Maurice William Ittel
Parents: Philip Ittel and Ida Vizedom
Brother: Lloyd David Ittel
Wife: Mary Louise Miles and Mary (Morris) Davis
Children: Steven Dale Ittel and David Miles Ittel
Maurice W. Ittel was born in Hanover Township, Butler County, Ohio on March 13,
1915, the son of Phillip Ittel and Ida (Vizedom) Ittel. He was raised on the
96-acre family farm on
Krucker Road (his maternal
grandmother was Hannah Elizabeth Krucker) in Hanover Township, northwest
of Hamilton, Ohio. Maurice’s
Grandmother moved from Germany to Hanover
Township
in Butler County, Ohio
before the Civil War and lived there all her life. His Mother lived there her
entire life. He lived there until he was married. He graduated from Hanover
School in 1933 and then went to
Miami
University
on Oxford, Ohio
where he earned both his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Education.
Surprisingly, during those degrees, he did not sleep one night in
Oxford because he commuted the entire time.
As a youth, Maurice was active in both Grange and 4-H work. He was on the Ohio State Fair Board as a juvenile Grange member. He was a 4-H Club member and leader. In 1955, his Father decided it was too much work to continue farming so he sold farm for about $60,000. The manager of a machine shop purchased it and later sold it to Hamilton Foundry. They transformed the farm to a retreat, made the large barn into a conference center and used the house to entertain out of town guests. They named it Circle H Farm. When they had financial problems they sold it to Baseball-Hall-of-Famer, Johnny Bench.
Bench
later sold it to the Garretson family. They built a huge new home in
addition to the original pre-Civil War home. They put it up for sale
for over one million dollars and a winner of the Ohio Lottery was the
next owner. Then it was sold to Rev. Bobby Grove who planned to build a
church on the property until his congregation rebelled at the
extravagance.
He went to Camp Campbell Gard as a 4-H camper in 1928 and became a member of the camp staff in 1935, as a Counselor, then as an Associate Camp Director and then Director. In 1937, he started to teach at Reilly School. In 1941, he accepted a position as Principal of Wayne Township School. One of the teachers was Mary Davis, who figures later in this story. In 1943, he married Mary Louise “Billie” Miles. His two sons, Steven and David had the pleasure of going to Camp Gard each summer from the time they were babies through their late teens. That was back in the days when school closed up about the second week in June and the family moved out to Camp Gard. The first of August, the custodial staff would open up the school and oil the floors. The third week in August, the family moved back to Hamilton from Camp Gard and he went out to school to get ready for the opening day on the first Tuesday after Labor Day. He served on the Camp Campbell Gard board of directors and on the Hamilton Fairfield YMCA metro board.
Back in 1941, when he went to Wayne School, one of his High School teachers, Jim Mason, served as a teach and the athletic coach for all sports. In December 1941, Mason was drafted into service in World War II. Maurice had to take over the athletic teams. One of his first experiences was to take the High School Basketball team in to play Wilson Junior High. In those days all the County High Schools varsity teams would go to Hamilton, Ohio to played the city Junior Highs. The night we played Wilson Junior High, Wayne scored 29 points and one of their players scored 30 points – a ninth grader by the name of Joe Nuxhall who pitched professional baseball for the Cincinnati Reds the following summer as the youngest-ever big-league pitcher.
In 1959, Wayne and Seven Mile consolidated and the new district was called Shiloh. Prior to that consolidation, he took the Junior and Senior classes to Washington, D.C. To earn some of the money, they started having annual steak dinners at the school. After they consolidated with Seven Mile, they only took the Senior Class due to the capacity of the buses. The tradition of the Steak Dinner has continued. One of the highlights of going to Washington, D.C. was to have the class picture taken in front of the Capitol. The cameraman used a slow-revolving camera. Maurice would stand at one end of the group and have his picture taken, then sneak down behind the group and appear at the other end of the group also. This perpetuated the myth that there were two of him and that he could enforce discipline at the school two places at once.
In 1969, Trenton schools merged with Wayne and Seven Mile and they named the new district Edgewood. They immediately passed a bond issue to build a new High School at the present site but money for athletic facilities was not included. While they were building the High School, Maurice got a government surplus surveyor transit and laid out the present running track. They used fill dirt from where they were digging at the High School. He set the leveling stakes and had their bulldozer move the dirt as directed. He had a volunteer blacktopping crew come in and blacktop the track and this became the first all-weather track in Butler County, essentially for free.
In 1977, his wife, Billie Ittel, along with 12 other residents of Edgewood School District, lost their lives in the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire while attending a school retirement dinner. Maurice was severely burned. In 1978, he married Mary (Morris) Davis, the teacher who had worked for him 37 years earlier.
During his 39 years as the head of the schools in this district, he always had a good staff and a very cooperative Board of Education. More important was the support of the student body and members of the community. The express his appreciation of what the school had done for him, during the 1979-1980 school year he proposed to the Edgewood school board that he work for just $1.00 as the transition for his retirement began. Interpretation of state rules seemed to rule out this possibility so he finished his final year as superintendent without pay.
Maurice was a life member of the National Education Association. He was also active in the Buckeye Association of School Superintendents and the American Association of School Superintendents. He served as a member of the State Board of the Ohio Retired Teachers Association for four years and as president of the Butler County Retired Teachers Association. He also served on the Hamilton Fairfield Metro Board, the Franklin School Administrators Discussion Group and the Butler County School Masters Club.