West Chester Olympics Games

This appeared on May 28, 2006


I don’t think that we have to argue over the proposition that I’m one of the better parallel parkers in Chester County. No, I don’t think that we have to waste our time quibbling over that.


I think that there are enough of the right kind of people who have seen my work and, having seen it, describe my technique as "most righteous." So I think we’ve established that when it comes to the task, nay, the art of parking, I’m up there with the Renoirs, the Picassos, the Wyeths, dare I say, the Sculthorpes of the world.

But living in a town like West Chester takes more skills than just parallel parking. It takes timing, agility, bravado, know-how, focus – all the qualities that would make up a successful Olympic athlete.

Because you have to compete at living here in West Chester if you want to lead a satisfying life.

You can believe me or not.

But just as a sort of academic exercise I’d like to go through some of the lifestyle events I participate in on a weekly basis here in the burr-ah, as Mayor Tom used to say.

The Gay Street Slalom: I don’t have to explain this to anyone who has tried to make it from the east end of the borough to the west end directly on Gay Street through the central business district on a weekday morning say, around 9 a.m. The restaurant delivery trucks are lined up on the curb like they’re waiting to hit the English Channel on D-Day, and there are cars in back, front and to the side of you.

To be successful in getting through, you have to weave your way from one land to another like skier Bode Miller, sans hangover. I can do that. I can get from Iron Hill to Ryan’s in the blink of an eye, spilling not even a drop of my morning tea.

The Post Office Dash: This is a bit of a little known event, but one that has its rewards. Running to get in line at the post office at Gay and Walnut as soon as possible after it opens is important because if you get stuck behind say six or seven other customers, you may find yourself standing in line all day, until the branch closes.

For some reason the staffing level at this branch seems stuck in the period of time when only Ben Franklin actually used the postal service in this country. The thought of having two or more clerks on duty at the same time apparently was discarded as "too risky" by the plant managers.

Need I say I average two minutes waiting time per trip? I didn’t think I did.

The Seated Half Gainer Turnaround: Particularly in play while driving in from the suburbs and encountering another one of those annoying signs telling you are entering the borough. My latest whiplash moment was the double take I did after seeing a new blue and yellow sign on Lenape Road proclaiming "Borough of West Chester" standing directly in front of an older blue and white sign proclaiming, well, "Borough of West Chester."

You tax payers are getting your moneys worth on these expenditures, I assure you.

The Beer Can Toss: Not what you think it is. It’s not chucking the can on your neighbor’s front lawn that gets you recognized in this event. No, it’s picking up the numerous cans deposited on your block the morning after the latest Golden Rams game and either shot-putting or jump-shooting them into the nearest garbage can you find on your morning walk that gets you noticed.

And the applause from your neighbors is just the icing on the cake.

Rellahan for Commissioner

This appeared on May 21, 2006



Now that the ground has stopped shaking and the sky has stopped raining frogs and the sun is back to rising in the east, it looks as though we are going to need a new minority commissioner.

For those of you who were out of the loop last week, the Big Gambler in Heaven rolled the dice on Election Day and came up Andy Dinniman. Not that it should have surprised anyone, because as I understand it, Andy went to all the homes in the 19th Senate District and promised every registered voter he would help clean out the garage, polish the silver or de-frag the computer - whatever - if they would just please, please, PLEASE vote for him.

So he's got his work cut out for him over the next couple weeks.

Meanwhile, someone has to take his seat at the boardroom table. And while I don't want to be too forward about it, I think I have the perfect choice.

Me.

Don't look that way. There are several very good reasons why I should be the next county commissioner, and if you would just stop laughing for a few minutes we could discuss them.

First, if the adage that 50 percent of the job is just showing up is true, I'm a natural. I only live a few blocks from the courthouse, I have a pass to go around the security monitors, I know where the elevators are, and I can find my way to the fifth floor. How many other people can say that?

Second, I know how to do the job. Over the years, I've seen lots of minority commissioners in action - Pat O'Donnell, Patty Baldwin, Andy - and I think I can put together a public face that blends a little bit of each. I can tell a good Irish story before voting "no" on everything but the reading of the minutes like Pat; be punctual and stay in the office in case someone has to answer the phones like Patty; and talk about the wonders of Chester County until everyone else in the room wants to throw up like, well, you know who.

As for a political platform, I've got that covered. I think readers of this column will know that I stand for, among other things, annexing Chadds Ford Township from Delaware County, building a public swimming pool within walking distance of my home on South Church Street, coming up with a suitable motto for West Chester (my new favorite: "Better Organic Lettuce Than Phoenixville"), and eliminating fake Cincinnati-style chili from local restaurant menus.

A little help from commissioners Carol and Don and I think we can get all those things accomplished in no time.

You might think there are people out there who have an edge over me because they've, oh, actually been active in Democratic Party politics over the years, but consider this: Not only do I know the president judge by her first name, but I've met her parents. Since the judges in the county make the pick, need I say more?

So I think if we just accept the notion that I'm The Man, we can wrap up this whole thing rather quickly.

Just one thing: I don't have to pose in all those photos with the Marching Band Parent of the Year, do I?

Me and The Babe

This appeared May 14, 2006


Before there was Bam, there was The Bambino.

Mr. Margera of West Chester, star of his own "reality" television series on MTV, may owe his nickname to Mr. George Herman "Babe" Ruth, late of Baltimore, Boston and New York City.

Back before there was a cult of celebrity in America, there was a cult of Americans who fed off the celebrity of baseball's greatest player, instantly known as Babe.

There's been much talk lately about The Babe, what with Barry Bonds making his way up the home run ladder toward Ruth's 714 mark. All that chatter pleases me no end, because I love Babe Ruth, and I love hearing stories about him.

And, of course, because of the connection he has with Chester County.

I first learned of that connection when I read Robert Creamer's marvelous 1974 biography, "Babe: The Legend Comes to Life." Creamer digs past the old chestnuts about Ruth and his love of hot dogs, his orphanage background and his called shot home run against the Cubs, and weaves some wonderful little-known tales about Ruth into the mix.

One that caught my attention concerned Ruth's weaving road trip in July 1920, just after he'd joined the New York Yankees. He put his young wife, a few fellow players and an older coach in the passenger seats of his four-door touring sedan and set out from Washington, where the Yankees had played, back to New York.

Now, remember, this was in the day when automobile driving was in its infancy, and drivers really hadn't come to understand how the rules of physics matched with the laws of physiology in determining how your car could stay upright. So Ruth, as was his habit, refreshed himself along the road with sips of bootleg whiskey.

By the time the crew passed into Pennsylvania, one can assume that Ruth's blood alcohol level was something like a point-Avogadro's Number (6.022 times 10 to the 23rd). And so when he tried to round a curve in the road outside Wawa, Creamer said, Ruth flipped the car and sent everyone sprawling.

No one was seriously hurt - the newspapers got it wrong anyhow, reporting "RUTH REPORTED KILLED IN CAR CRASH" - and The Babe continued his marvelous 1920 season. But it got me thinking: Driving north from Baltimore to Wawa, he must have driven through Southern Chester County.

The thought of Ruth tooling up Route 1 in the middle of the night, drunk behind the wheel, while mushroom farmers were asleep in their beds filled me with a great glimpse of how close you can be to history without you even knowing it.

I read elsewhere that later in life, Ruth attended a street fair in Kennett Square hosted by Herb Pennock, his Yankees teammate and a native of mushroom country. After dinner, Ruth and his teammates began winning prizes at one of those booths where you knock down milk bottles with a light baseball.

It was a piece of cake for the crew, even throwing curve balls, but one of the players found the next morning that his arm had swollen to three times its normal size - the fault of the lightweight balls and the curves.

The teammate's name? Why, Waite Hoyt, of course. Hoyt's post-baseball career? Why, Cincinnati Reds' radio announcer, of course.

Hoyt's biggest fan? Why, me, of course.

Get the connection, Bam?

Roadside Shrines

This appeared May 7, 2006




Another fatal car crash last week brought another roadside tribute.
This time the makeshift shrine appeared on Pigeon Creek Road in South Coventry, the site of an accident that claimed the life of a 17-year-old Owen J. Roberts student one week ago today.
Over the years, the custom of creating memorials to a loved one killed in crashes has taken root across Chester County. One recalls seeing them on North High Street across from the West Chester Golf and Country Club, the site of two fatalities last August, as well as at the intersection of New and Gay streets outside St. Agnes, where a young motorcyclist was killed that same month.
The flowers and photos and letters that marked those memorials were gone within a few weeks after the accidents. But driving along the county's roads, a driver's eye might still catch sight of a shrine that has stood for years, and whose presence is a mystery to all but those loved ones for whom it is a marker of pain and of remembrance.
I have in mind one such site, at an intersection I pass through regularly.
At the spot where Valley Creek Road becomes Quarry Road as it crosses Boot Road, just past the so-called "twin tunnels" in East Caln, stands a white cross dedicated to the memory of two young men who did not know one another but who died in the same accident in November 1991.
Richard Cabott, then 23 years old, and Gregory Brownback, then 24, died because a 26-year-old Exton man had too much to drink that night and ran through the stop sign at the intersection, taking the back roads home to hide his drunkeness from police.
Cabott was a passenger in the drunken man's car; Brownback was driving his 1989 GMC pickup home.
I first noticed the cross after meeting the families of the victims of that crash, and writing the story of their anger and pain over the loss of life. For years I lost track of it, not having any reason to pass by the location, but now have come to see it regularly and view it as a stark reminder of loss.
The cross is well-kept and sturdy. It is planted well into the ground, giving you the sense that it is not coming down anytime soon.
Some states are taking action against such shrines, seeing them as safety concerns and a distraction to drivers. The folks at PennDOT say they have no regulations as to how long roadside shrines stay up - temporary ones with flowers and photos generally are removed by the families of the dead soon afterwards.
Crosses like the one paying tribute to Richard Cabott and Gregory Brownback may never come down; only if they become a safety hazard will officials take action.
I've thought hard trying to understand why the memorials go up in the first place. What draws the crowd to the scene of a tragic crash? How much grief can be eased by the placement of a cross at a crossroads? Why tributes only to those who die violently?
Then I remembered my visit to Cincinnati last month.
Driving back to my sister's house after an errand to the local grocery store, I took a right turn when I should have continued straight, and stopped a block away at a nondescript two- story building.
I gently left the car running and crossed the street so I could see a dark window close to the corner of the building. I stayed for only a moment, turned and left.
Seeing the place where my mother died always connects me to her, even if I don't leave flowers.

Finding Her Way

This story appeared Oct. 31, 2005. It was awarded a First Place prize for Personality Profile in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers Association's Keystone Press Awards contest.





By MICHAEL P. RELLAHAN
Staff Writer
WEST CHESTER - To borrow a timeworn phrase that nonetheless fit her well, Mary Catherine "Marie" Lynch was a survivor.
She survived the hard life of the streets, official indifference, terrifying violence, a crippling addiction to alcohol and personal demons that nearly destroyed her. She survived by her own force of will, with quite a bit of luck and through the kindness of people in her adopted hometown of West Chester.
But even survivors do not live forever. Lynch, diagnosed in 2003 with throat cancer, died Thursday morning at 12:15 a.m. in the Main Line Nursing Home in Paoli. She was 63.
"Even though she was a street person, she had some dignity," said Susan Baldwin, a former caseworker at West Chester's Safe Harbor shelter, who became her close friend. "I think she had a spunk about her. She asked that you give her the respect that she thought she deserved."
"Her recovery was one of the greatest turnarounds we ever saw," said Art Zadrozny, the former director of Safe Harbor who helped oversee Lynch's withdrawal from alcohol addiction and made her a part of the shelter's extended family.
Lynch went from living alone on the street, pushing her meager belongings in a shopping cart, drinking heavily and debasing herself, to kicking her habit, putting order in her life and eventually volunteering for others at Safe Harbor.
"There are definitely lessons to be learned from her," Zadrozny said in an interview Friday. "If anyone says they've had a bad hand dealt them, take a look at Marie's life. You can recover. You can change your life, because she did."
Lynch's personal history is punctuated mainly by gaps. She was born on Sept. 19, 1942, in Pennsylvania, but exactly where and to whom remains unknown. After her recovery, when Baldwin received a copy of her birth certificate in preparation for registering her for Social Security and official identification, the document didn't list either a place of birth or names of her parents.
She spent the first 20 years of her life as a ward of the state, living in an institution whose antiquated name was the Laurelton School for Feebleminded Girls of Childbearing Years. She endured violence there and may have been forcibly sterilized.
After leaving the school, she worked for two decades in a box-and-cup factory on the north side of West Chester until the factory burned down. With nowhere to go, Lynch spent the better part of the next 15 years on the streets of West Chester, a homeless woman with a slight frame and a rough, scarred face.
Those familiar with the town would see her sitting on a bench on South Church Street, pushing her cart along the sidewalks or keeping warm near a radiator in the Gay Street post office.
Baldwin said she did not know exactly how Lynch kept herself alive in those days. She worked occasionally doing cleaning work at area businesses such as Whirlaway Travel and Penn's Table, where the owners would give her $20 or so for her efforts, but it was nothing like a true job.
"The people of West Chester really kept her alive for a number of years," Baldwin declared. The money she earned went primarily to buy alcohol. "Beer, whiskey and wine, that's all I thought about," Lynch told a reporter in 2003. The alcohol and life on the street frequently got her in trouble with the law, and she developed a reputation as a nasty, vulgar, mean-spirited woman.
Summing her up during those years succinctly, Zadrozny said: "When she was drunk, she was a nasty drunk."
Her legs were scarred from rat bites she'd gained from sleeping in alleys and back ways. She lost all her teeth and had her nose broken. Already mentally handicapped, she was considered incompetent because of persistent deafness caused by wax build-up in her ears. Lynch was also prone to hearing voices and becoming paranoid, thinking that helicopters were out to harm her, Baldwin said.
"Everyone just assumed she was ignorant," Baldwin said.
Lynch's life was becoming worse when Baldwin started working with her in the late 1990s. Her alcohol addiction grew fearsome, and she began acting out in public more often. Although Safe Harbor, opened in 1985, had offered help to homeless people like Lynch, she had largely stayed away, being reclusive and suspicious, Baldwin said.
It took weeks of speaking to her on the street before Lynch began responding to Baldwin, then a counselor with Northwestern Human Services assigned to Safe Harbor. But even as Baldwin gained her trust, Lynch remained certain that she would disappear from her life.
Sometimes, Baldwin said, she would move too fast, ask too much of Lynch, and Lynch would pull back and stop showing up at Safe Harbor. "I slowed down, and she came back," the caseworker said.
The turning point for Lynch came on Easter Sunday in 2000. Still living on the streets, she was pistol-whipped by an assailant, who stole what little money she had in her pockets. "That was her wake-up call," Baldwin said. "She knew that she had better get off the street or she would end up dead. Now she had to go the extra mile."
Zadrozny met her then, and he saw her begin to change. "She started to realize that there was a better life. I remember her telling me it felt good to be clean."
But Baldwin and Zadrozny also pushed her forcefully to give up her drinking. For several months, she was put out of the shelter for being overly intoxicated.
"Marie was someone you could rationalize with, but it had to be on a basic level," Zadrozny said. "'You want a safe, warm bed? You want to be clean?' It was like a bargain with her."
She entered an alcohol recovery program in 2001 and later entered a hospital where her mental illness was diagnosed and medication prescribed to control her paranoia. She took a room at a Coatesville boarding house and commuted back and forth from there to West Chester, where she felt comfortable.
Along the way, she was treated to a new social life with Baldwin. "She had never seen an airplane up close, never been on one, so I took her to the Philadelphia airport and we sat down to dinner and watched the planes land," Baldwin said. Later, Baldwin was able to arrange for Lynch to walk through an empty airliner, looking into the cockpit and strolling up and down its aisle.
"She was amazed at how large they were, and how they could get up in the air," Baldwin said. "She also thought the pillows on the seats were cute."
Lynch began shopping with Baldwin for new clothes, and they visited the grounds at Embreeville Center where they watched for wildlife. She planned a trip to the New Jersey shore because Lynch had never seen the ocean, but the trip never occurred because of her illness.
"We couldn't have been two more opposite people," Baldwin said. "But we both had a mutual respect, and a fire for living."
Zadrozny said Lynch's daily life was "a simple one" - volunteering at Safe Harbor, attending church services at the Salvation Army on East Market Street, working for area businesses and taking the bus back and forth to Coatesville.
"But for her it was a purposeful life, and she took pride in her work. That made you feel good," he said.
Both said, however, that there was still a hard side to Lynch that she displayed up until the end of her life. Battling the awful pain of throat cancer, she nevertheless refused to stop smoking her unfiltered Pall Malls.
"Even at the end, she didn't give up quietly," Baldwin said, noting that she had tried to escape her room at Main Line Nursing to catch a smoke outside two days before she died.
"She had that feistiness inside her, and that was what kept her going, what allowed her to survive out on the street for so long," Zadrozny said. "She was a tough woman."
A funeral will be held for Lynch at 10 a.m. Wednesday at St. Agnes Church in West Chester.
Although the Salvation Army, St. Agnes Church, Halladay Florists and the Boyd Funeral Home, among others, have made contributions to her funeral costs, further contributions may be made at the Salvation Army, Zadrozny said.