3-08-2025 4:07pm

Ripples

Ann and Victor Feinauer

What is the measure of a life? On March 4th, our family said good-bye to my mother-in-law, Ann Feinauer, when she passed away after a short illness. Her transition was peaceful surrounded by family. Today I find myself reflecting on her life of nearly ninety-five well-lived years.

While attending the University of Cincinnati she accepted a blind date invitation arranged by a friend. The gentleman needed a date to accompany him to the wedding of his fraternity brother best friend. That blind date led to a lifetime of love and adventure. Ann Gutjhar's marriage to Victor C. Feinauer on Halloween 1952 was like a single pebble dropped into water creating wide-spread ripples with far reaching affects.

Just as the pebble Vic and Ann’s first ripple was close – their family of three sons, which would forever after be their treasure. Victor successfully built a career as project manager for electrical contractor Becker Electric running major construction projects including the building of Kings Island, Sycamore High School, the Chapel of Spring Grove Cemetery/ Arboretum, most of the hospitals on Cincinnati’s “Pill Hill” and many more.

As many women of the time, Ann was a project manager in her own right building a home and raising three boys. When their youngest son was approaching kindergarten age, Ann decided she wanted to become a teacher. With a degree in social work, she returned to U.C. for the education she needed to gain her teaching credentials and worked as a fourth grade teacher in Sycamore School District for 20 years when she and Victor retired.

It was in retirement that Ann and Victor’s ripples grew exponentially. Socially engaged in the community Vic and Ann became aware of needs in Lebanon. When they learned of the crisis of homeless families, Vic and Ann with their friends Park and Ethel Gast and Dean and Ellen Froehlich created the Interfaith Hospitality Network (now known as Family Promise) in Lebanon. Director Linda Rabolt says, “Vic and Ann are the cornerstones of Family Promise. Without them there would have been no IHN.”

In addition to serving on the board, fundraising, organizing churches, setting up and furnishing the day center, Vic and Ann served as overnight chaperons when their church hosted IHN families and provided meal donations at other times. They continued this work over two decades ,well into their seventies.

While they worked as a pair in the Family Promise efforts, Vic and Ann made major community impact individually. Like the Family Promise endeavor, Victor was instrumental in the founding of Warren County Adult New Readers serving as their first president and working for decades as a one to one tutor in addition to volunteering with the team of tutors who worked with inmates in the Lebanon Correctional facility weekly. In his honor, Adult New Readers (now known as Literacy Connections) annually presents the Victor C. Feinauer Tutor of the Year award to one of their volunteers.

Ann’s passion project was the free clothing store attached to the Lebanon Food Pantry. For over thirty years Ann led a team of volunteers to provide access to free clothing for anyone in need in Warren County. For three hours every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday a team of volunteers sort community donations of clothing, towels, and bed linens to stock the store in this completely unfunded enterprise. Ann last worked at the clothing store ten days before she passed. The concept of providing a place to receive donations from those with much and redistributing to those who lack inspired her. She truly enjoyed serving the community, organizing the volunteer team, and interacting with the clothing store customers.

In these reflections of the lives of my in-laws, I see that every life, like the pebble dropped in the water, creates so much more than the initial splash. The ripples created circle on and on, spreading and spreading from the center, flowing and flowing with no easily determined end point. May we always remember the ripples.

For those who may wish to honor Ann’s recent passing, the family requests your donation to one of the projects she and Victor so loved – Family Promise of Warren County (formerly IHN), Literacy Connections (formerly Warren County Adult New Readers), or the Lebanon Food Pantry (please designate for the clothing store.)