Action in Bond Hill

This summer I upped my hours with the Butler County Rape Crisis Program to about 25 hours/week. Yesterday, about 3 of those hours were spent at the groundbreaking at St. Aloysius Orphanage in Bond Hill. What does St. Al's have to do with Rape Crisis? Well, last year the Community Counseling and Crisis Center (RCP's parent organization) merged with/was absorbed by St. Aloysius out of Cincinnati. The merger allowed St. Al's to continue to expand into Butler County while keeping the CCCC fiscally afloat. I don't know or understand all of the details of the merger, but I do know that now us folk at Rape Crisis are affiliated with the folk at St. Al's. So there ya go.

In support of our new parent organization (or would it be our grandparent organization?), we attended the ceremonial groundbreaking for a new expansion to St. Aloysius on Reading Road in Bond Hill. It is a BEAUTIFUL building, and they will be adding on an addition (how redundant of me) to include more classrooms, a new cafeteria, and other neat stuff. It's the first major rennovation in the organization's 175-year history. Wowza.

But what fun would it be to just tell you about it. Here's Channel 9 WCPO's take on the day! If you watch the video package you will see an artist's rendering of the new addition, and if you look closely in the "crowd" shot, you'll see me standing in the background (focus on the left side of the screen).

After a few inspiring words from some important people (like Mayor Mark Mallory, as depicted in the video), it was time for the "groundbreaking." Of course, the dirt was already dug up in a little raised bed behind the podium, complete with about 10 golden shovels (I kid you not--they were some good looking shovels!) wedged in the dirt. About 20 people donned white hard hats and took turns posing with their shovels in the dirt. By the third round of photos, my adventurous boss Jane and RCP's board president decided to get down with a golden shovel, too. I wish I had the picture. Boo.

And that concludes my first ever ceremonial groundbreaking. Looking back, I should have gotten in on the shovel action. Oh well. I guess it's best that we didn't linger too long in Bond Hill because apparently the FBI raided the Community Action Agency. Yesterday. The FBI. For real. The search warrant is sealed so there aren't many details yet, but you can check out the story here. I mean, really? What the what?