Cardington’s Cecil Maxwell reflects on 90 years of life, faith and community

By Eve­lyn Long -

Cecil Maxwell, who will be 90 years old on March 6, has lived those nine decades fol­low­ing the admo­ni­tion of one Bible verse: James 2:14.

A devout man with a benev­o­lent spirit, Maxwell, a life­long Card­ing­ton res­i­dent, has com­mit­ted his life to the words of the Bible verse, “What does it profit, my brethren, if some­one says he has faith but does not have works.?”

He has car­ried out those works through involve­ment with his church, his com­mu­nity and the gov­ern­ment of his home town, usu­ally in lead­er­ship roles. Most impor­tantly to him, though, is his fam­ily and his role as parent.

Cecil grew up the sec­ond of two chil­dren of Paul and Ada Maxwell. His father estab­lished the River­side Dairy in 1915 and Cecil began work­ing with his father in the deliv­ery of those prod­ucts when he was 13 years old and received his driver’s license. His sis­ter, GaNell, helped on these deliv­er­ies, made first from a horse drawn wagon.

“The horse was named Net­tie and when we took too long to make a deliv­ery, she moved on,” he said. Deliv­er­ies were made later from a pickup truck and still later, in 1945 they acquired a truck with refrig­er­a­tion as they made deliv­er­ies to many school dis­tricts, includ­ing of course, Card­ing­ton School and to 225 res­i­den­tial cus­tomers. Even­tu­ally, their prod­ucts expanded to include ice cream, orange drink, orange pineap­ple drink, choco­late milk and cot­tage cheese.

The milk was pro­duced by Hol­stein and Golden Guernsey cattle.

“Dur­ing this time the herd of cat­tle acquired Bangs dis­ease,” said Cecil. “Dad was kind to me let­ting me reduce the herd by 50. It was the sad­dest day of my life when we got rid of them.”

Cecil assumed the oper­a­tion of the dairy in 1953 upon his father’s retirement.

He was assisted in its oper­a­tion by his wife, Kathryn, whom he mar­ried in 1947.

The Maxwells sold the dairy busi­ness in 1994, the ice cream divi­sion to Vicki and Rob Lill, Coun­try Cater­ers, Mar­ion, who retained the River­side Dairy logo and ice cream recipe.

Dur­ing this time Cecil was active in the Card­ing­ton Rotary Club, join­ing in 1945 and served as its pres­i­dent and as Dis­trict Governor.

“I served in all of the offices,” he noted. Involve­ment with the Rotary Club took him on many trips, includ­ing trav­els to Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Guatemala. Bob Math­ews, cur­rent trea­surer of the Card­ing­ton Rotary Club, said Cecil is the old­est liv­ing mem­ber of the club and also has the longest years of mem­ber­ship. Among the many hon­ors he received was the Paul Har­ris Award, a pres­ti­gious Rotary honor. Math­ews said Cecil was the club sec­re­tary for sev­eral years and upon his retire­ment from that posi­tion, he recom– mended Math­ews for the post which he has held ever since.

A life­long mem­ber of First United Methodist Church, Card­ing­ton, Cecil’s ded­i­ca­tion has led him to be a lay speaker, not only on the local level but as a Dis­trict Lay leader with the Mount Ver­non dis­trict. He and Kathryn trav­eled to many coun­tries on mis­sion trips. “There were many great times as we trav­eled together,” he said

They vis­ited their son, Jim and his wife in Hong Kong and Sin­ga­pore where they found the coun­try beau­ti­ful and “the peo­ple kind.” A high­light was their trav­els to the Holy Land in 1973. They vis­ited Egypt and Jor­dan and fol­lowed the Nile River.

In the late 1980’s he was asked by the Bishop of the East Ohio Dis­trict of the Methodist Church to visit Zim­babwe, Africa and seek land for build­ing a future African Uni­ver­sity. That uni­ver­sity was later estab­lished and is a great site of higher edu­ca­tion today.

Cecil and Kathryn car­ried on the host­ing of the Hos­pi­tal­ity House at Lake­side, after his par­ents gave up the ven­ture. The Hos­pi­tal­ity House con­tin­ues to be hosted by a Maxwell as daugh­ter Jean­nie Vaughan has assumed those host duties.

Cecil served his home town as mayor from 1978–1982. It was 1981 when he was met with the biggest chal­lenge of his life fol­low­ing the mas­sive destruc­tion of Card­ing­ton by the tor­nado in 1981.

“I remem­ber some­one from the ODOT say­ing, ‘Do you want a hole dug out or filled?’ They were going to see if we wanted the town rebuilt or just let it be filled in. I recall Dale Carsner say­ing, ‘I raised my boys here and they’re going to work here.’ So we rebuilt.”

Cecil spent many, many hours meet­ing with offi­cials and with the towns­peo­ple as the town rebuilt.

His benev­o­lence was espe­cially gra­cious when in 2003, he donated 33 acres of his prop­erty along the river to the vil­lage. Known as Maxwell Park it is being devel­oped with the help of a grant from ODNR, into walk­ing trails, wet­lands, fish­ing area and as a source of edu­ca­tion for school students.

Active with the seniors cit­i­zens, Cecil and Kathryn were rec­og­nized as Out­stand­ing Seniors in the area’s agency on aging.

Loyal to Card­ing­ton High School from where he grad­u­ated in 1941, he rarely misses an alumni party each May.

Cecil has expe­ri­enced sad­ness in his per­sonal life as well as many joys. His first wife, Kath­leen, passed away from the effects of strep throat after only 23 months of mar­riage, leav­ing behind an infant son. His mar­riage to Kathryn Pearl also brought a mother to Jimmy and then they had three daugh­ters, Jean­nie and twins Jan­ice and Janet.

Sadly, Kathryn died in 2010 and their daugh­ter, Janet Wuertz, passed away in 2011.

His daugh­ter, Jean­nie Vaughan lives in Avon and daugh­ter (TJ) and Jan­ice Haynes reside in Delaware. His son, Jim and Pam live in Shel­burne, Ver­mont and in Green Val­ley, Ari­zona. Cecil has five grand­chil­dren and six great grandchildren.

Today, he still resides in the home in which he was born and the home where he and Kathryn raised their family.

His pas­tor, Gail Angel, praised Cecil and Kathryn for their work with Key Min­istries and sup­port of mis­sions on the local, national, and inter­na­tional levels.

“Since I have been pas­tor, I’m impressed with how he is inter­ested in the health of the church,” she said. “He’s very sup­port­ive of all the new things that are happening.”

Susie Pey­ton, Card­ing­ton mayor, praised Cecil for his work with the vil­lage while serv­ing as mayor. “Since serv­ing in that capac­ity, I can under­stand the chal­lenges he encoun­tered, espe­cially dur­ing the rebuild­ing from the tor­nado. He really stepped up. Of course, we are grate­ful for his dona­tion of the Maxwell Park land.”

James 3:18 says, “But some­one will say “you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith with­out your works and I will show you my faith by my works.” Cecil Maxwell is the per­fect exam­ple of a man whose faith has been demon­strated through many, many works.

He will be hon­ored dur­ing an open house recep­tion from 2 to 4 pm Sun­day, March 3, at the First United Methodist Church, Cardington.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Feb 27 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.