Toms River Buildings Named After Nobel Winner, Superintendent

TOMS RIVER, NJ — The Toms River Regional Board of Education has unanimously voted to name a downtown building after former superintendent Albert J. Dietrich, and the auditorium at Toms River High School North after alumnus and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa.

The namings were approved at the Nov. 17 school board meeting.

The building at 54 Washington St., which houses the district’s central registration office and an employee health center, will be named after Dietrich, who died in February. He was superintendent of the Toms River Regional School District from 1979 until 1991. During his tenure, Dietrich developed the district’s first alcohol and substance abuse program, and the Regional Alternative Learning Center for at-risk students, the Asbury Park Press reported.

The High School North auditorium will be named after 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, a 1982 Toms River North graduate and journalist who for her investigative reporting in the Philippines, where she was born and lived until her parents fled to the United States. She returned to the Philippines in the late 1980s and founded the digital news service Rappler, which has reported on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his regime's anti-drug campaign. That campaign has included "death squads," she said, that executed people on the charge that they are using drugs. Thousands of people were killed, she said.

Her reporting has landed her in jail several times. In 2020 she was convicted of "cyber libel" by a Philippine court; it was her relentless reporting in the face of jailings and threats of prison that earned her the Nobel Peace Prize. Read more: Nobel Peace Prize Awarded To Journalist With NJ Ties

"Without media, you cannot have a strong democracy," said Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which announced the honor.

"Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda. The Norwegian Nobel Committee is convinced that freedom of expression and freedom of information help to ensure an informed public," the Nobel Committee said.

Ressa moved to Toms River from the Philippines at age 10 in 1973. She attended Silver Bay Elementary School, and High School North.

At High School North, Ressa served as class president for three years acted in plays, played in the orchestra, and played basketball and softball, according to a Patch profile. She cited former High School North music teacher Donald Spaulding as someone who helped shape her. She went on to study journalism at Princeton University.

Note: This article has been updated to correct that Maria Ressa received the Nobel Peace Prize for her reporting and work with Rappler, the media company she founded. Patch regrets the error.