Sewickley Herald

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The Sewickley Valley’s Home News Weekly
Voi. 44 No. 32
SEWICKLEY, PENNA., THUESDAY, AUGUST 7, 1947
Price Five Cents
RIVERLIGHT CAMP
BURGLAR CAUGHT!

Photo By ‘Bud’ Janies
Blind Wcfmen Enjoy Vacation at the Lighthouse’s Camp at Croton on Hudson
By Walter Lister, Jr.
In New York Herald Tribune
Croton on Hudson, N. Y., July 13,— Secure in the knowledge that they are all similarly handicapped, forty-five women are thoroughly enjoying a two-week vacation here at River Lighthouse, a twenty-two-acre camp maintained by the Lighthouse of the New York.Associa-tion for the Blind.
The women, all over thirty-five years of age, playgames and stroll through the woodlands with a confidence that belies their blindness. River Lighthouse, •usually shortened to Riverlight, is host to groups of men and women for alternate two-week periods throughout the summer, arid has been since 1912, when the property was donated by Mrs. Emma L. Hardy.
The campers exhibit eagerness in all their activities here—whether singing or dancing or playing such games as bridge, checkers, volley ball, shuffleboard, horseshoes or croquet.
. Mrs. Alice Van Swearingen, director of Riverlight, said she prefers to let the, visitors themselves plan as much of their program as possible. Of paramount assistance in this regard is Mrs. Margaret Averill, totally blind since she was twelve, who has been coming here for five years and is now a permanent member of the staff of fifteen.
(Note: The' Mrs. Theodore Benton ; Averill mentioned is the former Margaret ‘ Nevin, daughter of the late Mr. and ( Mrs. Joseph T. Nevin of Sewickley. Her j' almost total blindness came on gradually,, f. some years after her marriage, not “since S she was twelve,” as the writer states. A: penciled postcard from her to a former Sewickley friend says: “Having a wonderful summer and love everything that I am doing. Here till Sept. 9th, so write me again.” Her permanent address is 32-12, 155th Street, Flushing, N. Y.)
“Knowing that I’m handicapped the ' same way they are gives them a lot of i confidence,” Mrs. Averill explained. A i large jovial woman, Mrs. Averill, “deputy s mayof” of Riverlight, sat in the mayor’s i office” under an elm tree and described [ Riverlight.
j; “We open the day with a song session s at 9 a. m. That includes some of my fs parodies on popular ballads. Then at
I'9:30 I have my gym class. Setting-up exercises mostly—for reducing, of course —and it also gives them a little zip for ithe day. The rest of the morning is most-;ly games.”
i Mrs. Averill, who is president of the Women’s Club at Lighthouse, 111 East ¡Fifty-ninth Street, New York, described ■the various games and explained how ¡apparently impossible pastimbs could be enjoyed by the blind.
“Bridge is simple. We use marked cards-in braille, you understand,” she said. Games such as bowling and croquet ¡become possible with the aid of white ¡colors, for those who hav6 partial vision, iand by leading the totally blind with .voice directions.
“Perhaps we don’t play so well,” she ¡said, “.but we have an awful lot of fun. ’ I: She admitted that ■ some of the ¡guests "need to be prodded a little—but before you know it we have them all going strong.” After ltinch and a rest period, she said, “We frequently have social dancing, or square dances. I" call the figures for that pnd blow my police whistle.
“There are guide wires from the Big
Brigadier General Ralph W. Snavely, deputy Commander of the Eleventh Air Force, met Colonel Joshua Foster, Commander of the Airport, who resides at the Elmhurst Inn, Sewickley, on Sunday at the Greater Pittsburgh Airport. General Snavely activated a new reserve group commanded by Lt. Colonel Stanley Fowler of Sewickley.
Local Flier Heads Unit Lt. Colonel Stanley Fowler of Sewickley is the new commander of the Three
House—that’s the •former home of Mrs. Hardy, you know—to the bungalow, the cottage and along the paths through the woods, so we can go from one place to another without being dependent on tire guides.” Although many of the guests have Seeing Eye dogs at home, none is brought here. They just aren’t necessary.
Every one at Riverlight appears gay. “It’s heaven on earth and our guides are angels,” declared Mrs. Lydia Reems, a former New Orleans resident, now living on Staten Island. Miss Ilaiganoush Tashjian, a registered nurse who became blind recently but still works at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York,- described Riverlight as “a dream come *true.”
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Gayest of the group was Happy Lynch, sixty-seven, who claimed she was “the only blind professional mistress of ceremonies in the business.” A life member of National Variety Artists, Inc., and a trouper for the last fifty years, Mrs. Lynch did a song and dance number for her fellow guests.
Most of the staff' and campers are members of the Lighthouse in New York. But one of the guides, Marilyn Pitcher, fifteen, lives in Cornwall and was passing her first day here. “I want to specialize in social work when I graduate from high school,” she said.
Mrs. Averill stressed the predominant feeling at Riverlight. “It’s nice to be with, people who have the same handicap,” she said.	*
Silence is the ¿¡lenient in which great things fashion“" themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the delights of life, which they are thenceforth to rule.
—Carlyle
Hundred Seventy-Fifth Troop Carrier Group, which was activated Sunday at a review conducted on the ramp of the Greater Pittsburgh Airport. There are three active squadrons and a headquarters unit in the group, which will be manned entirely from Pittsburgh district reservists. Messages of congratulations to the new reserve group, one -of hundreds being formed throughout the nation, came from General Eisenhower, as Chief of Staff; General Carl W. Spaatz, head of the AAF; Major General T. J, Hanley, commanding the
> Edgeworth Boy Abroad
The following is a translation of The Amsterdam Courant: a daily paper of the Netherlands; it describes the revival of. the four-day • marches, an annual event, in which thousands participate. Headquarters are’ in Nijmegen, much bombed city located some twenty miles from Arnhem, scene of the unsuccessful jiarachute landing a year before the end of the war. It reads as follows:
Nijmegen Welcomes 7,000 Four-Day Marchers
“You are 15 years old, you live in a village in the U.S.A. and now you are ’staying with your Grandfather, and you stand in the big Square in Nijmegen called the racetrack, one of thousands of marchers, and the Police* band plays all the National Anthems and then it plays the Star Spangled Banner, and there the American flag is hoisted until it blows on the breeze to those of England and Belgium and Sweden and all the others—eight nations were represented.
“That is what happened to the 15-year old American marcher Bolger, the Only American entry in the foreign group of marchers.” 1	.
1,000 spectators, even from nearby rooftops, saw the marchers leave on the first of four twenty mile trips. The weather was hot and many dropped out. Groups stayed together. There were the soldiers, the mineworkers, the Boy Scouts, the Frisians in national 'Costume. Bands greeted them in the villages and towns. The hardships and sufferings of the past years were forgotten under the blue skies, filled with great white clouds, through green ’ meadows and orchards.
A message was received in Edgeworth: “I made it, have the medal and three blisters, signed David Bolger.”
Eleventh Air Force, and others,
The ceremonies climaxed a three-day ‘open house’ at the airport celebrating the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Air Forces. Over 35,000 persons attended the celebration, which was featured by aerial demonstrations and displays of warplanes. Only a week ago, the Army Air Force was made equal to the Army and Navy under the unification bill. Forty years ago, the Army established an aviation division, consisting of a few box-kite like aircraft as a part of the signal corps.
Republicans Increase ' Registration in Ambridge
The'previous majority of Democratic voters registered over their Republican opponents in Ambridge has been reduced fronvover 300 to a mere 14 today.
Figures compiled at the county court house in Beaver following the closing of registration for the coming primary, reveal that in Ambridge borough there are a total of 3,218 Democrats eligible to vote and the Republicans number 3,204.
In reducing the majority by more „than 300, the endeavor of GOP leaders and members in the borough is showing cooperation and close harmony. The change was accomplished since the previous registration date last Fall.
By Precincts
Ambridge borough totals registered for the coming primary are as follows:
	Rep.	Dem.
1st Ward. 1st dist ...	.... 410	487
1st Ward, 2nd dist -. .		272
2nd Ward, 1st dist . .	.... 497	344
2nd Ward, 4th dist . .	.... 200	370
3rd Ward, 5th dist . ,	.... 518	333
3rd Ward, 6th dist. •,	.... 221	405
4th Ward, 7th dist , .	.... 486	421
4th Ward, 8th'dist . .	.... 498	586
, i 35 Fail Driving Tests Either the state police are becoming more strict, or the current crop of beginning drivers isn’t so good. For one of those reasons, 35 out of 73 beginners who appeared at the Sewickley Borough Building for tests Monday, failed to make the grade. That percentage of failures is much higher than usual, in the tests, which are given the first and third Mondays every month at the municipal building.
Arrested in ’A & P Store
Rookie police officer Sidney Sternberg and veteran officer Frank Harwood caught a burglar red-handed in the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company store on Broad Street at 1:25 a. m. Tuesday. ¡While making his patrol of the business district, Officer Sternberg discovered the rear door of the store open. He called for the police car and, accompanied by Officer Harwood, entered the building and found James Vincent Lee, colored, 600 Washington Street, inside the store. The officer pointed his .38 at Lee until he was safely in custody.
The officers found that the rear door had been forced; a door to the girl’s rest room where the cigarettes are stored jimmied open and a heavy wire barricade cut sufficiently to allow egress to the main store room. The keeper had been broken off one of the doors, which had been locked with a padlock. Searching the suspect, the officers found a 5/8 inch cold chisel, 7 inches long; a three cornered file, 9 inches long, a small pen knife; a green sock, which lie used over his hand to avoid leaving fingerprints; 18 cents in change and a key. The file was apparently used to cut through the wire barricade.
The manager of the store, J. S. Kavsky of Carnegie, was called and came to the store. He couldn’t tell whether anything was missing, until employees make a complete inventory of the merchandise. Lee was charged with burglary and held for court at a 'hearing before Justice of the Peace Gibb Tuesday evening.
Admits Taking Money
Vincent Miller, 2nd floor, 509 Beaver Street, pleaded guilty to a charge of burglary at a hearing before Justice of tlie Peace L. V. Gibb Monday morning and was held for court. He Was arrested Saturday by Officer Robert Colledge on orders from Chief' Thomas Prendergast, after Miller had been seen flashing a large roll of bills in various bars and „ taverns. “Vince” told police that he had ■ won the $208.05 they found in his possession in a crap game under the 11th Street Bridge in Ambridge; that he had been paid the Wednesday before and .that he had borrowed some from a loan company in Ambridge.
Police checked and found that he had been paid on Wednesday, but not that much and had not secured a loan at the Ambridge loan company. Of course, they couldn’t very well check on the crap game, so they just left the suspect in the ‘cooler’ over the week-end. Finally, Sunday evening, 'lie called the chief down and confessed, police say.
He had used van ordinary door key to open the room in Steve’s Hotel, next door to his apartment, occupied by Mrs. Steve Pyevac, during her absence. He took a cigar box full of money which Mrs. Pyevac told police contained $344. Mrs. Pyevac was in charge of the hotel in the absence of her husband and was saving the receipts as a surprise for him.
Cars Back Into Each Other
Two cars backing out of parking stalls on opposite sides of Broad Street,, at 4:45 p. m. Wednesday of last week,‘collided and slightly damaged the left rear fenders of both cars. One of the vehicles was driven by J. II. Foster, Jr., Greater Pittsburgh Airport, and the other by James S. Crawford, 516 East Drive, Edgeworth.
Most of the critical things in life, which become the starting points of human destiny, are little things.
—Robert P. Smith