LANCASTER — Gov. Mike DeWine has ordered the flags of the United States and Ohio flown at half-staff on Monday, Oct. 19, in honor of former state Representative Gerald Stebelton, the Lancaster lawmaker and community leader who died this week at 87.
Under the governor’s order, flags will be lowered from sunrise to sunset on the day of Stebelton’s funeral at all public buildings and grounds throughout Fairfield County, as well as at the Ohio Statehouse, the Vern Riffe Center and Rhodes Tower in Columbus. All other public buildings and grounds across the state may fly their flags at half-staff for the same period, at their discretion.
Gerald L. “Jerry” Stebelton died Wednesday, Oct. 14, at Violet Springs Health Campus in Pickerington after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, according to his obituary. Born in Columbus on Sept. 13, 1939, and raised in Lancaster by a single mother who worked at the Anchor Hocking plant, he graduated from Lancaster High School with the class of 1957 and stayed devoted to the Golden Gales for the rest of his life.
His working life spanned two careers. Stebelton first worked as an aeronautical engineer and contracting officer for Battelle Memorial Institute, leading negotiating teams in Iran and Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, then earned a law degree from Capital University Law School, served as an assistant Franklin County prosecuting attorney, and became senior shareholder of the Lancaster firm Stebelton, Aranda & Snider.
Public service ran through all of it. Stebelton served two terms as Lancaster City Council’s second-ward councilman and was elected to the Lancaster City Schools Board of Education, where he served as president. In 2006 he was elected to the Ohio General Assembly and served four terms in the Ohio House, from 2007 to 2014, representing the 77th District.
As chairman of the House Education Committee, he was instrumental in passing the Third Grade Reading Guarantee and H.B. 96, which designated dyslexia as a specific learning disability in Ohio, and he sponsored H.B. 247, which removed the requirement that operators of automated external defibrillators be CPR certified — opening the door to placing the life-saving devices in schools and other public locations across the state. He also helped secure funding for new school buildings throughout Lancaster and Fairfield County.
Fairfield County leaders remembered him this week as a mentor as much as a lawmaker. County Commissioner Dave Levacy said Stebelton was one of the first people to back his own run for commissioner in late 2011, when Levacy had no political experience at all. Commissioner Steve Davis, also a lawyer, said Stebelton “gave most of his life to his community” and taught him early in his career what it meant to serve it. State Sen. Tim Schaffer called him a statesman’s statesman. Stebelton is survived by his wife, Becky, whom he married in 1963. Monday’s lowered flags will mark the state’s formal farewell.