A capacity crowd attended a luncheon Wednesday at the John S. Knight Center to honor Oriana House for 30 years of service in the field of alternative community sentencing programs.Cleveland Councilman T.J. Dow, successor to legendary Councilwoman Fannie Lewis in the city’s Ward 7, was one of dozens of community leaders, judges and government officials who attended. He called Oriana’s rehabilitation programs, which began in Akron in 1981 at a single facility for treating DUI offenders at the downtown YMCA, a great partner for inner-city residents and a much needed “vehicle for rehabilitation.”Oriana has 25 facilities for alternative sentencing, chemical dependency treatment and court re-entry programs in Summit, Cuyahoga and Seneca counties.“It is part of Oriana House’s culture to help and give back to the community, and we appreciate that,” Dow said.“It has been a great partnership. I cannot think of another institution in Ward 7 that gives back as much as Oriana House.” Lewis, who died in 2008 at age 82, was honored in June with the dedication of the Fannie M. Lewis Community Corrections and Treatment Center on East 55th Street in Cleveland.Oriana spokeswoman Christina Deibel said 280 attended Wednesday’s luncheon. There were so many inquiries about the program, she said, the event had to be moved from the downtown Greystone Hall to the larger Knight Center Goodyear Ballroom.The organization and its founder, James Lawrence, were named in “Oriana House Day” proclamations by Summit County Council, Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic and the congressional offices of U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton, D-Copley Township, and Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.Plusquellic called Oriana “vitally important” to Akron-area communities because it “provides those who are not hard-core folks a better way to serve their time.”Summit County Common Pleas Judge Elinore Marsh Stormer, who began the county’s first re-entry drug court in 1995 when she served on the municipal bench, recalled a meeting at the old City Club in the early 1990s. A discussion about the prospective treatment program was not well received.“This man stood up and said, ‘This is ridiculous! You’re a communist! Only a communist would be telling us we have to coddle these criminals. We need to bring back the chain gang!’“Well,” Stormer said, “our response was the only problem with that is when you get off the chain gang, all you know how to do is break up rocks.“You don’t know how to deal with your drug addiction, and you don’t know how to deal with getting a job. That seemed to resonate with only a small percentage of people in the room.” Stormer said the story was so memorable because it shows how far such rehab programs have come — “surviving the time when we wanted to be tough on crime to a time when we now celebrate being smart on crime.”Bernard Rochford, executive vice president at Oriana, said that on an average day, its many treatment facilities deal with about 1,200 residential referrals and 1,400 other referrals.Ed Meyer can be reached at 330-996-3784 or at emeyer@thebeaconjournal.com.