Lititz Record Express

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123RD YEAR 28 Pages- No. 47 LITITZ, PENNSYLVANIA 30 Cents
INSIDE
□ Business
Retail grant
The Lititz Retailers Associa­tion
recently received a $20,000
state grant to rejuvenate busi­ness
in the downtown district.
More about this grant, plus
analysis by Association presi­dent
Lon Heibeck in his monthly
column are on Page 18.
□ Sports
State berths
Warwick wrestler Ben Witmer
earned a trip to Hershey, follow­ing
his stellar performance last
weekend in the 140-pound
class at Districts. Page 8.
Ben wasn’t the only state
qualifier for the Warriors. in
swimming, both Ashley Haney
and Emily McGlashon will ad­vance
to the upcoming slate
meet. The details are on Page
9.
□Out of the Past
Billy Sunday
It was a memorable day when
the popular and famous evan­gelist
Billy Sunday came to
Lititz 80 years ago this week.
The full account of his visit, plus
the latest on the support Gen.
John Sutter was getting for his
land claim back in 1880, can be
found on Pages 20 and 27.
□ School
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RICHARD REITZ
Art Awards
Warwick High School boasts
91 students who captured a
total of 130 Scholastic Art
Honors this year. Among those
honored were senior Abby Sulli­van
(above), who earned a gold
key for her art portfolio. Page 7.
Also, Dave Raiser is heading
to the Regional Band festival in
Camp Hill this weekend to rep­resent
Warwick. It is a difficult
achievement to qualify for Re­gional
Band... especially for a
sophomore! Page 6.
□ Entertainment
R e c o rdE x p r e s s Ed ito r
LITITZ — Water is a precious,
plentiful resource in our commu­nity.
It is also a vulnerable one.
For the past year, several local of­ficials
and community leaders have
been looking at the Lititz water
supply, and exploring ways to
ensure its safety for generations to
come.
“This is about prevention,” said
Kelly Gutshall from Landstudies
Inc., an environmental consulting
firm in the borough. “There is cur­rently
no problem with the water
quality. There are, however, poten­tial
threats.”
Among the major threats to
water can be industry, storage
tanks, on-lot septic systems, and
agricultural practices.
Ephrata fatal
worries Lititz
STEPHEN SEEBER
R e c o r d Express S ta f f
□ Church
LITITZ — In the wake of
Ephrata’s fatal pedestrian acci-
L o c a l a r t dent on Monday, Mayor Russell
The Warwick Band Parents Pettyjohn is taking steps to make
Association is hosting its sure the same doesn’t happen in
second annual art exhibit and this borough,
auction this Saturday evening at On Tuesday night, Pettyjohn in-the
high school, and will feature formed borough council and a
original artwork by several art- small handful of attending citizens
ists. Page 6. that P°hce will no longer tolerate
Also featured is a story on unyielding drivers.
Brunnerville artist Deborah “Anyone who does not stop will
Randolph, who recently spent a §et ticketed, so be prepared,” said
week in a local classroom ex- Pettyjohn. “We all saw the paper
posing art students to life as an this morning (Tuesday). I don’t
artist. want it happening in Lititz.”
What the mayor was referring
and reacting to was the Monday
morning fatal collision between a
woman walking in a crosswalk
S t e r e o t y p i n g and Ford pickup truck.
In her Musings column, Geraldine K. Wolf, 64, of 109 E.
Marian Shatto explores the Mam St., Ephrata, was struck and
realms and dangers of stereo- killed at 8:45 a-m- on Feb- 28 as
typing. Page 16. she tried to cross East Main Street
at Washington Avenue in Eph­rata.
The truck was being driven
by James E. Pleitner, 54, of Mohn-
Rirthc, ^ ton, and the accident is now being
Busine, ss......,................. 1. 8. -1, 79 County district attttthoer neLy asn coafifitccer.
Cnurcr)................................... " Wolf had recently retired from the
Classified.......................... 22-26 Badorf Shoe Company in Lititz.
Editorial / Letters.................... 4 Lititz experienced a pedestrian
Entertainment........ ............... 21 fatality shortly before Christmas,
Obituaries......................... 12-13 when American Legion Com-
Out of the Past..............2 0 ,2 7 mander James Benjamin was
Police/Fire Log......................2-3 struck while crossing North Broad
School News......................... 6-7 street at Lincoln Avenue. The
Social 14-15 driver was not charged for any vio-
Sp o rts.................................. 8-11 See PEDESTRIAN,page 17
Y o u c a n c o m e h o m e a g a i n
Higgs’ new
book is set
in Lititz
RICHARD REITZ
Photo courtesy of Landstudies, Inc.
Nontoxic dye is injected into a Lititzsinkholeto determine how fast
water is moving through the ground during a 1998 test, demonstrat­ing
how fast a hazardous material could potentially enter the water
supply.
Protecting our water
Task force takes preventative
steps for safer drinking water
The biggest threats to the Lititz
water supply, however, are hazard­ous
spills, according to the Lititz
Area Wellhead Protection Task
Force.
One of the challenges for tile 22-
member task force is to inspire resi­dents
to recognize water safety as a
potential problem and take precau­tions,
at a time when the water
supply is safe and plentiful.
“This is very important,“ said
Sue Barry, Lititz Borough mana­ger.
“If something were to enter our
aquifer, it would cut off the water
supplytotheentireregion.”
And it wouldn’t take much toxic
material to render an entire supply
contaminated.
“An amazingly small amount of
toxins can contaminate an incredi­ble
amount of water,” Gutshall
said. “The cost of treating contami­nated
water is astronomical.”
It is much more economical to
invest in preventative measures,
particularly, educating the general
public about ways to keep the water
supply safe.
This will become one of the first
major cooperative projects between
local communities since the Joint
Strategic Plan was adopted in De­cember.
By late spring or early
summer, an informational pam­phlet
on ways to protect drinking
water will be published and distrib­uted
to all local residents. It will ex­plain
how local water is generated,
the importance of protecting the
water supply, and offer ways resi­dents
can do their part to keep the
water safe.
“This falls into the infrastruc­ture
part of the plan,” Barry said.
“This is a definite area where mu­nicipal
boundaries are not fol­lowed.”
The pamphlet explains how
See WATER, page 17
R e c o rdEx p r e s s Ed ito r
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — When Liz
Curtis Higgs asked Peggy and
David Jones if Emilie Getz could
live in their historic home on Main
Street in downtown Lititz, they
were more than happy to oblige.
And Betty Siegrist had no prob­lem
with Higgs’ request to place a
golf course on her Warwick Town­ship
farm, located next to the Lititz
Public Library.
Since the Jones household didn’t
have to clear a room or set an extra
place at the dinner table, and since
crops could still be grown on the
Siegrist farm, it was hardly an in­convenience
for either to accommo­date
this former Lititz resident’s
requests.
Emilie Getz is a fictional charac­ter
in Higgs’ 14th book, “Book-ends,”
and the golf course only
exists in the pages of her humorous
and inspiring new novel. Although
the characters and a few of the loca­tions
are fictional, the town
which the action takes place is very
real, and should be quite familiar to
local residents.
Higgs spent the first 20 years of
her life in Lititz, known to her class­mates
at Warwick High School as
Ruth Amidon. Now 45, she and her
husband Bill and two children
reside in Louisville, Ky.
To create the atmosphere for
“Bookends,” she drew upon her ex­periences
from growing up on
Front Street in Lititz. But she also
relied on the input of friends and
family who reside in the borough,
and two trips to town helped her
create an accurate background of
modern Lititz for the novel.
“When some people write fic­tion,
they make it all up,” Higgs
said. “I love to take the facts, and
ground it in truth, with a little
whimsy.”
During one of those visits, she
stayed at the Alden House on Main
Street to help her experience life in
downtown Lititz, living right next
door to the home where her main
character lives. She attended ser­vices
at Lititz Moravian Church
(the church of her youth) as well as
alovefeast.
Walking downtown, she said
that occasionally some residents
would recognize her and come up to
Photo courtesy of the Minichino family
Mlchaeleand Ben Minichino take an interesting journey during
a recent missionary trip. They are returning to Thailand this week­end
to begin mission workthere.
A family mission
WHS grad takes family to Thailand
KARIRADVANSKY
R e c o rdE x p r e s s S ta f f
Ben Minichino is putting his Warwick High School education to
work in some of the world’s most troubled cultures.
The next stop for this Class of 1986 graduate is the Asian tropics of
Thailand, where he recently accepted a position as field director with
the International Justice Mission.
On March 4, Minichino - along with his wife and two young children
- will be moving to Chiang Mai, a city along the Ping River in the north­ern
part of the country, about 75 miles east of Burma and a little more
than 100 miles west of Laos. There, they will make a home, learn a cul­ture,
and try to promote human rights for the next three years. It will be
See THAILAND,page 17
WMS 8th grader leads goodie
bag drive to help needy youth
□ Index
MARYANNELAAGER
S p e c ia l to the R e c o r d
LITITZ — What started out as a
simple class project for one War­wick
Middle School student, has
turned into a school-wide drive to
open hearts and help the needy.
Eighth grader Shea Bergman
wanted to do something service-oriented
for her for her year-long
school project in the Extend pro­gram.
So back in November, she
visited the Water Street Rescue
Mission in Lancaster, and after
meeting with a volunteer there, she
decided to get involved in helping
the mission’s Welcome Bag Project.
The Welcome Bag Project pro­vides
children at the mission with
their own bag of goodies. A typical
bag contains paper, crayons, a
game, a toy, a stuffed animal, and a
coloring book.
Shea’s task was to collect as
many of these items as she could
from her schoolmates’ donations,
sort through them, and bag them up
into brown paper grocery bags do­nated
by Bob’s Save Rite.
The biggest job was collecting
items for each bag. Shea placed a
box in every homeroom where stu-
See GOODIES, page 17
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Lititz is the setting for Liz
Curtis Higgs’ new novel, “Book-ends.”
chat. She said it made her feel right
at home in the borough. “Forget the
phrase that you can’t come home
again,’’ she said. “You really can.”
When she returned home to
begin writing “Bookends,” she
brought a lot of those experiences
back with her.
“It made writing the book feel
like I was still in Lititz,” Higgs said.
“Mentally and emotionally, I felt
See ‘BOOKENDS7, page 17
‘Circle’ loses
a good friend
RICHARD REITZ____________
R e c o rdE x p r e s s Ed ito r
LITITZ — On the same day that
local teens supported a dance to
help Crystal Engle Hohenwarter in
her battle against breast cancer,
and 13 days before a benefit auction
on her behalf, the 1978 Warwick
High School graduate succumbed
to the disease.
Hohenwarter, 39, of Circle Road,
Lancaster, died Feb. 26, 2000 fol­lowing
three years of treatment.
She was the wife of Stephen
Hohenwarter, and the mother of
three sons, Drew, Evan and John,
all still living at home.
Her cancer was in an advanced
stage when she started an alterna­tive
holistic treatment for the dis­ease
— a treatment that was not
covered by insurance. Her closest
friends and family decided to hold
an auction to help defray the ex­penses.
The event was dubbed the Circle
of Friends Benefit Auction, and
though that circle of friends is right
now devastated by the loss of their
good friend, they plan to continue
with the event as scheduled.
“The financial need is still
there,” said Missy Deibler, one of
the event’s organizers. “There are
still the debts she had from the
treatment she had started.” If there
are funds left from the event after
those bills are covered, she said they
will look for someone else with a
need.
The teen dance, which was held
at the Lititz Community Center
and organized by Warwick Middle
School eighth grader Jessica
Conjar, raised over $900 for Crys­tal,
according to Deibler.
The auction is scheduled on
Friday, March 10, and will be held
from 6-11 p.m. at Clair Bros. Audio,
1 Ellen Ave., located along Furnace
Hills Pike north of Lititz. More than
300 items have been donated for the
event, from concert tickets and art-
See FRIENDS, page 17
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Photo by Maryanne Laager
Shea Bergman has been collecting goodie bag items for youth
through the WaterStreet Rescue Mission.