The Pilot News - Bean, Millers, and VFW ladies honored by Culver Chamber

Fassett, thanking Stallings for his service as Chamber president over the past two years, noted the first annual banquet he’d attended – before Stallings’ tenure – included only 15 people, a marked decrease from the teeming throng attending this year’s event, which Stallings said is the group’s largest awards banquet turnout to date.
Fassett, who also thanked Stallings’ wife Patty for her support of his Chamber work, said Stallings has been a Culver homeowner since 1977 and full-time resident since 2002, hailing originally from the Crown Point area. “His presence here has meant a lot of good things for the community,” said Fassett. “As he looks at Culver, he sees opportunities we sometimes walk by every day. Not necessarily that (Culver is) going to change; Culver doesn’t like change, (but) we like to see things progress.”
Stallings presented a plaque from the Chamber to longtime Culver fireman and chief Lance Overmyer, explaining the Chamber was part of a surprise banquet this past fall recognizing Overmyer for his community service, but was unable to present Overmyer his plaque at the time. “Talk about volunteerism and involvement in his community,” Stallings added. “Lance is the ultimate example of that.”
Awarded as Business Person of the Year was the joint team of K. Ward and Esther Powers Miller, owners of the Painter and Poet Gallery in Culver. The gallery started 20 years ago and launched in full in 1989 with the debut of Esther’s first Christmas card, bearing a watercolor painting of Culver Academies’ Memorial Chapel and Ward’s poetic verse. In the ensuing years, scores of local scenes and landmarks depicted in Esther’s recognizable watercolor and graced with Ward’s poetry were released, even as the Millers opened their own shop at 307 N. Main St. and launched its Web site, www.painterandpoet.com.
The Millers were married in 1980, he a Korean War vet who wrote poetry in his head, he says, while walking guard duty, before working 36 years for Indiana Bell telephone company and later joining Esther in her real estate appraisal business. Esther herself has lived in Culver since moving here in 1953, having studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute and spending most of her working years in real estate appraisal.
After the two juggled that profession and creating poetry and art, they “took the plunge” and retired from real estate to hit the road with their combined art and poetry on the art show circuit across the country. During that time, Ward’s poetry was collected in several small books graced by the calligraphy of well-known then-Culverite, the late Jean Williams (later Murphy). It was in 2001 that the Millers’ shop, adjacent to their North Main St. home, opened.
The two thanked the Chamber for its quarterly “Destination Culver” newsletter’s role in supporting their business, as well as “the enthusiastic support” given them by the community and their customers.
Awarded Volunteer of the Year was Leroy Bean, whom Stallings said “epitomizes what a volunteer is.”
Born in Chicago in 1941, Bean was in Culver by 1942 and has lived here 66 years since, marrying Margaret Poor in 1961 and having two daughters, Kimberly and Cheryl, besides three grandchildren, three stepgrandchildren, and five great grandsons. Bean retired from Easterday Construction after 42 years in Nov., 2004 joining the Lions Club along the way in July, 2001. Bean became “Station Master” in 2002 at the Club’s headquarters, the former Culver train station-depot in the town park. “If Leroy asks you to take that job over,” quipped Stallings with a smile, “you have to say ‘no.’ He basically runs that place. Everything that happens there, Leroy’s involved in it.”
Bean has been in charge of rental of the station since 2003, and over recent years has volunteered at the Kiwanis Club’s Twin Lakes camp, helped with Christmas in April several times, worked with Culver’s food pantry, removed snow from sidewalks of neighbors and residents; put up Christmas decorations on Main St. and Lakeshore Drive, and held seats on the park board and Lakefest Committee.
Bean, expressing his appreciation and surprise at the award, said simply he’d “rather be out volunteering somewhere!”
More Chamber awards to be published in tomorrow’s Pilot News.

Margaret Dehne accepted the Chamber’s Lifetime Achievement award on behalf of the Finney Shilling VFW Ladies Auxiliary Post 6919. The organization, which celebrated its 60th anniversary in April, 2007, is made up of “the mothers, daughters, granddaughters, sisters, and wives of our veterans of foreign wars.”
From its early days, the Auxiliary has supported VA hospitals, the VFW National Home, and various community activities. In the late 1960s, noted Stallings, the group began to be recognized on the state and national level with awards. In the 1970s, the Auxiliary started its first Senior Citizen Christmas Dinner and started a fund drive to support the then-fledgling Culver EMS, holding bake sales, dinners at the Post, and selling black walnuts door to door to raise funds.
On a national level, the Auxiliary also supports cancer aid and research, legislative and community activities, Americanism, and the Buddy Poppy program. Mary Lou Wise, past state president and Auxiliary president, has been editor of the group’s newsletter for 40 years, winning a number of state and national awards.
The Auxiliary has donated flags to local schools, the town, and library and sent boxes of needed items to troops in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and Iraq. The Voice of Democracy and Patriot’s Pen programs award local, state, and national-level prizes to area students for essays on patriotism. Also supported locally are the Maxinkuckee Players, Lake Maxinkuckee Environmental Fund, Heminger House, Red Cross, the local After-prom, Special Olympics, bingo at Miller’s Merry Manor, food for needy families, various programs at area libraries, and membership in both the Culver Chamber and Second Century Committee.
Dehne, accepting the award, thanked the Chamber as well as Ruhnow for her work in the Auxiliary, as well as all the women in the group, “without whom we wouldn’t be able to do all this.”
Plaques listing current and past Chamber award winners will be on display for the public at the Culver-Union Twp. Public Library.