Wooster Chamber to honor Margo Broehl with Jan. 15 induction to its Wall of Fame
By Tami Lange Mosser
January 3, 2015
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If Wooster Area Chamber of Commerce Wall of Fame inductee Margo Broehl had applied to Radcliffe College, this would be a whole different story.
As a teenager in the small town of Piper City, Ill., (population, 800 and out in the middle of a big cornfield, she said,) Broehl was hoping to go east to college.
Her father had other ideas.
The College of Wooster was affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. Broehls father was a Presbyterian.
His daughter was going to Wooster.
And so she did, not really having settled on a course of study. Broehl said she considered political science, economics, theater, education and math. I liked math, she said.
Instead, she chose English and minored in speech. Along the way, she met fellow student David Broehl, who in a few short years would become her husband.
They might have gone back home to Piper City, Broehl said, were it not for her father dying in an accident. Without him in Illinois, the Broehls decided to put down roots in Wooster.
Soon, Broehl was considering grad school. Again, she wasnt sure what she wanted to pursue. By this time, the Broehl family had grown to include two children. If all else failed, she said, Ive always got a job making peanut butter sandwiches.
Instead she found that the University of Akron School of Law had an evening program, which allowed her to keep making peanut butter sandwiches while working toward a law degree.
She was one of 10 women in a class of more than 300.
Broehls first cases came to her via the late Judge Jay Lehman, who needed someone to handle his client load when he was elected Probate Court judge. She stayed with the firm for seven years before opening her own law office and focusing her practice on business, banking, estate planning, elder and probate law.
Im interested in people, Broehl said, so I have principally a people practice.
Broehl said in the those early years, she was troubled by the perception that Wooster was a closed community, hard for newcomers to crack. At the same time, she was becoming more and more concerned about economic development and the necessity of providing economic stability for people to have family stability and hope for the future.
In the early 1980s, Broehl went to then-Chamber President Charles Manges and talked to him about the Chamber developing some sort of economic development committee. Later, she said, she was contacted by then-Mayor J. Clyde Breneman, who was developing a plan to bring the Seaman Corp. from Millersburg to Wooster.
The vehicle to help bring that project about was the Wooster Growth Corp., which had been incorporated years earlier to handle industrial revenue bonds.
Broehls association with the Wooster Growth Corp., of which she is now president, has been a long and fruitful one. In addition to the Seaman project, the WGC has worked on initiatives that resulted in TekFors location in Wooster, as well as the BioHio Research Park. She also was a driving force behind obtaining the first EB-5 status in the state of Ohio. The EB-5 grants immigration status to foreign investors committed to doing business and providing employment opportunities in the area.
There is an absolute, consistent message from everybody in this community that we want people to do business here, Broehl said. Her work with the Growth Corp. and with local officials has been particularly gratifying. I find everybody helpful, Broehl said, easy to work with. If you disagree on a point, you can talk about it and see different perspectives. There are no hidden agendas, she said.
But Broehl is not all about business.
A staunch advocate for the disabled, she helped craft some of the language found in the Americans with Disabilities Act and also serves as corporate counsel for the Prentke Romich Co. She also has served on the Board of Trustees of the Augmentative and Alternative Communication Institute.
Over the years, Broehl has served as a guardian for disabled adults, one of whom she has worked with since 1980.
Her passion to help the disabled population comes from the fact, Broehl said, that she is not disabled, but I have a lot of imagination.
You think about how hard it is for some people to even get up and get dressed in the morning.
When she was still in college, Broehl recalled taking a trip to the Apple Creek Developmental Center. While she found the caregivers to be kind, she was astounded to find any number of residents were housed there mainly because they could not communicate. The work Prentke Romich does on communication devices is incredible, she said, and can make a huge difference in an individuals quality of life. Not only can a device help a person create speech, it can allow a disabled person to control much of his or her everyday existence–from turning on lights, to answering the phone, to sending an email.
So when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last year set about trying to curtail coverage for speech generating devices, Broehl took a road trip to Fargo, N.D. to make her case. The proposed changes would encourage rental, rather than ownership of the devices. In addition, coverage would not extend to devices for additional functionalities beyond the generation of speech.
Clearly, she said, the officials creating the policy hadnt meant anyone who used a customized device. It is a small population, Broehl said, and one that often has a primary diagnosis that goes beyond a communication disorder. But their ability to maintain some independence and be part of the outside world relies on those devices, which are expensive and not easily affordable with the insurance coverage.
By the time the meeting was over, the CMS agree to open the issue up for comment through the end of 2014. Broehl and her fellow advocates immediately got on the phone with lawmakers and officials with the Department of Health and Human Services. The issue is still being considered.
I dont like bullies, Broehl said.
It seems Broehl has a pretty full schedule, but she said she makes time for hobbiesgardening, reading, collecting antiquesand wishes she could do more. Now the mother of three and grandmother of four, she has no desire to slow down.
I live in hope, she said, that someday Ill get my desk cleared off.
