Sceva made headlines through Kiwanis newsletter

Bill Sceva went to live at a children’s home organized by the Junior Order of United American Mechanics in Tiffin, Ohio, after his father died in 1937.

He didn’t speak often about his early hardships, but his fellow members of the Kiwanis Club of Longboat Key believe it helped shape his dedication to the Kiwanis mission of helping children.

“If we wanted to make a grant to something that wasn’t particularly helping kids, he would be the first to speak up and ask if this fits with the Kiwanis mission,” said member Dick Baum.

Sceva, 87, of Bradenton and formerly of Longboat Key, died May 5.

Sceva put together the club’s Keynotes newsletter using his detailed notes, photographs and cartoons for 25 years and also created the group’s website.

“His mission was to publicize our action and do it in an extremely detailed manner,” said member Vincent DeLisi.

Born Oct. 14, 1926, Sceva got ink in his blood while living at the children’s home. Children in the program split their days between school and vocational training. Sceva was assigned to the print shop’s pressroom. There, he learned to operate a Chandler letterhead press and helped to print the organization’s magazine, which was similar to the Kiwanis newsletter.

By his senior year of high school, Sceva was editor and reporter for the organization’s national magazine’s “Home Kid” page, for children who lived in the organization’s homes throughout the country.

Sceva served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He went on to graduate from The Ohio State University School of Architecture in 1953. (Decades later, he would still politely correct anyone who omitted the word “the” from the school’s name.)

The university then hired him to work in its architecture office.

Sceva’s career as an architect left him little time to volunteer, but, in 1987, after he retired and moved to Spanish Main Yacht Club, he joined the Kiwanis Club at the invitation of a neighbor. After he moved to Bradenton, he continued to drive to the Key for the group’s 7:30 a.m. Thursday breakfast meetings.

Sceva received the 2010 Kiwanian of the Year Award for his efforts.

“I think the Kiwanis Club scholarship program is a great thing,” Sceva said at the time. “It’s just $1,000, but to those students it means so much.”

Sceva was preceded in death by his wife, Etta. He is survived by his daughters, Glenda Sceva Greer, of Saratoga, Calif., and Karen Smedley, of Beaufort, S.C.; five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.