Gene Leroy Ditsler

Gene Leroy Ditsler loved life and lived it to the fullest for nearly 88 years, from his birth on February 8, 1937 in Valparaiso, IN, until his death on November 7, in Granville, OH.

Gene grew up loving sports, especially basketball, and though he wasn’t tall enough to play on the high school team, he worked hard to become a free throw champion, later earning him a front-page article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer sports page at the age of 39 for shooting 73 free throws in a row. His record (witnessed) was 228 in a row in 2003. He was unbeatable in horse.

In 1954, Gene met Marjorie, a renowned beauty and his wife to be, in South Bend, IN, at the Disciples of Christ Church and they were married in 1959. Their first son, Mark, was born in 1959. Gene graduated from Western, MI with a degree in physical education and English and earned his master’s degree in education administration at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland. He loved working with kids and devoted a great deal of his life to coaching, educating, and supporting young people.

Gene began his long career in education as a guidance counselor for the Cleveland city schools, where he became assistant principal during the civil rights movement, which he championed. Gene and Marjorie settled in Fairview Park, a suburb of Cleveland, and had two more children, Jennifer in 1962 and Andrew in 1968. Organic gardening enthusiasts, Marge and Gene bought a ramshackle Civil War-era farm in Warsaw, OH in 1970 that the family would visit almost every weekend and in summers till Gene and Marge retired there in 1990. By that time, Gene had planted 3,000 trees and together they’d transformed their 40 acres of wooded hills into a beautiful tree farm and nature reserve that everyone loved to visit (he also installed a regulation NBA half court in the barn for free throw shooting). An avid fisherman, Gene stocked his pond with largemouth bass and bluegill and spent just as many hours fishing as he did just sitting by the pond feeding his fish and contemplating life.

During his “retirement” at the farm, Gene worked as a bus driver for the Warsaw school system, as principal of Ridgewood High School in West Lafayette, as a canal boat captain in Roscoe Village, and as a Coshocton GED teacher. An avid reader and lifelong lover of poetry, literature and the theater, Gene and Marge traveled regularly to New York to see the latest Broadway shows on visits to their daughter. An actor himself, Gene appeared in several theatrical productions by the Coshocton Footlight Players. Never one to decline a challenge, at the age of 65 Gene decided to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a pilot. By the age of 68 he was a fixture at Coshocton’s Richard Downing Airport and was flying his own plane around central Ohio, often with a grandchild in tow. A great day for Gene was to fly to Carrollton for a piece of pie—his favorite food—with either Madison, Benjamin, Drew, Jackson or Inès, his five beloved grandchildren, as his co-pilot. When he wasn’t flying he was working in the woods of the farm he loved so dearly. Gene and Marge moved to a retirement community in Granville, OH in June 2024.

Loved by so many, Gene will be greatly missed by his wife Marjorie, his children Andrew and Jennifer, his five grandchildren and his many friends. Donations in his memory can be sent to the Arbor Day Foundation.

Category: Obituaries