If you go
What: Presidents Club of Dayton Citizen Legion of Honor award luncheon
When: 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Oct. 2
Where: Dayton Convention Center, Fifth and Main streets
More information: Kelley Long, 937‐226‐8274 or klong@dacc.org
The President’s Club of Dayton will recognize Clay and Mary Mathile with its Citizen Legion of Honor award Oct. 2.
The award is the oldest honor given to volunteer-leaders in the region. The Mathiles will be the 64th recipients, continuing a tradition that started in 1951.
“I haven’t heard of it (a similarly focused award) anywhere else,” said U.S. District Judge Walter Rice, who received the honor in 2011.
Clay Mathile is perhaps best known locally for selling local pet foods producer Iams Co. to Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble in 1999 for $2.3 billion, making him the region’s sole billionaire.
But the Citizen Legion of Honor award recognizes qualities well beyond professional success. The Mathiles are being recognized for a quarter century of charitable work and philanthropic giving.
The Mathile Family Foundation has supported thousands of nonprofits focused on children, the foundation said in a statement. At the end of 2014, the foundation will have awarded more than $300 million in grants to organizations, mostly in the Dayton area.
The list of organizations the foundation has supported has contributed $500 million for area children, single mothers and more, the foundation said.
Mathile also built Aileron, the Tipp City-area educational campus designed to educate and support mid-sized entrepreneurs.
“Over the years, I have gotten too much credit, and Mary hasn’t gotten enough. In her humble way, she has taught all of us in the family how philanthropy should be done,” Clay Mathile said in a prepared statement.
“Look at what a role model they are,” said Franz Hoge, the retired managing partner of the Dayton office of PricewaterhouseCoopers, who received the award in 2008. “Given the financial success they’ve had, they could have lived anywhere. But they chose to live in Dayton, Ohio.”
A look at the roster of past Legion of Honor recipients shows people who have achieved success but weren’t consumed by it. Rice said the honor goes to people who encouraged those around them “to come out of their comfort zone” in serving others.
Brother Raymond Fitz — the former University of Dayton president who received the honor in 20o1 — said recipients tend to be people “who had a passion for making some aspect of the greater Dayton community better.”
“It goes all the way from arts to education to children,” Fitz said. “Just a whole variety of things.”
Among other causes, the foundation has focused on Catholic education and making it more accessible, Fitz said.
Since the foundation’s 1989 birth, it has awarded more than $167 million in education-related grants and scholarships, mostly to Dayton-area students.
“There are untold numbers of young people, in this and other communities, that would have been lucky to finish high school if it weren’t for them,” Rice said.
“Really, the bottom line is the President’s Club tries to honor people who are truly servant-leaders,” Hoge said.
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