LOOKING GOOD — Northern Indiana resident Jeff Walton, a 1983 graduate of Jefferson Union High School, was the structural engineer who worked with the fabricator to complete the design for the new press box at Edison High School’s unified sports complex. During high school, Walton was a football team manager and part-time videographer who recalled how there wasn’t enough room in the old press box for the coaches, announcer, journalists and videographers to be in the same space.
— Janice Kiaski

RICHMOND — Seeing family and former co-workers was on Jeff Walton’s agenda during his visit back home this week, not to mention attending Edison High School’s Homecoming game Friday against rival Toronto.

But of equal interest was checking out Edison’s new sports complex, specifically the press box that the 1983 graduate of Jefferson Union High School had a hand in seeing to fruition.

The son of Jeff and Margaret Walton of the Knoxville area, Walton ended up being the structural engineer who worked with the press box fabricator to complete the design.

What are the odds of an engineer who works from his home in northern Indiana for a company in Pennsylvania gets an opportunity to provide consulting services for a project involving his alma mater in Ohio?

It was a surprise, agrees Walton, who graduated from the University of Akron with a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering. Initially he worked for an engineering and architecture firm in Wheeling before moving to Elkhart, Ind., in the summer of 1990, where he resides with his wife of 30 years, Karen, and their five children, Charlie, Emma, Patrick, John and Isaac.

“I became a licensed professional engineer in 1996 and currently am licensed to practice in 42 states,” explained Walton, who is a consulting engineer for Glenco Inc., a company in Middleburg, Pa. “I provide consulting engineering services for commercial and residential modular building manufacturers across the country. That involves providing a complete engineered building design including the structural, heating/cooling, plumbing and electrical systems as well as ensuring the buildings have proper handicap accessibility and life-safety features such as adequate exits, emergency lighting, fire-resistance rated construction and other fire protection measures,” he continued.

“Modular manufacturers fabricate their buildings in a manufacturing facility, and they are then shipped to their final location by one of several methods — towed behind a semi-truck, or on a flatbed or lowboy trailers. When they arrive at the site, they are often lifted onto their foundation with a crane. If it is a smaller building, it also can be placed on the foundation with a large forklift truck,” he added.

Walton shed insight on what his involvement was with the new press box at Edison.

“The press box manufacturer is the Dant Clayton Corp. out of Louisville, Ky., and I have worked with them on hundreds of press box and grandstand projects during the past seven years,” he said. “They have sent me several projects for high schools and small colleges located in Ohio. I had hoped that eventually there would be a project for a school in the Ohio Valley sent my way.”

Last summer that happened.

“One afternoon last July, I opened up my e-mail after lunch, and there was a new project from them for Edison Local — Richmond, Ohio,” Walton said. “That was a neat surprise, and I was excited to be a part of it. Over the course of the following few weeks, we took their press box design from the preliminary layout to the final design that was ready to be submitted to the industrialized building plan review section at the state of Ohio’s Department of Commerce for their review and approval,” he explained.

The state granted approval last fall.

“Dant Clayton is an excellent client, and the whole process for the Edison project went very well,” Walton said. “We moved on to other projects, but by seeing the updates online and articles in the Herald-Star, I knew the building was being set at the new stadium earlier this year,” he noted, adding that he ended up working on some other area projects in Youngstown, at Beaver Local and in Gnadenhutten at Indian Valley High School.

“I was visiting my family over the Independence Day holiday and drove out to the school and saw the press box was in place, but I couldn’t get a close look,” he said, commenting that he was looking forward to his return this month to not only catch a football game, but to see all of Edison’s new facilities.

“I really enjoy the kind of work I do, and after all of these years of designing buildings that were located anywhere from the Florida Keys to the barren reaches of North Dakota, it was very satisfying to be a part of something new and exciting in the Ohio Valley and at my alma mater no less,” he commented. “All of the athletic fields look outstanding and are something for the whole school district to be proud of in the coming years.”

Edison’s unified sports facilities constitute a project that includes a multi-purpose field to serve football, soccer and track. The fieldhouse standing at the former Cartwright Memorial Stadium will offer a 1,500-seat gym for sports and other festivities and is expected to open this winner The baseball and softball fields, meanwhile will be ready for the first pitch this spring.

While Walton will admire the new press box, he’ll likely reminisce about the old one as well.

Walton said although he didn’t play football during high school, he was a football team manager and part-time videographer from his sophomore year on.

“I remember when videotaping games that there wasn’t enough room in the press box for the J.U. and visiting team coaches, the scorekeeper, announcer and journalists, so the videographers had to climb out a window to sit on this little perch on the roof of the lower level of the press box,” he recalled.

Press box memories gave way to other memories of his days at the home of the J.U. Yellow Jackets.

“I just remember spending a lot of time at school,” he said. “In addition to school during the day, I was one of the managers for the football team, a scorekeeper for the baseball team and played on the basketball team, so there were lots of evenings spent on the school grounds, too,” he said. “During my college years, I spent three summers working at the high school helping the custodians with the summer cleaning of the entire building. The custodians then were Bob McClelland, Andy Rohal, Russell Haynes, Mr. Charlie Brown, and after Bob retired, John Bendle. They were a great bunch of guys,” he reminisced.

“Another J.U.H.S. grad, Steve Clark, and I worked together one summer, and we had a time,” Walton continued. “We once had to trap a bat on the top floor of the old section and get it out of there. And he and I pranked poor Lori Burns, another summer worker. She was cleaning lockers on the top floor, and when she took a break, we wired up a skeleton from Mr. Lawson’s classroom so that when she opened a locker, it came swinging out, bones rattling, knocking back and forth, the whole nine yards,” he said. “I remember the buildings always being well taken care of, even if the old section was ‘old.’ But there were occasional times when the students were sent home early when the school ran out of water because the water truck had not come to replenish the supply.”

Walton said he hasn’t been inside the school since watching his brother, Dennis, a 1990 Edison South graduate, play basketball there when he was a senior. Walton also has a sister, Amy, who graduated from J.U. In 1987.

While maybe the inside of the school hasn’t changed a lot, the athletic fields have so in dramatic fashion, according to Walton.

“The new facilities and grounds are just beautiful, and the aerial pictures and drone footage of them are incredible,” Walton said of the major transformation he was eager to get a look at.

The day Walton found out about the press box project, he made a post about it on the Jefferson Union High School Friends group on Facebook.

“The post received a number of comments and likes,” he said.

“It was cool to see so many familiar names and faces.”