Former teacher donates $1.52 million

At a basketball game Jan. 10, Greg LeFevre asked everyone in the gym who had been taught by Ron Shoemaker to stand.

Then, he asked the same of anyone who had learned from current Fort Recovery High School math teachers Janice Osterloh and Joe Bruns, both students of Shoemaker’s, to stand as well.

“Pretty much all of them in the gym were standing up,” said Greg Wright, Shoemaker’s cousin.

The moment provided just a snapshot of the lives Shoemaker touched during his more than three decades teaching math at FRHS. Thanks to the gift announced that evening, he will touch many more.

Wright was on hand to announce his cousin’s donation of $1.52 million to Fort Recovery Community Foundation for future scholarships for Fort Recovery students.

“That was his life,” said Wright, noting that Shoemaker never married and had no children. “I know he did a lot of extracurricular activities over there for the band. He coached cross country.

“That’s what he put himself into.”

Shoemaker was born in Bluffton, graduated from Portland High School in 1961 and earned his bachelor’s degree in education from Earlham College and his master’s degree from Ball State University. He went on to a career teaching math at FRHS from 1966 to 2001.

He died at the age of 76 in November 2018, and it was last summer that Fort Recovery Community Foundation first learned of an impending gift from his estate.

But there was no indication of what the amount would be until Wright called LeFevre, president of the community foundation, in December to set up an in-person meeting.

“He wanted to see the look on my face, and the look on my face was exactly like the look on the crowd’s face that night at the basketball game,” said LeFevre. “Just absolute disbelief and excitement at the same time.”

Not wanting to have a $1.52 million check in his possession, LeFevre immediately delivered it to community foundation treasurer Janice Fiely. But as he worked with Fort Recovery Local Schools superintendent Larry Brown to set up the announcement at the basketball game, he mostly kept the news quiet.

“I never wanted to tell the exact amount, because I wanted to keep it quiet until the community could hear it all at one time,” he said. “To be able to hear the gasps and deep breaths and everything, it was simply fun. … It was just neat to hear the reaction.”

“When we announced the amount, you could just see it, and then they started clapping and everything,” added Wright, who works for Portland’s street department. “It was pretty awesome.”

The donation, which amounted to about a third of Fort Recovery Community Foundation’s previous total assets, will be used for new scholarships in addition to those Shoemaker had already been funding since 2008.

One was in honor of his father, Lamar Shoemaker, who had served as principal at General Shanks Elementary School in Portland. One was in honor of Howard Berry, who had been Shoemaker’s track coach, and one was in honor of Robert Freemyer, who joined the faculty of Portland High School when Shoemaker was a senior in 1956.

Freemyer remembers Shoemaker as an excellent math student and also as a musician. He was involved in Jay County Community Band and Jay County Civic Theatre.

“He was a great drummer,” said Freemyer. “He loved to play.”

Shoemaker taught not only Osterloh, Bruns and Amy Kaiser, a math teacher by degree who is now a guidance counselor at FRHS, but 2017 Wolf Prize in Mathematics winner Richard Schoen. When Schoen received the prize that recognized him as one of the greatest mathematicians in the world, he credited Shoemaker with his start.

“I had a math teacher, Ron Shoemaker, who took a big interested in me,” said Schoen, now the Excellence in Teaching Endowed Chair at the University of California, Irvine. “He would get me out of study hall almost every day to work one-on-one. At the time, I didn’t quite know what to make of it but I think it really made me feel special and like he felt I had some mathematical ability.”

The Fort Recovery Community Foundation board is still working out exactly how the money million will be used.

Shoemaker’s will spells out that it must go toward scholarships for graduating FRHS seniors, but leaves a lot of leeway as to details such as how many scholarships, their amounts and whether they are single-year or renewable for four years.

LeFevre did, however, say the board’s intention is to make the scholarships endowed, ensuring that they will live on. He pointed out that even 5 percent annual earnings on $1.52 million amounts to more than $75,000 to be distributed each year.

“There’s a variety of things that we are trying to evaluate,” said LeFevre, “and trying to do as close to his intention as what we can.”