This week's personality: Loudonville native comes home, transforms motel into Hemlock Inn

LOUDONVILLE − A village woman, who met her suburban Philadelphia husband while in college in Pennsylvania and later spent three years in Montana, is now back in her hometown and running a motel.

Leigh Ann (Edmondson) and Taylor Runge took over what was formerly known as the Little Brown Inn, a fixture on the state Route 3 bypass since 1985, a year ago last month. They renamed the business TheHemlock Inn.

Leigh Ann is the daughter of Jon and Doreen Edmondson of Loudonville, and is remembered as an outstanding volleyball player. She took her volleyball prowess, and academic ability, to Pennsylvania after graduating from Loudonville High in 2008, playing both volleyball and basketball at Lock Haven College in eastern-central Pennsylvania.

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“It seems like a long time ago, but I picked Lock Haven as a college because I fell in love with the campus,” Leigh Ann Runge said. “I played volleyball there my freshman through junior years, and basketball as a junior, but after an injury, did not play either sport my senior year.”

She earned a degree in health sciences at Lock Haven, and has worked in nuclear medicine at several hospitals since graduating.

Through one of her friends on the Lock Haven basketball team, she met Taylor Runge, who attended Bucknell University, about 35 miles east of Lock Haven, and was a pitcher on Bucknell’s baseball team. They started dating, and were married in 2017. Leigh Ann graduated from Lock Haven in 2012 with a degree in public health services, and Taylor in 2013 with a degree in geology.

In the year between her graduation and his, Leigh Ann Runge worked an internship in Williamsport, Pa. Then the couple moved to Loudonville, both landing their first Ohio jobs at Tree Frog Canopy Tours near Greer.

Taylor Runge found a geology job with Frontz Drilling in Wooster, serving as an environmental drill operator, and then landed a job with Arcadis, a huge engineering firm involved in well-drilling projects in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but interestingly, never in Ohio.

He was then transferred to Arcadis’ Wyoming office, about the time the couple married, and the newlyweds moved to Bozeman, Montana, about 80 miles north of Yellowstone National Park.

Converting old motels into upscale lodging

Whether in Pennsylvania, around Loudonville, or in Montana, Leigh Ann Runge worked, as her husband put it, “in the rock-solid health care field, while I bounced around.”

After a while in Bozeman, Taylor Runge got out of drilling and fell back on skills he gained when younger, doing architectural fabrication and welding for building firms.

“I got involved in really creative construction projects, including converting 50s- and 60s-era motels into upscale lodgings or private homes, and building new homes, usually on a very upscale basis,” Runge said. “For a stretch, the construction projects I was involved in, including building custom fireplaces, steel paneling, and range hoods, averaged $30 million, with one carrying a $45 million price tag.”

Then two years ago, when the Runges' daughter, Maeve, was born, they decided to do what they always intended, move back to Loudonville.

“My family and community have always been important to me," said Leigh Ann Runge, "and when Taylor came to Loudonville, he found he loved the community too.”

“Leigh Ann was fixed on getting involved, somehow, in the hospitality industry, and was looking at big, older homes in the Loudonville area where we could move and develop a bed and breakfast,” Taylor Runge said. “Then one day, she discovered the Little Brown Inn listed for sale. It was a far cry from the two-unit bed and breakfast we were considering, but within four months, we were owners of a motel in Loudonville.

“When we arrived, we found the motel was not in bad shape, but was dated,” He continued. “We took ownership in August of 2021, and I found myself performing all sorts of seemingly small upgrades, like replacing electric outlets and wall switches, and installing phone charger plugs. It is amazing how much time doing all those little things takes.”

Busy summer at The Hemlock Inn in Loudonville

Runge is pleased with the level of business they are maintaining at the inn. “This summer has been really busy,” he said.

Where do their customers come from?

“A lot from the Cleveland and Toledo areas, but interestingly, not that many from Columbus. And a lot of people stay here from Michigan. A few weeks ago, a gentleman from Denmark stayed here,” Runge said.

He said after the tornado hit the area this summer, “we acted like sort of a refugee camp, with lot of people whose homes were damaged or who were without power staying here. This was a great experience for us, because we were not used to dealing with locals, and we found that very rewarding. We discounted our prices as much as we could afford to provide emergency housing for them”

Runge works full time at the motel, doing as much repair and renovation work as he can along with regular customer and maintenance work, doubling his work by caring for their daughter. Leigh Ann Runge, meanwhile, works in the Nuclear Medicine Department at MedCentral-Mansfield hospital.

He grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia. He is a 2009 graduate of Octorara High School.

They named the place The Hemlock Inn, Runge said, “because of what I learned about the hemlock tree."

"Hemlocks are long-lived and have character, and don’t grow everywhere in Ohio," he said, "but rather only in the hilly Appalachian areas of the state, like our area here. I liked the name, so we used it!”

This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Leigh Ann & Taylor Runge are the faces of Loudonville's Hemlock Inn