NEW APPOINTMENT — G. Daniel Spahn, right, is the new trustee appointed to the Charles M. and Thelma M. Pugliese Charitable Foundation, serving along with Thomas P. Timmons, left, and H. Lee Kinney, a charter trustee. Spahn fills the position left vacant by the recent death of charter trustee William W. “Bill” McElwain. -- Janice Kiaski

WINTERSVILLE — As the Charles M. and Thelma M. Pugliese Charitable Foundation considers the recipients of awards from this year’s batch of applicants, it does so with a heavy heart as it mourns the loss of a charter trustee, colleague and friend.

The late William W. “Bill” McElwain, who aside from H. Lee Kinney and Douglas F. Naylor was one of the three original trustees appointed by foundation founder Charles M. Pugliese, died on Christmas Day at the age of 83, leaving Kinney as one of the original three.

Naylor, who died in 2009 — ironically also on Christmas Day — was replaced by Thomas P. Timmons, leaving Kinney and Timmons, under the guidelines of the foundation’s trust agreement, to fill the vacancy left by McElwain’s recent death.

In the event of death, remaining trustees fill any and all vacancies with this one bringing on board Judge G. Daniel Spahn, a lifelong resident of Jefferson County who served as Steubenville municipal court judge from 2002 to 2014. He has been the Jefferson County Educational Service Center’s attorney since 2014.

The appointment was occasion to bring Kinney, Timmons and Spahn together to touch base on foundation achievements, assess their work in reviewing applications filed by the March 31 deadline for 2023 awards later this spring while also remembering the dedicated foundation servant that McElwain was in a quiet, behind-the-scenes way.

Charter trustee William W. “Bill” McElwain -- Contributed

“Bill is sorely missed around the Pugliese board table and in the community,” Kinney assured. “Fairness was a hallmark with McElwain and serving the last several years as chairman of the Pugliese Foundation, McElwain took pleasure and great care in reviewing and analyzing applications for grants from not-for-profit organizations, school districts, cities, villages and townships in a 30-mile radius of Fourth and Market streets in downtown Steubenville as they are submitted, year after year,” Kinney observed.

“McElwain was especially gratified, in a recent press release, to announce the Pugliese Foundation has granted more than $10 million dollars to local charities since 1999,” Kinney added of what constitutes more than 770 awards made through the years.

That milestone had brought Kinney, McElwain and Timmons together at a fitting location last August — in the foyer of Pugliese West Elementary School in Steubenville’s West End where they posed for a photo near a prominent 2008 plaque acknowledging the school was made possible with the help of a grant from the foundation established 24 years ago.

At $1 million, it was the largest grant made in the foundation’s history.

“It’s certainly helped a lot of public charities, their endeavors, to accept that money, and of course we’re grateful for the Pugliese family for putting it (money) in the foundation so that we can dole it out,” McElwain had said at the time, adding, “It’s been fun and rewarding to be able to do that.”

Kinney said McElwain began a distinguished banking career in 1958 with the Union Saving Bank and Trust Co. in downtown Steubenville, which culminated with being a charter investor and serving as president of UniBank, chartered in 1985 and sold in 1995, when McElwain retired. The bank today is part of Huntington Bancshares Inc., Kinney explained.

In addition to involvement with “country bank” organizations throughout Jefferson County and Ohio — as smaller banks were labeled by the state Division of Banks and FDIC — McElwain was active in the local community, serving as a faithful board member for more than 25 years with the Jefferson County Family Service Association, as a longtime president of the former Downtown Steubenville Business Association and in other organizations, according to Kinney.

Music was an avocation with McElwain as well as he served many years as the organist and choir master at the United Presbyterian Church in Mingo Junction.

When Timmons came to UniBank in 1993, that began a working relationship with McElwain, but Timmons said he knew McElwain as a fellow member of the Steubenville Kiwanis Club.

“He was a Kiwanis member for a while but I started working at the bank, and I just was impressed with Bill and what he knew and how he handled all the financials and he always very professional,” Timmons said. “Bill wanted to keep out of the limelight, he wasn’t in for pictures too much or anything like that and he always wanted to stay out of that but when I got on the Pugliese board, Bill loved doing what he did out here,” he said.

“He did a lot, and Bill was very particular about making sure that everything was done and done properly,” Timmons added.

Timmons recalled that when he first started at UniBank, it had a choir. “Bill was the director and the piano player, and we had several people and we went around different places, Kiwanis and Rotary, and we sang mostly around Christmas time.”

“That was a side of Bill many people may not have known — that he was a pretty good musician on the piano,” Kinney noted, adding, “Bill and I have actually been friends since high school — rival high schools. He was at East Springfield, and I was at J.U. We crossed paths then and have been fast friends ever since.”

When Kinney got out of the Army, he said it was McElwain, already an employee at Union Bank, who encouraged him to talk to Chuck Edwards, an attorney who was president of Union Bank, about getting a job.

That he did. “I really enjoyed what I was doing at the bank, and I did it pretty well, and Bill and I stayed in touch through that for 40 years,” Kinney said.

Spahn commented that he would see Pugliese around town but didn’t know him, and his association with McElwain was from a distance with admiration and respect.

“I knew Bill as a respected banker and at UniBank but I didn’t have a strong relationship with him — I just knew of him through his reputation and a casual ‘how you doing,'” Spahn said. “But I’ve worked with Lee and Tom in other areas, with Lee probably for 30 years and with Tom probably in the last 15 on some projects, so we’ve gotten to know each other in a work relationship that I think is very complimentary,” Spahn said.

“As I listened about Bill and what he did and the shoes I’m allegedly filling, I think this is going to be very interesting for me to join in, but I like being a part of a team. I like being able to figure out my role on the team and fulfilling that role, so I am looking forward to this because of the benefit the community gets,” Spahn added.

A 1967 graduate of Steubenville High School, Spahn graduated from Bucknell University in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in economics and from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1982. He worked at Spahn’s Dairy, the family business, on a part-time basis from age 16 through college, then full time from 1973 until the business was sold in 1979. He was an attorney with Friefield, Bruzzese, Moreland, Straus and Spahn from 1982 to 2001 before becoming municipal court judge.

Spahn served on the Steubenville City Schools board of education for 18 years and the Salvation Army board for more than 20. In his 30 years at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Steubenville where he is a member, he has served as a teacher, trustee and elder.

He and his wife, Connie, a teacher with 37 years of service before her retirement, have two daughters — Erin Erenberg of South Carolina and Leigh McLaughin of New Jersey — and four grandchildren.

The Charles M. and Thelma M. Pugliese Charitable Foundation was funded in 1999 by Mr. Pugliese, according to Kinney, who explained that the Puglieses primarily operated hotels, including in Steubenville, Wheeling, Warren and Portsmouth. Pugliese had a strong work ethic, loved to make money and amassed a fortune, noted Kinney, who connected with the businessman as he and McElwain and the late Robert Hargrave as counsel sought investors in 1985 to launch a new bank in Steubenville — UniBank.

One of 12 children raised during the Depression by a mother he greatly admired, Pugliese turned up as one of the major investors and served on the UniBank board for the life of the bank.

By his 80s, Pugliese had long been a widower with no children — Thelma having died in 1972.

A contemplation of his mortality apparently was the backdrop against which the foundation was established with Pugliese naming Kinney, CEO and chairman of UniBank; McElwain, president of UniBank; and Naylor, a fellow UniBank director, as trustees of the self-perpetuating, autocratic board. When Naylor died, the remaining trustees appointed Timmons, former UniBank vice president, to fill the vacancy.

Pugliese, who died during the early 2000s, uniquely laid out in his foundation trust document who was eligible to apply for a grant — any governmental subdivisions such as a city, village, township, police and fire department, etc.; any school; and any “not-for-profit” organization within a 30-mile radius of Fourth and Market streets in downtown Steubenville, which is where UniBank was and is home now to Huntington.

The foundation will only have three trustees by its design.

“There is a trust document we’re guided by. How Charlie came up with that, he loved the bank but we can only give to charities within 30 miles of Fourth and Market, the bank’s location. We’re bound by that, but it’s a big area. It reaches to East Liverpool in the north, to St. Clairsville/Wheeling to the south and Robinson Township Township to the east and Carrollton to the west,” Kinney noted.

March 31 is the deadline every year for applications.

There are about 25 applicants under review this month with May the likely time when the recipients will be announced.

“Our process is each of us, at our own pace, comes to this office and goes through these applications and then the three of us get together and start the process of elimination,” Kinney explained. It’s not unusual for on-site visits for trustees to get a better understanding of how an applicant envisions a proposed project funded by the grant.

“We don’t really give any money away until May or maybe June,” Kinney said.

Kinney said McElwain was “was very involved in the market — we all are in our own pace — but I actually called Bill a day trader. He watched the market every single day and, of course, we had a big stock portfolio, and we had managed it ourselves, and I think a good bit of the success of that was because of Bill.

“He was very dedicated to the Pugliese Foundation,” Kinney said.

“The foundation was good for him because he was really interested in the community and the radius and all those things like that,” Timmons said of McElwain. “He was big on the humane society, he was big on the food pantries, really big on the food pantries, and we have like a $5,000 discretionary fund each that we can give out to anyone we want to, and Bill usually did the humane society.”

In 2022, McElwain donated it all to food banks, Kinney said.

“Bill probably is the most honest person I ever knew,” said an emotional Kinney. “He never did anything off the record at the bank, knowing him almost 70 years, he was the most honest person I ever knew, and that’s saying a lot. He was entirely 100 percent honest to a fault almost.”

Spahn explained that he worked with Kinney and Timmons through the Albaugh Wherry Foundation.

“We have worked together in that capacity, so it’s much the same kind of work we’ll be doing.”

What the Pugliese Foundation has accomplished through the years impresses Spahn.

“I think it’s a wonderful contribution, and it’s given me a whole new regard for Mr. Pugliese because I knew Charlie as a businessman, but I didn’t really understand all that he did. I knew he owned a lot of real estate and that he was just a little bit of a different character, but then to find out he had the vastness that he did and then made the contribution to the community in the way he has, that was very impressive to me,” he said.

“I just think it’s really nice to be able to carry that forward with these two guys,” he added.

“As I look at the contributions they’ve made over the years, there’s a lot of functions and causes. I think they’ve been really good and helpful to the community.”