VCSC Circle of Honor 2023 inductees bios | Local News | tribstar.com – Terre Haute Tribune Star

This 2023 VCSC Circle of Honor includes:

Bernard Ridens

A graduate of Indiana State University with a degree in math and physics, Ridens has served the Vigo County School Corp. in numerous ways, including as a physics teacher at Terre Haute South Vigo High School.

During the Cold War years in the 1960s, he volunteered to lead the creation of a fallout shelter at Honey Creek High School. He later developed the first closed circuit television at Honey Creek, and while teaching computer programming at Terre Haute South he worked with the science club to sell light bulbs which raised money to purchase the original Apple computer.

Ridens was named the distinguished physics teacher in 1977.

His commitment to the community was also impressive, serving as the president of the Vigo County Federal Credit Union, eight years on the Area Plan Commission, deputy assessor of Honey Creek Township and once retired he served as the executive director of the Vigo County Taxpayers Association.

He also was one of three co-founders of the Terre Haute Childrens Museum.

Bonnie Monaghan

Bonnie Monaghan was a longtime West Terre Haute resident and a valued volunteer in the community. Her career was in retail, serving as manager for various department stores, but once she retired in 1997 is when she really got to work.

She began volunteering with Helping Hands, using her knowledge in retail to bring the store from humble beginnings of no heat, air, water/plumbing or decent lighting to what it is today.

Currently, Helping Hands has more than tripled its space, added heat, air, running water and a bathroom. Volunteers use cash registers for their sales and Monaghan carefully counts and documents all transactions into a computer.

Over the last 19 years Helping Hands has generated over $1.6 million and awarded 369 college scholarships to West Vigo seniors.

Monaghan has been a driving force behind Helping Hands for the last 20 years, with the help of the other nine board members.

David Daniel Gossage

Gossage grew up in West Terre Haute, attending school at South Elementary and graduating from West Vigo in 1962. In the fall of 1962 he entered Indiana State as a teaching major. While in college he also joined the Navy Reserves and served two years active duty. When he returned home, Gossage married Janet Wittick and they had two children, Mark and Martha.

He went to work for McMillan sports and returned to ISU to finish his undergraduate teaching degree and master's.

His first teaching position was at his elementary alma mater, South Elementary, then at the new West Vigo Elementary. He served as principal at West Vigo Elementary and his last position held was principal at West Vigo Middle School.

A proud West Terre Haute community member, he also volunteered with Little League baseball and announced West Vigo basketball games.

Sue Ann Lenderman Secondino

Secondino was raised on a farm in northwestern Vigo County. She graduated from Fayette High School in 1956.

She was a classy lady, a farmer, not just a farmers wife. In addition, Secondino was a 4H leader for the youth of the community. Aside from her vital role in Secondino farms, she drove a school bus for the Vigo County School Corp. for 30 years.

Secondino was a pioneer for women bus drivers of the Vigo County School Corp. Her commitment to children was most evident throughout her 30-year service.

Patricia Fouty

Patricia Foutys distinguished career in education touched countless students, families, and colleagues.

She taught at Glenn, Rea, Deming, and Meadows schools. She was an elementary principal at Davis Park, Maryland, Prairieton and Dixie Bee.

As the longtime principal at Dixie Bee, Fouty was beloved by students, parents, and teachers and was recognized as Indiana principal of the year in 1979.

In addition to her teaching and school leadership duties, she was committed to her community as well. She served on the boards of the Family Service Association, Leadership Terre Haute and Westminster Village.

She served two terms as a trustee of Indiana State University. She also belonged to numerous professional organizations.

Vernon Hux

Born in 1928 in western Vigo County, Hux graduated from what was then Fayette High School in 1946.

Playing semi-pro baseball in the Western Indiana League, Hux was an apprentice in machine shops in Indiana and Illinois for seven years before embarking on his own.

He founded his own shop in 1955, and then after surviving serious injuries sustained in a March 7, 1959 airplane crash, Hux relocated to Terre Haute in 1961, changing the name of the business to Tri-Industries Inc.

Tri-Industries became a world leader in the fabrication of precision parts for aircraft engines, space satellites, and missiles. Virtually every American satellite launched included one part produced by Tri-Industries.

The manufacturer of honeycomb seals among other things, the company earned gross revenue of more than $38 million in 1987.

In February 1988 Hux sold the business to a New York Stock Exchange company.

He remained the chief executive officer of the subsidiary for several years. He was also president of Hux Oil Corp. Meanwhile, Hux unselfishly devoted his time and resources to community needs, particularly in health and education.

Hux was on the board of directors at Union Hospital, spearheading several hospital-building fund drives. In 1988 his $2 million endowment to the hospital foundation allowed the Hux Cardiovascular Center to add interventional cardiology to its list of services.

The facility was named among the nations top 100 hospitals offering the specialty.

LaVern Gibson

Gibson was a successful businessman and life-long resident of Vigo County.

He was devoted to his family and the betterment of his community. Among his many contributions to the area was an inspired vision that came from watching his grandson compete in cross country.

Gibson endowed 240 acres of land that had previously served Terre Haute and Vigo County as, first, a coal mine and later as a sanitary landfill to become the LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course.

The vision became a reality in the early 1990s when Gibson enlisted the help of his son, Max; his grandson, Greg, an accomplished distance runner; and two respected cross country coaches, John McNichols of Indiana State University and Bill Welch of Rose-Hulman.

They all launched a plan to retool the property for the championship cross country course that was dedicated in 1997.

Gibson made numerous contributions to the Wabash Valley, but his vision for the land resulted in a world-class facility that has set a new standard for the sport of cross country, a facility that our students proudly compete on throughout the cross country season.

William Welch

Someone who truly loved cross country and the LaVern Gibson Course was the late Coach Bill Welch.

He coached the first Vigo County team to claim an IHSAA state championship: the 1972 Terre Haute North cross country team.

It was among many high points in a long and distinguished teaching and coaching career.

He was a Terre Haute native who graduated from Gerstmeyer High School and then went into the U.S. Army to serve in the European theater in World War II.

While he rarely spoke of the experience, Welch had distinguished himself in military service in harrowing conditions during four campaigns including northern France after D-Day.

After discharge in late 1945, he enrolled at Indiana State Teachers College with a desire to teach and coach. In 1951, he started that career back at Gerstmeyer.

He coached a number of sports in those days, including basketball, football and baseball.

He would continue his career at Terre Haute North when it opened in 1971.

Track and field and cross country were his passionshe demanded much from his athletes, and they respected and adored him.

He developed a national reputation and helped train U.S. Olympic teams and served as a lead track and field official at the 1984 Summer Games at Los Angeles.

His teams were consistently successful and he was widely recognized as a leader and innovator who initiated training techniques now in widespread use.

He was inducted into multiple halls of fame locally, regionally, and nationally to recognize his prowess as a track and cross country coach. Even in retirement, he served as a coach at Rose-Hulman.

The tracks at Rose and Terre Haute North bear his name.

Welch was a modest, unassuming man, not prone to boast or seek attention.

He commanded the full attention of athletes, of course, but he cared little for other attention. He would prefer to be remembered by what his athletes accomplished, not the number of victories he logged.

It goes like this: four individual state champions, five future college All America athletes, 20 sectional team titles, eight IHSAA Regional championships and that first and special state championship at North.

Blessed with a long life, Coach Welch died in 2020 at the age of 97.

Clarence Hood

A career watchmaker, one of Hood's proudest accomplishments was the extensive work he did to the Woodrow Wilson clock.

After serving in the Army, Hood moved to Terre Haute to attend the Terre Haute School of Watchmaking, eventually opening his own business with the help of his wife, Mary.

Around 1966 with the business running well, he revisited his interest in a rundown old clock located in the beautiful clock tower at Woodrow Wilson Middle School.

At the time he said that as long as he had lived in Terre Haute, the clock never kept time.

It always bothered him. He approached the school board about repairing and maintaining the clock, which they said no because of budget concerns.

Hood laughed saying he wasnt interested in the money; he wanted the challenge of fixing it and the satisfaction of seeing it run. So they voted again and he got the job.

He cleaned, repaired and improved the clock, doing so for the rest of his career, never accepting any payment for the work.

Hood retired in 1995 and said that his greatest and proudest accomplishment was the work he did for the school corporation.

Jane Dabney Shakelford

Born in 1895, Shakelford moved from Tennessee to Indiana as a child and swiftly succeeded in education, first as a student, then as a teacher, and famously as an author.

After graduating from high school in 1914, she enrolled at Indiana State Normal School, the premier teachers college in Indiana at the time.

Now known as Indiana State University, the school was one of the few public higher education institutions open to African American students in that era.

She earned a degree and started a 43-year teaching career in the Terre Haute public schools, teaching in both segregated and integrated settings.

She was dismayed that books for and about students of color were rareand so she set about to correct that failing.

She wrote books about African American people as leaders and eschewing the ugly stereotypes and prejudices that continued to haunt society in the 20th century.

Her first book was published in 1938 and called The Childs Story of the Negro. It featured the lives of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass and Mary McLeod Bethune.

Her books not only taught history; they made history, too.

She continued to write books that were published and available in school libraries not only in Terre Haute, but throughout the country. Some of those books are displayed today at the Vigo County History Center.

She died in 1979.

Reita Sue Schnabel

Schnabel was born in Prairie Creek, graduating from Prairie Creek High School in 1951, then going to Indiana State University, majoring in home economics and a minor in music.

She married Jim Schnabel in June 1955 and got her first teaching job that summer at Farmersburg.

The family moved around, but in 1967 the family of six moved to Prairie Creek when Jim took a job with the Vigo County schools.

Around 1970, Reita Sue took another hybrid job teaching kindergarten in Fairbanks and choir at North Central High School in Farmersburg.

After two years she decided to go back to ISU to pursue her master's in elementary education with an emphasis in science. She graduated around 1974.

She took sub jobs before she was hired at Meadows Elementary school and taught there until she retired in 1997.

During her teaching years she began developing the idea of launching a childrens museum. With our two other honorees (Jerry Mansfield and Bernard Ridens), she co-founded the Terre Haute Childrens Museum in 1988.

Dorothy Jerse

Jerse, her husband Bill and their children moved to Terre Haute from California in 1964; all four of her children attended Vigo County schools.

A proud parent at those schools, Jerse was part of the beginning of the Vigo County Education Foundation.

As curator at the Vigo County Historical Society, she worked with third grade students as they came to visit, a program that continues to this day at the Vigo County History Center.

Later, Jerse served many students and staff as the director of the former YWCA. Outspoken on racial equality and the empowerment of women, Jerse has written many local history books, with her last published in 2015.

Her newspaper column ran through 2017.

Jerry Mansfield

Jerry Mansfield is one to thank for many learning opportunities in Terre Haute. A graduate of Indiana State University, Mansfield received his masters degree in education and a doctorate in educational technology from Belford University.

In the 1970s, he taught science at Otter Creek Junior High School, then he taught astronomy at South. He was the director of the Allen Memorial Planetarium.

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VCSC Circle of Honor 2023 inductees bios | Local News | tribstar.com - Terre Haute Tribune Star