Triko Valley Section, ASHE
Cincinnati Ohio, Northern Kentucky, Southeastern Indiana
In the fall of 1988, ODOT District Deputy Director Lloyd Wallace approached some prominent members of the Cincinnati area engineering community concerning the establishment of a local chapter of the American Society of Highway Engineers. He had been a member of the Central Ohio Chapter in Columbus prior to returning to Cincinnati.
During the next few months, and many telephone calls later, a group of about 50 persons had agreed to become Charter Members. Among them were Lloyd Wallace, Donald Schramm (the Hamilton County Engineer), Joseph Kearnes (the Regional Engineer for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet), James Jurgensen Sr. (owner of the John R. Jurgensen Company), William Brewer (former owner of Brewer Cote Corporation), George Kral (owner of KZF Environmental Design Consultants), along with many others from all areas of the highway industry. These areas included local and state government, consultants, contractors, suppliers, and utility companies, to name a few.
After meetings with ASHE National and the Central Ohio Chapter to help us organize and set up the chapter structure, we officially incorporated on June 9, 1989, with a charter membership of 54 persons. Currently, our rolls have reached the 150 level.
Since inception, the chapter has met five times per year, with four luncheon meetings and one holiday evening meeting. In the beginning, we tried to hold membership meetings at various locales in the area, going for points of interest or actual field trip locations. When this proved to be too much trouble (getting everyone the correct directions), the chapter chose one location in downtown Cincinnati so as to be centrally located for the membership.
One of the most pertinent questions concerning the group was the chapter name. After much discussion, the name “TRIKO VALLEY” was chosen, being an amalgam of “Tri-State – Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio – Ohio Valley”.
Through the years, Triko Valley has kept abreast of federal, state, and local issues which affect the transportation industry and sponsored many letter writing campaigns, proposing our views of the situations.
In 1999, the Section sponsored a golf outing, which raised monies for college scholarships. In 2007, the Lloyd Wallace Memorial Golf Outing awarded $2,500 in scholarships to worthy students in the final year of their transportation-related degree programs.
In 2006, the Section began awarding Professional Development Hours (PDH’s) to attendees of our luncheons, which feature a technical program for education.
Our holiday dinner features entertaining speakers from other than technical backgrounds. Some notables include Joe Nuxhall (long-time Cincinnati Reds announcer) and Bill Cunningham (lawyer and radio talk show host on 700 WLW Radio).
All in all, our Section has enjoyed a very diverse and entertaining time, with our meetings being both sociable and technical.
Triko Valley was selected as the host Section from Region 1 for the 2010 ASHE National Conference.
