(upbeat music) (graphic pops) - Hello and welcome to "The Journal."

I'm Steve Kendall.

The US will be celebrating its semiquincentennial, we're gonna learn a new word tonight, that means 250 years, in 2026, and the Buckeye State is all in to celebrate Ohio style.

It will highlight Ohioans unique contributions for more than 250 years.

We're joined by Todd Kleismit, Executive Director of America 250 Ohio.

Wanna welcome you to "The Journal," Todd, and of course, before we start, you're a BGSU alum.

Glad to have you back and glad you're here to talk about America 250 Ohio.

- Oh my gosh.

The pleasure is all mine.

It is great fun to be here at BGSU in Wood County.

Love this part of Ohio, and just such a pleasure to be with you.

So thanks for the invitation.

- [Steve] Yeah, now, some people are probably just now starting to hear about obviously America's celebrating its 250th birthday.

Ohio was a big part of that, even though we weren't a state then.

But talk about how this Commission came about and what its mission is and then we can start to talk more about what it means to Northwest Ohio and then a lot of the events that are going, a long list of things.

It's gonna be a big celebration.

- [Todd] Yeah, we think so.

So, yeah, the commission launched in 2022, the Ohio Commission.

There's a national commission that formed a few years before that, but Ohio got formed around 2022.

And so we launched the commission.

We have 29 members on the commission.

I serve as the executive director.

We have a team of people working to further Ohio's engagement in this national, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to really showcase what Ohio and Ohioans have contributed to the nation these past 250-plus years.

So it's really exciting.

Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

So it's really amazing to be part of it.

- Yeah, because obviously when we talk about Ohio, we've had prominence throughout America's history, and as we're gonna talk about too, even before we were a state during the Revolutionary years, obviously pretty important because it was a territory and, of course, there was a lot of excitement about eventually who was going to control that, whether it was gonna be the French or the British or, in this case, eventually the Americans ending up with it.

When you were first approached by this and talked about this, what are some of the other people that are involved?

Where do they come from?

What do they bring to the table for the commission?

- Sure, yeah.

We've got a really good group that's part of the statewide commission.

Some people are appointees either from the governor or the Ohio House or the Ohio Senate, things like that.

Other people are in the statute.

You know, we are created in the Ohio Revised Code Section 149.309.

Some people are on the commission because they're an executive director of an organization or the board president, things like that.

But we've got several Northwest Ohioans that have ties to Northwest Ohio.

So Adam Levine, who is the executive director of the Toledo Museum of Art.

He's on the commission.

Sharetta Smith is the mayor of Lima.

She's on the commission.

And we have two co-chairs of the commission.

One is the former mayor of Columbus, Michael Coleman, who is originally from Toledo.

But a really strong group.

There's a couple of state representatives and a couple of state senators that are on the commission.

There's a couple of former governors.

And so it's a really good group.

And so as we said, we are heading up Ohio's participation in this nation's 250th anniversary next year.

- [Steve] Yeah, now, when you look at Ohio's role in this, at the national level, are you involved in making sure Ohio gets noticed in this whole celebration?

- [Todd] Absolutely.

- Obviously every state, everybody's competing for, "No, no, we're the reason America's here, not you guys."

- [Todd] That's a great point, yeah.

- [Steve] "We're number one.

Thanks for coming along, the rest of you guys."

- Right, right.

So a lot of, you know, Virginia and Pennsylvania and some of the other states are really hitting it out of the park like you would expect.

But I'll tell you, Ohio has a lot to offer to this.

We are definitely not passive bystanders.

The Ohio country was very relevant to all of this.

And I sometimes say to audiences that Ohio is really the first truly American state in this respect, that the first 13 states were, of course, British colonies, the next three states were carved out of those former British colonies, and it wasn't until Ohio sprang first from the Northwest Ordinance out of the Northwest Territory that really the new template, the way to move forward and to bring in states that were of equal stature into the United States came to be.

And then we know we have multiple touchpoints to that era.

We'll definitely lean into those things.

But we think that the bigger opportunity here is to focus and to tout what Ohio and Ohioans have contributed to this country.

- [Steve] Sure, sure.

And I know that floating around out there, and I saw it years ago, was a book that said how Ohioans won the Civil War, and, of course, it focused on, because Ohio did contribute a lot to that.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

And I think, too, especially when it comes to cultural references, the movie with Mel Gibson where one of the British people down in South Carolina says, "Tell me about Ohio."

You know, like knowing that there's something big gonna happen there and I want a chunk of that if we win.

So it had profile even back then.

- [Todd] For sure.

- [Steve] When you first sit down to look at this, where do you start with, what are we gonna talk about first?

Because obviously you've got tons of things you can bring to play here.

How do you sort out how you're gonna just organize and structure this?

- Yeah, well, what's really important for us is to have all 88 counties actively participating in this.

And I'm pleased to report that all 88 counties have passed resolutions to say, "Hey, we're gonna participate in this."

And so we're trying to really localize this as much as we can.

I mentioned there's a national commission.

We're gonna head up some things from the statewide level, make sure that all 88 counties are in it for the semiquincentennial.

And then get the counties, local cities, and organizations all over the state to participate.

So we're setting it up in such a way where we can do that, where it's not just all about one big party on July 4th, 2026, for example.

- [Steve] Yes, sir.

- But to have lots of different ways to come at this.

And so one of the biggest ways we're coming to 2026 is we have monthly themes all throughout calendar year 2026.

So it's not about one particular point.

It's about 12 different monthly themes.

And so we think it's gonna be very easy, we think, for communities and organizations to participate in ways that are meaningful to them.

It's not necessarily us deciding what's gonna be most important for you.

It's how can we as the commission at the state level help you achieve something locally?

- [Steve] Sure, kind of be that sort of overarching sort of thing to make sure that- - [Todd] Right.

- [Steve] Because obviously counties, cities, towns, areas, all have historical societies.

And the state, of course, has a statewide repository of all kinds of historical information.

So a lot to draw on and each of those areas can bring something to the table.

When we come back, we can talk a little about particularly Northwest Ohio, some things about that, and obviously the state itself, we touched on the Civil War, the Revolutionary War, but the history goes back way before even we start thinking about 1776.

So, yeah.

- [Todd] For sure.

- Back in just a moment with Todd Kleismit, executive director of America 250 Ohio here on "The Journal."

Thank you for staying with us on "The Journal."

Our guest is Todd Kleismit, Executive Director of America 250 Ohio.

The organization's focused on making sure that Ohioans understand their history as America celebrates 250 years.

We touched a little bit earlier, obviously Northwest Ohio, a lot of history here, just as there is all over the state.

So talk about some of the focus on Northwest Ohio and some of the things that have already gotten in place and what's gonna be coming forward.

- Sure, sure, yeah.

We actually just pretty recently launched what we call the Ohio Creativity Trail.

And so what this is, this is the second of a series of trails where we're connecting the dots among these amazing assets that we have in the state of Ohio.

So the Creativity Trail was launched in Toledo in early February and what that is, it's more than a hundred different places around the state of Ohio where creative expression can be found, where there's places where you can have an actual visitor experience somewhere where creativity is really the main thing that connects these places.

So more than a hundred of them, several of them in Northwest Ohio.

So we've categorized them in six different ways.

One is called On The Page.

So that's gonna be literature.

One is gonna be Visual Art.

You know, the places like the Toledo Museum of Art, those kinds of places.

One is Glass and Pottery.

We've got several places on the trail that express creativity through glass and pottery.

We have a category for folk and traditional, one for music, and one for, this is a nice surprise, carousel art.

Ohio's got- - [Steve] I saw that, yeah.

- Got a nice history on carousel art.

There's more than 20 different places where you can go in Ohio and ride on a carousel that has to do with Ohio history in some form or fashion.

So that was our second trail.

Our first one was called Air and Space.

So if you're in Ohioan, you know, air and space, that is our bread and butter right here in Ohio.

So I think there's more than 30 places in Ohio connected.

We have found that a lot of these places, oftentimes they're not in the room together, they're not communicating.

And so this is a good way to sort of cross-collaborate among different places that have a lot in common but we- - [Steve] They just don't know that they're, yeah, they don't- - [Todd] Yeah, so that's fun.

- Well, it's funny you mentioned air and space because obviously the Wood County Airport, which is just north of where we're sitting right now, BGSU during World War II was a pilot training area for pilots to train to fly for the Army Air Corps back in the war.

So that's a little bit of history that people may or may not know.

But those are the kind of things you're talking about where people don't know, oh, that's why that's there.

It's there's a particular reason it really plays an important role in the state's history and in the nation's history.

- [Todd] For sure.

You know, we think one big undertold story in Ohio are the Firelands.

- [Steve] Yes.

- So not a lot of people know what the Firelands is, but in Northwest Ohio, if you live anywhere near like Norwalk, Ohio, in Huron County, you might know this, but the British during the American Revolution burned Norwalk, Connecticut, and so a lot of land was dedicated out here in what was in the Western Reserve.

And so they ended up calling this the Firelands for that reason.

So that's a neat touchpoint to the American Revolution.

And then we have three of the counties in Northwest Ohio are named for those, you remember Benedict Arnold?

- [Steve] Yeah.

- He ended up going to the other side.

- [Steve] Had kind of a mixed career, but okay.

- [Todd] You know, but there was spy named John Andre, who was captured by some American Revolutionary War patriots.

So Paulding, Williams, and Van Wert counties are all named for those gentlemen.

Interestingly, one gentleman, his last name was Van Wort, but it ended up- - [Steve] Being Van Wert.

- [Todd] For the county, it ended up being Van Wert.

But we've got some touchpoints like that.

You know, so we're looking for all the different ways to tout what Ohio has contributed.

And sometimes it's names.

A lot of times it is the American Indian tribes who were here well before European contact.

And so they're a big part of this story too.

- [Steve] I was gonna say, that has to be part, that part of the story has to be told too, or needs to be told.

- [Todd] Mm-hm, for sure.

Yeah, so there's a long legacy, lots of things we can discuss.

We just recently launched a webinar series.

We just had our first one last week.

And so we're gonna be telling the story of what was happening in and around the Ohio country during this time, you know, in the 18th century in the American Revolutionary War era.

So there's a lot of things we can talk about, and we're gonna talk about those things.

And really, again, just what Ohio has contributed to the nation over our history.

- [Steve] Yeah, and we know that if we stroll around just a few miles north of here, there's Fort Meigs up along the Maumee River and Fort Miami, and obviously the Battle of Fallen Timbers and the French, the British, the Indians, us all working out who was gonna control Ohio because everybody knew how valuable it was going to be.

- [Todd] Right.

- So those are the stories we at least have some familiar with, but there's, of course, as you mentioned, all those other stories that people have in their small towns, in their counties, that maybe the rest of the state isn't as familiar with and this is an opportunity to make sure that they find out about that and see the depth of our history here.

- I think there's a lot of opportunity there with those places.

Battle of Fallen Timbers.

You know, Fort Recovery.

General Mad Anthony Wayne.

I mean, there's a lot there to uncover.

And here's another thing.

We have more than 7,000 American Revolutionary War veterans that were buried in the state of Ohio.

Now, they wouldn't have started here, but for various reasons and land given to- - [Steve] Those who had served.

- [Todd] To those who served.

So we wanna do a better job of telling those stories.

You know, we can build on the work that's already been done by the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Sons of the American Revolution, sometimes the Adjutant General has good research.

So we're trying to build upon that and just better connect those stories.

So at some point in 2026, we plan to have a searchable digital map- - [Steve] Oh, wow.

- [Todd] That will connect these stories of these Revolutionary War veterans.

A lot of times we just don't know where they're buried, but we got a strong team working on that and so we're really excited about that possibility.

- Yeah, and you make a good point because you could be driving by a cemetery or something and not even know that there's that piece of history there.

And this is an opportunity, again, to make people aware.

Or if they're walking through a cemetery and go, "Oh, look at those old, wonder who that guy was," well, it turns out it might be a Revolutionary soldier who migrated from the states of the East and came out here to start a new life and was rewarded for serving, that sort of thing.

So lots of stories there because we've, yeah, and I think we talked a little bit about the fact that Ohio's role in the American Revolution, well, that's a part of the story, but there were people who lived here that fought because the fighting was going on here.

It just wasn't getting the attention that the places we're familiar with, like Yorktown and Saratoga and things like that.

You know, later on, during the War of 1812, there's the Battle of Lake Erie, those sort of things, which we're familiar with.

A lot of other things that have fallen a little below the radar.

- [Todd] Yeah, that's what makes history so exciting is there's so much to uncover.

There's no way you could know half of what happened.

So we're really excited about that.

You know, with the Revolutionary War veterans that are buried in Ohio, I think Mound Cemetery in Marietta has the highest concentration of Revolutionary War officers that are anywhere in the country.

- [Steve] Really?

- But these people are buried all across Ohio.

They're not all concentrated in one particular region.

You know, for various reasons, they're scattered all around the state.

So that's a great way to tie in.

So I'm going to some cemetery events here and there, and I'll be going to one in Ottawa County in May.

Also, I want to mention that we're borrowing on the idea of liberty trees.

You know, there was the famous Liberty tree in Boston, and we're gonna do a sort of Ohio style.

We're gonna plant some mostly white oaks around the state of Ohio.

Just, you know, at a ceremonial level.

We're not gonna do anything too large scale, but we want to at a minimum do one ceremonial tree planting in each county of the state and engage the counties and the local governments in that work.

It might be a tree planting on the county courthouse green or at a local park, whatever the community wants to do.

And then if they want to go and do something much more comprehensive in their own community, we would encourage that to happen as well.

But that's another way we're kind of working with local communities.

- When we come back, we can talk more about that because obviously there's a lot of other areas to touch on yet.

Back in just a moment with Todd Kleismit, Executive Director America 250 Ohio, here on "The Journal."

You're with us on "The Journal," our guest is Todd Kleismit, Executive Director America 250 Ohio, as the country and Ohio celebrates America's 250th birthday in 2026.

Obviously you don't just start the day before with all of this planning.

We go back just quickly, you know, we talked about the trees, one of many things that's going on, but it reminds people 10 years, 20 years, 30, they'll see that tree and connect it to Ohio and it's a chance to tell a story about Ohio's history simply by planting a tree.

So something that basic, simple.

And a white oak is sort of native to Ohio.

- [Todd] Right, that was important, yeah.

- It's just a real good example of how you can connect the dots on something like that.

We talked a lot about the things that are going on and some of the things, I mean, is there anything in particular coming up in Northwest Ohio that people should be aware of sooner rather than later?

- Sure, yeah, one thing I wanted to mention, speaking of the trees, is we're actually launching that in Northwest Ohio.

So that'll be an event we're having April 25th.

That'll be in Lima.

So we've got some great support, some private support from Cenovus Energy on what we're calling the Heritage Tree Program.

So I think a handful of communities will plant some trees this year, and then most will do it in 2026, the year of the 250th.

So that's great fun.

You know, we're going to some cemetery events and we're doing a lot of other things to try to encourage local communities to do their own programs and projects locally in ways that are meaningful to them.

And it's like, what can we do to help support what you want to achieve?

So lots of exciting things going on all over the state.

- [Steve] Yeah, because I would assume that you're probably getting people saying, "Hey, we've got something here you should know about that should be part of this."

And we talked about this a little bit when we were between segments that a lot of times people will drive by something.

It's in their town, it's in their county.

They don't think much about it because it's there every day.

It's mundane.

Oh, it's the mill.

And they don't realize the depth of the story and what it meant to the area, the history, why it's there, why something is there or not there.

We traveled last summer to a place in New York state, and they have a, the county has a military cemetery, and you can go back, and it goes back to the Civil War.

And it's something that the natives drive by every day.

You know, they may stop in occasionally, but for us it was kind of special because it was different.

But we can drive by things like that and go, "Oh, yeah, there's a plaque out there," yada, yada, yada.

But the reality is you should stop, even the things that are right next door to you, and pay attention to them.

- [Todd] Yeah, that's true, yeah.

- [Steve] Not just when it's a special time, but to take advantage of the information and the opportunity to learn.

- [Todd] Yeah, right.

Yeah, lots of opportunities like that.

We have a committee dedicated to undertold stories because we think that there's a lot of little nuggets that sometimes just need to be pulled together and put the spotlight on something and have people say, "Oh, I had no idea Ohio did that or contributed to that."

If I give you one great example of this is in American film, what Ohio has contributed to film.

So we have a project called Ohio Goes to the Movies.

And this is gonna be one of the bigger things that we undertake.

This is getting huge traction all over the state.

We're going to try our best to connect all 88 counties to American film where there's a local tie.

Maybe the film was partially filmed in Ohio and it might have Ohio actors, Ohio producers or people behind the camera.

So we think Ohio Goes to the Movies is gonna be huge.

We did launch that publicly last year just to make an announcement that it's coming.

We are working with venues all over the state.

So we're very confident we're gonna have all 88 counties participating in this in some form or fashion.

You know, there's a lot of people like Paul Newman, Clark Gable, just the list goes on, Halle Berry, Ohioans.

Beverly D'Angelo, who's originally from Columbus, filmed a trailer for this to help promote it.

- [Steve] Oh, okay.

- [Todd] So you can find that at ohiogoestothemovies.org.

There's a short spot with Beverly D'Angelo and it features Governor DeWine and Mrs. DeWine.

They had their first date at a movie theater and so they're really (Steve chuckles) enthusiastic.

- [Steve] They're into this one, yeah.

- [Todd] They're into this, as are we.

So we're really excited about Ohio Goes to the Movies and we think that's gonna be big for sure.

And it's gotten a lot of attention even outside of Ohio.

So we're really excited about that.

- [Steve] Yeah, well, one of the things too, and just to the side real quick, if you're watching older movies, '30s, '40s, '50s, that kind of thing, you will see references.

And of course, here in Northwest Ohio, you're always surprised.

Like, "Oh, we were going through Toledo."

And it's like, "Was there somebody from Ohio that wrote that in because they wanted to get the name, they wanted to get Toledo in there?"

That's what they were...

So you see little things like that, touchpoints, and you're like, "Oh, why Toledo?

Why not Fort Wayne?"

But it's just because somebody connected to Ohio or had an experience here and they wove it into a new movie, the script.

- That's right, yeah, yeah.

So, you know, when Ohio had its bicentennial in 2003, this was an idea that was percolating around that time but they ran out of time and the resources to do it.

So we think, of course, Ohio's laundry list of contributions to American film has only grown- - [Steve] Since then, sure.

- In those 20-plus years.

And so we're gonna kick that off next February.

We'll launch the, it's gonna be about a 250-day film series all over the state.

We'll kick that off at the Thomas Edison birthplace in Milan, Ohio, in Erie County.

So we're really excited about that.

And, you know, we'll have dinner and a movie and kind of date nights and keying things up with the Academy Awards.

So we'll have lots of fun opportunities.

Because a lot of people say, you know, a lot of times history is a very serious thing, but we also need to have some fun sometimes too.

So Ohio Goes to the Movies is gonna be one of those opportunities.

- [Steve] Yeah, and we'd be remiss if we didn't mention BGSU alum and one of my favorite actors, Eva Marie Saint- - [Todd] That's right.

- [Steve] Who came to Bowling Green from New York, but spent time here and then eventually went on to incredible success and has come back multiple times to the university to talk about her career.

So, yeah, so names like that just pop out.

It's like, "Oh, I didn't know there was an Ohio connection.

Oh, look at that."

Yeah, and you can go, Clark Gable a good example.

A lot of people say, "Gee, he's from Ohio?"

Yes, he is.

- [Todd] Right.

- So, yeah.

Now, when you look at all of the array of stuff, was it difficult to say, "Boy, we'd like to spend more time on that, but we just," you have to pick, you have to pick and choose a little bit, because there's so much out there.

- Right, yeah, that is really our biggest challenge is as much as we want to do, we're trying to do as many things as we can, and I'm feeling really good about the ideas that are going around and a lot of the things we can achieve, but we know we don't have to do everything ourselves.

We've got a real nice ecosystem of support around this Commission.

So a lot of other organizations, communities, are stepping up to the plate and making significant contributions.

You know, the Toledo Museum of Art, where we launched our Creativity Trail.

Destination Toledo has been huge.

The Ohio Travel Association, the County Commissioner's Association of Ohio.

A lot of times these organizations that have a large constituency, they're able to help us in significant ways.

And we really do need that help because there's so many things we could do.

What are the right things to do that are strategic?

- [Steve] Yeah, and how can you, and how can you dedicate resources to things that will have as broad an impact or as deep an impact as you like?

And I guess it probably incensed the local people to do more locally too, because, hey, we've contributed this to the overall state and national package, but we don't wanna, we've got things here we still think are important.

So, yeah, so it maybe reinvigorates the idea of learning more about where we live and the people that lived here before us, that kind of thing.

- [Todd] This is really something for everyone.

- [Steve] Yes.

- [Todd] And the monthly themes we're doing, you can find out more about this at america250ohio.org.

Most of everything we're doing, you can find it on our website.

I mentioned the 12 monthly themes earlier.

Think about, you know, I'll just mention a couple of these.

We're focusing on Ohio Originals in January.

We wanna focus on things like entertainment, movies, et cetera, in March.

We'll talk about Ohio's outdoor resources in June.

In July, we really want that to be a time to bring people together.

There will be fireworks, but we also want picnics and homecomings and reunions.

In September, think about people like Scott Hamilton.

You know, there are Ohioans who really, with sports, there's a big story to be told.

There are lots of Ohioans who went on to do great things.

You know, not everybody's a LeBron James, but we got our Scott Hamiltons and there's a lot, there's a nice diverse mix.

We've got Olympians.

There's a big, big story to be told.

Multiple stories to be told.

I mentioned the American Indian tribes that were here, a huge part of this story.

So we're not just coming at this in one way.

There's gonna be a- - [Steve] A broad brush, I guess.

- [Todd] A multi-tiered way, yes.

- [Steve] The broad brush of Ohio.

- [Todd] We're gonna make the most of it, yeah.

- [Steve] Great.

Well, thank you so much for coming on Todd.

Appreciate it.

- [Todd] My pleasure.

- And as you mentioned, you can go online real simply, just type in America 250 Ohio and you'll get to the website.

It's a dot org.

And you can find out more things about this.

So thank you so much for coming on.

- [Todd] Yeah, great.

Thank you.

- You can check us out at wbgu.org and can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 p.m. on WBGU-PBS.

We'll see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

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