Scioto County gets its own Bicentennial Barn
Article taken from Portsmouth Daily Times, Wednesday, August 28, 2002 pg A1, written by G. Sam Piatt
87th barn now being painted in the Minford area
MINFORD -- A barn-painting project that began four years ago to help celebrate Ohio's 200th birthday is nearing completion.
Artist Scott Hagan will finish painting the Ohio Bicentennial Commission's red, white and blue logo on a barn near Minford on Thursday and Scioto County will then be the 87th of the state's 88 counties to have its own Bicentennial Barn.
The 86th was painted Tuesday in Lawrence county.
The 88th, in Sandusky County, will be painted by Hagan in mid-September, and then he can step back and say his work is done.
The commission began with the project in 1988 with plans to place the logos on billboards. but there weren't enough billboards available where they wanted them, so perhaps remembering the old "Chew Mail Pouch" signs painted on barns across the country in an earlier era, it came up with the idea of painting a barn, visible to the motoring public, in each county.
"It started out as a regional project. We didn't know if we could do a barn in every county or not," said commission spokesman Leo Yoakum. "But everything just seemed to fall into place, and now here we are about to finish."
The Scioto County barn will be dedicated in a ceremony from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday at the site, owned by Clo Spriegel and located at the intersection of Ohio 335 and Ohio 139.
Yoakum said organizers are planning to have food and live music for the celebration.
Donna Poole Foehr of Detroit, formerly of Portsmouth, said her grandfather, Louis Barton Poole, built the barn in 1920.
"He and my grandmother, Nellie Bever Poole, had a very prosperous farm there," Foehr (pronounced Fair) said Tuesday in a telephone interview from her home. "I was just elated to learn that my grandfather's barn has been chosen to be honored like this."
Foehr and her husband, Don, both graduated form Portsmouth High School. He went on to graduate from Michigan State and she from Ohio University. Her parents were Forrest and Pauline Poole and they lived on Coles Boulevard when she was growing up.
"My father had season tickets for the Portsmouth Spartans home games," she said.
Don Foehr's father, Harry Foehr, was circulation manager of The Portsmouth Times.
The Foehrs both plan to be at Thursday's dedication.