Deb promoting family-owned business Healthy Blends
Debbie Doherty had a go-to person in mind for help when her daughter, Rita, reached out to her for assistance in the early months of the pandemic last year.
Rita, the executive director of Friendship Village of Dublin, was in search of masks for the retirement community’s residents and staff, but struggled due to supply shortages. Her mother immediately knew who to call.
“Let me call Deb,” Doherty recalls telling her daughter.
The two worked as members of the parent teacher organizations at the same Dublin schools their children attended, and both served as presidents of those organizations.
“We talk on Facebook (occasionally),” Papesh says, “and then here we were in the middle of the pandemic and we jumped right back into it, like we just did a PTO meeting last night. It was crazy and we were able to fight to get the needed masks.”
The two were able to help provide more than 2,500 masks for residents and staff at Friendship Village in a matter of 10 days, Doherty says.
It’s just one of the many stories that highlight how Papesh is a walking, breathing and living resource in the community, and a worthy recipient of the Dublin City Schools Hall of Fame Class of 2020’s Outstanding Service Award.
In early April, Papesh wasn’t walking much following a recent knee surgery, but she still connects with Dubliners. Elementary students, for instance, sent cards wishing her a speedy recovery. The cards are displayed prominently near her fireplace.
Papesh still receives Christmas cards from about 75 different families from around the world that she’s connected with throughout her life whether as an educator, a military wife or a volunteer.
Connections, for Papesh, come easy.
“It is very second nature,” she says. “I have a couple of things that I live by and one
of them is that life is a networking event. … I network 24/7 because it’s just what we should be doing, right? … I wake up with a lot of gratitude every day to have the opportunity to connect with people and find a way for me to be helpful to them.”
Deb's freezer gave out so she went freezer shopping and of course even had to snap a selfie thanking the employees.
Papesh says she believes her outlook on life comes from her upbringing in a military family. Her father served in the U.S. Air Force, while Papesh’s Japanese mother became an American citizen after marrying Papesh’s father. The family was based in Okinawa, Japan, where Papesh spent most of her childhood through the fifth grade.
“(It) really helped me to see the world early on and the possibilities of how people can just get along and also to adjust to life as it’s given to you,” Papesh says. “Because military families have to sometimes move often, or even if you stay, your friends are coming and going and you may not see them again or you might meet up with them on a military base again, but you had to learn at a very young age to adjust and to look at new possibilities and have a positive mindset.”
Papesh attended the University of Illinois to study elementary education where she met her husband, Brian Papesh, who, like her father, served in the Air Force. Brian worked for Honda, a reason why the family moved to Dublin.
The family relocated to Oklahoma while Brian was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base. There, Papesh got her master’s degree in early childhood education from Oklahoma City University.
She served in several education related roles in Oklahoma including on the board of the Stars and Stripes Child Development Center, where she raised awareness for the need of a childcare network in federal buildings and was in the process of creating a teacher training manual for cultural inclusion before moving back to Dublin with their daughters Ashley and Katie.
The Stars and Stripes Child Development Center operated out of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which was tragically destroyed in a domestic terror attack in 1995. The bombing killed 169 people.
“Right after we left there, that spring was when that happened and I knew 47 people who were (killed in the bombing),” Papesh says. “So that was a very traumatic experience for me. I will say it was very hard because I trained all the teachers and knew many of the families there.”
Back in Dublin, while her husband went back to work for Honda, Papesh decided to become more involved in Dublin schools as her daughter Ashley was starting kindergarten at Riverside Elementary School.
“I tried to go back to work full time one time and it just didn’t work. It was so supportive of me but I just wasn’t ready to go back to work and I ended up just dedicating my time to doing what I love to do, but as a volunteer,” Papesh says.
Papesh's post in the Support Central Ohio Restaurants FB group about Moretti’s and our young Jerome student battling cancer during Covid. Best feel good post that month.
That included writing grants, posting parenting classes within the building and helping to organize different PTO committees. Her volunteer work made a major impact on her new home and the families in it.
“She has a lot of life experience,” Doherty says.
She recalls Papesh organized activities to teach elementary school children about other cultures.
“I like that about Deb,” Doherty says.
Phil Niemie, who was the Riverside Elementary principal at the time Papesh’s children were in school, recognized her education credentials and provided her the opportunity to expand her volunteer work beyond the PTO. This led Papesh to develop the first OCLC school partnership to match company tutors with students in the 1990s.
Papesh along with other volunteers developed a Radiant Readers program to teach 50 parent volunteers how to teach reading in small group formats.
Papesh’s grant writing raised $260,000 in grant funds for Riverside Elementary and Davis Middle School within an eight year period, including more than $125,000 for Riverside’s summer reading and parent training programs.
Truck and Trunk
Dublin Food Pantry
Deb Papesh’s involvement with the schools enabled her to branch into other organizations.
Last year, Papesh organized the first “Cinco Deb Mayo” event. She hosted a food truck at her house and welcomed visitors, some of whom dropped off food donations in the trunk of Papesh’s vehicle. Papesh donated 350 pounds of food donations to the food pantry and the same amount for a local church organization.
In July, Papesh held a similar “Truck and Trunk” event at the Spa at River Ridge’s parking lot in partnership with the Dublin Food Pantry, Dublin Bridges and Welcome Warehouse. At that event, there were four food trucks and four cars with empty trunks to accept food donations for the pantry and school supplies for Welcome Warehouse. Attendees also signed up for Dublin Bridges’ emails to receive notifications about people who need help with immediate financial emergencies.
Papesh became a food pantry board member last year and held her second Cinco Deb Mayo in May. She plans to host another Truck and Trunk event this year
Brandon Klein is an associate editor. Feedback welcome bklein@cityscenemediagroup.com
