Speaker Series

 

The 2025/2026 schedule is available here!


 

Monthly Speaker Series 2025-25

Third Tuesday of the month   **   Free & open to the public!
RecPlex West Theater (Rec West)
965 Miamisburg Centerville  Rd.

 Reception 6:30 p.m.        Program 7:00 p.m.

Enjoy refreshments and historical education. 

Donations welcome and appreciated.

**NOTE -- Please enter on the south side of the building using the east doors that are closest to the theater. Park between the Subaru dealership and the building for the shortest walk.

 September 16, 2025
Kevin Rusnak
McCook Field:
Dayton’s WWI Flying Field 

 

October 21, 2025

Andrew Walsh 

Dayton Triangles: The Football Team

 

November 18, 2025

Angie Hoschouer Berghuis

Legends, Symbols & Traditions
of the Holiday Season

 

January 20, 2026

Andrew Lloyd

Revolutionary War Soldiers in the Miami Valley

 

February 17, 2026

Ann Hagedorn

Sleeper Agent:

The Atomic Spy in America Who Got Away

 

March 17, 2026

Tom Gaudion

Roots: Cars Born in Dayton

 

April 21, 2026

Ryan Riffle

History of Fairborn after the 1913 Dayton Flood

 

May 19, 2026

TBD 

 

 

 

September 17, 2024 Watch the presentation on YouTube
Angie Hoschouer Berghuis
 Patterson, Kettering, Cox and Wright Brothers: The drive & passions of Dayton's most eccentric men

This program follows the book The Grand Eccentrics by Mark Bernstein. It highlights the lives of John H. Patterson, Charles F. Kettering, Gov. James M. Cox, and Orville & Wilbur Wright. Discover the drive and passions of Dayton’s most eccentric men and how they acted and interacted with one another. Angie Hoschouer Berghuis is a historian, public speaker, community volunteer, and a lifelong Daytonian. She is a member of the Heritage Committee at First Baptist Church which is celebrating its 200th anniversary in 2024, and is currently the neighborhood liaison for Grafton Hill Neighborhood Association and Preservation Dayton.  

October 15, 2024  Watch this presentation on YouTube
Sara Kaushal 
Dayton Ghosts & Legends

All towns have their legends and Dayton is no exception. Author Sara Kaushal will share facts surrounding some long-told ghost stories and legends from Dayton featured in her new book, Dayton Ghosts and Legends. Highlights may include tales from the Sorg Opera House, stories of phantom truck drivers in Englewood, or reports of the famed Butter Street Monster roaming Germantown. Hear these and other stories along with the facts behind some of Dayton’s most fascinating tales. As a native Daytonian and avid historian, author Sara Kaushal has enjoyed uncovering little-known facts about Dayton, its history, and its residents. Her first book, Murder and Mayhem in Dayton and the Miami Valley, was initiated through researching for the blog ‘Dayton Unknown’, founded in 2014. Her second book, Dayton Ghosts & Legends, is a compilation of thorough research of Dayton area ghost stories and other legends. 

November 19, 2024 Watch the presentation on YouTube
Ken Serey
What’s the Story: Soldiers War Memories!

‘WHAT’S THE STORY?’ is a collection of first-hand stories from Ohio veterans who answered the call when our country needed them in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. True stories from the Veterans who were there: The first man to land on Omaha Beach; A detailed account of the Battle of the Bulge from a member of the 101st. Airborne “Band of the Brothers”; A pilot’s description of the firebombing of Japan.... AND MORE

Ken Serey is an author and proud husband of almost fifty years with two grown children and five grandchildren. He lives in Tipp City, Ohio. Ken and his brother had an independent business to help thousands of blind and visually impaired men and women by giving them the capability to see, read, and resume normal life. As he worked with veterans, he invited them to share their personal, moving, dramatic stories.

 
 January 21, 2025 Watch the presentation on YouTube

Andrew Lloyd
Joe Desch – WWII Codebreaker –
Oakwood’s Unsung Hero
 Local historian, Andrew Lloyd, shares the historical significance of Joe Desch during World War II.
Joseph Desch (1907-1987) was an engineer and inventor at National Cash Register (NCR) in Dayton. His contribution and leadership in developing a cryptanalytic machine, or "codebreaker," played an integral part in U.S. military's intelligence against Germany during World War II.

 

February 18, 2025    Watch the presentation on YouTube
Mike Williams
The Rise & Fall of George Remus, America’s First Millionaire Bootlegger
George Remus, America’s first millionaire bootlegger, was a Chicago lawyer who identified loopholes in the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act. He moved to Cincinnati to establish his operation and quickly became extremely wealthy, using a network of bribes that reached the U.S. Attorney General’s office. Ultimately, he was brought down by a handful of officials who refused to be bribed. After serving three years in prison, Remus returned in 1927 and infamously gunned down his turncoat wife in broad daylight. He represented himself in court and achieved an acquittal that stunned the nation. Teacher and local historian Mike Williams invites you to meet the real Remus, the man who some believe served as one of the models for "The Great Gatsby."Mike Williams is an English and Social Studies teacher who also serves as an adjunct history instructor at UD and Sinclair. He has had history articles published in American History, Timeline, World War II History, Echoes, and the online History News Network.
 

 

March 18, 2025  Watch the presentation on YouTube
Jim Charters
1913 Dayton Flood

Beginning on Easter Sunday, March 23, 1913, torrential rains fell across the Midwest dropping a record three months of rainfall in four days. Floodwater funneled down Ohio’s Miami Valley into the heart of the vibrant industrial city of Dayton. Levees burst, houses were swept away, and downtown was gutted by fires blazing from broken gas mains. At the end of Easter week, 123 Daytonians had perished, and tens of thousands more were left homeless and destitute—a tragedy that made banner headlines in newspapers nationwide. Out of Dayton’s ashes and mud rose fierce public resolve never to suffer such destruction again.Jim Charters is a spokesperson for Dayton History and volunteers as an interpretive guide at Carillon Park and Hawthorn Hill. Mr. Charters, a community actor and volunteer school tutor, was born in Dayton and graduated from Chaminade High School and Ashford University. After a career with Illinois Tool Works, he returned to the Dayton area to enjoy retirement.

 

April 15, 2025

Don Aukerman
Discovering the Industrial Town of Woodbourne

Discover the thriving 1800s industrial town of Woodbourne in Washington Township (Centerville area). The town rivaled Dayton’s early industrial development. In 1819, only the Woodbourne textile industry, not Dayton’s, had a half-page advertisement in the Cincinnati Directory. As quickly as the industry exploded and prospered near West Whipp & Mad River Roads, it completely faded away around 1860, leaving few footprints.  The presentation will attempt to reconstruct and revisit this lost community. We will “walk down” several town streets, look at businesses and homes, and see the artifacts their occupants left behind.  Four wonderful coverlets produced in the community by noted weaver Charles Boden will be on display. Don Aukerman is a lifelong resident of Montgomery County, spending his retirement years after a CPA career exploring local and Ohio history through research and preservation. He is a member of Centerville-Washington History, the Dayton Antique Study Club, the Centerville Landmark Foundation, and the Ohio Historical Decorative Arts Society. He formerly resided in the 1826 Elisha Jones stone house in Centerville with his wife Edythe. The Aukermans received the 2016 Mayor’s Preservation Award for restoring and preserving the house and gardens.

May 20, 2025

Hylda Strange

Ohio's Awesome Women

You may know Harriet Beecher Stowe & Annie Oakley -- but how about MaryAnn Bickerdyke, Victoria Woodhull, or Geraldine Mock or Charity Adams? Author, pilot, politician, nurse, and soldier might be some of the titles these women claimed. Come learn about how each of them made history in their own way. Growing up in the Belmont area of Dayton, Hylda Strange attended Stivers High School and Otterbein College.  Major interests include: history, gardening and antiques. She and her husband, Jerry, are members of four historical societies. They own and have restored two old houses: the 1820’s Thomas Collins house in Ripley, OH (was part of the Underground Railroad) and the c.1833 Aaron Nutt Jr. House in Centerville, OH.

 


Previous Presentations available on YouTube:

 Enjoy videos of our 2020/2021 speakers on YouTube