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Dick Pillion, retired Warwick High School math teacher, received so many cards on Feb. 22 that the mailman couldn’t fit them into the mailbox.
Dick Pillion, retired Warwick High School math teacher, received so many cards on Feb. 22 that the mailman couldn’t fit them into the mailbox.
THE ISSUE
Today, we take a few moments to highlight the good news in Lancaster County and the surrounding region. Some of these items are welcome developments on the economic front or for area neighborhoods. Others are local stories of achievement, perseverance, compassion and creativity that represent welcome points of light during another winter of this long, stressful pandemic.
Daily readers of LNP | LancasterOnline may be a bit confused as to why “Good Things,” a regular Monday Opinion feature, is being published today. The answer is simple: We needed it, and we figured you might need it, too.
Last week, after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine, the images and interviews coming out of that beleaguered nation were brutal and heartrending. We continue to pray for the people of Ukraine and for the Lancaster County residents who have loved ones in that fiercely independent country, which is being barraged by Russian missiles and tanks.
As that tragedy began to unfold, we felt compelled to remind ourselves that there is good in the world — and a great deal of good in Lancaster County. So here goes.
— There is promise in the air in Ephrata Borough.
Kris Kaufman and his business partner Dan Gotwalt recently bought the six-story Brossman Business Complex in the heart of the borough’s downtown for $3.5 million. Their company, Firm Foundations, also purchased two neighboring properties.
Kaufman and Gotwalt told LNP | LancasterOnline’s Tom Lisi that they envision a more active downtown Ephrata.
“Like many downtown communities across the country, Ephrata’s Main Street features stately but underused storefronts and buildings,” a story published in last Sunday’s edition noted.
Once a bustling town of retail shops, restaurants, a movie theater, a phone company and a namesake bank, Ephrata saw those businesses bought out, taking jobs with them, Ephrata Mayor Ralph Mowen told LNP | LancasterOnline in 2018.
“Just about anything they do is going to be a benefit to downtown,” Mowen said recently of Firm Foundations.
What “could be an engine for activity in the area is Kaufman’s and Gotwalt’s commitment to revitalizing the (Brossman) building’s restaurant space, which housed Lily’s on Main until 2017, when it closed after nearly 20 years,” Lisi noted.
This is good news for Ephrata and the many Lancaster County residents who enjoy dining out.
— Remember the old comedy-drama TV series “Room 222” about an American history class at a fictional racially diverse Los Angeles high school? We’re wondering if this retired Warwick teacher was a fan.
As LNP | LancasterOnline’s Ashley Stalnecker reported in Wednesday’s edition, “Former students came out in droves to surprise retired Warwick High School mathematics teacher Dick Pillion on his favorite day, a Tuesday — or as he would call it, a ‘twosday.’
“At 2:22 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022, Pillion, family and friends erupted in cheers.”
In his 33 years at Warwick, Pillion’s fascination with twos “made quite the impact on his students,” Stalnecker wrote. “So much so that they funded the Scholarship Pillion in his name, from 1993 until his retirement, in the amount of $222.22.”
Pillion’s former students collectively had donated more than $4,000 to the scholarship fund to keep it going for 21 years.
To mark last week’s special “twosday,” many students called, sent cards, emailed or dropped by Pillion’s home to pay tribute to him. Many cards, of course, featured the numeral 2 — which caught Pillion’s fancy years ago because there’s “a Tuesday, and a two-dollar bill. … It just stuck.”
The lessons of a great teacher stick, too. And Pillion provided another one last week, when he told Stalnecker: “You don’t live life truly for yourself. You live it to help others and be a good example for others to follow.”
If more people thought that way, the world would be a kinder place.
— Making Lancaster County a more compassionate, more prosperous and more equitable place is the work of The Steinman Foundation, a local, independent family foundation that was funded by the companies that make up Steinman Communications; those companies include LNP Media Group.
As a special feature in last Sunday’s LNP detailed, The Steinman Foundation’s contributions to this county are many and varied. They include the Lancaster Partnership for Learning Equity, created in 2020 to offer summer learning and after-school programs to students whose educations were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, the foundation also partnered with the nonprofit All Star Code to create economic opportunities for young men of color by helping them to hone their entrepreneurial and coding skills.
And it sponsored the first Pursuit of Equity Prize during the 2021 Extraordinary Give to celebrate organizations prioritizing equitable practices.
From STEM education — the teaching of science, technology, engineering and math — to its support for local journalism, which lies at the heart of the Steinman family’s mission, The Steinman Foundation has made a remarkable impact on Lancaster County.
In every corner of the county, on every issue you can imagine — from addressing the pollution of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, to providing internet access and nutritious meals to children in need, the foundation has made its mark. And, as we’ve written before, we are deeply proud to be even tangentially associated with it.
— With Black History Month ending Monday and Women’s History Month beginning Tuesday, the timing of this could not be more perfect: As LNP | LancasterOnline’s Kevin Stairiker reported, a new version of “Speak to My Soul,” which first premiered in 2015 and was last performed in 2017, was slated to premiere Saturday at The Ware Center.
“Speak to My Soul: A Montage of Voices” is the creation of writer Evita Colon; it features the choreography of her partner Solise White and the writing of cast member Davianna Holland.
Colon also launched a Lancaster organization called Speak to My Soul, which uses the arts to “empower, educate and elevate.”
Its namesake theatrical production, as described on the organization’s website, “uses song, dance and spoken word (poetry) to voice the stories of the Black experience in America.”
With its cast of Black women, the show “amplifies Black women in a way that society doesn’t always celebrate us,” Colon told LNP | LancasterOnline.
— Finally, this week will bring Shrove Tuesday and fasnachts, followed by Ash Wednesday, which Pope Francis has declared a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Ukraine.
We wish our Christian readers a meaningful Lent.
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