Landenberg Today Fall/Winter 2015

Fall/Winter 2015

Landenberg Today

Magazine M agazine

Turning again, home:

Pownall Jones

Inside • Landenberg artist Chad Cortez Everett • Landenberg Q&A: Dave Yake • British Soccer Camp at Crossan Park

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The many facets of the Landenberg community Letter from the Editor: During our ten years of publishing Landenberg Today, we have had the opportunity to write about some extraordinary people who call Landenberg home. This issue of Landenberg Today contains a collection of stories that illustrate the many facets of the community.

Writer Richard Gaw spends the day with farmer and lifetime New Garden resident Pownall Jones, who shared his life stories and some of the hidden history of New Garden.

We profile artist Chad Cortez Everett, who combines his artistic talents with a powerful message to create talkedabout canvases that convey color and meaning.

We also introduce our readers to Rachel Gillespie, who is a freshman at Ringling College of Art and Design, a prestigious art school in Sarasota, Florida. The Avon Grove High School graduate tells us about how she has wanted to be an animator since she was five years old, and about how she is currently pursuing her dream of working for Disney Animation Studios.

The subject of the Q&A is Dave Yake, who is the public face of the Save Our Water group in Landenberg, which was formed to block the Artesian water company’s efforts to pump water out of a local aquifer and send it into Delaware.

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We also talk to Bruce Latshaw, the pastor of the Barn Vineyard Church, and Ben Quintana, the pastor of Christ Church at the Grove, about how the Avon Grove Ministerium brings together Christian leaders from 20 local churches to share faith and fellowship.

Churches and places of worship dot Landenberg’s landscape. In the photo essay, photographer Carla Lucas gives readers a chance to identify the area’s houses of worship from just one or two details that she photographed.

Landenberg Today was also there during a day in August when youngsters learned how to play soccer at Crossan Park as part of a week-long Challenger Sports Soccer Camp.

We hope that you enjoy reading these stories as much as we enjoyed preparing them for you. As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions for future stories. We’re already looking forward to bringing you the next issue of Landenberg Today in the spring of 2016.

Sincerely, Randy Lieberman, Publisher (randyl@chestercounty.com, 610-869-5553) Steve Hoffman, Editor (editor@chestercounty.com, 610-869-5553, ext. 13

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Table of Contents Landenberg Today • Fall/Winter 2015

8 8

20

Profile of Chad Cortez Everett

20

Pownall Jones: Turning again, home

36

Faith & Fellowship

44

Local artist pursues her dreams

58

Nightscape: The Chester County Balloon Festival

62

Q & A with Dave Yake

70

Special section: Education

78

Youngsters learn how to play soccer

86

Photo essay: The Landenberg Steeple Chase

92

The invisible winemaker

36

44

58

86

Cover design: Trisha Hoadley Cover photo: Richard L. Gaw www.landenbergtoday.com | Fall/Winter 2015 | Landenberg Today

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—————|Landenberg People|————— Landenberg artist Chad Cortez Everett’s paintings are a testament to his emotions, his vision and his message. His evolution as an artist is best told in five parts.

Photo by Richard L. Gaw

Artist Chad Cortez Everett outside his Landenberg home.

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The man in the chair

By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer

Club Kid In the late 1990s, when Chad Cortez Everett was a graduate student at the Hoffberger School of Painting, a division of the Maryland Institute College of Art, he went out one night in Baltimore with his school colleagues.

Everett enjoyed the clubs.

He went there for inspiration, for ideas, for subjects. He was becoming known around school as the Baltimore Club Painter, and although it was a tag he didn’t mind – the work he was creating was getting him noticed – he felt the hard and raw pull coming from somewhere in his mind that said that his art needed to be about more than just pretty paintings.

On this particular night in Baltimore, an Asian man approached him. He asked Everett if he could sing. Everett replied that he was not a good singer. The Asian man then asked him, ‘Can you dance?’ Everett replied that he could dance, but not well. Then Continued on Page 10 Courtesy art

“Autumn”

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the Asian man asked him, ‘Do you rap?’ Everett said that no, he did not rap.

“Well, then you must not be black,” the Asian man told Everett, “because all of the black people I run across do all of that.”

Privately seething, Everett then asked the Asian man whether he knew karate. The Asian man said that he did not, and called Everett a racist. “I told him, ‘Well, what did you just ask me?’” Everett said.

Everything crystallized in his head when Everett returned to his apartment. Everything about how we assess people, he thought, is wrong. He hated the way we look at people who wear baggy jeans and are all tatted up from head to toe must be a criminal, just like how we believe that all people who wear a Confederate flag patch on their sleeves belong to some backwoods militia hellbent on promoting the Aryan race.

Then Everett took out his paints, sat near a blank canvas, Continued on Page 12

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Courtesy photo

Everett’s studio is in the basement of his home.

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For that moment when time stands still

and waited. He listened until his rage quieted down to a sweet stillness, and he continued to wait until his thoughts were crystallized and hard as sandstone. Then he took the tip of his brush, dipped it into paint, and then onto the canvas.

And there it was. “Face,” where the hollow face of an African-American man seems to burst from the canvas and behind the image, a prism of infinity, stairways going everywhere, headed to new journeys and new places.

“I thought at the time that we need to get to the point where instead of just looking at the outside of someone, we need to step into their minds,” Everett said. “Ignorance is bliss. Sometimes getting to know someone is harder than just passing judgment.”

Nearly two decades removed from that night in Baltimore, “Face” is now displayed in the family room of the Landenberg home Everett shares with his wife and young daughter.

“Who is Chad Cortez Everett?”

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In 2002, Everett, who in addition to receiving a Master’s from Hoffberger had previously studied painting at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, produced a solo exhibition of his work at the Christina Cultural Arts Center in Wilmington. He called the show “Who is Chad Cortez Everett?”

In a career that has taken him to 14 solo exhibitions and 18 group shows from Philadelphia to Wilmington and seemingly a dozen towns in between, it’s a question Everett has been attempting to answer on his own ever since.

Everything you need to know about Chad Cortez Everett begins with his hunger. It manifests itself in a self-driven motivation to perfect what happens when he applies a paintbrush to a canvas. It

Photo by Richard L. Gaw

An unfinished painting in Everett’s studio waits to be completed.

began when he was a little boy, when he was just another kid running around the Bartram Village Projects in Philadelphia. He was not the best athlete there, but his cousin was one of the cool kids in his neighborhood, and it wasn’t because he could toss a football a mile or slam dunk on a basketball court. It was because he could draw. Everett asked his cousin to teach him to draw and soon, with the fundamentals of illustration now in his kit bag, drawing was soon his obsession.

His cousin used to look at Everett’s drawings, and one day, he told him, “You’ve got to go to Overbrook’s art school.”

Leslie Kamison, Everett’s art teacher at Overbrook High School’s art magnet program, was a former Marine, and he drove the students in a military-like tutorial of discipline. In class one day, he told the young Everett, “I need you to commit to me.”

“Mr. Kamison used to say to us, ‘If I’m going to teach you guys to paint or draw, I need to know that what you create is coming from your heart,’” Everett said. “He told us that if it was not my from the heart, then we’re just playing around. He taught us that it has to be soulful art, which comes from the soul. I’ve always carried that with me.

“He taught us that we all have a voice. Some people may understand that voice, some don’t, but it’s the voice that makes us different from other artists. If we all painted the same way, I have a funny feeling that art would be too predictable.”

Continued on Page 14

“Face”

Courtesy art

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“Can you show me something that I have not already seen?”

In 2013, the Vivant Art Collection in Philadelphia presented a solo exhibition of Cortez’s work. “Human: Trials, Transformation, Triumph -- Believe the Hype, A Story of Enlightenment” was a 24-piece tribute to everything that Kamison taught Everett back at Overbrook. His soul burst from the canvases. His voice told a narrative that reflected society, identity, mental illness, and introduced the audience to the message of what the artist was trying to convey -- to heal and transform.

“I tell other artists all the time, ‘You have to be honest with your viewers about the stories you’re telling as an artist,’” Everett said. “Nowadays, when I look at the modern art scene, I feel like a lot of artists are not being truthful toward their audience. They’re trendy artists.

They just go with what’s going on at the moment. They paint it and abandon it.

“You have to experience these life moments in order

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to paint. You have to do a lot of soul searching before you produce a painting. You have to release it down and ask yourelf a lot of questions. Some artists don’t want to accept the truth about their work. Sometimes their messages fall short because they don’t take it to a more intellectual level. They tend to play it safe and remain in the box that has been built for them.”

There is, arguably, not an artist of color in the United States who has not thought about applying his or her reflections on the issue of Race in America onto a white space or a garage wall. In light of Ferguson, of Staten Island, of Baltimore, their numbers are many and their leap has been ferocious. It’s not a topic that sprang up overnight; Everett began pouring out his emotions on the topic years ago, but instead of painting images that depict violence, he goes softer in his narrative. Rather than guns, for instance, “Happy People” and “Change is Coming” portray African-Americans with outstretched arms, paintings that reflect the quiet steps of Hope rather than the gun-toting fist of Despair.

“It’s all a duplication of effort,” Everett said of the art world’s response to race. “If you want to do this kind of Continued on Page 16

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work, please come up with solutions, because otherwise, you’re just adding gasoline to the fire. Can you show me something that I have not already seen?

“Too many black artists are on this subject simply because it’s a hot issue,” he added. “I try to dig in as deep as I can because I want my viewers to understand that the angles I’m coming from are personal images, but at the same time are universal that they can relate to.

That’s the narrative, to tell the story about what’s going on in the artist’s mind. That’s the formula that separates the artist from the rest of the pack.”

Light Tower

“Lost Cortez”

Since 2007, Everett has been an art teacher at the McCullough Middle School in New Castle, De., where he teaches visual arts and art history to students from the sixth grade to the eighth grade. In more ways than he can count, the students he teaches at McCullough are different than those -- like him -- who attended Kamison’s art classes at Overbrook. When he was a kid, Everett had the love of his mother and his grandparents to see him out of Bartram Village and into college, but every year at McCullough, he can count on more than one hand those who come to school not having had breakfast that morn-

Courtesy art

ing, or from splintered family factions that are not focused on learning but with mere survival. They arrive at school loaded not with books but with burdens and barriers, both real and invented, and Everett knows that being able to express themselves through art is the furthest thing from their minds.

“These students have been told over the Continued on Page 18

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years that they can’t draw, but I tell them that if they have the desire to do it, and even if they don’t have artistic skills, they can still apply some of these principles in everyday life, in terms of overcoming odds,” Everett said. “They have been taught that if they fall down, stay down. I tell them that if they fall down to get back up. I tell them that the race is not over, and that they may have 80 more years on this planet.”

In order to reach these students, Everett funnels his lessons through the prism of pop culture relevance: music, celebrity...and footwear. Recently, he supervised a project that gave his students the creativity to design their own sneakers.

“You have to make a connection in the classroom,” he said. “I might be the only light tower in their lives, so I want to plant that seed of inspiration in their mind.”

Promised Land Chad Cortez Everett’s avatar – his incarnation, his embodiment – is in the form of a man sitting in a chair. There it is, in his painting “Second Chance,” a figure of a man in the painting who is attached to a chair. He’s also in “Running From the Truth,” and “Capoeria,” and “Knowledge as Power.”

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Courtesy art

“Riding to the promised land of hope”

“I am the man in the chair, and the fact that it’s attached represents immobility,” Everett said.

“You go through roller coasters as an artist, and at that time, the art world was not accepting my work. When I left Hoffberger, I thought I’d be a rock star artist coming out of art school. It didn’t work out that way, and in many ways, even though I’ve continued to pursue my art on my own terms, it’s still an upward climb.”

At 41, Everett realizes that he is no longer

the Club Kid artist soaking up the nightlife scene in Baltimore as a carefree art student top heavy with talent and desire. He sees the transient choices made by contemporary artists in an effort to shock the public rather than ask them to ruminate. He struggles with the big weight of aspiration versus obligation, the common thorn shared by ninety-nine point nine percent of creative people in America. He begins a new painting and questions whether its intended meaning will strike the right chords. He attends solo or group exhibitions of his work and watches the faces of the people who stop to look at his paintings. ‘Am I reaching them?’ he thinks. ‘Is it the story they want from art -- the message -- or is it merely for the colors?’

Before he heads off to McCullough Middle School, Everett wakes up at 4:30 a.m. most mornings and enters a very small room on the lower floor of his home. He calls it his studio, but it really isn’t one in the traditional definition of the word. It’s made for function only; there are utility objects and inner guts of the home protrude down from the ceiling. There are no windows that overlook a meadow or a lake -- like the way we usually think of artist’s studios -- and therefore, there is no natural light.

The painting he is currently working on is at eye level in

front of him, unceremoniously fastened to the far wall in the small room.

“I picked it because I’m isolated there, and it is my separate world from my real world,” he said. “My wife has tried to get me to get my own studio away from the house. I tell her that it wouldn’t be the same, that I would waste time. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I can come right here and work. This way, I’m focused, with less distractions that may interfere with my feelings and my thoughts.”

And so the man in the chair continues to work, and what comes out of that litle room -- Chad Cortez Everett’s artistic narrative -- screams sometimes, and other times it hums, whispers or prays.

“That’s just the way life is,” he said. “There’s all different kinds of emotions that enter in and out of your life. You express all of it by finding your vehicle, and you drive it to your desired location. Once that vehicle breaks down, you have to get another vehicle, because where you’re trying to get to is the promised land.”

To learn more about Chad Cortez Everett, visit www. chadceverettart.com To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, e-mail rgaw@ chestercounty.com.

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—————|Landenberg People|—————

Pownall Jones has lived in New Garden Township since 1927 – the entirety of his life. Recently, a magazine writer invited him to go on a driving tour through the area, simply to hear Jones recall the places and people that have woven themselves into the rich tapestry of a wonderful life

By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer From the passenger seat of the car, Pownall Jones points to a group of houses on West New Garden Road, informing the driver that there was once a three-acre field there that his father rented to grow crops.

On the afternoon of April 12, 1945, just up the road from his family’s home, the 18-year-old Jones was aboard a tractor and in the process of plowing the field, when his neighbor Margaret Thomas came running across the road to tell Jones that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had just died.

Jones quickly finished plowing the field, and rushed back to his home up the road. The family radio was tuned to a station that kept playing “Home on the Range.” It was the president’s favorite song. * * * * In the front lobby of the New Garden Township building on Starr Road, there is a display case filled with archival photographs of the township’s rich history, carefully compiled and positioned by the township’s Historical Commission. They are positioned at such angles as to give the illusion that they are joined together in a continuous line, side by side, so that one can imagine walking from one to the other -- past a church, past a home, and so on.

It is very easy for me to get lost in them; the black-andwhite photographs depict a period when the township smelled of locomotive coal smoke and sawmill refineries.

Continued on Page 22

Photo by Richard L. Gaw

Pownall Jones, in front of the home he grew up in on New Garden Road.

Turning again, home

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There is the Old Hammer Trowel Hotel. Isaac Slack’s stone sawmill, the Toughkenamon railroad station, and the Foulkleon mansion. Beside each photograph is a corresponding picture of what the exact location looks like today. The comparisons are heartbreaking; the archival shots depict a period of rustic and simple beauty, while the modernity of the current photos demonstrate what happens when progress overtakes preservation and promptly turns the past into dust.

I am a victim of an appreciation for what came before us. It’s simply where my attention leads.

When I drive past a cookie-cutter development, I don’t see the tawny modernism of stucco but the fields that conjure what came before all of this efficient ugliness. I see the sweat-embossed veins of property owners whose names appear on an 1883 map of the township, standing proud to the plow: Lamborn. Cooper. Miller. Wickersham.

When I first approached Pownall Jones wife Peg with the idea of having her husband show me Continued on Page 24

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Courtesy of the Jones family

Pownall Jones with his cousin on the family farm, circa late 1930s.

Jones...

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around the lost parts of New Garden Township, she quickly responded, saying that her husband would be glad to accompany me. I have to confess early in this essay that for all of its intended uniqueness, the idea for this assignment was not even mine. It belonged to longtime township volunteer Chris Robinson who, during a hike I took with Robinson and two other Friends of the Landenberg Trails for a story that appeared in the spring edition of this magazine, suggested I speak with Jones.

“You really want to know the history of what this place was like back then?” Robinson asked. “Take Pownall Jones around. He knows everything about this area.”

As I sat waiting for Jones to meet me at the township building on Aug. 13, I realized that I wasn’t needing a history lesson. What I really wanted was something hidden in those photographs that Jones could unlock for me and make them almost real. What I really wanted was to be invited - if only for Continued on Page 26 Courtesy of the Jones family

The young Pownall Jones on his family farm.

Courtesy of the Jones family

Pownall Jones, circa late 1930s.

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brief moment -- into the sepia-toned world of the photographs in the display case. * * * * It is impossible to look into the 88-year-old eyes of Pownall Jones and not see the last century of America running through them. They have seen the Great Depression, the Second World War, D-Day, V-E Day, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, and every president from Calvin Coolidge to Barack Obama. They have seen the sunrise of more than 30,000 mornings, and the gentle sway of thousands of acres he has plowed and tilled and harvested along New Garden Road. They have met the tender eyes of his wife Peg through 65 years of marriage, four children and 11 grandchildren.

The two hours I spent with Jones began in a back room of the township building, with the simple question, “Where were you born?”

Jones pointed to the edge of a gray barn that could be seen from the back window of the township building in the far distance. He said he grew up there, on a 60-acre farm known as Crestfield on New Garden Road, that is

now the home his daughter, Ellen Marsden lives in with her husband and family. The move to New Garden was merely another stop in the long line of family lineage that traces its roots in America to 1682.

“My father was a dairy farmer who shipped milk to Philadelphia,” Jones recalled. “I remember a couple of workers on the farm, who would take the milk in a onehorse milk wagon out to New Garden. They backed up and unloaded ten cans of milk onto the milk truck every morning, for transport to Philadelphia. In order to expand the dairy, my father got his first tractor in 1941 and rented two small farms just up New Garden Road, so he could raise crops.”

No one other than Jones and his father would ride the tractor.

“My father continued to have a team of mules, and kept them after he got the first tractor,” he said. “They were a trusted team of horses. We had just put fresh shoes on one of the mules when one day I was working and I saw the mule just lay down and die, right in front of me. I was so upset to have to see that. I found my father milking and told him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘go back and take the shoes off him, so I did.”

Jones began opening up books that detail the history

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of the township, including a map that dates back to 1883. The maps show property lines and names of owners, a broad sweep of angles and property lines that he points to with his pencil. He recalls dates and acreage and deeds with an exactitude that belies most people of his age. For instance, he points his pencil to the farm his grandfather once owned on Route 41, and recalled that his grandfather died there on Christmas Day in 1932, and that after her husband’s death, his grandmother kept the land, but sold the home to Mario Zunino.

His pencil stops at the intersection of Newark and New Garden roads.

“This is where I would pick up the school bus every morning,” he said. “I never went to a traditional one-room schoolhouse.”

Continued on Page 28

Photo by Richard L. Gaw

The Kennett Meeting House, where Jones and his family have attended service for several decades, is undergoing a restoration.

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Rather, Jones was a member of the first class to ever attend what is now Kennett High School, starting there in 1933 and going through all 12 grades at the same location. When he was a freshman in high school, Jones made his first major purchase -- a used bicycle he bought for five dollars -- “a lot of money back then,” he said. He rode it everywhere he went.

To Jones’ recollection, whatever impact the Great Depression or World War II were having on the nation and the world was a seismic shift that was not felt in his insular cocoon of growing up on a farm in New Garden Township in the 1930s and 1940s. For the most part, Jones’ young life was divided according to farm, family, school and faith. The New Garden Meeting House was just a short walk up the road from the Jones farm, as was the general store and post office across the road. Access to the outside world was limited to what the family could get on the radio, and the arrival of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, which arrived in the mail wrapped in brown paper and marked “Gordon P. Jones, Avondale, PA” one day after it was originally published.

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“It was yesterday’s news, but it was the only news that we really had in those days, except for the radio,” Jones said. “I grew up on the farm and never really knew anything else. The farm was everything.”

In 1944, Jones met his future wife, Margaret Brosius, who was attending Unionville High School -- at a Quaker conference in Cape May. Six years later, they married and moved about one mile east of Crestfield, to a farm he purchased at an estate sale in 1949.

For the first ten years, Jones raised hogs and cattle while growing corn and hay to feed his livestock. During the winter months, he worked for his father-in-law on his West Marlborough mushroom farm. During the 1960s, Jones eased out of the livestock business, transitioning to mushrooms. For the next 25 years, he grew mushrooms, while raising field crops to feed his father’s cows. After retiring from active farming in 1978, Jones served on the Chester County Board of Assessment Appeals from 1986 to 2008, retiring when he turned 80.

With the chronology of life now told, Jones closed up the history books, and we entered my car, in the hopes of going back in time. * * * * Continued on Page 30

The breathtaking scenery of the Jones farm he has owned since 1949.

Photo by Richard L. Gaw

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In the days after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s death, the entire nation mourned. The captain of their ship was gone, and for many, Roosevelt was the only president anyone knew When 18-year-old Pownall Jones arrived at the Kennett Consolidated School soon after Roosevelt’s death, he was asked by school officials if he would volunteer to recite Lord Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar” at an upcoming school assembly to honor the president. He was an easy pick; he had a booming voice, one that would certainly carry to the last student in the last seat of the gymnasium.

He accepted the challenge, and immediately walked to Continued on Page 32

Photo by Richard L. Gaw

Jones still operates the tractor his father purchased in 1941.

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the empty gymnasium, where he recited the poem over and over again.

In the moments just before he finally got his chance to speak, Pownall Jones looked out over a sea of his fellow students, wondering if he would be heard. When he began speaking, the poem poured out -- they were the perfect words -- and they reverberated around the gymnasium walls: Sunset and evening star And one clear call for me!

Andy may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. * * * * Jones and I went everywhere, and at every turn of every bend, it was as if a giant history book had opened up to reveal its facts. Barns, farms, fields, dates and points of

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interest; he painted the landscape of the people who created the township, such as James Starr, who was one of the early immigrant farmers who farmed 300 acres.

We made a turn onto New Garden Road off of Route 41, to the actual home where Jones grew up. His daughter and her husband were on vacation in Australia, so Jones and I had the place to ourselves. It is a well-kept home with sprawling and well-manicured grounds, and the architecture of what Jones remembered as a boy is still there.

Back on the road, Jones pointed to where the now defunct Penn Green Schoolhouse once stood, where his mother once served as a substitute teacher. At the New Garden Crossroads, he said that the new Garden Friends Meeting House will be holding its 300th anniversary in September. “They had a 200th anniversary in 1915, and over a thousand people attended, and there’s a booklet that includes all of the speeches given at that celebration,” he said. “this was the center of town, and in many ways, it still is. My grandmother was a member of the Sadsbury Meeting in Christiana, and my mother was a Mthodist from Glenmmore. When my parents married in 1921, my grandmother moved her membership, and they Continued on Page 34

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all joined New Garden Meeting.”

The car wove around the soft bends of Penn Green Road through Landenberg, which Jones remembered as a mill town, and although he lived less than three miles from the town’s epicenter, Jones saw Landenberg as a hardscrabble outpost in comparison to the docile farm fields he and his family farmed, just to the north.

The Jones home on East New Garden Road is bordered by the New Garden Elementary School to the south, by Hartefeld on the East, and Newark Road to the west. The home, a white farmhouse, faces to the south and immediately behind it, fields of corn tilt back and forth beneath a perfect blue sky. Although Pownall and Peg have moved to a nearby retirement village, they still help maintain the home and its immediate surroundings. Peg still uses an upstairs room for her quilting and still attempts to hold back the weeds from her gardens that border the yard.

Pownall still mows the lawn and takes care of minor repairs.

Jones took me to a nearby barn and showed me the tractor his father had purchased in 1941. The tractor

-- as well as its twin beside it -- looked brand new, the preserved beneficiary of a farmer who, for more than five decades, has placed a value on the care and proper running of his machines.

Something was wrong with the picture. It was no longer sepia in tone. Cornfields plush with ripening produce swallowed up the entirety of the landscape, but as I looked out over them, I saw that there were no farmers.

I looked again at Jones, and this time, I saw another story.

When the young Jones was old enough to begin helping his father on the farm in 1935, there were 6.8 million family farms in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that number has fallen to two million. A little more than a century ago, nearly 40 percent of the nation’s population lived and worked on farms. Now, about two percent do and, most alarmingly, more than 300 farmers leave their land every week, for good. The reasons are as simple as they are painful: food processing conglomerates and huge seed companies are dominating the farming industry, while at the same time, too many young people are less inclined to follow their family name into a career that demands seven-day work weeks for the uncertain promise that at the end of harvest time, there will be enough to sell in order to make a 610.388.8088.BrandywinePrime.com Rt.1 & Creek Road, Chadds Ford, PA We Serve: Mon - Sat 5pm Sat Lunch starting @ 12 noon Sun Brunch 10am-2pm Sun Dinner 4pm Best Steakhouse Chester County Wine Spectator Award of Excellence Best of Philly Burger Award Best of Delaware Opentable-Service Award

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living; not to mention the necessity of investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in farming technology.

The four Jones children -- three of whom live in the vicinity of where they grew up -- are the first generation who have not been farmers since the Pownalls first came from England in 1682.

I thanked Jones and Peg for their hospitality, and as I left the farm, a single thought stayed with me as I drove home: Who will take care of these tractors when Pownall Jones is no longer here? * * * * Part and parcel of our continued self-assessment, we often measure our lives by the places we have visited -- some of us, by the countries we have stepped foot in -- and not by what we have done in the tiny space of our daily life, believing that the broader the footprint, the better the life. This assignment, ironically, arrived during a period of self-reflection in my own life that has met at an intersection, demanding answers. What is a full life, and have I truly lived one? Is happiness better achieved in the act of leaping from continent to continent like a person of the world, like a restless searcher, or is it better attained through what I have learned in the small spaces I have chosen to live my life in?

In between farming, helping to raise four children, Pownall and Peg Jones have managed to do their share of traveling, and this Fall, they will embark with their family on a trip to France. And yet, for the vast majority of his life, the world Pownall Jones has known has been a journey in the distance between the house he grew up in and the one in which he reared his family -- a little more than one mile apart.

Before a recent Board of Supervisors meeting at the township building, I looked at the sepia photographs of the township’s history again. Beginning at the top photo, I imagined that a young boy on top of a bicycle rides past the church in the photo. He has just purchased the bike for five dollars -- a lot of money in those days -- but it is enough. This is the world he was born into and it is large enough and he by the end of his life, he will know every inch of it. He then rides through the next photograph, and then the next, in a journey through the small part of southern Chester County that he will know his entire life.

In the very last photograph, the young boy on the bike -- a boy named Pownall -- suddenly disappears off the photo’s edge. I imagine him peddling furiously, turning again home.

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, e-mail rgaw@ chestercounty.com . www.landenbergtoday.com | Fall/Winter 2015 | Landenberg Today

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—————|Around Landenberg|—————

Faith and fellowship

By Steven Hoffman Staff Writer

E

Photo by Steven Hoffman

Ben Quintana, the pastor of Christ Church at the Grove, is the vice president of the Avon Grove Ministerium. Bruce Latshaw, the pastor of the Barn Vineyard Church, is the current president.

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ach month, the religious leaders from 20 local churches gather together to share their faith and enjoy fellowship with each other.

The Avon Grove Ministerium has no official membership or organizational structure, but the 24 active members representing eight different Christian denominations in southern Chester County find significant value in these monthly meetings.

No matter how much these men and women enjoy the sacred work that they have been called to do, what they are tasked with day to day can be difficult.

Bruce Latshaw, the pastor of the Barn Vineyard Church, is the current president of the Avon Grove Ministerium, while Ben Quintana, the pastor of Christ Church at the Grove, is the vice president.

According to Latshaw, a typical meeting of the Avon Grove Ministerium includes time for corporate prayer, a light breakfast, praise reports, updates on any business on the agenda, the reading of scripture from one or more of the pastors, and then time for small group encouragement and prayer.

Latshaw and Quintana have both been involved with the Avon Grove Ministerium for about 15 years.

Latshaw said that when he first started participating with the Avon Grove Ministerium, he found it very beneficial to get to know the other pastors in the area.

Quintana echoed the sentiment. “The relationships are very good,” he said. “I get to know these people. I’m able to rejoice with them because I know them. We care for each other.”

That encouragement and prayer between peers is invaluable because ministers shoulder numerous burdens that few people fully understand.

“It’s a real spiritual family. Many ministers can have times when they feel alone. When one of us hits a rough spot, we can receive counseling and help.” ~ Bruce Latshaw, pastor of the Barn Vineyard Church

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Church leaders are expected to have the management skills of a CEO, but the versatility of a real jack-of-alltrades. They need to be a counselor in times of trouble, a comforter in times of pain, a cheerful friend at other times. Then there’s that little matter of providing spiritual guidance to an entire congregation. The burden is heavy, and the pastors come to rely on the fellowship the Avon Grove Ministerium provides, and rejoice in the faith that is demonstrated during the meetings.

“We almost always have small group prayers, and that creates a sense of cohesion,” Latshaw explained. “It’s a real spiritual family. Many ministers can have times when they feel alone. When one of us hits a rough spot, we can receive counseling and help.”

During the meetings of the Avon Grove Ministerium, the similarities between the members always prevail over their differences. On matters that might be controversial, the leaders of the different denominations agree to disagree. They create a supportive environment that is built on the bedrock of purposeful Continued on Page 38

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prayer and focused, always, on Christ.

“For me,” said Quintana, “it is very gratifying to see the individual ministers praying for the community. It’s a prayer-based group.”

The seeds were planted for the Avon Grove Ministerium by the Avondale Presbyterian Church more than two decades ago. Alice Dripps, a member at that church, had a property in Chatham, and envisioned it as the future home of a Christian retreat center. Dripps would host monthly meetings of church members so that they could pray together and share ideas.

“It was a time for fellowship for Christian ministers,” Latshaw explained.

“Sometimes, they would have a speaker.”

Today, the Dripps’ property is home to the Stillwaters Presbyterian Church. Those meetings of pastors in the area evolved into the Avon Grove Ministerium. In addition to the monthly meetings for church leaders, the Avon Grove Ministerium unites local churches for the community Thanksgiving service, the Good Friday service, the Baccalaureate service, and other events as decided on each year.

The Avon Grove community has undergone significant changes during the last few decades, and the Ministerium is a way for the churches to meet the changing needs of the community.

Latshaw founded a church with his wife, Lynn, when they were still students at the University of Delaware nearly 40 years ago. The original name of the church was Continued on Page 40

Photo by Steven Hoffman

This plaque in the New London Presbyterian Church lists the ministers of the church, dating back to 1726.

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the New Ark Community Church, and members met at first in a campus apartment, and then in a townhouse in Newark, Del. In 1980, the church’s name was changed to the Newark Christian Fellowship Church. Latshaw worked as a teacher in Delaware, but it became evident to him that his true calling was to lead a church. The church eventually relocated to a newly built barn on a 21-acre property in Landenberg, and its identity continued to evolve. When they first moved to the Landenberg property, the building was an actual working barn with animals, and it was slowly converted into a space with offices and a spiritual meeting place. The name of the church became The Barn Vineyard Church. The church was formally adopted into the Association of Vineyard Churches, USA, in 2003, the same year that a new church building was constructed on the property. Today, the Barn Vineyard Church has four full-time pastors caring for and serving approximately 500 members. Latshaw described the church as “an informal, charismatic, contemporary, community of Christians.”

Quintana grew up in Avondale. He graduated from Avon Grove High School in 1977 and was involved in social work until he became a pastor. The Christ Church at the Grove was started eight years ago. The Avondale Presbyterian Church opened its doors to the new church during its first year. Then the Christ Church at the Grove met at the Church in the Vineyard for about five years.

For the last two years, the Christ Church at the Grove has been based out of the former New London Presbyterian Church, an historic building, on Newark Road.

“We’ve been a church in transition, and all the churches here have been so supportive of us,” Quintana explained.

He described the Christ Church at the Grove as an independent Christian church that is contemporary in presentation, but conservative in its values.

Members of the Avon Grove Ministerium, like pastors and ministers everywhere, must learn how to navigate the changing tides of society.

Latshaw said, “One of the substantial challenges that pastors face is this: What is the prevailing understanding of what regular commitment is to a church? Is it twice-amonth Sunday attendance? There are many more things in the world now that compete for the time, money, and energy of people than there was twenty years ago.”

Continued on Page 42

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Photo by Steven Hoffman

The Barn Vineyard Church in Landenberg.

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Quintana added that the societal changes regarding authority, commitment, and values are something that all pastors must address with their congregations.

The Avon Grove Ministerium is open to any religious leaders of churches in the area. Two of the churches that participate are from the Kennett Square area, and there are also four para-church ministries that are cosponsored by churches in the Ministerium. This kind of collaboration that doesn’t have geographic or denominational boundaries was precisely what the founders of the Avon Grove Ministerium had in mind.

“It was always meant to be an opportunity for all,” Quintana explained.

“We’re welcoming and very open to participation by all Christian leaders in the area,” Latshaw explained.

Quintana added that the Avon Grove Ministerium has ethnic, racial, and gender diversity, which is very important as the group works to meet the needs of the diverse community.

Latshaw and Quintana both agreed that the Avon Grove Ministerium is a blessing to them.

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Photo by Steven Hoffman

Latshaw in the Barn Vineyard Church in August.

“It’s a connection to the larger Christian community,” Quintana explained. “We know that we’re a part of something a little bit bigger.”

To contact Staff Writer Steven Hoffman, email editor@ chestercounty.com.

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To understand what and how to study, students must know exactly where they have gaps in knowledge and skills. A diagnostic assessment is the best way to measure a student’s areas of strength and weakness. Any test prep study plan should be built around the areas that need the most attention.

Take several full-length practice exams.

Practice exams give students the chance to get familiar with the testing environment. A study program should incorporate at least two full-length tests so that students can see the impact that their studying has on their test scores.

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www.landenbergtoday.com | Fall/Winter 2015 | Landenberg Today

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—————|Landenberg Arts|—————

Local artist pursues her dreams

Gillespie has experimented with all kinds of different artwork.

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Courtesy photo

Rachel Gillespie has wanted to be an artist since she was five years old. The Avon Grove High School graduate is now studying at Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida. She wants to pursue a career at Disney Animation Studios and work on movies that inspire future generations

By Steven Hoffman Staff Writer

R

achel Gillespie can remember the time when she knew that she wanted to be an artist.

She was five years old and her family was on vacation in Florida. They visited Universal Studios and they were being led on a tour of the animation studio by some of the animators who worked on Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch.”

Continued on Page 46 Courtesy photo

Gillespie’s illustration of Griffyn Llyr from Dianne Salerni’s upcoming novel, “The Morrigan’s Curse.”

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From the very moment that she saw the animators’ work, Rachel knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life.

“Ever since then, I knew that I wanted to be an animator,” Rachel explained during an interview in August. “That made me realize what I wanted to be.”

It’s not unusual Continued on Page 48 Courtesy photo

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Artist...

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for a five-year-old to decide on a career in Opposite page a moment of fascination Courtesy photo and amazement. What is Rachel Gillespie credits her teachers at Avon Grove unusual is for that child High School with making a to grow up, progress big difference in her life, through twelve or more especially the art teachers who have helped her get years of academic work, closer to her dream of reach young adulthood, becoming an animator. and still want to pursue Gillespie is pictured here with several of her art that same career that he teachers: George Janavel, or she wanted at the age Jennifer Martorello, Julie of five -- without ever Watson, and Mercedes Deleguardia. wavering on the dream.

“I have been making art since I was very young, and nothing will ever cause me to lose my passion for it,” Rachel declares on a Facebook page she has set up to showcase her artwork.

Rachel graduated from Avon Grove High School in June and is now in her freshman year at the Ringling College of Art and Design, a prestigious art school in Sarasota, Florida. The college isn’t that far from Universal Studios where Rachel discovered her lifelong passion. It’s also not that far from Disney Animation Studios, where she hopes to one day work professionally.

She remains steadfast about becoming an animator. As a freshman in college, she appreciates that she was able to identify a career path early in life.

“The earlier that you decide on a career, step by step you can work toward the goal,” she explained.

Rachel already has an impressive portfolio as she enters college. While still in high school, she did the character illustrations for “The Eighth Day,” a book written by local author Dianne Salerni.

“I worked on that project on and off after school,” Rachel said, explaining that she put in about three hours of work for each drawing before transferring them into Photoshop. She earned a little bit of money for the work, but she said that she also felt like she was giving something back by helping to contribute to the book.

Salerni, a former teacher in the Avon Grove School District, explained how she came to enlist Rachel for Continued on Page 50

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several different projects related to her writing.

“I started out looking to commission artwork for my author website,” Salerni explained. “My daughter, Gabrielle, suggested I contact her friend, Rachel Gillespie, who had just started her own art business.”

Salerni said that she was impressed by the Continued on Page 68 Courtesy photo

This mural that Gillespie helped work on at Avon Grove High School was part of the work with the school’s Art Society.

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The Chester County Balloon Festival, held this past June at the New Garden Flying Field, may have experienced its share of rain, thunder and gusty winds, but thanks to the determination of many, the skies over New Garden still managed to be lit with a kaleidoscope of color, as captured through the lens of photographer Jeff Kahan

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This year’s three-day Chester County Balloon Festival drew over 13,000 visitors to the New Garden Flying Field.

A little hot air can go a long, long way.

An enthusiastic crowd received quite a thrill when a multi-colored array of balloons took off for the sky.

Continued on Page 60 Photographer Jeff Kahan captured one balloonist inside his flying machine, as he prepared it for display and flight. www.landenbergtoday.com | Fall/Winter 2015 | Landenberg Today

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All photos by Jeff Kahan Photos clockwise from above: In addition to a stunning display of balloons, the festival featured interactive aeronautical games, scuba diving lessons, a beer garden and live music.

Several cartoon characters dotted the night sky of the New Garden Flying Field.

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—————|Landenberg Q&A|————— Photo by Richard Gaw

Q & A

Dave Yake 62

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By John Chambless Staff Writer Dave Yake has become the public face of the Save Our Water grassroots action group in Landenberg, which was formed to block the Artesian water company’s efforts to pump water out of a local aquifer and send it into Delaware. The legal fight has been going on for years, but has intensified as more community support has gotten behind the effort in recent months. As Save Our Water becomes more organized and more of a political force, Yake has found himself at the center of an issue he never thought he’d be part of. He recently answered a few questions about his involvement in the group, and his personal opposition to the Artesian plan.

Q.: How would your home be directly affected by the Artesian plan, if it were to be activated?

A.: It is unlikely, according to Brickhouse Environmental, that our home well would be directly impacted if the Broad Run well were commercially activated, due the distance from the well. However, other local wells could be impacted.

When and how did you find out about Artesian’s purchase of the property and its plan to pump the water?

We were aware of Artesian’s purchase of the water rights to the well from all the public uproar over that in the early 2000s. More recently, in late 2012, Jane and Marion Waggoner from Save Our Water learned of the Pennsylvania DEP application permit to test the well again. It was finally completed in April 2014.

Continued on Page 64

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How did the Save Our Water Committee come about, and how did you become involved?

The formation of Save Our Water dates back to the early 2000s, when Gene Oates formed the organization to fight Artesian’s plans to mine water from the Broad Run well and export it to Delaware.

When Marion and Jane learned of Artesian’s more recent plans to test and activate the well, they reformed the organization and held town hall meetings to educate the public. I met them at one of the early meetings, bought a sign to put up and offered to help them.

What is your professional background, that you thought may lend itself to the work the Commmission is doing?

I have a Ph.D. in chemical engineering, and served in various global research, business and sales senior leadership roles over my 33-year career

with DuPont. In each of those roles, I had to quickly understand the issues, develop a strong working knowledge of the technology, and lead a diverse organization to meet business needs.

What are your basic objections to Artesian’s proposal?

My, and Save Our Water’s, key objections to Artesian’s commercial plans are focused on three key areas: First, a public utility, primarily Delaware, mining water which belongs to all of us for profit outside of New Garden Township -- over 105 million gallons per year, with over 80 percent exported to Delaware. This is not allowed under current township zoning ordinances. Second, I was concerned that the amount of water being mined would draw down the aquifer, stress the Broad Run ecosystem and negatively impact area wells, especially during drought

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periods, without adequate controls and public/regulatory oversight. In fact, we have serious concerns with the insufficient testing that was done by Artesian, the technical analysis of the results and the conclusions.

Finally, Artesian’s heavy-handed approach appears to be focused on getting approval from certain regulatory agencies in a way that circumvents the township zoning approval process and ignores the township’s Comprehensive Growth Plan. This would set a very dangerous precedent.

Have you become more comfortable becoming a public spokesperson on behalf of the Commission?

I have had a lot of experience in communicating to the public and government throughout my DuPont career. My role in

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Save Our Water is a natural application of that experience and it is one shared with Marion Waggoner.

Are you active with other environmental groups in the region?

I am not active with any other environmental groups and am enjoying my retirement, especially helping to take care of our granddaughter and finding time to pursue various hobbies.

What do you like most about the Landenberg area?

My wife Rhonda and I lived in Tokyo, Japan, for nearly six years prior to moving to Landenberg in 2002. We really enjoy the open, rural lifestyle and quality of life compared to the hustle of a large city.

Artist...

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work that Rachel did for the website.

“Originally, I commissioned only three character sketches from Rachel,” Salerni said, “but they were so delightful that I ended up hiring her to do about a dozen more—not just for my website, but for promotional materials, like an eight-day-a-week calendar.”

Rachel describes herself as a “proud graduate” of Avon Grove High School, and it’s clear that she enjoyed the experiences that she had while at the school.

“I really loved the high school’s art department,” she explained. “All of my art teachers were just great—they are a very supportive group of people who make personal connections with the students, and then push them to do their best. I know that I wouldn’t be where I am without them. They helped me out so much.”

Rachel enjoyed a wide variety of activities,

ranging from drawing to video editing to singing or playing the piano, and took every kind of art class that she could take.

“I love dabbling in everything,” she explained of her artwork. “It’s a good experience to try something new and I like challenges.”

She also was an enthusiastic participant in the Avon Grove Artist Society, an extracurricular club for students devoted to the creation of visual art. Led by several art teachers in the school, the Avon Grove Artist Society provided students with the opportunity to have after-school studio days where they could work on their portfolios. The students made an annual portfolio presentation, participated in painting at Homecoming events, worked on mural projects, and showcased their work in a district-wide art show exhibition.

Rachel worked with another student on a representation of Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” that is displayed in the high school.

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Landenberg Today | Fall/Winter 2015 | www.landenbergtoday.com

She also designed multiple T-shirt logos for clubs at Avon Grove High School, including ACTO (All Cultures Together Overcome) and the Holiday Holla, which she designed T-shirts for in 2013 and 2014.

Rachel said that she feels well-prepared for college as a result of what she learned while at Avon Grove. She also believes that her college will prepare her for the next step in her journey.

The Ringling College of Art and Design has a very high rate—about 97 percent—of placing students in jobs after graduation.

“It’s a really top-notch school,” Rachel said, explaining that she is hoping to get an internship with Disney so that she can embark on a career as an animator.

On that fateful trip to Florida when she was five, Rachel not only discovered a potential career, she fell in love with Disney movies and the lessons on life that they so creatively and

delightfully deliver to millions of people. “Lilo & Stitch” is a particular favorite, but Rachel said that she loves many of the Disney films.

One of her favorite quotes is by Walt Disney himself: “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”

Rachel’s dream is to be an animator on Disney films so that she can work on a movie like “Lilo & Stitch” that will be meaningful to millions of children.

The amazing work that members of Disney’s animation team did made a difference in Rachel’s life, and in the lives of millions of other people. She would one day like to work on a movie and have her work entertain and engage children.

“I want to do that for future generations,” she explained.

To contact Staff Writer Steven Hoffman, email editor@chestercounty.com.

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EDUCATION Area SCHOOLS DELAWARE PRIVATE SCHOOLS Archmere Academy 3600 Philadelphia Pike, Claymont, 798-6632, archmereacademy.com Caravel Academy 2801 Del Laws Road, Bear, 834-8938, caravel.org Hockessin Montessori 1000 Old Lancaster Pike, Hockessin, 302-234-1240, thehms.org Independence School 1300 Paper Mill Rd., Newark, 302-239-0332, theindependenceschool.org Layton Preparatory School 6201 Kennett Pike, Centreville, 655-3280, laytonprep.org The New School 812 Elkton Road, Newark, 456-9838, thenewschool.com Red Lion Christian Academy 1390 Red Lion Road, Bear, 834-2526, redlionca.org Salesianum School 1801 N. Broom St., Wilmington, 654-2495, salesianum.org Sanford School 6900 Lancaster Pike, Hockessin, 239-5263, sanfordschool.org St. Andrew’s School 350 Noxontown Road, Middletown, 378-9511, standrews-de.org The Tatnall School 1501 Barley Mill Road, Wilmington, 998-2292, tatnall.org Tower Hill School 2813 W. 17th St., Wilmington, 575-0550, towerhill.org Ursuline Academy 1106 Pennsylvania Ave., Wilmington, 658-7158, ursuline.org

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Wilmington Christian School 825 Loveville Road, Hockessin, 239-2121, wilmingtonchristian.org Wilmington Friends School 101 School Road, Wilmington, 576-2900, wilmingtonfriends.org

DIOCESE OF WILMINGTON Padua Academy 905 N. Broom St., Wilmington, 421-3739, paduaacademy.org St. Elizabeth High School 1500 Cedar St., Wilmington, 656-3369, sehs.org St. Mark’s High School 2501 Pike Creek Road, Wilmington, 738-3300, stmarkshs.net

COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES Delaware College of Art and Design 600 N. Market St., Wilmington, 622-8000, dcad.edu Delaware State University 3931 Kirkwood Hwy., Wilmington, 254-5340, desu.edu Delaware Technical Community College 400 Stanton-Christiana Road, Newark, 454-3900; 333 Shipley St., Wilmington, 571-5300, dtcc.edu Goldey-Beacom College 4701 Limestone Road, Wilmington, 998-8814, gbc.edu Springfield College 1007 Orange St., Wilmington, 658-5720, springfieldcollege.edu University of Delaware Main Campus in Newark; Wilmington Campus, 831-2792, udel.edu Widener University School of Law 4601 Concord Pike, Wilmington, 477-2100, law.widener.edu Wilmington University 320 Dupont Hwy., New Castle, 356-4636; 31 Reads Way, New Castle, 655-5400; 3411 Silverside Road, Wilmington, (877) 967-5464; 651 N. Broad St., Middletown, (877) 967-5464;

EDUCATION PENNSYLVANIA HIGH SCHOOLS Avon Grove School District 375 South Jennersville Road West Grove, PA 19390 610-869-2441 Avon Grove High School (610-869-2446) 257 East State Road, West Grove, PA 19390 Fred S. Engle Middle School (610-869-3022) 107 Schoolhouse Road, West Grove, PA 19390 Avon Grove Intermediate School (610-869-2010) 395 South Jennersville Road, West Grove, PA 19390 Penn London Elementary School (610-869-9803) 383 South Jennersville Road, West Grove, PA 19390 Kennett Consolidated School District 300 East South Street Kennett Square, PA 19348 610-444-6600 Kennett High School (610-444-6620) 100 East South Street, Kennett Square, PA 19348 Kennett Middle School (610-268-5800) 195 Sunny Dell Road, Landenberg, PA 19350 Bancroft Elementary School (610-925-5711) 181 Bancroft Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348 Greenwood Elementary School (610-388-5990) 420 Greenwood Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348 Mary D. Lang Kindergarten Center (610-444-6260) 409 Center Street, Kennett Square, PA 19348 New Garden Elementary School (610-268-6900) 265 New Garden Road, Toughkenamon, PA 19374 Oxford Area School District 125 Bell Tower Lane Oxford, PA 19363 610-932-6600 Oxford Area High School (610-932-6640) 705 Waterway Road, Oxford, PA 19363

Penn’s Grove Middle School (610-932-6615) 301 South Fifth Street, Oxford, PA 19363 Hopewell Elementary School (484-365-6151) 602 Garfield Street, Oxford, PA 19363 Elk Ridge School (610-932-6670) 200 Wickersham Road, Oxford, PA 19363 Jordan Bank School (610-932-6625) 536 Hodgson Street, Oxford, PA 19363 Nottingham School (610-932-6632) 736 Garfield Street, Oxford, PA 19363 Unionville-Chadds Ford School District 740 Unionville Road Kennett Square, PA 19348 610-347-0970 Unionville High School (610-347-1600) 750 Unionville Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348 Charles F. Patton Middle School (610-347-2000) 760 Unionville Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348 Chadds Ford Elementary School (610-388-1112) 3 Baltimore Pike, Chadds Ford, PA 19317 Hillendale Elementary School (610-388-1439) 1850 Hillendale Road, Chadds Ford, PA 19317 Pocopson Elementary School (610-793-9241) 1105 Pocopson Road, West Chester, PA 19382 Unionville Elementary School (610-347-1700) 1775 West Doe Run Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348 Chester County Intermediate Unit Educational Service Center 455 Boot Road, Downingtown, PA 19335 Telephone: (484) 237-5000 Chester County Technical College High School Brandywine Campus 484-593-5100 443 Boot Road, Downingtown, PA 19335 www.tchsbrandywine.org Chester County Technical College High School Pennock’s Bridge Campus 610-345-1800 280 Pennock’s Bridge Road, West Grove, PA 19390 www.tchspennocks.org Continued on Page 72

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EDUCATION

Chester County Technical College High School Pickering Campus 610-933-8877 1580 Charlestown Road, Phoenixville, PA 19460-2371 www.tchspickering.org

NON-PUBLIC SCHOOLS Assumption B.V.M. School (610-869-9576) 290 State Road, West Grove, PA 19390 Bethany Christian School (610-998-0877) 1137 Shadyside Road, Oxford, PA 19363 CFS, The School at Church Farm (610-363-7500) 1001 East Lincoln Highway, Exton, PA 19341-2818 Episcopal Day School (610-644-6181)

Church of the Good Samaritan 212 West Lancaster Avenue, Paoli, PA 19301 www.goodsamdayschool.org Kimberton Waldorf School (610-933-3635) 410 W. Seven Stars Rd., P. O. Box 350, Kimberton, PA 19442 Landenberg Christian Academy (610-255-5512) P.O. Box 397, Kemblesville, PA 19347 www.lca-pa.com London Grove Friends Kindergarten (610-268-8466) 500 West Street Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348 Malvern Preparatory School (484-595-1131) 418 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Sacred Heart School (610-932-3633) 205 Church Road, Oxford, PA 19363

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EDUCATION Continued from Page 72

Upland Country Day School (610-444-3035) 420 West Street Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348 Villa Maria Academy Lower School (610-644-4864) 1140 King Road, Immaculata, PA 19345-0600 West Chester Christian School (610-692-3700) 1237 Paoli Pike, West Chester, PA 19380 West Chester Friends School (610-696-2962) 415 North High Street, West Chester, PA 19380 Westtown School (610-399-0123) 975 Westtown Road, West Chester, PA 19382 White Clay Learning Center (610-880-0114) 250 New Garden Road, Toughkenamon, PA 19374 whiteclaylearning.org

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CHESTER COUNTY CHARTER SCHOOLS Avon Grove Charter School (Early Learning Center) (610-255-5325) 1769 New London Road, Landenberg, PA 19350 www.agcharter.org Avon Grove Charter School (West Grove Campus) (484-667-5000) 110 East State Road, West Grove, PA 19390 www.agcharter.org Chester County Family Academy (610-696-5910) 323 E. Gay Street, West Chester, PA 19380 Email: ccfacademy@comcast.net Erin Dudley Forbes Charter School (610-932-8998) 225 Barnsley Rd., Oxford, PA 19363 Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School (610-701-3333) 1332 Enterprise Dr., West Chester, PA 19380 Continued on Page 76

EDUCATION

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EDUCATION

Sankofa Academy Charter School (610-696-0333) 446 W. Gay Street, West Chester, PA 19380 Email: sankofa.academy@yahoo.com

AREA COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES Cheyney University of PA (610-399-2220) 1837 University Circle, P. O. Box 200, Cheyney, PA 19319-0200 Delaware County Community College (Marple Campus) (610-359-5000) 901 South Media Line Road, Media, PA 19063-1094 Delaware County Community College (Brandywine Campus) (610-723-1100) 455 Boot Road, Downingtown, PA 19335 Delaware County Community College (Brandywine Campus) (610-723-1100) 455 Boot Road, Downingtown, PA 19335

Delaware County Community College (Exton Campus) (610-450-6500) 912 Springdale Drive, Exton, PA 19341 Delaware County Community College (Pennock’s Bridge Campus) (610-869-5100) 280 Pennock’s Bridge Road, West Grove, PA 19390 Immaculata University (610-647-4400) 1145 King Road, Immaculata, PA 19345 The Lincoln University (484-365-8000) 1570 Baltimore Pike, Lincoln University, PA 19352 Penn State Great Valley (610-648-3200) (School of Graduate Professional Studies) 30 East Swedesford Road, Malvern, PA 19355 Valley Forge Christian College (610-935-0450) 1401 Charlestown Road, Phoenixville, PA 19460 West Chester University of Pennsylvania (610-436-1000) University and High Streets, West Chester, PA 19383

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—————|Landenberg Sports|—————

Youngsters learn how to play the world’s most popular sport at Crossan Park

By Steven Hoffman Staff Writer

C

rossan Park was the location for a Challenger Sports’ British Soccer Camp for one week in August.

Youngsters from throughout the area learned the basics of soccer, the world’s most popular sport, under the Continued on Page 80 Photos by Steven Hoffman

The youngsters enjoyed practicing soccer at the camp.

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rs w e ost

ark

Photo by Steven Hoffman

Soccer is a very popular sport among U.S. youngsters, especially after strong showings in World Cup action.

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Soccer...

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tutelage of coaches Rory Harding, from London, and Kieran Nicol, from Scotland.

The Challenger Sports Soccer Camp is based on one of the most innovative approaches to coaching youth soccer in the U.S. and Canada. Each year, Challenger Sports selects coaches from around the Continued on Page 83 Photos by Steven Hoffman

The coaches had the players practice drills.

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Photo by Steven Hoffman

Coaches Rory Harding, from London, and Kieran Nicol, from Scotland, taught the youngsters the basics of soccer.

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Soccer...

Continued from Page 80

world to lead camp programs. An overwhelming majority of the coaches are British. There are programs for each age level, and the curriculum includes a variety of foot skills, technical drills, and tactical practices. The players also learn about the core values of respect, responsibility, integrity, sportsmanship, and leadership.

Harding said that he welcomed the challenge of teaching the basics of soccer to young people in the U.S. The camp utilizes proven training techniques that are also fun for the youngsters. One day, the focus will be on dribbling, another day will focus on shooting, and another day will find the players learning how to pass the ball.

Harding, who does a lot of coaching in his home country, said that soccer has been a lifelong pursuit of his.

“I’ve been playing soccer since the age of four,” he explained, adding that he likes teaching the sport that he loves to any youngster who is interested in it.

Harding said that he sees American youngsters becoming more and more interested in soccer, especially after the recent success of the U.S. men’s team and the U.S. women’s soccer team that won the World Cup title.

Continued on Page 85

Photos by Steven Hoffman

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“There is a lot of excitement, you see it wherever you go,” Harding explained.

The Avon Grove Recreation Association (AGRA) served as the host of the camp.

Cheryl Doyle, the coordinator for AGRA, said that a representative from Challenger Sports reached out more than a year earlier to see if they could work together to bring the soccer camp to the area. She was immediately enthusiastic about having AGRA play a role in bringing the camp to the area, especially since soccer is a very popular sport with families in the community.

“I wanted the kids to have the opportunity to do the camp,” Doyle explained.

More information about other camps offered

by Challenger Sports can be found at www. challengersports.com.

To contact Staff Writer Steven Hoffman, email editor@chestercounty.com.

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Photos by Steven Hoffman

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————|Landenberg Photo Essay|————

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The Landenberg Steeple Chase Photo Essay by Carla Lucas Churches and places of worship dot Landenberg’s landscape. Each church has its own unique style and architecture. Can you recognize the area’s houses of worship from two of their details, such as steeples, entrances, or graveyards?

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Photo Essay by Carla Lucas

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The churches revealed 1

Kemblesville United Methodist Church Located on Route 896 in the village of Kemblesville KUMC was founded in 1852, the same year Franklin Township, where the church stands, was established.

2 St. Rocco Catholic Church Located on Sunnydell Road, near Route 41 This is the first National Hispanic Parish designated by the Archdioceses of Philadelphia.

3

London Tract Baptist Meeting House Located in the White Clay Creek Preserve at the intersection of Sharpless Road, South Bank Road, and London Tract Road The meeting house was built sometime between 1725 and 1731. The building is now part of the White Clay Creek Preserve, and serves as a natural history museum and meeting room.

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Steeple Chase...

Photo Essay by Carla Lucas

Continued from Page 89

Landenberg United Methodist Church

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Located at Penn Green Road and Landenberg Road The first church established at this site was in 1847 and the congregation quarried the stones after working their shifts in the mills. It was then known as Chandlerville Methodist Episcopal Church.

Nicknames for this church are Church by the Stream or Church in the Valley.

Toughkenamon Presbyterian Church and Iglesia Presbiteriana Hispana

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Located in the Village of Toughkenamon on Church Street.

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Cornerstone Presbyterian Church L Located on Gypsy Hill Road, near Route 896 It is one of the newest churches in the region.

London Britain Friends Meeting Located on Route 896, between Strickersville Road and Flint Hill Road This Quaker meeting house was established in 1834, and a congregation continues to meet there each July and August.

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St. Gabriel of the Sorrowful Mother

Located on Route 41, between Newark Road and Penn Green Road The church began as a mission of St. Patrick’s in Kennett Square. In 1988, the parish was established. Before moving to its current site, the church was located in the Village of Landenberg, by Sawmill Road.

The stone used on the building is Avondale brownstone.

The Barn Vineyard Church

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Located off Appleton Road, in London Britain Township The Barn began in the 1970s as the New Ark Community, later changing its name to Newark Christian Fellowship. It moved to the barn at its current site in the 1980s. In 2003, it was adopted into the Association of Vineyard Churches, thus its new name.

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New Garden Friends Meeting Located at the corner of Newark Road and New Garden Road, in Toughkenamon This fall marks the tricentennial of the first meetings held at the site. The first church was a log cabin built by church members. By the mid-1700s, the community had grown and the beginnings of the brick structure we see today started.

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—————|Landenberg Business|————— In his time as a winemaker, Anthony Vietri of Va La Vineyards has never been one for self-praise, but the truth is out: his vineyard was recently named as one of the best in the country

The invisible winemaker Photo by Richard L. Gaw

Va La Vineyards was recently named as one of the top 101 wineries in America by The Daily Meal.

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By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer “...the highly unorthodox quintet that issues from two dozen (mostly Italianate) cépages (largely in field blends! ) on six acres set just back from the main drag of tiny Avondale... is worth a detour; Vietri is passionate, experimental, articulate, and focused on vineyard excellence...”

“Best of 2012” David Schildknecht, The Wine Advocate

Y

ears ago, when Anthony Vietri first began cultivating the 6.73 acres of Avondale farmland that would eventually become Va La Vineyards -- land that once belonged to his great-grandfather -he encountered a man who was driving by the farm on Route 41.

The man pulled over to the side of the road, saw Vietri and others digging into the southern Chester County earth and, in the clipped syntax of the English language tinted with an Italian dialect, asked Vietri what he was planting.

“Grapes, for a vineyard,” answered Vietri, who had just left California for a new life on the same farm he remembered as a child. He was exhausted from the work and frightened over the prospect that becoming a winemaker could be an extremely risky career choice -and that was putting it mildly.

“Are you kidding me?” the man responded. “No grapes can grow in Avondale...

You crazy...”

Undaunted by the fair warnings from the roadside soil advisory committees Continued on Page 97

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Kennett Square

Book a walking food tour of Kennett Square, and visit several of our town’s restaurants, markets, and winery tasting rooms. Sample sweet and savory food samples and local wines on your guided tour. Leave with a satiated appetite and a taste of what makes Kennett Square so unique!

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Va La Vineyards...

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that drove by, Vietri persisted in his original mission -- to produce small quantities of the finest wines possible and, in the process, avoid the pat-ourselves-on-the-back competitions that far too many wineries are all too consumed with. And out of that self-imposed workshop, Va La Vineyards became a shining star of the burgeoning growth of vineyards in Chester County, and out of that process, Vietri became an artist -- the Invisible Winemaker.

While quietly avoiding the limelight and the gladhanding pomp and circumstance, Vietri has toiled on his tractor and in his cellars for more than 15 Continued on Page 98

Photo by Richard L. Gaw

The tasting room at Va La is located in a period-style barn, where guests can sample wines at a serving bar, an upstairs tasting room, or outside on decks that overlook the vineyards.

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years in an attempt to make a better wine. It’s not difficult to understand his reason to conduct his business out of the radar; the Vietri family traces its roots to Northern Italy, where making wine was, and remains, a work of art, and whose winemakers considered it a scared honor to have one of their own grace the dining table of the families it served.

Made in the ancient methods of vins de terroir, Va La has concentrated solely on a few select varietals, the grapes of which are all tilled in four separate Avondale soils: The Silk, now in its 12th, is made from corvina veronese, barbera, carmine, petit verdot and nebbiolo.

The La Prima Donna, now in its 12th vintage, is made from a batch blend of malvasia bianca, petit manseng, pinot grigio and tocai.

The Barbera, now in its 14th, is a blend of fives clones of barbera.

The Mahogany, now in its 8th vintage, is a blend of barbera, malvasia nero and several other kinds of grapes.

The Cedar, now in its 11th vintage, is a blend of five clones of nebbiolo lampia & michet, corvina veronese.

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Photo by Richard L. Gaw

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“We have been blessed by being able to grow our grapes in a very unique geographical location, which allows us our vineyard to receive drainage of water and air in four different directions,” Vietri said.”We’re trying to express what’s happening on this one particular place on the planet, and our philosophy has always been that we want the vineyard to decide the wine, not us.

“Each one of those four plots decides which grapes are to be grown in it, a process that will never be completed in my lifetime, and each year, it gets more complex,” he added. “It’s a yearly, continual process, focusing on those four main wines, because of those four different soils.”

If his or her product is good, however, a winemaker can hide for just so long before the secret is out, and now, Va La Vineyards is not just known to the local oenophiles, who stop by the vineyard’s tasting room to pick up a bottle or a case, but by an entire nation of wine lovers.

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For the second year in a row, Va La Vineyards was named among the “101 Best Wineries in America”

by The Daily Meal, an online resource for recipes, restaurants, chefs and food trends. This year, Va La Vineyards finished at No. 85 – and not just the only vineyard in Chester County to crack the list – but the only one in Pennsylvania.

The judging was not based on all of the ancillary attributes that often judge a vineyard, the Daily Meal said, such as architecture or a beautiful setting. “Is it a dependable veteran, tried and true?” the article read. “An audacious innovator? Does it specialize in just one or two grape varieties, or do a sterling job with 20? Is it representative of its corner of the wine country? Does it help, in one way or another, enhance the reputation of its region, and/or of American wine in general?

Panelists who took part in the judging were also asked to step outside of the box of the usual places Continued on Page 102

Va La guests can spend a leisurely weekend afternoon tasting the fruits of the vines.

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Photo by Richard L. Gaw

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where wine is grown in the United States, such as California, the Pacific Northwest and New York State. Although two-thirds of he list were from California, the list also included wineries from Virginia, Texas, Maryland, Colorado, New Mexico, Michigan.

The Daily Meal praised Va La Vineyards for its originality.

“Anthony Vietri is one of the more original winemakers in America,” the online source said. “Over the past decade, he has cultivated more than two dozen French and Italian varietals and their clones in...his ‘little vineyard’ of slightly less than seven acres located amid the area’s mushroom farms. They are unusual wines, to say the least, benefiting from long aeration and tasting unlike anything you’ve ever tried...

There is no reference point for these wines – but they are remarkable, and, yes, quite delicious.”

“It’s kind of embarrassing but its also absolutely wonderful, especially for my family,” Veitri said. “I feel very good for them, because they’ve sacrificed and worked so hard and put so much into this business, so to receive recognition like this is an honor.”

In a list dominated by vineyards and wineries from California, the Pacific Northwest and New York State, Vietri is proud to add ‘Pennsylvania’ to that list.

“One of the things we decided a long time ago was that we don’t submit the wines into competitions, so we are limited in terms of how we can help Chester County on the national level,” he said. “Because its not something we are not normally able to do, it just makes it that much sweeter.”

Va La Vineyards is located at 8820 Gap Newport Pike, Avondale, Pa 19311. For more information about wine tastings and special events throughout the year, visit www.valavineyard.com or call 610-268-2702.

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, e-mail rgaw@chestercounty.com.

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