Remembering John Bange
I met John Bange within the first few weeks of opening the Hub in 2021, when he introduced himself as a friend of Deanna Spatz. I had met Deanna in person only a few days prior to that (also at the Hub), but I had known her name for years as the person who had started the Beyond the Bin collection program at St. Anthony parish in Madisonville. When a friend of mine, Joyce Richter, SC, (who, like me, was on the Sustainability Committee at Mount St. Joseph University) told me about Deanna and her program in about 2015, I thought it was brilliant! Because of what Deanna did, I was inspired and the Committee adapted the Beyond the Bin program to collect one type of item for one week each month on campus during the school year. For instance, in January, we collected packing materials and took them to an independent shipping store, who reused the air pillows, bubble wrap, and packing peanuts. In April, we collected garden items (including plant pots) and we donated them to the Civic Garden Center so they could use or sell them at their annual Plant Sale. In May, we collected gently used school supplies, which we donated to Crayons to Computers.
Flash forward a few years to when -- after an extremely busy electronics event in April 2018 at Oak Hills High School -- I had the idea that we needed a permanent place to collect electronics year-round, which was the birth of the Cincinnati Recycling & Reuse Hub. It was a natural extension of that idea to have a Beyond the Bin program at the same place, since there were so many other “hard-to-recycle” things that could be collected from the community.
Although Deanna had started the original program at St. Anthony’s, I know that she had a small army of helpers to manage the program. One of those recruits was John Bange. The first time I met John, I liked him immediately, since he was always friendly, always encouraging, and always wanted to make sure that he was putting things in the correct places at the Hub. At that point in time, things at the Hub were not nearly as busy as they are now and we actually had time to talk to everyone who was bringing items and I got to know people a bit. I mentioned to John one time about how worried I was about whether this slightly insane, pretty much untested idea to create the Hub was going to work out, and his reply was basically a paraphrased quote from James Earl Jones’ character from the movie Field of Dreams – “People will come, Colleen.” He told me how excited he was that we existed, and that he’d been looking for something like us for years, and that he knew there were other people like him, who would be just as delighted when they found us, too, in the future.
And John’s predictions came true. As time went on, more people started coming to the Hub. We received more funding so that we could begin hiring and then expand staff, which eventually allowed me to move upstairs to work on more administrative tasks. That was helpful in many ways (for instance, I have more time to write grants these days), but I do often miss seeing all of the friendly, encouraging faces who come in to drop their items off.
I’m always happy when someone from the “early days” makes their way upstairs to say “hi”, and I was happy to see John in early January when he came upstairs to look for something on our reuse floor. We chatted for a bit, and, although he seemed a bit tired, I chalked it up to just having gotten through all of the holiday rigamarole.
A few weeks later, though, Carrie Turpin, our Development Coordinator, who tracks all of the donations for the Hub, asked me if I knew an individual named John Bange. I said, “Yes”, and she informed me that we had started receiving donations in his memory. I was beyond touched to learn that the Hub was listed along with The Caring Place in Kennedy Heights and Cincinnati Kharkiv Sister City Partnership as an organization “close to John’s heart.” By encouraging people to make donations to the Hub, it means he’s continuing to help us, even though he’s no longer here with us.
When I attended John’s funeral at St. Francis de Sales church on February 17, it was exactly what I expected. The church was packed with all of the family, friends, and acquaintances that loved and knew John for the great person that he was, and the eulogy by one of his sons was both beautiful and heartbreaking. As it was being read, I kept thinking to myself that he would have gotten along great with my dad who also has an affection for tractors, engineering, music, and his family.
John will be sorely missed, but I will be eternally grateful for his inspiration, his kind words, and his encouragement.
