THIS WEEK'S PERSONALITY: Bill Huffman begins second stint as Loudonville Council member

Tonight (Monday, Jan. 3) Bill Huffman begins his second stint as a member of Loudonville Village Council.

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Huffman, who was elected as a write-in-candidate in the Nov. 2 election, served on council from 1986 to 1990.

“I enjoyed that service but I was getting involved, through my sons, as a Boy Scout leader, and didn’t feel I could do both jobs justice at the same time,” said Huffman, who is a retired insurance adjuster.

Huffman served on the council with former mayor Steve Stricklen, Clayton Shoudt, Robert “Jake” Donelson and Jay Hollinger. For three of those four years he served as council president pro tem.

He made the decision to run for council this time after only three people filed for the office, filing and getting elected as a write-in candidate.

“I felt I could help,” he said, “as I had been in a council seat before.”

A 1972 Loudonville High School graduate

Huffman is a life-long Loudonville resident, the fourth of five children of Carl and Stella Huffman and a 1972 Loudonville High School graduate.

He began his first career, as an auto body technician, when he was just 14 years old.

“I went to work with my older brother, Dave, at Gene Heimberger’s body shop, continuing there through high school, including working my senior year full time through the school’s Diversified Cooperative Training program,” he said. “I was making $1.25 an hour at the time, and when I graduated was lured to a factory job at the Flxible Co., where I would make $2.26 an hour, a huge wage increase!”

He worked at Flxible for four years, then thought “there is no way I can work in a factory my entire lifetime. So, I left and got a job at Gary Johnson’s body shop in Ashland, and then, again with my brother Dave, in the body shop at Burgess Motors in Loudonville from 1976 to 1979.”

Then he changed careers, a bit, when he was hired as an estimate writer for the Continental Insurance Co. A few years later he joined the Grange Insurance Co. in Mansfield as a multi-line adjuster, working there until 2002, when he took a similar position with American Family Insurance. He retired from American Family in September 2019.

He and his wife Marge, whom he married in 1984, intended to do a lot of traveling.

“We started to, spending 28 days out West in early 2020, but then COVID hit, and we’ve been close to home ever since,” he said.

The Huffmans have two sons, Daniel, a systems analyst for Dell Computers who lives in Kettering,and Jon, a captain and an engineer in the U.S. Air Force, serving in the United Arab Emirates. Daniel and his wife have given them two grandchildren, Aiden, age 9, and Nyla, 7. Jon has a stateside residence in Florida.

Marge spent much of her adult life working as a computer programmer. She is from Alexandria, west of Newark, and is a graduate of Milligan College in Tennessee.

Involved with Boys Scouts for nearly 30 years

Huffman started nearly 30 years of service with the Boy Scouts in Loudonville as a Tiger Cub leader in 1990. That led, ultimately, to 19 years as Scoutmaster of Loudonville Boy Scout Troop 539, much of that time served with his assistant, Dana Maxwell. He retired from that post in 2013.

In the 19-year period, he fostered 24 Eagle Scouts through the Loudonville program, including his two sons, and Maxwell’s son Matt.

“Highlights of my years as Scoutmaster were the trips we took with the Scouts,” he said. Among them were to Jim Rhamey’s cabin north of Lake Superior in Canada; three trips to the Philmont Scout Ranch in northern New Mexico; and three trips to Charleston, South Carolina, where the boys slept in the crew quarters on a U.S. aircraft carrier.

Asked what he felt was the biggest challenge facing the Loudonville Council today, he quickly answered “growth. We need to attract companies that don’t want to build their plants right on the freeway to locate here. We need jobs here for the young people who don’t go off to college.”

This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: THIS WEEK'S PERSONALITY: Huffman begins 2nd stint as council member