Two springs ago, in a comfy office at Wittenberg University, a shy young African woman asked her financial aid counselor a question: If she were admitted, could Wittenberg find her a place to stay between semesters instead of her Dayton homeless shelter?
WYSO Clark County reporter Tom Stafford has the story.
In 12 years as a financial aid counselor, Jamie Cason heard the words of need spoken before. But never with the same urgency.
When 83-year-old Lois Christel went to the Springfield Meijer store a week ago Tuesday, she found the toilet paper shelves already bare. But that’s not what sent the retired hospital infection control expert home in tears.
WYSO Clark County reporter Tom Stafford has the story.
STORY TRANSCRIPT:
TOM STAFFORD: Lois Christel and her husband, Bob, were clean out of produce. So she chose to go Meijer’s early bird senior shopping hour.
LOIS CHRISTEL: There were fewer people and fewer dirty hands and fewer snotty noses and all that kind of thing.
A coalition of Springfield groups is trying to stitch together a food safety net for thousands of people. On March 4, the city’s South Side will become the region’s newest food desert, when the neighborhood’s Kroger supermarket closes. WYSO’s Jason Saul talked with Clark County reporter Tom Stafford about the emergency.
Starting January 1, a new community-based nonprofit took over Springfield’s 40-year-old Second Harvest Food Bank. They’ll provide nearly five million meals this year. WYSO Clark County reporter Tom Stafford attended the center’s rededication, and talks with WYSO News Director Jason Saul.
In Clark County, work is underway on a project some in the city see as critical to the long-hoped-for revival of downtown Springfield. It’s a nearly $7 million parking garage.
The garage is attracting a lot of buzz, but as WYSO Clark County reporter Tom Stafford, who also writes for the Springfield News-Sun, reports, in order for the project to succeed in promoting development, three critical elements need to be in place.
Stafford spoke with WYSO Managing Editor Jess Mador.
And now, an eyewitness account of the addiction epidemic. Four decades ago, when Winkie Mitchell and Ellen Stickney began their careers, they worked with the children of alcoholics at Clark County Mental Health Services. Before retiring as counselors, they'd also seen the children of crack, meth and opioid addicts. In this interview with WYSO Community Voices producer and Springfield News-Sun writer Tom Stafford, they share a glimpse of what they saw in those children's lives.
George Tan, Public Domain Mark 1.0 / Flickr Creative Commons
For many Americans around the country, climate change is a partisan political issue. But to many people of religious faith, the issue transcends politics. To them, the planet is “God's green earth” and should be treated accordingly. In this story we meet one Miami Valley man of faith whose long-held beliefs shape his view of climate change and the environment.
