John F. Kurfess will be inducted into the Eastwood Hall of Fame Saturday.
His name was inadvertently left out of the write up that ran in Saturday’s Sentinel-Tribune.
Kurfess served over 40 years on local school boards. He was an early advocate for school mergers, which eventually became Eastwood Schools. He was a charter board member for Penta County School promoting alternative vocational training and was also acharter board trustee for Owens Community College.
John Frederick Kurfess was born to Jacob and Elizabeth, growing up on a farm on Dowling Road. He graduated from North Troy High School and married Margaret Zingg. They are celebrating 65 years of marriage. Margaret was a school teacher for Lime City and Lake Schools for 15 years. John and Margaret had four children: Nancy, Charles F. (Chuck), Jim and John D. Kurfess; 13 grandchildren; and six great grandchildren when John passed in 1990.
Kurfess farmed and raised livestock (mainly Holstein dairy cattle) for more than 50 years on his family’s Dowling Road homestead. With John heavily involved in education and Margaret a teacher, the farm was frequently the site of school field trips, enjoying perhaps a maze in the corn or a taste of fresh milk.
He was a lifetime member of St. John’s Lutheran Church, Stony Ridge serving as a Sunday school teacher and also on its church council.
John’s first school board experience was serving on the North Troy (Lemoyne) School Board beginning in 1937. He called the meeting and advocated for one of the first Wood County school consolidations which became Troy-Luckey. He was on the Troy-Luckey School Board until 1958 when Eastwood School system was formed, merging Troy-Luckey, Webster and Pemberville schools. He was instrumental in making this Eastwood merger happen. He saw the larger tax base and the larger student body to offer more academic opportunities and a broader curriculum for its students.
Kurfess served faithfully on the Wood County Board of Education for 16 years, 1963-1979.
In 1987, he was the first recipient of the Wood County Spirit Award for Education and Civic Responsibility.
Kurfess was also a board member of the Wood County Farm Bureau Co-Op, Inc., Northern Ohio Breeder’s Association, Ohio Agricultural Marketing Association, and Farmer’s Savings Bank, Stony Ridge. He was active with Luckey Kiwanis Club.
