All Alumni Association Messages

President’s Messages – Spring 2023 – What Your Donations Have Done

by Dave Blocksom ’68

Sports
Withrow football is back. In his fourth season at the helm, Coach Kali Jones has taken the Tigers to the playoffs for the second year in a row. For the first time since the State playoff system was established in 1972, the Tigers made it to the district second round where they fell to Kings. Two seniors received DI college offers and four received DII offers. All told, our players were offered $12.1 million in college scholarships.

Withrow – The first fifty years: GAA-The Founder and The Advisers
Bob Linnenberg
’63 continues his excellent research into Withrow’s rich history with “Withrow – The first fifty years: GAA-The Founder and The Advisers”
You can read this article by clicking HERE.

Academics
We are proud to announce that two of our seniors have received prestigious Marian Spencer Scholarships to UC. Jamiah Mixon and Jaylen Green will receive fully paid room, board and tuition, plus an all-expense paid study abroad, as well as enhanced advisor support. The scholarships are typically offered to one senior at each CPS high school, but we were honored this year with two recipients.

Experiences
Through your generous donations we have been able to provide additional support and experiences for our students and staff this year. In March we funded a field trip to Kentucky State University for 80 of our students. The trip was led by Withrow Resource Coordinator James Robertson ’99, who is a member of our Alumni Board of Trustees. The students were able to tour the campus, enjoy a lunch in the school cafeteria and watch the KSU-Central State basketball game. It was an eye-opening experience for our students to see a historic black university. We are also funding an April trip to Howard University so that our rugby team can participate in the HBCU Rugby Festival. As Coach Nathan Myers stated, “This will enable our players to experience a rugby community where there’s a greater sense of shared culture and experiences” than they experience locally.

The Arts
We continue to support our growing fine arts program as explained in Christy Backley’s article in this edition. Specifically, we are now providing percussion, woodwind, and brass tutors for all of our band classes, as well as partnering with the Carlson-Berne Scholarship Fund, which provides tutors for our string classes.

Healthy Living
Through our Feed Our Tigers program we continue to provide game day team meals for over 400 of our student athletes. The mental health of students, teachers, and staff has been in the headlines ever since the Covid outbreak. Again, thanks to generous donations, we are providing mental health support to our Tiger family. Currently 80 students are receiving weekly mental health treatments, and we are funding weekly treatments for six students who do not have health insurance for mental health treatments. We have provided several catered lunches for our teachers and staff to show them our appreciation for the tough work they are doing.

Technology
We have hired a website developer to update and completely redo our aging website. This work will be completed this summer, so please check it out in August (withrowalumni.org).

Thanks
In closing, I want to thank all our donors who make all this possible for our students and staff. Your dollars really are transformative. Just a reminder to those of you who are 73 or older and are required to take a Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from your taxable retirement account: You can make a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) to Withrow Alumni Inc (WAI) in lieu of your RMD, and you won’t have to pay income taxes on the distribution. You can do this even if you take the federal standard deduction and don’t itemize on your tax return. Of course, all other donations to WAI are tax deductible. We sincerely appreciate any donation you can make by clicking HERE. Thank you for your support.

President’s Messages – Fall 2022

by Dave Blocksom ’68

Academic News
I am pleased to announce that Withrow Alumni, Inc. has been selected to manage a $50,000 donation from a private family foundation which prefers to remain anonymous. The grant is for $10,000 per year for five years. The funds are being used to pay for music tutors for our five band classes, which include beginning band, intermediate band, and orchestra. There are four tutors (oboe, brass, percussion, and woodwinds) who work with our 70 band students one day per week. The program started last year, and the results have been amazing! Some of the students will give up their study halls to come to the band room to practice with the tutors. Our oboe student is now looking into majoring in music in college. This is quite a turnaround for our band program.

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President’s Messages – Spring 2022

by Dave Blocksom ’68,

Withrow – the first 50 years
Football – Angus King and the Early Coaches

 

Bob Linnenberg ’63 continues his excellent research into Withrow’s rich history. His latest article “Withrow-the first 50 years – Football-Angus King and the Early Coaches” reveals early teachers and coaches who led Withrow teams in different sports to success. You can read this article by clicking HERE.

 

 

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President’s Messages-Fall 2021

by Dave Blocksom ’68

Repairs to Clock Tower and Bridge Complete
The copper roof is completely installed on the balcony level of the clock tower, and after years of water infiltration, we now have a dry interior in the tower. The concrete structural repair work on the bridge is also complete, and the bridge looks beautiful again. During the project, additional structural defects were uncovered, and Cincinnati Public Schools Facilities agreed to pay the $23,143 cost to make those repairs. Hummel Restoration did the work, and they did an outstanding job. Hummel was the masonry contractor on the original construction of Withrow and the clock tower in 1919. They built many of the old CPS schools as well as City Hall and the Art Museum. They just happened to be the low bidder on our project; low bidder and most qualified bidder are usually not synonymous. The total project cost was $128,000 and CPS picked up 86% of the cost. Withrow Alumni paid for the structural engineering work ($6,763), the City of Cincinnati building permits ($1,672) and the restoration cosmetic work ($9,200). Thank you, generous alumni who made the above repairs possible.

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President’s Messages-Spring 2021

by Dave Blocksom ’68

As it has been for everyone, this year has been tough for our students, teachers and staff. The school year started off with a blended learning model where students were in class two days a week and learning remotely three days a week. Later in the fall, due to an increase in Covid cases, teaching went completely remote five days a week. In mid-February it went back into blended learning, and as I write this, Withrow will go to traditional five day classroom teaching after spring break (March 31st). This year has been especially hard on our seniors, who have had to forego all of the in-school experiences of senior year. We are working with the administration to try to enhance the remaining experiences our seniors will have during their last two months on campus (yearbooks, prom, graduation, senior day).

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