Club marks 100th anniversary with gift to all

A bright spot in an otherwise gloomy year came when the Kiwanis Club of Findlay celebrated its 100th anniversary. To mark the milestone, the service club partnered with the Hancock Historical Museum to develop Brucklacher Memorial Park at the site of the Little Red Schoolhouse on County Road 236. The 10,000-square-foot park includes a playground, child-oriented sculpture and landscaping. "We are very grateful that we were able to give this gift to our community for our 100th anniversary," said Sarah Clevidence, who served as club president in 2020. The park is named after the late James Brucklacher, a past president of the Findlay Kiwanis Club and a trustee of the club's foundation, as well as a founder, past president and longtime trustee of the museum. He died in 2018 at the age of 94. Kiwanis members and volunteers began work at the site in September. Clevidence said the playground equipment went up in just a couple of days, and mulching and landscaping were also completed. Some members of the public volunteered to help as well. "Neighbors would stop in and just say, 'We're so excited that you're bringing this to our community for our kids to come play,'" said Clevidence. The playground offers areas to climb, two slides, a four-seat spinner and two spring rides. There's also an oil derrick teeter-totter that was sponsored by Marathon Petroleum Corp., the company from which Brucklacher retired. The next phase of the project involves Hancock Leadership. The Kiwanis Club submitted a proposal to add a history walk component to the park, and the project was selected as this year's class project. "We envision something like the StoryWalk at Riverside Park, except each post would have a piece of Hancock County history," Clevidence explained. The museum will be able to change the information from time to time, she said. "So you can go out there and enjoy the playground, but you can also take this little walk and learn about the history of our area," Clevidence said. "We're very excited about that." The location is the perfect spot for the park, club members have said. Each year, more than 1,000 grade school children visit the Little Red Schoolhouse — which is maintained by the museum — to experience what a school day was like in the 1800s when the school was built. There are also an estimated 500 children between ages 5 and 12 who live within walking distance of the property, the club has said. The cost of the project was estimated at $185,000, and Clevidence said the club was able to raise the funds despite canceling annual fundraisers like pancake day and purse bingo due to the pandemic. "Pancake Day was canceled, so that was kind of right when everything was breaking. Our sponsors were so generous in letting us keep their sponsorship donations. That meant the fundraiser still made around $18,000," she said. Purse bingo was also out of the question last year, she added. "So generous community members contributed," she said. "We had corporate donors, and we had a couple of club members who went together to make, we called it the Brucklacher challenge in our club. They would match donations from club members." In a three-to-one match up to $10,000, the challenge raised $40,000 for the project, she said. Clevidence noted that the project would not have happened without club member Rick Kidwell's involvement. "He was the heart and soul of this playground, from conception to completion," she said. And he's still involved in working with Hancock Leadership on the history walk, "which was his vision for the next phase," she said. For his efforts and dedication to the club, Kidwell was named Kiwanian of the Century.