Lifelong Volunteers Honored as 2024 Hilliard Senior Citizen Hall of Fame Inductees
Bill and Joan Zielenbach, along with Kathy Grubbe, recognized for decades of dedication to community service, arts advocacy, and healthcare volunteerism in Hilliard.
A Hilliard couple who are lifelong supporters of the arts, and a healthcare volunteer are the newest inductees into the Hilliard Senior Citizen Hall of Fame.
Bill and Joan and Zielenbach, and Kathy Grubbe are the 2024 selections for the Hilliard Senior Citizen Hall of Fame.
The Hilliard Senior Citizen Hall of Fame was established in 1987.
Each year since, a selection committee through the Phyllis Ernst Senior Center reviews nominees and selects inductees.
Posthumous selections are made, too, but no such nominations were received this year.
Past inductees include Will and Phyllis Ernst, John and Beverly Crumley, Ken Brenneman, Otie Blankenship, Jerry Baum, and Harold Butt.
Overview of 2024 inductees
Bill and Joan Zielenbach moved to Hilliard in 1960.
They have always made themselves an active and engaged part of the Hilliard community. Over the years, they have dedicated themselves to their church home, Hilliard Presbyterian, where they have served in a variety of roles, including multiple stints as church elders, as well as many years as the church's youth advisors, said their son, Kurt, a 1976 graduate of Hilliard High School.
A generation of Hilliard students might remember Joan as a volunteer “room mother” at Hilliard Elementary School in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Both were involved with the Hilliard Education Foundation, providing financial and volunteering support.
Joan served on the board of the Hilliard Education Foundation and was honored with a ‘Star Award’ by the organization for her exemplary service.
Bill and Joan also opened their homes three different times to foreign students attending Hilliard High School as part of the AFS (American Field Service) program.
The couple has been an active supporter of the arts, attending hundreds of band and choir concerts, and theatrical performances at Hilliard Elementary, Hilliard Junior High and Hilliard High School.
They likewise supported the Hilliard Arts Council, financially and with their presence.
Bill also got involved on stage appearing in many musicals as well as singing in the annual performance of Handel's Messiah, once directed by the late Ken Brenneman.
“My parents use their wealth of experience and wisdom to enrich not only their own perspective in life but also the perspectives of family and friends. They embrace a sense of fulfillment and contentment despite any hardships or difficulties that life may have thrown their way, always emerging with enduring grace and recognition of new learning’s and insights that their life experiences have provided. They continue to live independently in their own home and maintain active loving connections with family, friends and institutions like their church, the city, the schools and local businesses. You rarely hear a complaint from them and always receive a warm smile,” Kurt Zielenbach said.
Bill, 88, and Joan, 87, will celebrate a 68th wedding anniversary later this month. They have a son, Kurt, and a daughter, Karen Brown, a 1980 graduate of Hilliard High School.
They have four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Kathy Grubbe, 71, is a professional and a volunteer in home healthcare.
Her volunteer service includes as an ambassador for the American Red Cross since 2020, a volunteer at Mt. Carmel Saint Ann’s Hospital since 2018, and a volunteer guardian for Central Ohio Area on Aging since 2015.
As a professional, she has more than 25 years of experience providing physical therapy in home healthcare, and has a master’s degree in Gerontology.
Outside the healthcare arena, she supports the Hilliard Arts Council as its house manager, and is on the garden and landscape committee at St. Brendan’s Church.
She is the chairwoman of City of Hilliard’s Aging in Place Committee.
“She has a kind soul and a heart for service,” said Hilliard City Council Vice President Tina Cottone, who nominated Grubbe.