Angie Reedy’s dedication to Ravenna runs far and wide

After her retirement over 35 years ago, Angie Reedy decided to dedicate her life to volunteer service in the Ravenna area, and the community is stronger for it. When she’s not organizing fundraisers for the Auxiliary of University Hospitals Portage Medical Center or lending her assistance to the hospital gift shop, where she logs over 500 hours a year, she’s working with numerous other groups, committees and organizations.

And even with her busy schedule, she still has time to write a column for The Portager, help plan her class reunion, go out with her friends on Friday and Saturday nights and spend time with her nieces and nephews. She’s also been seen taking in scary movies at the local theater from time to time.

Angie Nagella [Reedy] was the president of the Ravenna High School Y-teen club. She was also a member of the Future Business Leaders of America club. Jeremy Brown/The Portager

Reedy, 92, began working at the Kent State University book store after graduating from Ravenna High School in 1953. She started out as a clerk typist, later becoming the office manager. When she retired in 1990, her brother, Ravenna Police Officer Tony Nagella, tried to convince her to volunteer for the auxiliary of the then-Robinson Memorial Hospital to keep busy. Nagella worked as the hospital’s on-site officer at the time. 

“I always said that I would never volunteer. If I did anything, I'd want to be paid for it,” Reedy said. “Well, my husband had health issues and I changed my whole way of thinking, because everybody at Robinson was so nice to me, I just thought I would do it for nothing.” 

After over 35 years, Reedy is still volunteering for the hospital auxiliary and has totalled over 17,000 hours during her time with the organization.

She’s currently in charge of the auxiliary fundraising events.

Angie Reedy [far left] was the president of the hospital Auxiliary for several years, alongside Vice President Jeanne Tondiglia [2nd from the right]. The two of them also ran the Auxiliary Celebration of Lights for most of its inception. They're still good friends.

The UH Portage Medical Center Auxiliary provides several volunteer services, including assisting in the emergency room, greeting at the reception desk, staffing the gift shop and transporting patients. It raises funds through several events, including nut and candy sales, purse sales, salsa sales, a books-are-fun sale and a style show. Reedy said her favorite fundraiser, and the largest one of the year, is the annual Celebration of Lights during the holiday season. The event includes festive decorations and lights inside and outside the hospital, as well as a candle procession walk in commemoration of community members who have passed away. 

“The biggest thing that we do, and it's very dear to my heart, is a Celebration of Lights,” Reedy said. “I just love that. It's just so wonderful, because people have a way of remembering their people who have passed away. We start working on it in August, and we usually have it in the first week of December, and it takes that long; we have a lot of meetings. A lot of organization goes into that.”

The auxiliary has hosted the event since 1987.

The money raised by the auxiliary has funded a variety of programs and services, including emergency department and surgical waiting room renovations; the purchasing of digital mammography, echocardiogram and cardiology equipment; women’s health and wellness events; farmers markets and scholarships for high school students pursuing nursing degrees. 

Reedy also volunteers at the hospital’s gift shop, The Chestnut Tree. When the shop gets a shipment of jewelry, she gets tasked with unboxing it by the shop's manager, Jenny Turner. 

“We just got new jewelry in, and I always know who to save the unboxing for,” Turner said. “She loves her jewelry. She's not going to stick with the same thing she wore back in the ’70s and ’80s. Just the other day when I had her unboxing the jewelry, she went ahead and bought two new bracelets, because she just loves jewelry, earrings, bracelets, necklaces.” 

Turner met Reedy 43 years ago, when Turner was 12 years old; the two sang together in the Ravenna Community Choir. Reedy was an alto and so was Turner. At that time, Reedy was good friends with Turner’s mother, Karen McKay, and her sister, Juli Nagel, both of whom were members of the choir. Years later, after they worked together at the gift shop, Reedy and Turner became better acquainted. Reedy was in the choir for 24 years, until she gave it up to make room for volunteer work.

Reedy said she comes from a large, talkative family — three brothers and five sisters, including herself — a situation that she said led to her outgoing gumption and her ability to communicate with others. 

She was born in 1934 at her home, right across the street from Robinson Memorial Hospital on Meridian Street. Her parents immigrated to the U.S. from Italy and chose Ravenna as homebase, because her mother was a woolen mill worker and Ravenna had opportunities for such workers at the Cleveland Worsted Mills facility. 

A 6th-grade class picture of a headstrong Angie Nagella [Reedy]. The picture was taken at Chestnut High School, which was located where the old hospital's parking lot was on Chestnut Street. She said she often wore a hair band because her hair was poker-straight. Jeremy Brown/The Portager

When Reedy was a child, her mother worked nights. She remembers playing under street lights with her siblings until her father beckoned them to come inside and eating chicken salad sandwiches and French fries on Saturday nights at Isalys. She remembers hanging around and watching people go by outside of the nickel and dime store, where she was later employed at the age of 16, and going to the theater across from the courthouse to watch a movie.

“We went to the movies every weekend, because it only cost a nickel. My parents would give us a nickel for popcorn or candy,” Reedy said. “I love spooky movies, Frankenstein, especially, and I loved mummies, and I still do.”

She favors Abbott and Costello to Laurel and Hardy, simply because there were more monsters in the former.
 
After Ravenna 7 Movies opened in 2018, the auxiliary held some of their banquets for its volunteers at the theater, where volunteers could choose a movie they wanted to see and watch it for free. Turner remembers Reedy usually having to watch her choice of movies by herself, because no one would watch what she picked. 

“It was hilarious, because only Angie was into scary movies. Not gory so much as jump scares. We all laughed because nobody wanted to go see it with her, because they didn’t want to see the scary movie,” Turner said. “I think one time she got someone to sit in with her, but everybody else was like, no thank you. She does like her scary movies.”

A picture of Dave Younkman, Angie Reedy and Diana Kane taken years ago.

The list of achievements that Reedy has acquired after her retirement is remarkable. Outside of her work at the hospital, which earned her the distinguished service award in 2014, she currently writes a column for The Portager and wrote a column for the Record-Courier for 20 years. She took on a job helping with tag sales for 14 years and still helps out when the occasion arises. She founded a volunteer program to provide non-perishable food for Ravenna school children in need. And she’s involved with the Portage County Historical Society, The Center of Hope, The Salvation Army, The Friends of the Reed Memorial Library, the Clothing Center and the Ravenna Design Review Commission, the latter alongside her friend from high school, Diana Kane. 

Reedy and Kane kept in touch throughout the years, but it wasn’t until Reedy started volunteering at the Design Review Commission about 15 years ago that the two became even better friends. Kane had been volunteering for the commission since the 1970s, when it was called the Heritage Group. They’re both still volunteering with the commission, they’re both members of the Beta Sorosis Philanthropic Club and they often go out to dinner on Friday nights. 

“She’s very dedicated to whatever she’s in,” Kane said of Reedy. “She believes that you should work if you're on a board, not just have your name on it. A lot of people just get on a board to get their names on it, but they don’t do anything. She believes you should help the agency. She's very structured, she gets things done, and is in charge of a number of different things. She always has everything done orderly and keeps abreast of everything that she's in. Very dedicated. I think her whole family was, actually, which is unusual.” 

Reedy said she’ll never retire from volunteer work, because her doctor advises against it.