Three individuals will be announced as this year’s Castle Wall honorees Friday before the start of the Tygers’ football game against West Holmes at Arlin Field.
Dr. Donald L. Dewald, Mrs. Inez Shepard and Johnny Givand will be recognized for their longtime service to Mansfield City Schools and the community at large. Their names will be added to the Castle Wall plaque, which bears the inscription “The heart and soul of our community.”
All three will be honored on the field at 6:45 p.m.
Dr. Dewald, salutatorian of the Mansfield Senior High School class of 1967, established the first hematology/oncology clinic in Mansfield now known as Ohio Cancer Specialists.
He served as team physician for Tyger football and basketball teams from 1990 to 2006 and coordinated sports physical examinations for Mansfield City and Madison students in grades seven through 12 during that same period. With the help of Doug Seiler he designed the cross country course for the new Senior High.
Dr. Dewald carried out his father’s dying wish to create the Dewald Community Center at The Salvation Army. The center provides an after-school program to help at-risk students succeed in school.
Mrs. Shepard opened Happy Time Child Care & Preschool in 1966. As an African-American female entrepreneur, she is the owner of one of the longest-operating minority businesses in Mansfield. Acting sometimes silently and in the background, she has motivated many others toward jobs, education or community service.
Her service on many boards includes The Culliver Reading Center, The Center for Individual and Family Services, YWCA, Habitat for Humanity and the Committee to Renovate and Revitalize Johns Park. Her honors include the Human Development Award, NAACP Image Award, the Mansfield Senior High School Black Culture Club Hall of Fame and the Altrusa International Foundation, Inc. Community Leadership Award.
For more than 47 years Mrs. Shepard has lived one of her favorite sayings: “It is better to build children than to repair adults.”
Givand, born in Alabama in 1936, is a veteran of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division Screaming Eagles. He came to Mansfield in 1958 and began working at the General Motors/CPC stamping plant. While there he served as a two-time president of United Auto Workers Local 549.
A member of Shiloh Full Gospel Baptist Church and a life member of the NAACP, he also has served as president of the Richland County Regional Planning Commission and as a member of the Democratic Executive Committee of Richland County.
Givand has shared his love for the youth of Mansfield in many ways, including serving as president of the Mansfield Northwest Little League, as a youth sports coach and as a Neighborhood Youth Corps volunteer supervisor. He currently is a co-chair of the Mansfield City Schools Levy Committee.
Givand and his wife Lillie have three children and eight grandchildren.
The Castle Wall, located behind Arlin Field’s east end zone, is named in honor of retired Mansfield City Schools administrator Doug Castle. It was constructed in 2011 from limestone blocks that formed the perimeter of the Mansfield High School that once stood on the northwest corner of West Fourth and Bowman streets.
Previous Wall honorees include Jim Day, Gene Earick, Jack Lehman, Johnny Marsh, Judge Jeff Payton, Dr. Ted Sazdanoff and fallen Mansfield City Police Officers Chuck Norris and Brian Evans.