March 10, 2011
Independence Day
Parade has grand marshal, benefactor
DISTRICT I CHAMPS
By KEVIN PARKS ThisWeek Community Newspapers
The date, time and location for the Northland Independence Day Parade have long been in place, dictated by calendar and tradition. A theme, “Music of America,” was decided upon a while ago. Last week, Northland Community Council parade chairman George Schmidt announced that a locally famous grand marshal had consented to be honored. In addition, Schmidt said that a benefactor in the form of George Hadler of the Hadler Cos. had stepped forward to offer $200 to assist any civic association to construct a float. Now all that’s needed is the kind of imagination that used to fuel entries to the annual celebration of the nation’s birthday. At the March NCC meeting, president Dave Paul said that longtime residents have shown him pictures of long-ago parades that featured elaborate creations using chicken wire and papier-mâché. He added that he was hoping the infusion of $200 toward materials would inspire the council’s member organizations to revive the tradition of floats that go well beyond pickup trucks with banners. The naming of Frederick C. Peerenboom, much better known as Fritz the Nite Owl, as grand marshal delighted Paul. “He’s an institution, certainly, here in central Ohio,” Paul said. Now 76, Peerenboom hosted “Nite Owl Theatre” on WBNS-TV (Channel 10) from 1971 to 1994, then took the character with the crazy glasses to a couple of cable channels, after which he hosted a jazz show for several years on a local radio station that has since changed formats. More recently, Fritz the Nite Owl, whom Peerenboom has portrayed for more than half a century, See PARADE HAS, page A4
By David Yunker/ThisWeek
Northland High School’s basketball team member Alexis Peterson jumps into the arms of Brooklyn Peterson to celebrate the Viking’s District I championship victory over Gahanna on Saturday, March 5. Looking on are Raven Bryant-Williams, left, and Tatiana Chapple. See Sports on page A5 for the story.
Northland Community Cleanup Day
NCC hears from Keep Columbus Beautiful By KEVIN PARKS ThisWeek Community Newspapers
The first Northland Community Cleanup Day on SR-161 is scheduled for Saturday, April 2. As if to help pump up participation in the first such event of 2011, a representative of Keep Columbus Beautiful was the guest speaker at
last week’s Northland Community Council meeting. Program manager Sherri Palmer provided attendees with some background on Keep Columbus Beautiful, praised the ongoing effort to remove trash and debris from a main corridor into the community and sought participation in two major cleanup efforts later this month and
in early April. The Northland Community Cleanup Day, which is held approximately every six weeks spring through late fall, is presented by the landscaping and beautification committee of the Northland Community Council, with the support of Keep Columbus Beautiful, the Northland Area Business Association and the
SR-161 Task Force. Volunteers for the April 2 inaugural event of the year, which will run from 9 a.m. to noon, are asked to meet at the Sharon Woods Center behind the Jiffy Lube at 1800 E. Dublin Granville Road. Bags, gloves, safety vests and tools for picking up trash See NCC HEARS, page A4
Annual awards event now set for May 12 By KEVIN PARKS
neighborhoods of the Northland
ThisWeek Community Newspapers area is now set for Thursday, May
A funny thing happened on the way to holding the 2011 awards banquet for the Northland Community Council: It got delayed. Again this year. Normally held in late February or early March, and this year set to take place on March 4, the event feting safety personnel, individuals and couples nominated for their contributions to the
12. Pregnancy on the part of the banquet’s main planner, NCC secretary Roseann Hicks — she gave birth to a boy in late January — and a paucity of nominations from council members resulted in the delay. In 2010, as a result of the economic downturn, the event was also pushed back to May while See ANNUAL, page A4
Area intersections rank high in crash study By KEVIN PARKS ThisWeek Community Newspapers
By Chris Parker/ThisWeek
Northland residents Tonya and Chad Winebrenner sit in Riverside Hospital. Tonya is pregnant with quadruplets — two boys and two girls — and is currently on bed rest until the delivery.
‘Overachiever’ carrying quadruplets By KEVIN PARKS
After Chad and Tonya Winebrenner received some unexpected news at the fertility clinic they had been using when three Tonya Winebrenner wanted to have five and a half years of attempts at getting pregchildren. nant on their own had failed, they went If all goes well, she’ll have accomplished straight to a Babies ’R’ Us where they got four-fifths of that goal in one fell swoop in even more startling news. a matter of a few weeks. The Northland couple learned from a ThisWeek Community Newspapers
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cheerful store employee that they can expect to be going through as many as 40 diapers a day after they take their babies home. If, as Chad and Tonya dearly hope, all four babies come to term – by no means a certainty, but all was looking good last week – See NORTHLAND, page A2
In his monthly report at the March meeting of the Northland Community Council, president Dave Paul said last week that the region had done very well in a major street resurfacing effort recently announced by Mayor Michael B. Coleman and members of Columbus City Council. Lots of streets in the area, 26 out of 31, are included in the first phase of the $30 million program. That was the good news. The bad news, according to Paul, is that in a study of the top 40 high-crash intersections throughout the region between
2005 and 2007, the Northland area was also well-represented. Paul, who sits on a citizens’advisory committee of the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, which conducted the high-crash intersection review, said that seven of the top 26 are in the Northland area. Several, Paul added, are along East Dublin Granville Road. These include the intersection with Maple Canyon Drive, coming in at number five with 189 total crashes in the two year period; the intersection with Tamarack Boulevard at number 16 with 121 accidents; and the intersection with Karl Road at number 26 with 171 crashes. See INTERSECTIONS, page A7
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