in 14 months, demolished four submarines with these torpedoes.
As the war wound down, the B-24 squadron was transferred to England, and Sutton and crew were sent to North Carolina, where, just before V-E Day, off Norfolk, Virginia, the only lighter-than-air (blimp) squadron with torpedoes sank another enemy submarine.
After the war Sutton was assigned to Inspector of Naval Materials at 30 Church Street, New York City. (Today this spot is known as Ground Zero.) After six months, he was assigned to serve as Instrumentation Coordinator for the Ordinance Evaluation Group at the Bikini Atom Bomb Tests where he witnesses the 4th and 5th atom bomb explosions.
Upon return, and entering Columbia, Sutton married Doris Nichols, a published poet and Associate Editor of the Fine Editions Press. (Today she is known as D. N. Sutton, and is the author of several books of poems.) They are the parents of two daughters. Pamela M. Sutton, M.D. worked abroad with the World Health Organization and is now Director of The Barbara Ziegler Program of Palliative Care and Hospice at the North Broward Hospital District in Broward County, Florida. Valerie J. Sutton invented the system for writing sign languages, and is Executive Director of the Center For Sutton Movement Writing, Inc., a California non-profit organization.
In the 1950s Sutton was employed as a section supervisor and research associate in the Research Laboratory of the Corning Glass Works in Corning, New York. In California from 1959 until 1987, he held the titles of Department Manager, Research Laboratory Manager, and Development Manager at the Ford Aerospace Corporation's California division at Newport Beach. His work at Corning involved theory and experiment on transmission of electricity and ultrasound through glass and development of techniques to measure stress in glass. His work at Ford Aerospace was chiefly optics and laser related, proposal preparation and research project administration.
From 1974 until the present he has been involved in management and planning for the Center for Sutton Movement Writing, Inc. founded by his daughter. The Sutton notation system permits writing of any of the world's many signed languages and has been proven as an excellent tool for teaching those who are born deaf. The system is being studied in thirty countries and is in effective use in Germany, Denmark, Brazil, Switzerland, Norway, Ireland, Malta, Canada and the U. S. For a person skilled in a particular sign language, anything written in that language in Sutton notation is easy to read. There are no other sign language writing systems for everyday use.
The Suttons have been residents of California since 1959 and live in the La Jolla part of San Diego. They tend to spend winter months in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where they are active in poetry circles.