Final season

Season tickets for all four programs are $100. For more information, go to trumbulltownhall.org or call 330-240-1706.

Trumbull Town Hall’s 47th season will be its last.

Organizers of the lecture series told attendees Wednesday at Packard Music Hall that it would end with the 2024-25 season.

“It was a financial decision,” said Diana Bauman, program co-chair. “We definitely don’t have the number of subscribers we used to have. In the past, we had well over 600. Now we have 320. When you only charge $100 (for a subscription), we do have donations, but it’s still not enough to get the quality of speakers and entertainment we would like to offer.”

In addition to rising speaker fees, organizers have to pay for flights, accommodations and meals for speakers as well as rental fees for Packard Music Hall, Bauman said.

“When attendance went down after COVID, we hoped it would pick back up,” she said. “At this point, it hasn’t picked up enough that we can maintain the town hall series. It’s unfortunate, because it’s one of the longest-running programs there has been (in the area).”

Since 1978, Trumbull Town has brought celebrities (Stephanie Powers, Linda Evans, Olympia Dukakis, Rita Moreno, Jane Seymour, Shirley Jones, Jamie Farr) media personalities (Andrea Mitchell, Al Roker, Martha Raddatz, Steven Hartman), authors (Alex Haley, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Mary Higgins Clark, Frank McCourt) and others to the area.

For its final season, the lecture series is bringing back a couple of favorite speakers from the past and a well-known figure with local ties.

The season will open Sept. 25 with Elliot Engel, who has given more Trumbull Town Hall lectures than any other speaker. His talk will be on the genius of humorist and author Mark Twain.

He is a scholar and performer who has taught at the University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University and Duke University. He earned his master’s degree and doctorate as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at UCLA. While at UCLA he won the university’s Outstanding Teacher Award.

“We know how much everyone likes Elliot,” Bauman said. “If this is the final season, let’s bring him back.”

Making his first appearance will be Orin Grossman on Nov. 20 for a program on “George Gershwin’s American Masterpiece: Rhapsody in Blue.” This year is the centennial of the composition’s premiere.

Historian Louis Masur, a professor of American studies and history at Rutgers University, is another returning speaker. He will talk about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War on March 19, 2025.

The season concludes April 30, 2025, with Jim Tressel, former head football coach and president at Youngstown State University and winner of a NCAA Division I Football Championship as head coach at The Ohio State University.

“Sue Datish (Trumbull Town Hall program co-chair) knows Jim Tressel personally,” Bauman said. “Her husband played football at Ohio State and her son played for Ohio State. Jim Tressel came to recruit her son and ended up having dinner at their house. There are not a lot of hometown celebrities that people would be awed by, but Jim Tressel would be one of them.”

Schedules and order forms have been mailed to subscribers. To subscribe to the 2024-25 season, go to trumbulltownhall.org or call 330-240-1706za.

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