When it gets colder, it’s not only important to be mindful of your pets and your plants but also your home’s pipes and water heater.
Yes, those inanimate objects need extra care, too.
As temperatures drop across the region, the risk of your home’s pipes freezing increases. There are steps, however, that homeowners can take to help stop that from happening and help you avoid a hefty plumbing bill this winter.
Here’s a list of plumber-approved tips on how to keep a pipe from freezing, spotting a frozen one, and what to do if it bursts.
How to prevent your pipes from freezing
“It comes down to three main things: draining outside faucets, keeping pipes warm, and checking for leaks,” said Vincent Thompson, owner of Thompson Plumbing and Heating. Thompson is a master plumber of more than 50 years and for two decades taught plumbing at Dobbins Vocational School in North Philadelphia.
💧 Draining outside faucets
Over the summer, we use outside faucets and hoses to water the plants, rinse of sidewalks, or simply cool down. When the temperature dips, water can freeze and build pressure, ultimately causing a burst pipe, a situation far too common, according to Thompson.
He recommends disconnecting your hose (and storing it for the winter), shutting off the valve that feeds the faucet or spigot (usually found near the hot water heater), and letting the remaining water in the pipe drain out. You can leave the faucet or spigot slightly open, according to Thompson. Letting the faucet drip is also a good suggestion for inside fixtures.
“If it’s empty, it’ll never freeze,” Thompson said. “But if there’s water, it can expand and explode. Then you’ll come out in the spring to use your hose and the water will be shooting out of the wall.”
🌡️ Keep your pipes warm
When the freezing weather descends upon us, we bundle up to stay warm. Pipes need that treatment too. Ideally, the lowest you want to keep your thermostat set at is 50 degrees, but heating is expensive. According to Thompson, the absolute lowest you can go is 40 degrees, because your pipes will start freezing at 39 degrees.
Opening the cabinets underneath your bathroom sink can be a good way to keep pipes from getting too cold. And for the ones in extra-cold spots, using electrical heating tape or fitting them with foam and rubber sleeves is a good idea. Be sure to check for any leaks beforehand, because if water is accumulating, they won’t prevent a pipe from bursting and it will become an added step.
🚽 Check for leaks
“Every drop that goes down the drain will turn into an icicle and eventually can clog up the entire soil stack,” explained Thompson. Not addressing it can result in frozen pipes, flooding, and even water backing up through your toilet.
After 50 years of handling these cases, he advises looking at your water meter because sometimes the leak might not be obvious. Make sure no water sources are open, and look at the blue or red triangle (depending on your meter). If it’s turning that can be a sign of a leak.
If you suspect the culprit is your toilet, he recommends adding a couple of food dye drops into the tank. If the water in the bowl changes color, your suspicions are correct.
Andrew Gadaleta, contractor, works on getting the heat fixed at Visitation BVM School in Philadelphia in December 2021 so that students could return to school. Thieves broke into the school Tuesday morning, ripping copper pipes from the walls that caused flooding. The water rendered the school unusable for a week.
How to spot a frozen pipe
Your house is filled with water pipes, and while it’s not hard to figure out when you’re dealing with a frozen pipe, it can be tricky to figure out where the frozen section is. If you turn on a faucet and nothing comes out, you’re going to have to do a little detective work.
The first step should be to try all the other faucets in your house. If all the faucets in a room aren’t working, the freeze is likely in a split from the main pipe. If all the faucets on a floor aren’t working, the freeze is likely between where the first- and second-floor pipes separate. If all the faucets in your house aren’t working, then the freeze is probably near where the main pipe enters the house.
The frozen section of the pipe, if exposed, will sometimes have condensation over it. You’ll also be able to tell that it’s colder just by touching it.
How to thaw a frozen pipe
Before thawing a frozen section of pipe, you should open the faucet to relieve the water pressure and allow the water to escape once it thaws. You should also begin the thawing process close to the faucet and work your way to the blockage. If melted water and ice get caught behind the blockage, the chance that the pipe will burst increases.
One of the easiest ways to thaw a frozen pipe is with a hair dryer. You can also use hot towels or a heat lamp to warm up the pipe. Never use an open flame.
What to do if a pipe bursts
Don’t panic. The first thing you should do is shut off the main water line into your property. This will prevent your house from flooding. The main water valve is usually near your water meter. After you’ve done that, call your plumber. Locating and tagging the valve to your main water line ahead of time can help make the moment less stressful.
Robert Jordan was playing in his backyard on Aug. 15, 1975, another summer afternoon in his idyllic Delaware County neighborhood, when the panic began to spread from house to house.
Gretchen Harrington, an 8-year-old girl from his Bible camp, was missing.
“I remember being asked, ‘Have you seen Gretchen?’ and saying, ‘No, why?’” Jordan, who was 9 years old at the time, recalled this week.
The Amber Alert system wouldn’t begin for two more decades. There were no cell phones. No Facebook, Citizen or Nextdoor apps.
But through a network of suburban moms, everyone in Jordan’s Marple Township neighborhood seemed to hear the news at nearly the same time.
“It went right down the line, housewives not even getting on the phone, just going to tell each other something had happened,” Jordan said. “We knew something was happening because our mothers were so jittery.”
They sprang into action. Jordan piled into a neighbor’s Volkswagen van with his mother and four other kids. Their search began at a nearby park.
Hundreds of residents from Marple and neighboring towns would later comb wooded areas with no results. Tracking dogs were called in. Even a psychic.
“We haven’t got a thing, not a thing,” then-Broomall Fire Chief Knute Keober told The Inquirer two days after Gretchen’s disappearance. “If she’s in the area, she’s by Jesus well-hidden.”
Police search for Gretchen Harrington in 1975. Harrington was reporting missing that August, and found dead in October.
It wasn’t until Oct. 14, 1975, that a hiker found skeletal remains along a path in Ridley Creek State Park. At first, he thought they belonged to an animal.
“I looked closely and saw what I thought was fingernails,” the man told police, according to a new book on the case. The body was positively identifiedas that of Gretchen Harrington. It bore signs of blunt force trauma to her skull. Her death was ruled a homicide.
Jordan, 57, now a health care marketing executive, still thinks of Gretchen and that summer each time he drives down Lawrence Road, the last place she was seen.
He remembers the Bible camp. Hot dogs and baked beans. Kickball and Wiffle ball. Then, an abduction and a murder. It haunted families for years.
“So many young people from the ‘70s still bear that pain and anxiety today,” he said. “She was a lovely girl.”
‘It was always a dead end’
Brandon Graeff was 2 years oldwhen Gretchen Harrington’s body was found. The case had long turned cold by 1997, when he joined the Marple Township police force.
Tips had poured in early on, then slowed. Detectives pursued them all, on and off the clock.
“Everything — and I mean everything — was followed up on,” said Graeff, who became chief in 2020.
The case came up from time to time, in roll call, or when a detective would grab the folder again during a slow week.
“They’d look through it, maybe try to see something different for her,” Graeff said, “But we couldn’t. We didn’t. It was always a dead end.”
In a 1975 Inquirer photo, Zoe Harrington looks over the area on Lawrence Road in Broomall where her sister Gretchen Harrington was last seen.
Since 1975, the case has proceeded along two tracks: the abduction handled by Marple Police, and the homicide by state police, because the park in Edgmont Township is in their jurisdiction.
In early 2021, Graeff got a call from a man named Mike Mathis, who said he and another former township resident, Joanna Sullivan, were working on a book about the murder and were hoping the department would cooperate with granting them some access to the files.
With little movement in the investigation in decades, Graeff couldn’t think of a good reason to say no.
“We’re dealing with a little girl whose killer was not held to account,” he said. “My question to myself was, ‘Why not? How could it hurt?’”
Trinity Chapel, where David Zandstra was reverend.
Sullivan, 57, remembers being at Lawrence Park Swim club the day that Gretchen disappeared. The image of a hovering helicopter was seared into her memory.
“We were just at the pool on a hot summer day and the helicopter was overhead,” she said. “We were wondering what was going on. Then we heard.”
Mathis, 58, remembers his father joining the search for Gretchen. He and Sullivan would meet a few years later at Paxon Hollow Middle School. They were editors at the student newspaper, The Hollow Log.
They kept in touch through high school and beyond. At a reunion decades later, they’d talk about writing a book together about Gretchen.
“It just stayed with me and Mike and many other kids through the years,” said Sullivan, now the editor-in-chief of the Baltimore Business Journal. “I always thought I’d like to write that story.”
Joanna Sullivan and Mike Mathis, who worked together on the student newspaper at Paxon Hollow Middle School, released a book last year on the murder of Gretchen Harrington. Weeks later, a new witness came forward who enabled state police to elicit a confession from David Zandstra, a former reverend.
When COVID struck in 2020, Sullivan and Mathis suddenly had more time. They got started by creating a list of people they wanted to interview.
“At the top of the list,” she said, “was the Zandstra family.”
The book, Marple’s Gretchen Harrington Tragedy: Kidnapping, Murder and Innocence Lost in Suburban Philadelphia, was published in October 2022. Sullivan and Mathis did a round of public appearances in the area, including a December book signing at the Barnes & Noble in the Lawrence Park Shopping Center — just down the street fromwhere Gretchen was abducted.
They had no idea that, just a few weeks later, a woman would come forward with information that would break the case wide open.
“I think it was Mr. Z”
On Jan. 2, 2023, state police interviewed a woman later identified in court documents only by her initials. She said she’d frequently slept at the home of a local reverend named David Zandstra and his family because she was friends with his daughter.
Zandstra had served at Trinity Chapel Christian Reformed Church, one of two churches on Lawrence Road in Marple Townshipthat were used for the Bible camp that Gretchen attended. The other was the Reformed Presbyterian Church, where Gretchen’s father was the pastor.
It was Zandstra who called police and reported Gretchen missing at 11:23 a.m. on Aug. 15, 1975. He said he was calling at the request of the girl’s father.
A missing person’s poster for Gretchen Harrington, 8, from a 1975 Inquirer article. The Delaware County District Attorney has announced charges against David Zandstra, currently of Marietta Ga., in Harrington’s murder.
The new witness told state investigators that during two sleepovers at the Zandstra house when she was 10 years old, she awoke to Zandstra touching her. She also showed police a childhood diary she’d kept that mentioned the sleepovers and, in September 1975, her suspicion that Zandstra might have been involved with the attempted kidnapping of a girl in her class, as well as Gretchen’s disappearance.
“It’s a secret, so I can’t tell anyone, but I think he might be the one who kidnapped Gretchen,” she wrote. “I think it was Mr. Z.”
At first, a cordial interview
Earlier this month, David Zandstra, 83 and living in Marietta, Ga., walked into an interview room at the Cobb County Police Headquarters with no reservations about speaking with police. He didn’t lawyer up. It was the department’s “soft” interview room. Couch, comfortable chairs, unlocked.
Two Pennsylvania troopers were waiting for him: Cpl. Andrew Martin, who had picked up the Harrington case about 2017, and Eugene Tray, who’d been called in recently. They’d caught a flight to Atlanta on July 17 to interview the octogenarian suspect, with thenew information in hand.
Trooper Eugene Tray, who participated in the investigation and arrest of David Zandstra, and Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer, announcing the arrest.
If Zandstra was worried about the interviewwhen he sat down, he didn’t show it — at least not at first.
Back in 1975, police had interviewed Zandstra twice. He also spoke to Mathis for the book, which focused on a different man as the prime suspect.
“Deep down, I’m sure he was very, very concerned,” Tray said.
The conversation was almost cordial to start. Zandstra denied ever seeing Gretchen on the day she went missing.
But then police told Zandstra about the sexual assault allegations from the girl with the diary. It was the final straw placedon top of nearly a half-century of guilt. He broke down and confessed.
“We asked and he spoke,” Tray said. “He was presented with things I don’t think he expected to be presented with. Then, I think he started to think more on it. I think he just wanted his sick, twisted version of redemption, and to come clean.”
Zandstra admitted to abducting Gretchen as she was walking to Trinity Chapel for morning exercises, according to the criminal complaint. He said Gretchen asked to go home, but he drove her to a wooded area and parked. When she refused his demand to take off her clothes, he struck her in the head with his fist, court documents state.
Zandstra said he checked her pulse and believed that she had died, so he attempted to cover up her half-naked body with sticks and left the area.
“He was two different people,” Tray said of Zandstra, before and after his confession. “He was definitely relieved and happy to get that off his chest, how sick that may be.”
Searching for other victims
Zandstra left Delaware County in 1976, and worked in Texas and California before retiring to Georgia. Cops in and around Marple Township who’d worked on the case, or helped search for Gretchen in 1975, have retired and died.
The case took a toll on many of them, knowing a child killer could have gotten away with it, said Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer, who was 12 years old when Gretchen disappeared.
“It’s important to understand law enforcement officers are moved by the trauma they see happen,” he said. “That’s why they’re in this business of trying to bring justice.”
A photo of a victim and her alleged killer are shown during District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer’s news conference on Monday, July 24, 2023.
Stollsteimer described Zandstra’s arrest as a “great relief” to police in Delaware County and praised Martin, in particular, for sticking with the case.
“This is just great, old-fashioned police work,” he said.
Martin was unable to attend the news conference on Monday announcing Zandstra’s arrest and was not available for an interview this week. Tray, however, said the “case would not have been solved were it not for him.”
State police collected DNA from Zandstra when he was arrested, which could prove useful if there are additional victims in other parts of the country.
As part of that effort, the Christian Reformed Church in North America says it is reaching out to Zandstra’s former congregations. He served in Flanders, N.J.; Broomall, Pa.; Plano, Texas; and San Diego and Fairfield, Calif.
After settling in Georgia, Zandstra continued to advise clients of a pregnancy resource center, according to a 2012 religious newsletter in which he wrote a small section titled “Peace to you.” A photo shows him smiling, with gray hair and a closely cropped beard.
“The prospect of peace was and is badly needed in the uncounted and constant conflicts of our world,” he wrote. “Only believers in Jesus are able to find real peace with God.”
“Who knows? This guy was a monster,” Stollsteimer said. “Nothing would surprise me.”
Sullivan, the author of the book on the Harrington murder, has been fielding calls and Facebook messages this week from people in Marple who might have information about other cases of abuse.
“I don’t think it was an isolated case,” Sullivan said.
As for whether the book helped lead to the break in the case, that depends on whom you ask. Some law enforcement officials are convinced that it did. Others cautioned against such speculation. Regardless, a new chapter is planned if the book goes to another printing: Case solved.
On Friday, the Delco DA’s office got word that Zandstra would waive an extradition hearing and agree to be transported from Georgia to Pennsylvania. But his defense lawyer later sought to have the waiver recalled because he was not present with Zandstra when it was signed. Authorities are awaiting a judge’s ruling.
The Harrington family released a statement this week, thanking police for their work and community members for their support over the years. Gretchen’s father, Harold, died in November 2021 at the age of 94.
“If you met Gretchen, you were instantly her friend,” the family wrote. ”She exuded kindness to all and was sweet and gentle. Even now, when people share their memories of her, the first thing they talk about is how amazing she was and still is. At just 8 years old, she had a lifelong impact on those around her.”
A crew working at a Philadelphia warehouse Tuesday was well on its way toward building 120 combination shade stations and planters to be installed this summer on sidewalks in the Kingsessing, Point Breeze, Grays Ferry, and Haddington neighborhoods.
The stations, many of which have already been installed, are built of pressure-treated lumber and come with a bench, umbrella, and decorative planter.
“This idea started as a job creation and heat mitigation program but turned into a broader set of things,” said Franco Montalto, a Drexel engineering professor who directs the program. “We found that a lot of people like these planters. They create social opportunities, and they are an aesthetic improvement.”
The shade can’t come soon enough. Temperatures are forecast to reach 97 on Friday, setting up a dual summer ick for Philadelphians: high heat, high humidity. Together, they’ll combine to make it feel like 106.
This week’s heat wave comes on the heels of data showing Philadelphia ranks as the sixth highest U.S. city for the number of people experiencing an “urban heat-island effect” of more than 9 degrees compared to those living in nonurban areas. It is also one of the few cities that have neighborhoods exceeding 12 degrees of heat island effect.
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Where it’s hottest
The data from the nonprofit Climate Central provide a model for which city neighborhoods are most vulnerable during heat waves because of the density of sidewalks, streets and buildings, along with the lack of tree cover.
Parts of Center City rank among the top for a heat island effect of more than 12 degrees. Center City, however, certainly has residents but is mostly a large swath of offices and retail and not representative of the city’s true residential neighborhoods.
Those highly residential areas, such as Fairmount, Spring Garden, North Philadelphia, East Schuylkill, Southwest Center City, Point Breeze, Kensington, Bella Vista, and Southwark, all bake up to 10 degrees higher than surrounding neighborhoods outside the city, the data suggest.
City officials have said previously that temperatures in some neighborhoods, such as Hunting Park, can rise even higher, leaving medically vulnerable residents at risk. This year, Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration launched a 10-year Philly Tree Plan that calls for planting thousands of trees to increase the city’s canopy to 30% as a way of tackling the disparity.
In general, areas of the city near big parks, with more detached homes and more tree canopy fare much better. Pennypack, West Oak Lane, Overbrook, Olney, Frankford, Bustleton, Northeast Philadelphia, East Falls, and Manayunk all experience a heat-island effect of less than 7 degrees.
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Philly’s islands of heat
Climate Central did not base its study on actual temperatures, but rather on modeling that combines data from satellite imagery, impervious land cover, green space, building footprints, transportation, and census tract population data.
Scientists use the data to model which tracts would likely be warmer than others. For example, buildings, roads, and other infrastructure absorb and reemit the sun’s heat more than forests and rivers. Dark surfaces, such as black asphalt roofs, reflect less light and retain more heat. As a result, certain areas can become hotter during extreme heat relative to suburban and rural areas, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The heat-island effect strikes a mix of neighborhoods:
For example, a neighborhood in the eastern part of North Philadelphia has an urban heat-island effect of more than 11 degrees. The population is 12% Hispanic, 16% Black, 44% white, and 23% Asian.
A cluster of streets in Kensington has a heat-island effect of 10 degrees, according to the Climate Central data. The neighborhood is 51% Hispanic, 25% Black, and 19% white. But a cluster in South Philly that’s 73% white, 10% Hispanic, 13% Asian and 2% Black sees the same 10 degree effect.
One of the least impacted parts of the city, West Oak Lane, with a 6.6 degree heat-island effect, is 94% Black. And people living in mostly white Bustleton experience the same effect.
The data, however, differ from Philadelphia’s Heat Vulnerability Index, which is used to indicate neighborhoods most at risk during extreme heat events. The city’s index takes into account more than just temperature. It looks at social, economic and health factors such as age, education, language barriers, percent of people living in poverty, race and ethnicity, and social isolation. It looks at the number of people who have asthma, heart disease, and other health issues.
For example, the Climate Central data give a census tract in North Philadelphia a heat-island effect of 7.75 degrees, which is not among the highest in the city. But the city assigns the same tract a “very high” score on the Heat Vulnerability Index. The neighborhood is 95% nonwhite, many live below the poverty line and have obesity and hypertension.
“Every day is a learning experience,” said Omar Sewell, 42, of South Philadelphia, who is working under a Drexel-led program to build shade stations for city sidewalks. Sewell spoke at the program’s rented warehouse in Kingsessing on Tuesday.
Finding shade
Jennifer Brady, a former EPA staffer who conducted the analysis for Climate Central, said it makes sense that Center City would show a high degree of heat-island effect because of the population density, paucity of trees, tall buildings, and infrastructure that absorbs heat and reduces airflow.
The impact of heat on people in Center City might be much less than in other neighborhoods, Brady said. That’s because people in Center City tend to be wealthier with the means to escape or have easy access to air-conditioned apartments, offices, stores, or shaded square.
“There are other neighborhoods that are not only high risk, but you can’t walk three or four blocks to find any kind of cover or shaded area,” Brady said. “That’s not accounted for in the data. That’s something not explicitly in these numbers, but is an important consideration when you’re thinking about people being able to escape from the heat.”
So, lower-income residents of color tend to bear the brunt of extreme heat’s impact. In 2020, for example, the Hunting Park Neighborhood Advisory Committee surveyed residents about how they cope with heat and asked how many had air-conditioning. Out of 563 who answered, only 100 had air-conditioning.
To help residents cope, the city operates scores of cooling centers, which can include air conditioned buses.
Back at the Drexel program, Oman Sewell, 42, of South Philly was working in a warehouse in Kingessing that Montalto’s program rents to build the shade-giving planters. The planters are placed with guidance from of local community organizations. It’s the fourth year of the program, which is funded by the William Penn Foundation and started with planter installations in Hunting Park.
Sewell started working in June under the tutelage of architect Angelo Zaharatos, founder of Arxis League, a New York-based design group. Sewell was busy Tuesday helping assemble the planters after having made many of the cuts on a miter saw.
Sewell is enthusiastic about the program and credits Zaharatos with daily uplifting readings that might come from, say, Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor and philosopher.
“Every day is a learning experience,” Sewell said. “It opens your mind, showing you can actually uses these building blocks and turn the skills into something you can use the rest of your life.”
Architect Angelo Zaharatos explains how shade-giving planters are built at a warehouse in Philadelphia’s Kingsessing neighborhood. Drexel professor Franco Montalto (middle) oversees the program. Nikki Pearl (right) manages it.
THE PARENTS: Shanay Rowe, 38, and Marrita (Rita) Rowe, 35, of Upper Darby
THE CHILD: Christopher, 12
FORMED A BLENDED FAMILY: July 2, 2022
AN INDELIBLE MOMENT: On a recent night, dinner segued into a spontaneous party, all three of them pulling up YouTube and TikTok videos and rocked the moves of the wu-tang and the jerk — ”our own little family dance party,” Shanay says.
Within the first five minutes of their first date — a picnic at the Curtis Arboretum, because it was fall of the first pandemic year — Shanay brushed a bit of flotsam off Rita’s eyelash. It was a sticky-hot October day, but they didn’t want the date to end, so they sought refuge in a nearby Barnes & Noble.
They had their first kiss in the aisle, amid the books.
“It felt very natural, very familiar; it didn’t feel like someone I was hanging out with for the first time,” Shanay says. She had recently written a nonfiction book about gender expression and sexuality, and Rita was eager to talk about that along with other titles both of them had read and loved.
“She loved art, books, reading, studying,” Rita remembers. By Thanksgiving, when she found herself eagerly anticipating spending the holiday together, she knew: “This is my person; this is who I want to start building traditions with.”
There was just one momentary roadblock: Rita had an unspoken rule that she didn’t seriously date people with children. Shanay had a 10-year-old son and talked about him effusively on that first date.
“I was like: Girl, you know I have a kid. I like him, he’s pretty cool, I spend a lot of time with him.” The more Shanay described Christopher — a baseball player, an avid Eagles fan, a warm and adventurous kid — the more Rita wanted to meet him.
“I knew the life I lived as a single, childless woman allowed me to travel and offered me a lot of spontaneity,” she says. “But prior to me settling down with Shanay, I’d put down firmer roots and was looking for someone who shared those same priorities.”
Shanay was technically a single parent, but likes to joke that she shares custody with “an amazing village” that includes Christopher’s biological father (a longtime friend), her mother, her brother, and her grandmother.
She always knew she wanted to be a mother, but in her mid-20s, years before marriage equality became nationwide law, “the whole idea of settling down, trying to conceive, and being a queer woman didn’t even seem like an option.” Although Christopher switched weekly from Shanay’s house to his father’s, “I was not creating family with another person.”
Gradually, Rita began to play a more significant role: She worked remotely from Shanay’s house so she could spend one-on-one time with Christopher during his days of virtual school. “It was a time to see him in his element, and him getting to see me in mine. We’d have breakfast together and lunch together; we’d talk about our favorite television shows.”
Christopher talked about Rita as “part of the family” and made her cards that said, “Best Bonus Mom Ever.” In April 2021, she moved in permanently — a bittersweet transition because it meant leaving a home in West Oak Lane that she’d inherited from her grandparents.
Meanwhile, Shanay had proposed, spontaneously proffering a ring one night while the two were watching Christmas movies; she’d planned to save the proposal until February 2021 but couldn’t wait. Later, in July, she engineered a more elaborate proposal, a catered picnic in Franklin Square on a weekend when Rita’s family was visiting.
Getting married mattered to both of them. “I run into many younger queer folks who still don’t necessarily know older queer people who are married — and when we talk about queer Black folks who are married, that number shrinks,” Shanay says. “It was important to me to be a bit of a living example for those who are coming up behind us.”
Rita says she never viewed herself as “other” because of her sexual orientation. “I always knew one day I’d be married; I just couldn’t parse out how that was going to happen.”
It did happen, this summer, at The German Society of Pennsylvania, an archival library that felt like the ideal setting. Eighty-five friends and family members joined them for a reception in the historic ballroom.
Christopher was front and center: dressed in a suit and a pair of shined Oxfords, walking his grandmother down the aisle, standing between Shanay and Rita as the pastor blessed them as a family.
Shanay Rowe with son Christopher
Shanay has always been frank with Chris about homophobia, “the harsh reality that everyone isn’t always going to be super-friendly about the fact that he has two mothers. It meant a lot to him, as a kid, to know he had that family unit, also.”
Rita cherishes the moment they were presented as “Mrs. and Mrs. Rowe” — she’d taken her wife’s last name because Shanay had been the one to propose — and the sight of a roomful of people who were there to support their union.
“It solidified: Not only am I taking this journey with my partner and family, but there’s a whole community around us that wants us to succeed. Being married: I think of it as a responsibility and an adventure. I have to take care of this woman and love this woman; if I don’t have the tools, one of the people in that room will have them.”
Christopher and “bonus mom” Rita at the July wedding that affirmed their blended family.
For Shanay, too, the tearful, smiling faces of family and friends made her feel loved, validated, and supported. But it was Christopher’s response that made the deepest impression.
“Rita danced with her father; I did my dance with Chris,” Shanay recalls. “It was the sweetest thing. He took my hand, got very close and said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ I put his hand around my waist and said, ‘You’re going to follow me.’ We danced to ‘If I Could’ by Regina Belle, a tearjerker. I said, ‘Do you need to cry? It’s OK; you can cry.’ He leaned on me and said, ‘I’m so happy for you.’ That was a highlight of a moment. It made me feel like I had made the right decision.”
John Hancock has lost his face. So has Pennsylvania’s George Clymer.
So have 12 other of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence whose memorial plaques have been consigned to the soles and heels of pedestrians in the 600 block of Chestnut Street, a block from where they put their lives on the line on July 4, 1776.
These days, the bronze plaques embedded in a sidewalk outside a Wawa, have become orphans, trodden upon daily and, literally, defaced.
The John Hancock plaque with the missing face.
They were donated by the Franklin Mint — whose roots, coincidentally, are in Wawa, Delaware County — for the city’s Bicentennial celebration in 1976.
The owners of the adjacent Public Ledger Building, who were not immediately available for comment, have assumed responsibility for the maintenance of the plaques, a spokesperson for the Center City District, a building tenant, said Saturday. However, they evidently have not been able to protect the plaques from vandalism.
Exactly how the faces disappeared is a mystery, and while a police spokesperson said that no incidents of theft have been reported, the remnants of glue and missing bolts suggest the faces were removed.
“That’s terribly sad,” said Ann Meredith, who as director of the erstwhile “Lights of Liberty” group had a lot to do with how the plaques wound up where they are today.
A bit of history
As part of an exhibit that The Inquirer called a “delightful” and “appropriate way” to teach history, the plaques were dedicated on May 10, 1975, the 200th anniversary of the convening of the Continental Congress.
Just over a square foot, each one contained the image of a signer and a replica of the signature that appeared on the Declaration. They were mounted beneath the arches of brick colonnades on the Judge Lewis Quadrangle, along with flags of the states, ready for a Bicentennial celebration for which Philadelphia aspired to be a centerpiece.
The old Judge Lewis Quadrangle pavilions, which houses the bronze plaques commemorating the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. The site now is occupied by the Independence National Historical Park Gateway Visitors Center.
After the Bicentennial, Independence National Historical Park planned a major transformation.
“We found out the NPS was going to dispose of them,” said Meredith, who was running Lights of Liberty, a historical sound-and-light show that she described as “a theme-park experience in one of the most protected historical areas in America,” on Independence Mall. “We asked, ‘Can we have them?’”
The plaques were to be installed on Chestnut, just outside the park’s property, as a “Signers Walk” — an “added feature” to the light show, said Meredith.
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who then was Philadelphia’s mayor, appeared at the 1999 dedication ceremony with a group of young descendants of the signers.
Meredith recalled it well: Her daughter participated.
Mayor Ed Rendell with some descendants of the signers of the Declaration of Independence during the June 7, 1999, unveiling of the “Signers Walk.”
“Everybody was happy,” said Meredith, now executive director of Herald Publishing, a division of the Bucks County Herald. The plaques “became a popular stop for tour guides.”
Meredith said that when she left Lights of Liberty in 2007, the plaques were in good shape.
Officials with the group, the city, the National Park Service, and the Center City District said they did not know who, if anyone, had assumed ownership of the plaques.
“I can’t say there was a plan for taking care of them in perpetuity,” said Meredith.
“I guess they were never meant for sidewalk use,” she said, adding she was not sanguine about their future.
“They were a nice enhancement. They were a pleasant surprise. I don’t think anyone would miss them if they weren’t there.”
The Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin plaques.
Staff writer Stephanie Farr contributed to this article.
This article has been updated to note that the owners of the Public Ledger Building have assumed responsibility for maintaining the plaques, according to the Center City District. An earlier version of this article also misidentified one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
As The Philadelphia Inquirer closes its printing plant, a ‘family’ of employees marks the end of an era
A tattered copy of The Inquirer is the last to ride the grippers from the pressroom to the mailroom at the Schuylkill Printing Plant in Upper Merion Township on March 28.TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
Tom “Three Bars” Lafauci had no chance of disappearing quietly into the howling winds of the night.
“Lafauci!”
Sybil White, a longtime security officer, summoned him before he could reach the only available exit at The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Schuylkill Printing Plant, the mammoth newspaper factory that was about to call it an era.
“Come on, get in the picture,” she commanded him. Almost reflexively, Len Leach and Tanya Rockeymore, who were working the lobby security detail that night, stuck their heads in the frame. They might not see him again. One of 500 who lost their jobs with the building’s sale, this was Lafauci’s last work shift.
At the age of 192, The Inquirer is stopping its own presses for good — the April 1 issues marked the last official runs — and will be outsourcing its print operations in line with newspapers across the country that are cutting costs and fighting a media universe changing at the speed of breaking news.
Aaron Krakovitz, a third-generation, 47-year pressman, threads paper through a set of rollers as he prepares for the night's press run. TIM TAI / Staff PhotographerA blur of paper courses along rollers during a Sunday advance run; some sections of the Sunday paper are printed ahead of time. TIM TAI / Staff PhotographerColor pages speed across rollers for a Sunday advance run. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
The guards seemed to be well-acquainted with Three Bars. Actually, they seemed to be well-acquainted with everyone exiting and entering the brick, curving structure built for $299.5 million (about $600 million in today’s dollars) 30 years ago, and sold to developer J. Brian O’Neill for $37 million to become part of his burgeoning biotech-health science empire.
“You get to know everybody,” said White. “It’s like family,” a leitmotif sentiment among the guards, engravers, pressmen, mailers, and drivers who worked in the immense, quirk-infested complex that was marinated in the vague odors of paper and the ink that blackwashed the floors and layered the handrails.
A production theme park
The printing plant, a 681,023-square-foot complex along the river, was built to house $160 million worth of “state of the art” presses. FRANK WIESE / StaffSecond childhood? No, engineer Joe Hoban is riding a tricycle that can carry tools while navigating the building’s lengthy corridors. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
This was a thundering production theme park of impossible intricacy, where paper-carrying freight cars rumbled and rammed into the rail bay, where newspaper pages rolled off presses that collectively weighed as much as a Navy destroyer.
They were folded and collated, and commuted on cars and conveyors as though they had purchased tickets on amusement rides. Ultimately they landed in trucks that ferried The Inquirer and Daily News to hundreds of locations while most readers slept.
All it took to get them their papers, said Fred Lehman, vice president of operations, was about two million moving parts.
Pressroom supervisor Jim Fish (top) flips through Inquirer pages as a quality check. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
Somehow amid the often hellish cacophony in this 681,023-square-foot behemoth, people got to know each other.
In many cases, they knew each other already. “Family” was more than metaphoric in White’s case. Her uncle got her the job 25 years ago; he worked at the company. Her father was a driver.
Lafauci, a mailer, said his nickname had no association with happy hour. “Three Bars … my grandfather worked here, my father worked here.” Yes, he was the third bar. Bill Burk, a transportation manager, worked with all three bars, and at one time or another, The Inquirer employed 20 of Burk’s family members.
Epitaph for an era: "BORN 1992 DIED 2021" is traced in the grime on an air duct inside the pressroom. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
“My grandfather worked here, my father worked here.”
Tom “Three Bars” Lafauci
‘It was family’
Those days are history, as soon will be the printing plant, located in Upper Merion Township at the junction of Routes 23 and 320, a location a reporter once described as “centrally isolated.”
Rather than a death in the family, October’s announcement that SPP would be sold was more like deaths in multiple families, and the sense of loss — a mix of resignation, equanimity, sadness, with a dash of bitterness — condensed as employees were leaving the building for the last time.
“It was family,” Lafauci said. There’s that word again.
Mailer Jessica Tayoun, who started working for The Inquirer in 1992, stacks a bundle of Daily News issues. TIM TAI / Staff PhotographerTayoun and Lionel Shaw, a 37-year Inquirer veteran, prepare bundles of the newspaper's last scheduled edition to be printed at SPP. TIM TAI / Staff PhotographerPressroom supervisor Tom Addison, hired in 1979, carries in his rear pockets rolled-up Daily News issues that he will examine later for quality. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
About the only problems they had at the plant, the guards said, involved intra-family disputes that reasoned discussion failed to resolve. Said White, “We tried to calm them down.”
The writers and editors reported and crafted the stories — from seven presidential elections in the SPP era, to a World Series title and a Super Bowl championship, to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to one tenacious pandemic — but the SPP workforce made sure people got to read them on paper that they could hold in their hands, and perhaps even save.
During the last run of the Inquirer's own presses, a “family” of employees say goodbye as the company transitions to an outsourced printing operation.Kristen Balderas, Raishad Hardnett, Astrid Rodrigues, Lauren Schneiderman and Frank Wiese / Staff
All the news that fits
In the pre-SPP days, type and advertisements were posted on flats by hand. Editors marked last-minute cuts with blue pencils, and the compositors would surgically consign them to the cutting-room floor.
The job evolved rapidly with “pagination,” as computer screens replaced the flats and workers such as Kathleen Griffiths moved from the composing room to a video terminal. Inspecting the pages to make sure that the ads are properly placed and error-free, and that the display type and copy are correctly confined to a page is a critical step in the “prepress” process.
Pressman Brett Nick, who started working at The Inquirer in 2003, wears a hat with an old Inquirer campaign slogan: "Keep It Local!" TIM TAI / Staff PhotographerPlatemaker Debbie Dougherty wears a T-shirt stamped with a front-page image from Jan. 20, 1994, the year she was hired. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
Engraved in memory: A board inside the plate room features photos of former employees. TIM TAI / Staff PhotographerInk-stained handprints decorate a pressroom wall. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
“It’s like putting a puzzle together,” said Tom Chambers, who has worked for the company for 31 years. He and the other platemakers imprint those completed-puzzle images on wafer-thin aluminum plates that bear the images of the pages of The Inquirer and Daily News.
On any given day those images would be stamped on paper rolls whose linear footage would reach halfway around the world — all the way on Sundays.
Pressman Hayden Darrabie, hired in 1998, presses plates into place before the night's run. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
Roll ‘em
SPP is more or less a prodigious shell built around $160 million worth of presses, said Pat McElwee, the production supervisor. When the plant started operating in the summer of 1992, “It was fantastic,” he said.
The Goss Colorlink “offset” presses were radically different from the 45-year-old “letterpress” predecessors in which plates were pressed directly onto the paper. With offset, the plates roll against rubber “blankets” that press against the paper. For the first time The Inquirer and Daily News could publish photographs and ads in color.
Wiring dangles from one of the nine Goss Colorliner presses. TIM TAI / Staff PhotographerLoose papers are scattered across the base of the gripper chute from which papers are conveyed from the pressroom to the mailroom for packaging. TIM TAI / Staff PhotographerPartial rolls of leftover paper from press runs, known as "butt rolls," are stored in the reel room. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
“It was all new,” said Tom Addison, the company pressroom foreman. With novelty came mishaps. More than once the papers published “To our readers” apology notes for delivery issues.
Like so many employees on the production side, Addison was a lifer, having started in 1979.
And to Aaron Krakovitz, Addison was a newcomer: Krakovitz already had been there five years, starting as a high school senior, recruited to fill in on a short-staffed weekend. He was child labor whose own father was a pressman.
The pressmen developed a familial and literal closeness, said Jim Fish, the union foreman: In the heydays, he said, “You worked with six to seven guys on the press.”
A clipboard in the quiet room informs pressmen about the plates that need to be switched out for a "lift" for a later edition. TIM TAI / Staff PhotographerPressman Keith Jones (left), who was hired in 2005, and Jim Fish prepare to embrace as they are about to depart after the last scheduled press run. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
Fold ‘em, stuff ‘em
Among all his family members who ever worked in the mail room, a 187,000-square-foot canyon where the printed sections and advertising inserts were added and prepared for the trucks, Devin Leidy counted 150 years’ experience.
“When I was 12 years old, my father said, ‘You’re going to be delivering newspapers. You’re going to learn how to hand-stuff,’ ” said Leidy.
Pressroom supervisor David Creek (left), hired in 1984, chats with colleague Bobby Nick, who joined The Inquirer in 2002, as Nick gets ready to sign off. TIM TAI / Staff PhotographerDriver Darryl Jackson (left) looks toward dispatcher George Young (center) hugging driver Dominic Delvecchio, all of whom started in 2000. TIM TAI / Staff PhotographerPressman Hayden Darrabie (left) and Jim Fish walk out of the press room after the last scheduled run. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
Leidy, who would grow up to be a mailroom supervisor, said the assembly and presentation of the papers were critical to sales: “You’re trying to put it out correctly … neatly.”
Evie Lang, a mailer who (stop if you heard this before) was the daughter and granddaughter of mailers, derived satisfaction from her labor as she left the house on Sunday mornings. “The newspaper would fall out the door and you’d go, ‘Oh, I helped to make that.’ ”
A discarded Daily News rests in a chair in the reel room, where paper had been loaded onto the presses that had been operating since 1992. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
“My whole life. I wanted to yell, ‘Stop the presses.’ But now, when I think about it, I don’t want to stop them. I wish they could keep going.”
Pat McElwee
The last rides
Budd Emmett got hired in an antiquarian fashion: through a newspaper ad. That was in 1971.
Emmett became a transportation supervisor in 1988, overseeing a truck fleet that at one time exceeded 325.
“It’s all family,” Emmett said. It wasn’t an echo; it just sounded like one. The mood at the building in the closing days was similar to that of a pre-funeral viewing, only in this case the subject of conversation wasn’t yet deceased and had the benefit of hearing the praise.
Emmett said he plans to retire, as does pressman Krakovitz and others.
The furloughed SPP workers generally were pleased with what they viewed as generous severance packages. Lehman said those who wanted to keep working have found jobs.
Lehman and McElwee are among those who plan to call it a career. McElwee is anxious to spend more time with his grandchildren, but the end is profoundly bittersweet.
“My whole life. I wanted to yell, ‘Stop the presses.’ ” he said. “But now, when I think about it, I don’t want to stop them. I wish they could keep going.”
In the early morning hours of March 29, newspapers litter the docks that no longer will be used for loading The Inquirer and Daily News onto delivery trucks while most of us slept. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer
Staff Contributors
Reporting: Anthony R. Wood
Visuals: Tim Tai, Frank Wiese, Danese Kenon, Astrid Rodrigues, Kristen Balderas, Lauren Schneiderman, and Raishad Hardnett
Design & Development: Dain Saint and Jessica Parks
Editing: Emily Babay and Diane Mastrull
Digital: Kerith Gabriel, Patricia Madej, Lauren Aguirre, and Caryn Shaffer
Copy editing & Print: Brian Leighton and Sterling Chen
With an onslaught of freezing winter weather, doctors have one message for Philadelphians: Stay inside as much as possible.
“In order to get frostbite, you have to be out in freezing temperatures,” said Bob McNamara, chair of emergency medicine at Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine. “So the number-one thing would be to stay inside.”
People should also be concerned about hypothermia, McNamara said, which can occur indoors too, if people don’t have proper heating. “Roughly half the cases of severe hypothermia we see happen indoors,” he said.
But fear not! There is plenty you can do to prepare for the winter not-so-wonderland.
While curling up under a fuzzy blanket is always a good call, here are some tips from experts, including one who’s been to Antarctica.
Frostbite
When the body gets cold, it restricts blood flow to the extremities, prioritizing major organs instead. So the first signs of frostbite include tingling or pain in the fingers, toes, ears, nose, and elsewhere on the face. Numbness and graying patches of skin are more serious indicators that frostbite is setting in.
Older people and young children are at high risk, as is anyone with a medical condition that might affect their circulation.
Nothing beats staying indoors, but if you have to venture out, try to spend as little time outside as possible, McNamara said. And go prepared.
Ted Daeschler, a scientist at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, has gone on a research expedition in Antarctica, where he and colleagues camped in 5- to 15-degree temperatures.
He said he often wore two pairs of socks, hooded long underwear, a second layer of long underwear, shirt and pants, a fleece jacket, insulated wind pants, a wind jacket, a neck gator, and wool hat and gloves.
“Still there were times when the wind made it too cold to work outside and we remained in our camp,” he wrote in an email.
While you may not need to go to Antarctic levels of preparedness, it’s a good idea to follow the advice your parents gave you as a kid: warm hat, gloves, snow boots, a wind-resistant jacket, and layers of clothing. The air between layers retains heat, McNamara said.
“If you catch frostbite early, it can be reversed,” McNamara said.
Mild cases of frostnip, in which the skin feels cold and is just starting to tingle, can be reversed by getting indoors or using a warm bath, he said.
But if the skin becomes pale, waxy, or hard, people should seek medical attention. Those are signs of tissue loss and may require amputation.
“Every winter we see people who lose body parts from frostbite in the city of Philadelphia,” McNamara said.
Hypothermia
When the body is exposed to the cold for long periods of time, it can lose heat faster than it can produce it, causing a dangerously low body temperature, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Wet conditions are especially dangerous, even when temperatures are above freezing.
“Hypothermia is a life-threatening condition,” McNamara said. Major organs can stop functioning properly when body temperature drops.
It can be difficult to spot, though. People may have slurred speech, stumble or trip over themselves, and seem confused. “A mistake people can make is to think they just had too much to drink,” McNamara said.
Stay inside and stay dry, the CDC recommends. People should check on neighbors and the elderly to make sure everyone has functioning heat. “Not just a space heater,” McNamara said.
When to get help for hypothermia
If you think someone has hypothermia, call 911 and get medical attention, McNamara said.
If you’re stranded or waiting for emergency responders, try to get the person dry, wrap them up in blankets, and get them as warm as possible.
And a warning on alcohol: While some people believe drinking can stave off the cold, it’s actually very dangerous, McNamara said. Alcohol dilates the blood vessels on the skin, making you feel warm. But this process increases heat loss. So you won’t know you’re cold and you’ll be getting colder by the minute, McNamara said.
Another concern doctors in the emergency room see during cold snaps: people with broken bones and head injuries from slipping and falling on ice.
“All the more reason to stay indoors,” McNamara said.
Glancing down near the intersection of 18th and Locust Streets near Rittenhouse Square, Carolyn Rogers can’t help but do a double-take.
“The space between this sign and the building is not dedicated to the public,” proclaims the brassy plaque inlaid in the sidewalk.
“I’m always like, ‘Am I reading this right?’” Rogers said. “Not dedicated? Should I not walk there?”
Rogers asked about the signs scattered around the city’s pavement through Curious Philly, a portal that allows readers to ask Inquirer and Daily News journalists their questions about the Philadelphia region.
“Space within building lines not dedicated” sign at the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center.
Some of the metal inlays say “the space … is not dedicated” while others proclaim “property behind this plaque not dedicated,” but in the end, they’re saying the same thing.
“Dedicated to the public,” in this case, is a legal phrase, defined by Black’s Law Dictionary as “an appropriation of land to some public use made by the owner, and accepted for such use by or no behalf of the public.”
The signage occurs when a building’s property line extends past the dimensions of the structure. In other words, the property owner owns more land than just the building.
So, “not dedicated to the public” means that the space of sidewalk between where that metal sign stops and the building begins technically isn’t public property.
Although the plaques are placed to protect the property owner’s rights, you’re welcome to walk in the “not dedicated” space, but technically, it’s private property, University of Pennsylvania Architect Charlie Newman said in a feature on the school’s website.
The plaques can be found throughout the city, from Penn’s campus in University City to the Federal Detention Center on Seventh and Arch.
A “property behind this plaque not dedicated” sign on Arch St. near the Federal Reserve.
It’s a safeguard in place to protect against a real estate legal loophole known as “prescriptive easements,” PlanPhilly’s Jim Saska wrote in a 2016 column about the curious corner pieces.
“Prescriptive easements” are another bit of legalese, meaning those who use an area for 21 years or more are extended rights to the land, as explained in the Pennsylvania Law Monitor.
So, in other words, if Philadelphians were to traipse down Arch Street on the 12 inches of pavement between the technical property line of the Federal Reserve and the building’s wall for 21 years straight with no “dedicated” plaque in sight, the property would become the public’s, too.
That’s where the plaques come in. With a little legal language bolted to the ground, the property owner is letting you know that you can walk there, but you don’t own it.
Naval Square, as it is now known, has been many things before becoming a gated community of expensive condos on the banks of the Schuylkill in a neighborhood with many names.
But whatever you call it, the 24-acre plot of land on Grays Ferry Avenue has been associated with the Navy since 1827 and has the unusual distinction of being the final resting place of Dexter, the Navy’s last working horse.
A reader interested in learning more about the horse — the questioner thought it was a mule — asked about it through Curious Philly, the Inquirer and Daily News question-and-answer forum through which readers submit questions about their communities and reporters seek to answer them.
First, a little history about the site.
The Philadelphia Naval Asylum, a hospital, opened there in 1827.
From 1838 until 1845, the site also served as the precursor to the U.S. Naval Academy, until the officers training school opened in Annapolis with seven instructors, four of them from Philadelphia.
In 1889, its name was changed to the Naval Home to reflect its role as a retirement home for old salts, as they used to call retired sailors. It closed in 1976, when the Naval Home moved to Gulfport, Miss.
It was in the service of the Naval Home that Dexter came to Philadelphia.
Originally an Army artillery horse foaled in 1934, Dexter was transferred to the Navy in 1945 to haul a trash cart around the Naval Home.
Despite his lowly duties, the men — only men lived there — loved him.
“That horse was more human than animal,” Edward Pohler, chief of security at the home, told the Inquirer in 1968. “He had the run of the grounds and would come to the door of my office every day to beg for an apple or a lump of sugar.”
The chestnut gelding was retired in 1966 and sent to a farm in Exton, but that did not last long. Naval Home residents who missed him committed to paying the $50 monthly bill for his feed and care.
For two years he grazed on a three-acre field that residents dubbed Dexter Park.
But on July, 11, 1968, Dexter, who had stopped eating and was not responding to medication, died at the age of 34 in his stall with a little human intervention to make it pain-free.
The story about the funeral for Dexter was on the front page of the Inquirer on July 13, 1968.
The next day, 400 people, including Navy men in dress uniform, turned out for a burial with full military honors.
Dexter was placed in a casket measuring 9 feet long, 5 feet wide, and 5 feet deep, with an American flag draped on the top. Retired Rear Adm. M.F.D. Flaherty, the home’s governor, offered final words, saying, “Dexter was no ordinary horse.”
As the casket was lowered by a crane into the 15-foot-deep grave, Gilbert Blunt rolled the drum and Jerry Rizzo played “Taps” on his trumpet. Members of the honor guard folded the flag into a triangle of white stars on a blue field and presented it to Albert A. Brenneke, a retired aviation mechanic and former farm boy from Missouri who was Dexter’s groom.
Brenneke recalled Dexter fondly, saying the horse was “very gentle and playful” and “liked to nibble on you,” according to news coverage of the funeral.
No sign exists marking Dexter’s final place.
The pasture, however, did not remain empty for long.
According to the December 1968 issue of the Navy magazine All Hands, a retired 16-year-old Fairmount Park Police horse named Tallyho took up residence at the Naval Home after Dexter’s death.
But, unlike Dexter, Tallyho, a bay gelding, was a gift to the home’s residents and did not receive an official Navy serial number.
“As was the case with Dexter, Tallyho’s only duty will be to contribute to the happiness of the men who share their retirement with him at the U.S. Naval Home,” the magazine said.
What happened to Tallyho after he went to the Naval Home is not clear.
Just before midnight on March 4, 1990, 15-year-old Darius Lamont was pulled through the back door of a friend’s home in Charlotte, N.C.
His attacker wanted the teenager’s green-and-white Eagles Starter-brand jacket, valued at $125. During their struggle, the attacker pulled out a gun and shot Lamont in the face.
When police arrived, the jacket was gone. Lamont died 10 hours later.
His death — like the jacket — was part of a trend.
The growing popularity of professional sports in the late 1980s and early ’90s spawned a new cultural status symbol: expensive sports gear lined in team colors and affixed with hulking logos. The apparel was marketed to the eager-to-impress in their teens and early 20s. But the gear was so popular that some young wearers became crime victims.
As the 2017 NFL season kicks off and sports stores start to push their cold-weather gear, we look back on the chaos that followed the rise in sports-gear popularity and crimes spurred by the Starter-brand jacket trend.
In the 1980s and ’90s, the jackets were manufactured by the Starter Corp. of New Haven, Conn. The company was licensed to produce gear for all the major professional teams, including baseball, hockey, basketball, and football. While the brand still exists, it’s now an underutilized subsidy of Iconix Brand Group, which continues to sell the jackets for about $100 each.
Starter’s business peaked in 1992, when the brand made $350 million in sales.The most popular product was the winter-weight jacket, worn by gangster rappers and Hollywood superstars alike.
But the status symbol also led to a secondary industry: jacket theft. In Philadelphia, especially in the lower Northeast, some who couldn’t afford one turned to violence.
Two and three times a week, the police blotter was full. On one week in 1993:
– “14-year-old boy was jumped by a group of four men at 8:45 p.m. Jan 23 in the 6300 block of Charles Street and robbed of his $100 warmup jacket”
– “14-year-old boy was punched and robbed of his $100 Starter jacket at 9:15 p.m. Jan. 22 in the 4100 block of Levick Street by a group of three teen-age boys”
– “A 13-year-old boy was robbed of his $100 Starter jacket at 3:15 p.m. Jan. 21 in the 1500 block of Foulkrod Street by a 15-year-old boy”
Philadelphia police went so far as to send the freshest-faced cops undercover as decoys to catch would-be thieves. A Mayfair neighborhood group offered to put jackets on a registry, scribbling assigned serial numbers in three separate and secret locations on the jackets. But the thieves caught on, cutting out the serial numbers after they were lifted.
In 1993, when Robert Levins was inspector of the Northeast Police Division, he told then-Daily News columnist Jill Porter that he would lecture parents.
“I tell parents that I wouldn’t buy one for my child because of the fact — why put a target on your kid?” he said. “Why make your kid a victim? Buy him a nice coat, but it doesn’t have to be a Starter jacket or a sports team jacket.”
Porter wrote in response: “Sounds good to me, but try telling that to your kid.”
James Lamont, Darius’ father, told the Charlotte Observer that he had given his son money for Christmas to buy the jacket.
“It’s a shame you can’t buy something for your child,” he said, “without worrying if he’ll be safe to wear it.”
