Don Dietrich: The 40-year trustee

Morgan trustee heads into retirement

By CARL E. FEATHER - Staff Writer - cfeather@starbeacon.com

Donald Dietrich longs for the old days in Ashtabula County, when a man could make a living running the family dairy farm and township trustees held as much local political clout as a Wall Street banker has on the Hill these days.

But dairy cattle no longer slog through the crusty fields that surround the red barns of Dietrich’s Morgan Township farm. There’s neither a moo nor a snort coming from inside these barns, just whispers of memory only Dietrich can hear.

The land has been in Dietrich’s family for five generations, and like those who came before him, Dietrich made his living here. His three daughters and three sons won’t, and while Dietrich would like to see his grandson take over the farm that his great-grandfather established in 1878, he knows it would be a sentence to hard work and intolerable risk.

“I feel sorry for these dairy farmers nowadays,” Dietrich says as he dodges the shadows of his barns, the biting wind reminding him he ought to be packing for Arizona soon.

This has been his home for 79 years, and for more than half of that time, 40 years, Dietrich has been a trustee of the township he loves.

That changes at the end of this month, when Dietrich attends his final trustees’ meeting on the 28th and turns over his seat to Donald Roland. On Nov. 3 Roland did what other candidates failed to do in nine prior elections: defeat the immensely popular Dietrich at the polls.

“It’s like a family,” Dietrich says of his township and the people who work behind the scenes to make it a community. “Fantastic. That’s why I always wanted to run and stay in there. I didn’t want to let (his constituents) down.”

He’s worked with four clerks, three road supervisors, three cemetery sextons and two cemetery clerks. He says the commitment of the people he worked with is one of the reasons he kept running and running.

“You have to love what you’re doing, or you don’t stick around so long,” he says.

Dietrich’s continuous run of 40 years makes him an anomaly in Ohio township trustee politics. Although the Ohio Township Association doesn’t track such things, it does recognize the oldest/longest tenure trustee who attends the annual meeting. Two years ago, when Dietrich was at year 38, he was duly recognized by his fellow trustees at that gathering.

He got into township politics as a result of residents’ discontentment with the way things were going. They wanted new blood, fresh ideas. Ironically, Dietrich suspects it was that same mandate for change that played a role in unseating him 40 years later.

“I think with people putting Obama in there last year, they wanted change,” Dietrich says.

The kind of change Dietrich planned to bring to Morgan Township four decades ago centered on the roads, or at least what was left of them. Two citizens drove out to his farm one day and asked him to be a candidate. Dietrich accepted the invitation; Pete Janson was to be his running mate.

The men put their message on hand-painted signs they hauled around the community in the beds of their pickup trucks. Dietrich went door-to-door, passing out coin purses with their names on them, although most of the township’s residents already knew who he was and the kind of job he’d do for them.

Dietrich and Janson went into office committed to their promises to fix the roads and dig the ditches. The depth of that commitment was demonstrated outside public view — Dietrich says that the first five years they were on the board, they refused to take wages so there would be more money for stone and other supplies necessary to fulfill their commitment. As a result, he will receive only 35 years of Public Employees Retirement System benefits.

More recently, all three Morgan Township trustees declined health insurance, saving the township $2,400 a month.

“We’ve done that for six or seven years,” Dietrich says. “Think of the money we’ve put in the coffers of the township.”

Dietrich says he and Janson had just started to settle into the task of keeping their promises when a major challenge to township roads hit several rural communities in the county. Gas drillers were flocking to the region, and their equipment was churning up township roads and the ire of trustees.

An incident with a drilling rig that got muddled in mud on Knowlton Road gave Morgan Township trustees the bite they needed. They called the sheriff, who cited the company that owned the rig and shut down drilling operations across the county until rules could be promulgated.

The county township trustees group convened at the courthouse along with mayors and city managers. In 5 1/2 hours, they developed and adopted the regulations and fee schedule.

Dietrich says something like that couldn’t happen today because the unity among townships and villages, and camaraderie of their leadership, no longer exists.

“They don’t stick together like we used to,” he says. “You got different people, different thinking today. They don’t all think alike.”

Looking back on the group’s evolution, Dietrich believes the seminal event that weakened the group was when it capitulated on the 9-1-1 taxation issue and allowed the county to tax real estate rather than phone service to pay for the system. He said prior to that, trustees held more clout than commissioners; indeed, the trustees consistently chose commissioner candidates from within their ranks.

“What we wanted (back then) we got. It’s too bad that it’s not that way today,” he says. “We wouldn’t have a lodge and be in the fix we’re in today.”

Closer to home, Dietrich kept his promise to improve the roads, using the windfall that came into the township via the drilling fees trustees enacted. The $300 fee, times 80 wells, generated enough money to buy a new grader, front-end loader and Mack truck.

The township needed a maintenance garage to store this gear, and Dietrich worked with the other two trustees to build a state-of-the-art building on property the township obtained in a land swap with the Boys Scouts of America.

“It turned out wonderful,” says Dietrich, who is equally proud of the cemetery work that’s been accomplished under this watch.

Trustees appointed Dietrich as their representative to the Union Cemetery Board 30 years ago. The cemetery is supported with a .45-mill that township residents and those of Rock Creek and Roaming Shores villages pay.

Under Dietrich’s leadership, 21 acres was added to the cemetery. Using volunteer labor and donations, the infrastructure for the this new section was built, including a 22-by-40-foot stone chapel. Not long after the chapel was completed, in December 2006, it was used for the funeral for his wife of 56 years, Delores.

Dietrich was equally committed to providing fire protection to the community, and joined Morgan Hose so he could better understand the volunteer firefighters’ needs and work to address them.

“We built onto the fire department, all volunteer,” says Dietrich, who has been recognized on several occasions for his service. The department named him citizen of the year in 1991.

“I love my fire department, he says. “We were like family. I love them; still do.”

Dietrich says the project that he wanted to complete before he retired from public service remains undone: planking on the historical iron bridge leading to Union Cemetery. The board received a $250,000 grant for the work, but could not raise a local match and lost the money.

“I know I can get volunteers together and we can deck that bridge and it would not cost $200,000,” he says.

Dietrich plans to continue to push for the project after he retires from official public service.

“I think I can go down there and volunteer and do just as much good as it is now. I’m ready to sit back and watch and see how the younger generation is going to do it,” he says. “They got a tough row to hoe. I’m pretty proud of the 40 years I put in.”

Reflecting on his defeat, Dietrich feels it’s because he didn’t take the time to do the door-to-door campaigning that he usually did.

“This time, I thought I’d just run on my laurels, and it didn’t work,” he says of the close race.

After passing his seat to Roland, Dietrich plans to pack his bags and head to Arizona for the winter, where a friend lives. He’ll be back in the summer, to pick up where he left off.

“After 40 years, you ought to start going fishing or something,” he says.

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