By Jeremy Brown

Hudson’s new pavilion will serve as an outdoor classroom and as the hub of Ellsworth Hill Elementary’s ongoing outdoor garden project.

The pavilion is dedicated to the memory of Ellsworth second grade teacher Denise Ellen Lukingbeal, who passed away suddenly on Dec. 21, 2022, at the age of 67. She had retired from the school in 2020 after 25 years. In life, Lukingbeal had left a lasting impression on her students and colleagues, due to her approach to outdoor learning, as well as her generous and loving nature. 

 

“It was built this fall, finally, and it is now in Denise’s name, which I can’t think of a better person to name it in memory of,” Ellsworth Principal Jen Filomena said. “The kids loved watching it get built. The playground is right there, and they could see the cranes lifting the beams. They thought that was pretty awesome. It’s been incredible.” 

A ribbon-cutting ceremony for The Denise Lukingbeal Outdoor Learning Pavilion took place on Oct. 24 with students, teachers, community members and the Lukingbeal family in attendance. The pavilion is part of an ongoing initiative at the school aimed at teaching children about gardening, as well as introducing them to different ecosystems. 

When the garden project at Ellsworth is completed, it will have various sections connected by a path that will guide children through a variety of gardens and habitats, each one being its own learning station. The project currently includes the learning pavilion, a garden area called the Ellsworth Hill Community Garden, two separate gardens in the shape of an E and an H for Ellsworth Hill, an apple orchard that sits adjacent to the pavilion and a nearby pinetum. It is part of a district-wide landscaping effort created by ReGreen Hudson Schools, an organization that focuses on creating outdoor educational habitats for students and making Hudson school campuses environmentally and ecologically sustainable.

“Our goal is to eventually finish our walking path that takes you through different habitats,” Filomena said. “We've got a little wooded area with a pond, or a bog in it, and then we’re going to make that path and a boardwalk, because it’s a real mushy wetland area, and you come up through the orchard and the learning pavilion. Then we’ve got a bunch of pine trees. Then it wraps around the rest of the building. The learning pavilion is definitely the gold star of the whole project.” 

Filomena said Denise Lukingbeal was a major force in the fine tuning of the garden, its design and getting kids out there to help water and harvest. 

Ellsworth Hill’s leadership had been considering building an outdoor learning facility for years, after seeing one in Copley, but it wasn’t until the school collaborated with the Lukingbeal family that the idea began to take shape. 

“I had reached out to the school and really asked them, hey, is there anything that we can be thinking about,” said Eric Lukingbeal, Denise Lukingbeal’s son. “They were actually in the early stages of working through some public work for some grant dollars for an outdoor learning lab. We felt that it was a perfect opportunity to bring an enhanced partnership between our family and friends and all those who wanted to offer support and the school my mom loved so much. It was really a perfect joining together of priorities and gave us an opportunity to leave a lasting impression that my mom had on all her students.”

As a result of the collaboration, the Lukingbeal family decided to create a GoFundMe to raise money for the pavilion, as well as for a scholarship fund in Denise Lukingbeal’s name. 

The GoFundMe raised $49,550 from 419 donations, of which the family contributed $25,000 to the learning pavilion project. The excess is being used as a yearly scholarship fund for students with a career path in education.

“We said we were going to give $1,000 scholarship to an education major every year, but the last three years, I’ve given two scholarships of a $1,000 each and, actually, one of them last year had her as a student and remembered her, so that was really a neat thing,” said Denise’s husband, Scott Lukingbeal.

The pavilion was also funded by about $65,000 from the state of Ohio and about $25,000 from the Hudson Heritage Foundation, said Hudson Board of Education Member Tom Tobin. The balance came from smaller donations from various contributors.

“I’m particularly aware of the power of philanthropy and how generous people can be for all sorts of things, and this just struck me as the kind of project that we could ask people to contribute to, that it would touch a lot of buttons with the historic preservation, the history of Hudson, the schools, the children, stuff that people love, so it worked out well. I’m very happy with it. I’m very proud of it,” Tobin said. 

The pavilion was constructed using a repurposed local historic barn that was built by The Flood Company, a family-owned paint business in Hudson, in the mid-1800s. 

That wasn’t in the plans until former Hudson Heritage Association member Curt Van Blarcum realized that a historic barn he was trying to save from demolition could be used as an outdoor pavilion. 

“Finally, it occurred to me,” Van Blarcum said. “I do a lot of horticulture work with the Hudson City Schools and a friend of mine, Tom Tobin, a school board member, I brought it up to Tom that this barn could become something other than a barn, and we could even consider it to be an outdoor education pavilion, a large picnic pavilion.”

After it was decided by school officials to use the barn in the making of the pavilion, Van Blarcum recruited the Mount Vernon Barn Company and Myron Graber from Sugarcreek Builders. With care, the crew dismantled, relocated and reconstructed the barn at Ellsworth Hill. Van Blarcum said a regular construction crew wouldn’t have been able to do the job, because it required the kind of know-how that only seasoned barn dismantlers have.

The barn’s shiplap siding was unusable, so the district used “Ohio-grown white pine shiplap siding,” as well as a metal roof also made in the state, Van Blarcum said.

“So everything in that barn, basically, was born, raised and built in Ohio,” he said. “It’s a hundred percent Ohio, even when we did the dowel pegs to put the mortise and tenons back together.”

Architect Jeff Ashmore from the Columbus area did the structural analysis for the project.

The school recently received a grant from the Kiwanis Club of Hudson to purchase picnic tables for the pavilion, and there’s a good chance that a stage could be built in the pavilion, as well.

“I believe Curt Van Blarcum is possibly going to use some of the old bleachers from the former Hudson middle school to make a little mini stage at the enclosed end of the pavilion, so we can do theaters, or little writing celebrations and performances, just a little one step up stage, if you will,” Filomena said. “Eventually, when we get ready to plant the garden in the spring, we can do some of the lessons out there in the pavilion. It can be used for anything.”

After the pavilion was finished, a memorial plaque was placed on an interior wall of the structure that showcases a copy of a zentangle art piece created by Denise Lukingbeal and her friend and teaching partner, Cherie Uber. The piece was originally created for the school district's administrative offices.

Back in 2021, Hudson began to renovate the Evamere Elementary School building to become the district's central administrative offices. Every chalkboard in the building was removed except for one left behind for memory’s sake. It was that chalkboard that Denise Lukenbeal and Uber were tasked by school officials to create artwork on in 2022. Denise Lukingbeal came up with the idea to take an art class in Peninsula to get some ideas. At the class, the two friends had learned about zentangle art and decided that it was the style they wanted to use on the chalkboard.

“We drew it and we really liked it,” Uber said. “When we were walking out we said, you know, we didn’t even sign that. And I said, oh, we’ll sign it later. Well, later never came, because that was in September [2022] sometime, and then Denise passed away suddenly in December.”

Denise Lukingbeal made a lasting impression on those she knew, and she left a legacy that will not soon be forgotten.

“She loved to be able to take something and turn it into something magical,” Eric Lukingbeal said. “To have that restoration project as part of that, too, is just really special to our family.”