Quarryville's search for a new police chief may be over before it started.
Members of borough council have approached current chief Ken Work and asked him to stay on the job. Work, who has been chief of the borough's police department for 14 years, announced he would retire from that post at the end of the year. He has also served as the borough manager for a year and said he will continue in that position. For the past eleven years, Scott Weyman has been teaching history. After working at Solanco High School for five years, he moved to Smith Middle School. Now he's changed course. Weyman will be teaching instrumental music in the district's two middle schools and beginning instrumental music at Quarryville Elementary School. The move takes his second career - teaching and playing music - and makes it full-time. The U.S. Postal Service is hiring.
The jobs are part-time, but they can lead to a permanent career, Quarryville Postmaster Patricia Wright said. The local post office is hosting a job fair to tell prospective employees how they can become substitute rural route carriers. It took Shauna Ridge years to find her calling.
"It did not come from any one incident," she said last week. "It was a gradual call." It was a call that saw her installed as pastor of Quarryville's United Methodist Church late last month. She started her pastorate on June 29; now she and her husband, Jamie, are settling in and getting to know the Southern End. "The congregation has been very welcoming," she said last week. Channeling that positive energy will be one of her first goals. Oak Hill Fellowship Church will install its new pastor during a special service at 9 a.m. on Sunday, July 27.
Ben Miller, a member of the congregation, will become the new pastor and teacher. He will replace the founding pastor, Nate Newell. Pastor Newell helped plant the church six years ago and had intended to remain with the congregation. However, he has been called to become the new pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel, Kuala Lumpur. Pastor Newell will begin a four-month training period in Chicago in September. Members of St. Paul's Church took God's Big Back Yard outdoors last week.
Volunteers held the first of four vacation Bible school sessions in Quarryville's Huffnagle Park on Wednesday morning, July 9. There will be three more sessions, scheduled for the mornings of July 16, 23, and 30. Each of the sessions is a stand-alone program, so kids can attend a later camp and not be confused by the activities. Ken Work will officially retire at the end of the day on Wednesday, December 31. He'll be back on the job in Quarryville's borough hall on Friday, January 2, 2015. After more than 13 years, Work is stepping down as the borough's police chief. He will continue to serve as borough manager. Work notified members of borough council of his decision on Monday night, July 7. It's a bittersweet decision, he said last week. "I've been a police officer for 43 years," he said. "It's tough to walk away after doing this so long.… It will be tough not to be a policeman. I've done that all my life since high school. There has never been a day when I haven't wanted to go to work. I couldn't imagine doing anything else." With 15 full teams and a single one-man team, organizers of the 2014 Solanco Relay for Life are confident they will reach their goal of more than $62,000. "We are at $51,000 right now," chairman Dawn Althoff said Saturday morning. This year's relay will include a car show on Saturday and live music Friday night. The events have been added to traditional relay activities such as the beautiful man lap, a candy drop, and fire truck rides. "We're trying to get more people from the community to show up and watch," she said. For the past four years, Jamie Welk has served as chief of the Quarryville Fire Company. Recognition of that service now extends well beyond the Southern End. On June 6, Welk was named the 2013 Chief of the Year for Lancaster County. He becomes the first person to receive this award, inaugurated by the Lancaster County Fire Chiefs' Association. A deputy chief from the Garden Spot Fire Department received the Line Officer of the Year. There will be some changes when the auctioneer begins the Quarryville Library's second annual benefit sale. Instead of mixing items during the sale, like merchandise will be grouped. "We will be doing it in hour-long blocks," said Linda Walter said. "We didn't do that last year. People want to know when things will be sold." The selection of sale items will also change this year. "We're having a number of bushes and small trees donated by Octoraro Native Plant Nursery," Walter said. The plants include New Jersey Tea, native Viburnum, and blueberry bushes and small Eastern Redbud trees. A reported standoff ended peacefully Thursday evening after a man was taken into custody and transported to a Lancaster hospital for a mental evaluation. Quarryville Borough police and an ambulance were called to the residence at the intersection of State St. and N. Church St. shortly after 6 p.m. on May 5. When they arrived, they were told the man had threatened to hurt someone if an officer tried to arrest him. Borough police then asked for troopers to back them up. The man was drunk, Quarryville Police Chief Ken Work said, and did not offer any resistance when he was detained. During the incident, fire police closed off State St. from Hess St. to Summit Ave. and N. Church St. Spectators watched from the lawn of the Wells Fargo Bank and the porch of Sam's Restaurant as the situation developed. The popular concerts in Quarryville's Huffnagle Park will return this summer.
The now-defunct Huffnagle Park Civic Association began hosting the concerts in 2008. Late last year, the association disbanded and the fate of the concerts was in question. The free concerts have been popular since their inception, Quarryville Borough Manager Ken Work said. Members of the Quarryville Lions Club will host a Memorial Day commemoration on Monday, May 26.
This will be the community's first formal commemoration since a Memorial Day parade was cancelled nearly two decades ago. "We've been talking about this as something we should do since the memorial pillars were renovated," said Joanne Black, the club's past president. Quarryville needs new lights for the two ball fields at Memorial Park. But the borough doesn't have the money to buy them. The immediate issue is the safety of the 70-foot-tall poles that support the lights. Some of the poles have plates on them dating their installation to 1948. Others are more recent. Buying one new pole cost $8,000 several years ago. That's when the borough purchased a replacement for a pole that fell over. "We were able to piggyback the shipping with other poles," borough manager Ken Work said. "Otherwise, the shipping would have been at least that much again, because poles that size don't come from Pennsylvania." Now the borough will be hiring a firm to determine the condition of the poles on each field. The expanded and upgraded Quarryville area sewage treatment plant began operation this week.
The project won't be completed for another five months, however. A fast car should be red. And loud. It doesn't hurt if it's also a classic and something of a rarity. Terry Farmer keeps his version in the garage behind his home on Quarryville's Summit Ave. He has owned the carefully-preserved Rouge Red 1965 Ford Mustang GT convertible for about a dozen years. "I'm here to unify the diverse ministries in the church." That's one the Rev. Dr. Sam Andreades' goals. His new charge, Quarryville's Faith Reformed Presbyterian Church, has been without a senior pastor for about two years. "They need leadership to continue to move forward," he said last week. "We need to forge a vision of the family of God." A month from now, the Friends of the Quarryville Library will host their first one-day inventory reduction book sale. "This is a new idea for us. We hope to sell more books this way and give us some room in our storage area," said Friends president Carol Biscardi. Eventually, the group hopes to hold a one-day sale every two months. Four Quarryville Borough employees were honored for their service during council's January 6 public meeting. William Lamparter, the borough's maintenance supervisor, was honored for 20 years' service. Lamparter joined the borough crew in 1994. Clint Herr will complete 15 years of service this year. Herr began working full time for the borough in 1999. Ron Munro was honored for 11 years of service. Munro joined the borough crew in 2002. Nearly eight years ago, volunteers began serving free community meals in Quarryville.
At first, the groups had trouble attracting a dozen people to the twice-monthly Flowing Oil Café dinners. Those numbers have risen steadily since that first dinner was served in April, 2004. Using funding from two grants, the Southern Lancaster County Historical Society is working to make its archives more accessible to researchers.
The grants came from the Sons of the American Revolution and the Quarryville Lions Club. For more than six decades, only weather ravaged the stone monuments flanking the entrance to Quarryville's Memorial Park. Late last month, three weeks after the restored monuments were dedicated, someone knocked four flagstone caps from one of the memorial planters. Something hit the planter closest to Park Ave. hard enough to dislodge the flagstone caps, knocking one to the ground and chipping it. Sometimes, a family just needs a little help to get through tough times. "We see it more and more," said Charles Grimasuckas. "People need a little assistance." Four Quarryville families got a some help last Saturday afternoon, thanks to members of the Quarryville Police Department and community members. "We knew there were people who could use a Thanksgiving dinner," Grimasuckas said. "I asked the other officers if they wanted to get involved, and they did." Starting early next month, Quarryville borough officials will have a new tool to help them cope with problem properties.
The issues can range from overgrown lots to buildings that are close to collapsing. Frequently, the buildings are in foreclosure or have been neglected as the family goes through a divorce. |
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