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ORCHID: To 2023 class members of Trumbull County African American Achievers Kimberly Walker, Rosalyn Hill, Charles Prince Sr., Honeya Price, Melanie Hameed and Andrea Hudson. The honorees were recognized last weekend at the association's annual banquet at Eastwood Event Centre. The observance proved to be the largest in the group's history with more than 450 tickets sold. The honors were well deserved.
ORCHID: To Champion High School senior Olive Karam for being one of only 100 seniors nationwide to receive the J-100 Air Force Junior Reserve Scholarship, Olive should be proud that she met the rigorous standards for selection based on character, leadership, citizenship and diversity.
ORCHID: To Youngstown State University football player Dra Rushton and his teammates for visiting Blott Guy Elementary School in Liberty recently to talk to students about athletics, the importance of academics and following their dreams. We're certain the college athletes wowed the youngsters by their visit. Kudos to the college gridiron players for using their off-season time so constructively.
ONION: To parents and guardians of young children who run slipshod over commonsense precautions in the storage and safekeeping of any and all firearms. A Girard man, Joshua Allen, was arrested and charged with endangering children recently after police said an infant boy was found lying next to an unloaded pistol with a loose round of ammunition. Carelessness, too often, invites tragedy.
ORCHID: To all contributors to Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley's annual Harvest for Hunger campaign that began this week and runs through May. Considering emergency allocations of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are ending for 673,000 Ohioans this month, the need for assistance Second Harvest provides in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties is certain to grow. Here's hoping this year's campaign tops the $300,000 and 32,000 pounds of food collected in the 2022 Harvest. There are many ways to contribute, the easiest of which may be adding a monetary contribution as you check out groceries at Giant Eagle supermarkets across the Valley.
ORCHID: To former U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, and the University of Cincinnati for launching an academic center to foster civility and bipartisanship in politics. The new Portman Center for Policy Solutions aims to groom future leaders for results-oriented public service. Portman himself opted against re-election to the U.S. Senate last year in part because of the divisiveness and rancor consuming politics and preventing constructive change. Clearly, this center for civility couldn't have come soon enough.
ORCHID: To Sen. J.D. Vance, Portman's Republican successor, and Sen. Sherrod Brown, Ohio's senior Democrat senator, for vowing to work together cohesively and constructively on legislation to toughen safety standards on all rail cars traversing the U.S. Let's hope this is just the start of cooperative politics that typifies the civility and bipartisanship Portman's new center advocates.
ORCHID: To brothers Serdar Dede and Erdal Dede, owners of Cafe 422 restaurants in Boardman and Warren, for sponsoring a benefit at their Warren eatery that raised more than $30,000 for earthquake relief efforts in Turkey and Syria. The brothers, originally from Turkey, on Monday provided a buffet dinner, basket raffle and entertainment in the fundraiser. An accompanying GoFundMe campaign raised about $11,000 as of Friday. The death toll from the Feb. 6 quake totals around 50,000.