When Sherrock failed to swear up and down in response, a shop supervisor told him, “Roger, you take bad news really well.”
Whether it was crows spattering the museum with their leavings, a financial threat to the iconic building’s survival or a $500,000 flood that closed Heritage Center doors for six months, Sherrock said he tried to approach things as he once did on the shop floor: By remaining calm and asking:
1. What went wrong?
2. Where do we go from here?
The importance of community
Perhaps the greatest challenge to Sherrock’s calm, two-step formula came just before midnight on April 25, 2019, when a third-floor pipe in the building’s fire suppression system broke, flooding the museum.
“When I came into the building,” the water was falling on the first floor carpeting so hard “it sounded like a thunderstorm,” he said.
“I give a lot of credit to this community,” which “hung with us” both that night and during the longer recovery period.
Firefighters “went above and beyond” by staying around to squeegee water down the fire escapes; Brian Shampton and Reliant Restoration were on scene within a half hour with their equipment; and “all hands were on deck” as the Heritage Center staff came in to help.
Sherrock, who is 71, also credits Wallace & Turner Insurance and Cincinnati Insurance, which, in the end, “covered the whole thing.”
If all this sounds like a grateful small businessman thanking those who helped save his operation, it’s no coincidence.
From the beginning Sherrock, who has changed belts on the museum’s sump pumps and air handlers, imagined his role as a small businessman who would be hands-on in running his end of the operation.
And the graduate of Northwestern High School and then Clark Technical Institute Clark knew who to look to for help in Springfield because he knew the community from previous years’ work at the McGregor Metalworking companies and the Springfield News-Sun.
Two history lessons
Five years before the flood, a rising sea of red ink required the Heritage Center to reach out to the public just to keep the 56,000 square feet building operational.
En route to the levy’s eventual passage, Sherrock learned “something fascinating about history.”
“We tend to think it follows a natural sequence and nothing could change that,” he said.
But the best laid plans to pass the initial levy by putting it on the ballot of a low-key off-year election of November 2015 fell apart when State Issue 3, the first attempt to legalize marijuana in Ohio, crashed the ballot.
In losing by 28 points statewide, that issue “pumped up the turnout of people who were saying no,” Sherrock said, and the Heritage Center levy failed 53 percent to 47.
There was good news was that night: “We were close,” Sherrock said.
Over time he also came to think the temporary loss became the Center’s long-term gain when it expanded community outreach for the second trip to the ballot.
A review of the results showed “how important it was to engage the agricultural community,” Sherrock said, (because) “they’re affected by these levies.”
The connection was made easier because the 100th anniversary of the Farm Bureau was to be celebrated in 2016. And because significant anniversaries are naturals for museum exhibits, the Heritage Center scheduled one.
In the process, “We found out their records were in a storage unit in Troy,” where they were at risk to damage by temperature and humidity changes.
“When they saw our archives” and the care with which the Heritage Center stores documents and artifacts, Sherrock said, the records were added to the Heritage Center collection and “helped build that relationship.”
History Lesson 2
A little more study also revealed a second equally important lesson about local history: To many, the building that houses the museum represents the edifice of Springfield history itself.
For that reason, the 2017 levy campaign used the theme “Save Your Heritage Center,” while providing a list of the work that would be done with the levy money.
The levy passed 53 percent to 47 percent and made not only short-term political sense but long-term practical sense. Because while programming at the Center is “is pretty much handled by our endowment,” Sherrock said, the cost of maintaining the building “is incredible. Without the levy we couldn’t continue” to operate and maintain it.
The five-year levy passed again in 2022 with a comfortable 65 percent on the yes side, expected to generate $740,000, most for building maintenance.
Last year the center finished two of the major projects it promised to do in 2017, installing solar panels on the attached Paul and Elizabeth K. Deer Exposition Hall to reduce utility bills and update the machinery that operates the original building’s elevators.
In a bow to history, an Expo Hall exhibit added solar to wind and water as sources of power used local since Clark Count’s founding.
The green energy advance also got Sherrock thinking about whether the cool water flowing beneath the streets of downtown Springfield — the Mill Run that once powered Springfield’s water wheels — might be tapped as a source of power for summer cooling as the climate warms.
Saving stories
In addition to preserving the museum and its building, outreach has been critical to preserving the objects and stories of all of Clark County and connecting with its people.
The center periodically asks people to bring in heirlooms that have no apparent future home to consider them for its collection — along with the stories that so enrich their historic value.
Sherrock himself has treasured the relationships with the Historical Society’s relatively small staff, which he has worked with closely for years, and swears up and down that he hasn’t sworn at.
He also has “seen a lot of really good volunteers pass away,” meaning a sadness balanced by the pleasure he took in getting to know the people so crucial to the museum’s work.
He also counts himself “very blessed” to work with community leaders including Dick Kuss, Harry Egger and Fred Leventhal, themselves players in Springfield history and supporters of the Center.
Epilog: Back to the future
The day after his official retirement, I ran into Roger Sherrock at the Farmer’s Market, held beside the Heritage Center.
He was checking out the redone brickwork street he was involved in having installed, and his car was filled with artifacts for the museum from the Coffelt Candy Company he’d picked up that morning with Brian Cubbage, whom he met and befriended through a Harleys and History project with Mid-Ohio Harley Davidson.
Sherrock’s retirement plans include catching up on yard work and home repairs; a return to the Heritage Center Archives to do some family genealogy; and continued community work as treasurer of his church, a Kiwanian and on the board of the recently refurbished Springfield Burial Grounds.
He’ll also be busy with three grandchildren, 7-year-old and twin boys who are 5 and whose mother has told him repeatedly to get them in bed on time because, if not, they’re going to wake up the next morning just as early, anyway, but crankier.
He looks forward to most of it.
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