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WEA-8 DUG · THE TOWN'S OWN TELLING, 2026
Walkerton's wealth story ends, in the present tense, in giving: the town's signature public works of the last decade were built substantially by one family's money. The town says so itself, through its council president: Gene Reese, profiled in April 2026, names "one tremendously generous family in the town of Walkerton, which is the Hiler family" — Hiler Industries' family — "responsible for helping us build a new library, the community center, the pickleball courts, and some things at the park," within a decade in which, by the same account, some $60 million in private donations and grants built the town's new public spaces, Veterans Park (dedicated 2021) among them. The library gift is the turn's first document and stands in the state's own record: land given in 2005 and a new library building offered at a cost of $2.5 million, per the State Board of Accounts' examination — philanthropy at a scale a town of 2,096 rarely sees, from a family whose fortune is the plant era's. Under this section's living-persons rule the family prints exactly here — the announced, built, publicly credited giving — and no further into its affairs. The two foundation vehicles the checklist names print with it at registry strength: the Walkerton Community Foundation and the Walkerton Park Foundation, both ruled tax-exempt in 2023 and both seated at 301 Michigan Street — the town's giving, institutionalized in the present decade; their Form 990 detail stands in the IRS record (ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer is the named settler for the figures) and was not extracted in this section.
Principal sources: profile of Gene Reese, redresssouthbend.com, April 30, 2026; State Board of Accounts, WLTPL examination 2005–2006 (the 2005 gift); the IRS exempt-organizations record for the two foundations (2023 rulings, 301 Michigan Street).