NC City Council Member, Tippecanoe Gazette Publisher, Dale Grimm passes at 74

Local residents and city leaders are mourning the loss of New Carlisle City Council Member Dale Grimm, who passed away on Saturday, August 3, at the age of 74.

A former New Carlisle Vice-Mayor, Grimm was also a former publisher of the New Carlisle News and the Tippecanoe Gazette. Elected to New Carlisle City Council for the second time in 2023, Grimm also worked as a school bus driver for Tecumseh Local Schools, where he was known to students as Mr. G.  

"Dale was a great guy," New Carlisle City Manager Randy Bridge said. "We did not see eye-to-eye on many social matters, but we remained friends and often went to lunch together."

"Mr. Grimm’s passing is a big loss for our community," he said. "Dale always had the city’s best interest in mind and contributed to the success and growth of the city these past few years."  

“He will be greatly missed,” New Carlisle Mayor William Cook said. “He and I differed at times, but we respectfully disagreed.”

Born on Aug. 9, 1949, Grimm was a 1966 graduate of Beavercreek High School and attended Capital University for three years.

He married Carol Marie Mader on January 18, 1975.

Grimm appeared as a DJ on WIZE radio, WBLY and WULM throughout the 1970s and 80s, then worked in sales and business. In 2008, he began publishing the New Carlisle News and Enon Eagle newspapers, followed by the Troy Tribune and Tippecanoe Gazette in 2010.

“He saw an opportunity,” Grimm’s son, Andy Grimm said. “Brown Publishing closed down in 2007, and they had the New Carlisle paper. He saw there was still a need for it, for local-only.”

“He took a risk and did it, and it paid off pretty well,” he said.

“He really believed that the media was not doing its job,” Andy Grimm said. “He wanted to do like it was when he was a kid; the local paper covered local-only stuff, with no opinions, just reports on city council and the local school board, and stuff like that. It’s boring, but it matters; it directly affects your tax dollars.”

“If you’re going to make a change, you change at the local level,” he said. “He just really firmly believed in that. The other end is that he absolutely loved giving young kids an opportunity to make money and build character by giving them paper carrier jobs.”

“He loved it; he loved giving people an opportunity,” he said. “He didn’t care where you’d been; it’s where you want to go. If you need some help stepping up, he’d gladly open that door for you.”

Grimm sold the papers in 2019 and was elected to serve on New Carlisle City Council in 2020. In 2022 he was elected to serve as Vice-Mayor, and in 2023 he was elected to serve on City Council for the second time.

Grimm passed away on Saturday, Aug. 3.

Mayor Cook said council members must now fill his vacant seat through a process described in the city charter.

“We announced last Monday night that there is a vacancy, and citizens have ten days from the date of publication to submit an application,” Cook said. “At that point, council will take all of those applications and sit down and interview those persons and make a selection. If council cannot make a selection at that point, our charter gives the mayor 30 days to make up his mind and appoint, seven days after that.”

“Whoever applies, we need to have a person who wants to add what they can do for the city, not what the city can do for them,” Cook said.

Funeral Services for Grimm were held on Saturday, Aug. 10, at the West Enon Church of God in Fairborn, followed by burial at New Carlisle Cemetery. A full obituary can be found online at www.adkinsfunerals.com.