By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Former Dowagiac assistant superintendent of schools W. Todd Bingaman, 56, died Saturday, April 2, at his residence.
Kerley-Starks and Menchinger Funeral Home, St. Joseph, is in charge of arrangements.
Visitation will be from 3 to 5 and from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday.
Services will be at 1 p.m. Thursday at the funeral home, 2650 Niles Road.
Tecumseh Public Schools in December 2003 offered Bingaman its superintendent's position from 42 applicants, but a "prolonged and undisclosed illness" forced the district to name an interim superintendent, The Tecumseh Herald reported March 25.
Tecumseh, with 3,400 students, was a bit larger district than Dowagiac.
Bingaman added another strand into Dowagiac's coincidental bond with Lenawee County.
Another community in the county is Morenci, where Ron O'Brien became superintendent in 1999 after 13 years as principal of Justus Gage Elementary School.
The superintendent responsible for hiring O'Brien back to his hometown from Buchanan in 1986 was Dr. Roger Dixon, who came here from Addison in Lenawee County.
Tecumseh also gave Dowagiac Don and Polly Judd.
Don, who passed away March 23 at 72, was business manager prior to Hal Davis and served on the Lewis Cass Intermediate School District board.
Polly retired as secretary at Central Middle School.
Bingaman served as Dowagiac's special education director for six years before leaving for six years in Battle Creek.
He was president of the Michigan Council for Exceptional Children in 1991.
He was rehired in May 1999 to succeed Larry Crandall, who moved up to the top job after nine-year Superintendent Ronald O. Jones retired.
Bingaman, Dowagiac's special programs director from 1987 to 1993, held a similar position as director of special education and staff development for Battle Creek Public Schools from 1993 to 1998, though during the 1998-99 school year he served as principal of W.K. Kellogg Junior High School.
In that role he managed, supervised and led a staff of 59 and 530 students in a city junior high school in transition to a middle school.
Bingaman came to Dowagiac from Berrien County, where he was teacher consultant for the Intermediate School District in Berrien Springs from 1975 to 1987.
Bingaman taught for Niles Community Schools from 1973 to 1975 after beginning his career in 1971 as a school home visitor in Plymouth, Ind.
Bingaman earned his bachelor's degree in education from Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., in 1971, his master's degree in education from Indiana University in 1974 and director of special education programs at Michigan State University in 1987.