By MELISSA MARTIN

Brunswick Post editor

Six new members were inducted into the Brunswick High School Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame last weekend in conjunction with the Brunswick Education Foundation Spring Fling.

The ceremony, which took place April 30, is conducted annually in an effort to raise funds that are used to award student scholarships and teacher grants.

Along with a dinner catered by The Grille, the event featured a silent auction and live entertainment provided by members of the Brunswick High School Jazz Band.

The list of 2011 inductees are as follows.

Robert A. Kobak, class of 1960. Kobak owned A-Kobak Container on West 130th Street for 25 years after buying it from his father in 1974. This was the first industrial business in Hinckley. As the property owner, he donated 16 acres of adjacent land to help build Kobak Park, where baseball and soccer are played. He sold the firm to his employees in 1999. He has been active in many organizations including Rotary International, where he was a founding member and past president of the Brunswick chapter, a past district governor of Rotary International and founding chair of Preserve Planet Earth Committee for Rotary International, helping to plant more than 77,000 trees from 1993-95. He is also founder of Buzzard Brigade Recycling and is an adviser to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. He was also active in 4-H for many years. Kobak and his wife, Betty (nee Mertes, also a BHS graduate) have been married 46 years and have five children and 14 grandchildren. They are Brunswick residents.

Ronald V. Stollar, class of 1976. Stollar is currently superintendent of the Medina County Juvenile Detention Center. A leader in the Medina community for the past two decades, he is recognized locally and statewide for his work in the fields of criminal justice, crime prevention and youth detention. He started his career as a Medina police officer, earning multiple Officer Of The Year honors, was promoted to sergeant and subsequently assigned to supervise a shift of patrol officers. He was also a leader in community policing before it was a recognized philosophy. Stollar accepted a job as assistant superintendent of the juvenile detention center in 2005 and was selected superintendent by Judge John Lohn in May 2007. He is married to Edith (nee Thomas, a 1977 BHS graduate) and they have a son, Jordan, in college. They are active in their church and Stollar is a member of the local Blue Knights Motorcycle Club and a board member of the Red Cross. The couple lives in Medina.

Kevin A. Leahy, class of 1976. Leahy is an electrical engineer and currently the Director and Enterprise Technical Executive, RF Technology, previously serving as director of product technology and design integrity and director of equipment design. He is a member of the Corporate Inventors Hall of Fame, Corporate Technical Innovation Award for one of his patents and Eta Kappa Nu Engineering Society. Leahy has been widely published in professional publications. He is active in his church, as he was when he lived in Brunswick; has served as Cub Scoutmaster and assistant Scoutmaster in his community; has been a crew chief for the Christmas in April program, a community outreach for construction or home repair for the needy in his county. He is currently studying strategic leadership in the doctoral program with Regent University. He is married to Bridget and they have five children. The family lives in Eldersburg, Md.

Gary Werner, class of 1979. Werner is mayor of the city of Brunswick. In addition to his duties as mayor, Werner is an attorney with Berns, Ockner & Greenberger, LLC, of Beachwood. He handles all aspects of civil litigation with zoning, planning and land use focus, trial and appellate levels including general commercial and construction law practice. He has also served as Brunswick Ward 1 councilman and vice mayor and was a member of the board of zoning appeals for three years. Werner is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned his bachelor's degree in economics and his juris doctorate. He has been admitted to the bar in California, Ohio, the Federal Sixth District Court of Appeals, and several other U.S. District Courts. Werner also previously served as the Vice President of the Board of Directors for Medina Creative Housing, a non-profit organization that provides housing for the mentally disabled. He is a member of the American, Medina County, and Cleveland Metropolitan bar associations and of the Medina County Home Builder's Association. He is a First Degree Knight with the Knights of Columbus and is a parishioner and lector at St. Colette's Parish in Brunswick. Werner is married to Lori J. Werner, whom he met in Florida in 1984, where she was a show group singer in a resort club where Gary was drumming. They have a daughter, Megan, and a son, Maxwell, a singer and a drummer respectively.

Bryan Nyary, class of 1985. Nyary, based in Chicago, works for a medical association under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief grant program to develop laboratory infrastructure in resource-limited settings around the globe. He manages work in Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Haiti, Cambodia and Ukraine. He works with the ministries of health and in-country centers for disease control offices, collecting information and then bringing medical technologists and doctors to the countries to work. Nyary graduated from Elmurst College with a degree in English and philosophy. He received his MBA in International Business Strategy in a blended program from Robert Kennedy College, Zurich, Switzerland and the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK. He was selected as Dean's Student in March 2009, in recognition as the most exemplary student out of a class body of 750. He has worked as senior project manager and managing editor of LabMedicine, an internationally circulated, peer-reviewed medical journal. He recently accepted his nomination to be associate editor of the African Journal of Laboratory Medicine.

Robert D. Villwock, class of 1985. Villwock is the associate director of the Center for Electrochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. After graduating from Brunswick, he attended Case Western Reserve University, graduating with a B.S. in macromolecular science. With a lifelong love of music, he went on to Berklee College of Music to study and then was a professional musician for several years. He is a jazz musician and keyboardist in Austin, where he currently lives. In 2000, he earned his PhD in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. He holds several patents, is an independent consultant in patent portfolio management and planning, and his paper on "Oxygen Depolarized Cathodes and Activated Cathodes for Chlor-Alkali, Chlorate" was published in 1998. He and his wife, Amy, have two children.

Capt. Michael A. Eberl, class of 1990. Eberl joined the Air Force in 2000 after being in the ROTC at Ohio University. He has lived and worked in Texas, Colorado, Washington, Nevada, New Mexico, Indiana, Florida and Arizona stateside and has served in Germany, Turkey, Spain, Denmark, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. During his service he took college classes and earned degrees in law enforcement and criminal justice and is currently working on a master's degree. While working through the ranks, he has led efforts to modify aircraft during or immediately prior to wartime deployments; selected as the 2006 Maintenance Group Flight Commander of the Year; his level of responsibility has gone from 25 people and a small budget to overseeing 220 people, 23 airplanes and all the associated tools and equipment worth $580 million to his current position, with 550 people spread throughout 26 locations in Asia, Europe and the United States. He has also volunteered with Habitat for Humanity and DEFY (which is similar to the DARE program). He and his wife and two children reside in Wichita Falls, Texas.