Deadline for September/October Newsletter is Friday August 22nd.
From the Mayor
By: Gary Griffith 740.768.2632
Finally, we’re getting some warm weather in the Berg! Looks like the first week of July is going to be a scorcher!
The Jefferson County Engineers’ Department has sent the First Street project out to bid for a contractor to be awarded the contract.
Be careful if you’re out and about in your car, because there are a lot of kids out at different times of the day!
A big Thank You to all the property owners that have been improving their properties! Thank You to all residents, both past and present, for doing what you do to make the Berg the envy of the Valley!
Mayor Gary Griffith
Bergholz Community Foundation
By: Nikki Klein
Summer is in the air! Such a great time of year!
We have some great news! Community Health Care of Bergholz will be opening soon. Mallory Puckett, CNP along with Paulo Borges, MD will be seeing patients in the Lawrence P. Crow Medical Building. Community Health Care has been in practice for over 35 years. They have 16 sites serving over 80,000 patients in Medina, Stark, Summit, Wayne, and Cuyahoga Counties in Northern Ohio. Their healthcare providers include board-certified Family Physicians, Physical Therapists, and Nurse Practitioners. If you would like more information on Community Healthcare, please visit their website at www.chci.com. To become a patient of Community Health Care of Bergholz, please call 330-854-2510. Once you are signed up, medication refills or acute care visits can be addressed until the Bergholz location is open.
The foundation awarded 16, $1,500 scholarships to graduates this year. Congratulations to the following graduates: Kaitlyn Phillips, Zachary Kuntz, Zoe Speaker, Madison Somerville, Bryce Bregenzer, Briley Blancato, Katie Philips, Rebecca Bell, Lillian Talkington, Jamie Barker, Kathryn Clancey, Kylee Stull, Ali Shrieve, Cole Pittman, Peyton Neeley, and Maria Hunter. Congratulations to all of you and wishing you all the best as you begin this exciting new chapter.
I have a correction to make from the previous newsletter. A&B Pharmacy does not deliver to Bergholz, but Diamond Pharmacy does. Sorry if this caused any confusion.
I hope you all have a wonderful summer!
East Springfield Christ UMC Block Party
Pastor Deborah Kellar
740.543.3002
Sunday, July 20th on the lawn of Christ UMC, we are having a Block Party. You are invited!
The day will begin with an outdoor worship service at 11:00am. Bring a lawn chair and join us in worship. Following worship will be a picnic lunch open to everyone. From 12pm to 4pm there will be games for children and adults – corn hole, horseshoes, badminton, and other games for kids and adults alike. Kurt James will be here with a couple of inflatables too!
The event is free. Come and join us and say hi to a neighbor!
The Church is located at 203 Church Street East Springfield.
WEBA Food Pantry
By: Ann Wiley 740.543.3972
Pantry and produce dates:
July Produce: Friday, July 18
Pantry: Saturday, July 26
August Produce: Friday, August 15
Pantry: Saturday, August 23
September Produce: Friday September 19
Pantry: Saturday September 27
October Produce: Friday October 17
Pantry: Saturday October 25
November Produce: Friday November 21
Pantry: Saturday November 22
December Produce: Friday, December 19
Pantry: Saturday, December 20
Let’s Fight Together Outreach
By: T.J. Anderson
740.512.3278
740.543.4353
letsfighttogether58@gmail.com
Hello everyone
I’m TJ Anderson, the founder of Let’s Fight Together outreach. Let’s Fight Together outreach is a 501c3 non-profit that helps support people fighting kidney disease, on kidney dialysis, or trying to receive a kidney transplant.
We just finished helping a young girl named Justus Chieffalo, 23, who finally received her 1st kidney transplant and is doing wonderfully. We just finished a raffle fundraiser for Justus and her family. We also did a fundraiser for a young lady named Stephanie. She is getting ready for surgery to remove a mass. She was scheduled to go in for surgery, but due to complications (insurance) her surgery has been postponed for 6 months and still is being postponed. We are currently helping her.
We have a few others coming up, but we are starting over again. Because of so much rain, it’s killed my fundraising for Let’s Fight Together. I must be able to set up outside of businesses, and the rain is relentless. We are desperate for financial donations to support our people of Let’s Fight Together.
We have several fund raisers coming up in August and September; hopefully the weather will cooperate.
We are asking for donation support for Let’s Fight Together once again. We really dislike asking, but we have no choice but to send out these letters.
We are currently on are 12th year of Let’s Fight Together. We have been blessed like I was blessed when I had my kidney transplants. I’m doing well. I’m nine years removed from my 2nd kidney transplant. I recently had a spot removed from my face that an UPMC Pittsburgh doctor said looked like skin cancer. I’m currently waiting for biopsy results. I appreciate the prayers.
If anybody wants to donate checks, they can be written to
Let’s Fight Together.
My address is:
Thomas Anderson
8258 State Route 646
Bloomingdale OH 43910
Library of Steubenville and Jefferson County
By: Jennifer Cesta
740.282.9782
BOOKMOBILE SCHEDULE
Tuesdays
July 8th & 29th, August 19th
Grammy’s Diner Amsterdam
10am-11am
Bergholz Fire Hall
11am-12:00pm
Red Dog Road
Home Delivery
12:15pm
Contact the Library to learn about our Book Club dates and current titles.
East Springfield Community Recreation & Service Center
By: Sue Call 740.543.3700
Join us for our monthly dinners. They are the second Thursdays of each month. The time is 4-6:00 pm. On Thursdays, July 10th and August 14th. The cost will be $12.00. Come join us for a filling dinner and visit with your neighbors. We sure could use extra help during these meals. Let me know if you are available to help or just show up to help. Carry Out is available. Phone ahead to 740.543.3700.
Check social media or flyers posted in the community for details of all Center activities. The Center is available to rent. Please contact me about prices and availability.
Nature Riddles with Answers
*I touch your face, I’m in your words, I’m lack of space and beloved by birds. What am I? – Air
*First, you see me in the grass dressed in yellow; next I am in dainty white, then I fly away. What am I? – Dandelion
*The pearls of night, stolen in clearest light of day. What am I? – Dew
*I fly without wings, I cry without eyes. What am I? – A Cloud
June 2, 2025
The Bergholz Community Foundation is excited to announce that Community Health Care of Bergholz will be opening soon!
Mallory Puckett, CNP along with Paulo Borges, MD will be seeing patients in the Lawrence
P. Crow Medical Building at 387 3rd Street, Bergholz, Ohio!
Community Health Care is a medical practice of over 35 years, with sixteen sites serving over 80,000 patients in Medina, Stark, Summit, Wayne and Cuyahoga Counties in Northern Ohio. Their healthcare providers include board-certified Family Physicians, Physical Therapist and Nurse Practitioners. For more information about Community Health Care please visit their website at www.chci.com
To establish as a patient with Community Health Care of Bergholz, please contact the new patient navigation number at 1-330-854-2510, so that you are set up when they begin!
Once you are signed up, medication refills or acute care visits can be addressed, until the Bergholz location is open.
Your care is important to Community Health Care, Community Health Care of Bergholz and the Bergholz Community Foundation.
Sincerely,
The Trustees of the Bergholz Community Foundation
Hello Bergholz!
Hello Bergholz!
We are so happy to meet you!
We are Community Health Care, a company of medical offices based around Canton and Akron. We were founded in 1986 by Dr. Rodney Ison, in Canal Fulton. Dr. Ison had a vision that we could build a medical group that always treated patients with great care and love. Over the years, we have grown to 18 offices across 5 counties from Cleveland to Canton, taking care of over 70,000 patients and employing over 250 wonderful people.
In early 2025, we hired nurse practitioner Mallory Puckett to work at our office in Green. Mallory told us that she was from Bergholz, Ohio, and that she had been working part-time there for several years providing medical care for the people of her hometown. She asked if we would consider allowing her to continue doing this. And since our mission at Community Health Care is to take care of as many communities as we can, the answer was a resounding YES!
We are proud to announce that we are working with The Bergholz Community Foundation to bring Mallory back to Bergholz! We will be opening to see patients in September, and we are very excited to help care for this community.
Below is our mission statement, which was written by Dr. Ison in 1986, and we continue to follow it to this day. We are excited to get started in Bergholz!
Sincerely,
The Physicians of Community Health Care, Inc.
Faith Community Church
By: Chad Thompson 740.768.2835
740.512.3238
Hello to All of our awesome community. I hope and pray you are having an incredible and safe Summer. Although for many of us it is upsetting to think about Summer soon coming to a close, I would like to encourage you to make the most of the remaining time. Spend extra time with friends and family, make lasting memories, get up early to enjoy a sunrise, find a great spot to take in a beautiful sunset, be purposeful to fully enjoy all of the blessings God offers you. Don’t let them go to waste and show Him how grateful you are for ALL that He has done for you.
Also, make the decision to have the best Fall ever! Instead of thinking how sad it will be when Summer has gone, begin to plan for ALL that God has for you in this next season. Look forward with excitement to embrace all the opportunities that God has set before you. 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
One of the greatest blessings we are offered through a relationship with Jesus, is we can look ahead with a new perspective and confidently take on the new challenges and overcome the obstacles. We are able to learn from our past mistakes, but we can leave them where they belong, in the past. Salvation through Jesus offers us; forgiveness from sin, a new beginning, a new hope, a new life, a new us!
Prayerfully reach out to Jesus, pour your heart out to Jesus, ask Him to lead and guide you. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He will never leave you nor forsake you. He will welcome you with open arms. He loves you!
All of us here at Bergholz Faith Community Church are praying for you, and would love to fellowship with you, and worship Jesus with you by our side.
Our worship service is at 10:45am Sundays. Feel free to stop in a bit early and have some coffee, cocoa or just to hang out. We have a nursery for little one’s infants to 4yrs, and children’s church for 5yrs-12yrs old. We also are a host site for AA Thursdays at 6:30pm. As always thank you for taking the time to learn about what is going on here at FCC. If you have a need, prayer request, or question, feel free to call us (740)768-2835
East Springfield Christ UMC
By: Nicki Tennant
Pastor Deborah Kellar
740.543.3002
Sunday, July 20th on the lawn of Christ UMC, we are having a Block Party. The day will begin with an outdoor worship service at 11:00am. Bring a lawn chair and join us in worship.
Following worship will be a picnic lunch open to everyone. From 12pm to 4pm there will be games for children and adults – corn hole, horseshoes, badminton, and other games for kids and adults alike. Kurt James will be here with a couple of inflatables too!
The event is free. Come and join us and say hi to a neighbor!
The Church is located at:
203 Church Street
East Springfield
Wednesday evenings at 6:30 pm we host Bible Study. Currently we are reading through Deuteronomy, verse by verse. Jesus frequently quoted from the book of Deuteronomy. We need to learn what rich history is there for us too.
This summer the adult Sunday School class is studying several of the New Testament Epistles. You are welcome to join us.
If you are looking for a home church, or just want to stop in for a visit, we have Sunday School at 9:45am and Morning Worship at 11am. You can also watch our worship service on our Facebook page. Bible Study is each Wednesday at 6:30pm – 7:30pm, followed by a prayer service. We would love for you to come and join us.
Bed In Summer
By: Robert Louis Stevenson
In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue.
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?
Something to Think About
By: Dave Miller
As I write my column for this issue of the Bergholz Foundation Newsletter, in just one week I will turn 90 years of age. So, I thought I would write about some changes I have seen and or experienced in my lifetime. As I have spent my life in the ministry, let me begin there. There has been significant change in church dress codes. When I began preaching in 1957 at the age of 21, ministers wore suits, dress shirts, and ties. Now, most of us dress casually in the pulpit. Many churches no longer have Sunday evening services.
When I was a child, we did not have TV. No Saturday morning cartoons. We got our first TV when I was fourteen. I lived in Cincinnati, and if memory is correct, we could get three channels. Channels had to be switched without a remote! Now my cable service is expensive, and I get 150 or so channels and I watch only about 10 of those.
Speaking of TV, as a teen I listened to many Cincinnati Reds baseball games, went to a few games at Crosley Field. Now I can watch the games in the comfort of my home.
As a teen I read the comics in the Cincinnati Times-Star. Remember Dick Tracy had a wrist radio. Now most everyone carries a cell phone. Just watch how many people pull the phone out and check messages as soon as they sit down somewhere.
I have two 35mm cameras. During my years in church camping in NY, we took hundreds and hundreds of slides of camp activities. Today if you have a cell phone, you have a camera readily available 24/7.
We did not have “Big Box” stores when I was younger. Sears had it all. Clothes, toys, furniture, tools, hardware. Our family spent a lot of money through the years in their stores. It is difficult to believe that they no longer exist. Or what of K-Mart also disappearing?
We didn’t know what “fast food” was. I can’t recall the first time I ate at a McDonald’s or Wendy’s. I think I was about twelve before I ever ate out at a restaurant. My Uncle Bud, my mother’s brother, had taken my brother Frank and me to our first game at Crosley Field. On the way home we stopped at Trolley Tavern to eat.
At age twelve I began to caddy at the Western Hills County Club, a private course near our home. Those years everyone walked the course when they played. A few months before I was seventeen, there was a change of pros at the club, and I became the Pro Shop Assistant, a position I held for six years. During that time golf carts were introduced. While we began with only six, soon there were many more so anyone who wanted to ride was able as they played.
I learned to drive a stick shift. Though as I am thinking back it’s been about thirty years since I have owned a car with three on the tree. It was 1983 before I had a car with air-conditioning. My childhood home did not have air. Speaking of cars, another development during my lifetime has been the self-service gas station. No longer clean the windshield, check the oil, etc. Pump it yourself. I remember gas prices in the 30 cents range, and just yesterday driving in the area the price was usually $3.19 per gallon.
One area that I must mention because of personal experience is that polio has been nearly eradicated from the world. My brother Frank and I had mild cases of polio in September 1950. We each spent a week in the polio ward of Cincinnati General Hospital. Across the ward from us was a twelve year old boy in an iron lung. He would later die from the disease.
Though my life has seen and experienced many changes during these ninety years, one thing has not changed. As Malachi 3:5 says, “I am the Lord, I change not.” And Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Pickleball
Bergholz Community Foundation Newsletter reader, Cheryl Shean Bakri, requested information on how to play Pickleball. Cheryl, I hope this helps.
Visit the Pickleball Court at the Springfield Township Park on 7th Street in Bergholz.
The History of Pickleball
Back in 1965, on Bainbridge Island, Washington, a group of friends, Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell, and Barney McCallum, were bored one summer evening. They intended to play badminton but couldn’t find the shuttlecock.
So they improvised, grabbing some wooden paddles and a Wiffle ball. The first games were played on a badminton court, which measures 44 feet long and 20 feet wide, or about half the size of a tennis court.
They enjoyed their new sport so much that they began making rules and eventually, lowered the net. Thus, the early iteration of pickleball began. Almost 60 years later, nearly 50 million adult Americans have played it, and its appeal is spreading rapidly worldwide
Why is it called pickleball?
Several stories circulate around the term ‘pickleball,’ much like the dinking and volleying that define the sport. One popular yarn is that the game was named after Pritchard’s dog, Pickles, who had a penchant for chasing stray balls. The intent was to honor the game’s unofficial mascot.
Another story, supported by Barney McCallum, claims that pickleball was named after the term “pickle boat” used in crew, which refers to boats crewed by oarsmen chosen from the leftovers of other boats.
According to Jennifer Lucore, who wrote the book, “History of Pickleball: More than 50 Years of Fun,” with her mom, the story about the dog is the true origin.
Some reports claim, however, that the dog came around a few years after the sport was named.
These narratives create a delightful tapestry of lore surrounding the game. Officially, we may never know. Unofficially, we get to choose the story that resonates with the pickleball player in each of us.
Pickleball is played on a badminton-sized court with simple rules that combine elements of tennis, badminton, and table tennis.
Basic Rules of Pickleball
- Court Dimensions: The pickleball court measures 20 feet wide by 44 feet long for doubles play, with a net height of 36 inches at the sidelines and 34 inches at the center.
- Serving:
• The serve must be made diagonally across the court and must clear the non-volley zone (the “kitchen”) which is 7 feet from the net.
• The server must strike the ball below the waist and the paddle must move in an upward arc during the serve. Only one serve attempt is allowed, except if the ball hits the net and lands in the correct service area, in which case the server gets another attempt. - Scoring: • Points can only be scored by the serving team. A team continues to serve until they commit a fault, at which point the serve passes to the opposing team. • Games are typically played to 11 points, and a team must win by at least 2 points.
- Two-Bounce Rule: After the serve, the ball must bounce once on each side before players can hit it in the air (volley). This means the receiving team must let the ball bounce before returning it, and the serving team must let it bounce before they can volley it back.
- Faults: A fault occurs when:
• The ball is hit out of bounds.
• The ball does not clear the net.
• A player volleys the ball from within the non-volley zone.
• The server steps on or over the baseline before hitting the ball. - Non-Volley Zone: Players cannot hit the ball while standing in the non-volley zone (the area within 7 feet of the net) unless the ball has bounced in that area first. This rule prevents players from “spiking” the ball directly at the net.
Additional Information
• Pickleball can be played as singles or doubles, with doubles being the more common format.
• Players use a paddle to hit a plastic ball with holes, similar to a Wiffle ball.
• The game is designed to be accessible and enjoyable for players of all ages and skill levels, making it a popular choice for recreational play.
Deadline for September/October Newsletter is Friday August 22nd.
Holidays
July 4th – Independence Day
August 3rd – Friendship Day
