By Peggy Kreimer Hodgson
Special to NKyTribune
Bruce Kintner, a Northern Kentucky banker who founded a car care clinic for low-income working families, is among three honored for outstanding community service at the 2023 Greater Cincinnati Jefferson Awards.
Kintner was among three finalists for the prestigious award. Other finalists were Ron Dumas of Clifton who founded a golf program for at risk children, and Joseph & Noel Julnes-Dehner of Hyde Park, who created a summer reading camp for children.
From left, Rotary President Steve King, Bruce Kintner, program chair Bill Shula, and Rotary member and former Jefferson Award winner Doug Adams. (Photo provided)
Dumas received the Greater Cincinnati award and will be a finalist for the national Jefferson Award in October, known as the Nobel Prize for community service.
The local Jefferson Award program is administered by The Rotary Club of Cincinnati and is one of more than 90 community awards programs across the country that send winners to be finalists for national Jefferson Awards.
“We have so many non-selfish individuals in Greater Cincinnati, this is always difficult to choose just one,” said Bill Shula of Bethel, Ohio, who chaired the Rotary’s Jefferson Award program.
“We are recognizing and celebrating individuals for their service and their imagination that continues to have such an impact on the community.”
Kintner founded Samaritan Car Care Clinic in 2007, as an outreach program for Madison Avenue Christian Church. He worked with social service agencies and forged partnerships with local garages to make affordable car repairs, helping low-income working families get to work and maintain independence.
The program helped 315 families (70% single mothers) in 2022, working with seven garage partners. In 2021, the program received several major grants, allowing Kintner to break ground on the program’s own repair center at 1428 Madison Ave., in Covington. Kintner stepped down from his career at PNC bank to direct the program.
At the award program, from left, finalists Joseph & Noel Julnes-Dehner, winner Ron Dumas, finalist Bruce Kintner, and Rotary award program chair Bill Shula. Rear, from left, Rotary President Steve King and Rotary member and former Jefferson Award winner Doug Adams. (Photo provided)
The other local finalists were Joseph & Noel Julnes-Dehner, who created the Summer Camp Reading program, helping children retain and expand reading proficiency over the summer.
Dumas, the Jefferson Award winner, is a PGA golf professional and CEO of Rely Supply who has become a mentor and life coach to thousands of at-risk children through his Reaching Out for Kids program. It combines golf skills with life lessons in persistence, integrity, teamwork, goal setting, respect, discipline and consequence-based decision-making.
The free program serves more than 350 kids annually and since its inception in 1997, has helped more than 200 young students get college scholarships.
The national Jefferson Award program was founded in 1972 by Cincinnati native Robert Taft and former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Since The Rotary Club of Cincinnati started hosting the local award program in 2005, nine local winners have become national awardees.
Rotary partners on the program with the Cincinnati Enquirer and WKRC-TV Local 12. The national award is a program of the national non-profit Multiplying Good
Nominations for the 2024 Jefferson Award open in January. Information is available on the Rotary Club of Cincinnati website at www.cincinnatirotary.org.
Rotary Club of Cincinnati
