GAMBIER — The Village of Gambier had a lot to celebrate Friday — the nation’s July 4 independence, Gambier’s 150th year of founding and its 2020 Citizen of the Year — during a brief ceremony with a small crowd gathered in front of the post office.
“Almost 200 years ago the Village of Gambier was named and laid out,” Mayor Leeman Kessler offered, referencing British Naval Officer James Gambier, Kenyon College benefactor who set aside land in 1824, including College Township. “But it took until 1870 for this village to be officially incorporated and set apart as distinct from the township.”
Kessler noted 2020 has been a year of substantial tumult and challenges amid a pandemic.
“I think we’ve all come to understand that more important than what sets us apart is what connects us together,” he said. These connections are not just about surviving and regrouping through the COVID-19 pandemic, but living through and being part of “a national conversation about social and racial justice,” he added.
Before the ceremony, Kessler — on hand with his two children and wife, Rachel, a fellow Kenyon College graduate who is a priest in charge of Harcourt Parish — asked all in attendance to wear masks for safety reasons. He noted that Gambier is starting to revive following Kenyon’s coronavirus-related shut down in March. Gambier’s cornerstone businesses are either open or soon to reopen including the market, bookstore, coffee shop, and in about six weeks, the college. Kenyon will reopen its classrooms Aug. 24 preceded by student move-ins with safety in mind, including mandatory COVID-19 testing, social distancing and mask-wearing, along with other protocols involving disinfecting, cleaning and emphasis on hygiene.
Kessler gave special thanks to two entities — one being People’s Bank, founded in Gambier and now celebrating its centennial year, and the other the post office.
A loud cheer from the small crowd included a large dog’s bark. He said after he and Rachel came back to Gambier following several years away following their Kenyon graduations, “It was the (People’s) bank who helped us build a house so we could be a permanent part of life here in the village.”
“And I also want to recognize another institution that has helped keep us connected — this very post office,” Kessler said. “For months now when businesses and offices and school rooms had to close their doors, these (post office) doors have remained open. The post office has helped us remain connected, to pay our bills, helped us to vote, and keep us connected to those we have been separated from, day in and day out.”
Kessler then said it was his “absolute honor” to name Gambier Post Office and its postal workers as Gambier’s 2020 Citizen of the Year. “It’s thanks for what they do that keeps us all together,” he offered.
Gambier does not have rural delivery inside its confines; all villagers are required to have a PO box. That brings them close together with the building as a gathering place of sorts, he noted. The Citizen of the Year award was extended to Gambier Postmaster Bruce Dingman and two clerks, Julie Fahling and Lina Ramsey, as well as rural carriers Nicole Grubaugh, Reida Frazer and substitute carrier Michelle Blubaugh. Carriers deliver mail to customers outside the village.
Kessler then introduced Gambier Poet Laureate Emeritus Royal Rhodes, who taught at Kenyon for 40 years with much of his religious studies focusing on poetry as a means of expression.
Part of his poem, “Gambier Sesquicentennial,” reads, “New challenges have seen our village rise / to hear and help is Gambier’s civic creed / Every crisis faced exemplifies / New ways to heal a neighbor’s sudden need.”
Rhodes said he found poetry to be a wonderful way to touch peoples’ hearts. He was glad knowing the post office was named Citizen of the Year, as Rhodes, each winter, writes a Christmas-related poem specifically for the Gambier Post Office, which has existed since the early 1940s.
“I love it,” he said. “These people (who work inside) are a link to the wider world for all of us.”
