August 13, 2009 - ChaddsFordLive.com

Brandywine Battlefield Park closing Friday

PHMC retreat — Brandywine Battlefield Park closing Friday

At the close of business Friday, Aug. 14, the Brandywine Battlefield Park will be closed and the employees will be furloughed.

Mike Harris, museum educator at the park said employees received word about 2 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 11. Harris said the park will be shut down and so far there are no known plans for the facility.

“There’s no deal in place with Chadds Ford Township yet to keep it open,” Harris said.

Harris sent an e-mail 3 p.m. Tuesday advising people of the imminent closing. He and four part-time employees will be furloughed, but one maintenance person will remain–at least for now.

At about 3:30 p.m., township Supervisors’ Chairman George Thorpe said he was aware of the closing but could not comment until he had further information.

Thorpe and other supervisors have been working to gather support to take over the operation of the park since the state announced it would stop funding the park.

Delaware County Council has already agreed to provide $55,000 and Thorpe is hoping Chester County will do the same.

“If Chester County gives us $55,000, that would give us enough to do the job for one year, but that would be minimal,” he said in a recent interview.

He would like to get $350,000 total, but “we could do something for less.” He said he doesn’t know what that something would be.

In addition to money from the two counties, Thorpe is looking to get another $100,000 from the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission. Those funds would be a combination of services–utilities and maintenance–plus cash, he said.

Thorpe will be asking other townships, such as Pennsbury, Pocopson and Birmingham to kick in $5,000 each, the same amount Chadds Ford and Concord townships will contribute.

“$5,000 from the townships is doable,” Thorpe said. “The associates still need to make a commitment.”

The associates are the Brandywine Battlefield Park Associates. That group’s president, Linda Kaat, said the associates have $30,000 to contribute and will do so once a series of agreements are reached.

Kaat said the township must first reach an interim agreement with PHMC, then the township and associates would be free to enter into their own agreement if both parties choose.

A state study that led to PHMC stopping operation said the township and the associates should operate the park.

The was a touch of irony two days before the official closing date as more than a dozen bicyclists, members of the Lafayette Riding Club, toured the park. They were met with the news that park would be closing.

The club was named after the Marquis du Lafayette who served with Gen. George Washington at the 1777 Battle of Brandywine and was wounded in that fight.

Club founder Dr. Andre Mas, a retired cardiologist, said it was sad to learn about the park’s closing especially considering its significance in U.S./French relations and that the club members’ visit was part of the annual Ride de Lafayette.

He said he would try to get some newspaper stories written when he returned to France to generate awareness and money to help get the park reopened.

Current club President Chris Davies, of California called the park a “site of shared history.”

He called the closing “tragic.”

“This is a place for education for young people and for adults as well, a place for young people to get interested in history and to spark an interest in learning more.”

(Editor’s note: This story has been updated since it was first uploaded.)

About Rich Schwartzman

Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.

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Knoll curb project in final stage

Local News

cf knoll — Knoll curb project in final stage

The long waited improvements to the curbs in the Chadds Ford Knoll should finally be complete in about a month. Work began on the final phase during the first week of August and workers say it should be finished some time around Labor Day.

Pennsbury Township manager Kathy Howley hopes it’s sooner.

“They started last week and it was supposed to be one month. So I hope they’re finished in three weeks,” Howley said.

Work has been proceeding in stages, she explained. Previously work has been done on the side streets within the development, and now the final stage is working down Constitution Drive toward Route 1.

Crews from Wexcon are replacing the old drainage system first, then will come back to dig up the old curbing and replace that with new curbs.

Residents in the area have been complaining about drainage problems for at least 7 years, Howley said. The delay in getting it all done was cost, she added.

Howley said the drainage problem was due primarily to water pooling up and freezing at intersections in the winter. Residents, she said, were fearful that there would be ice-related accidents, especially at times when school children would be waiting for school buses or when they would be dropped off after school.

Chadds Ford Knoll was built in the 1960s, Howley said, during a time when there was less emphasis on stormwater management. In the beginning there was little concern and no problem, but as time wore on and people landscaped and reconfigured their backyards, drainage problems developed.

About Rich Schwartzman

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Police log for Aug.13

Police

A home on Heyburn Road in Chadds Ford Township was broken into sometime between Aug. 8 and 12, a state police report said. Nothing was reported stolen.

• Pennsylvania State Police report a theft from a motor vehicle that was parked at the Brandywine River Museum. Police said a 35-year-old woman had a purse with three social security cards stolen when someone popped the lock of her car door. According to the report, the incident happened sometime between 2 and 5:40 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 10.

• Pennsylvania State Police from Troop J, Avondale will conduct a sobriety checkpoint at an undisclosed location during the weekend beginning Friday, Aug. 14.

About CFLive Staff

See Contributors Page https://chaddsfordlive.com/writers/

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Save us from our protectors

Opinion

A recent e-mail exchange with a reader provided some interesting food for thought.

This reader is a solid conservative who also appreciates–and even agrees at times–with libertarian thought that some of his fellow Republicans may object to.

Specifically, he believes that the leadership and elected representatives of both incumbent parties, on the national level at least, are in it for the power. It’s party over principal and even power over party. The discussion evolved to the thought that the name calling of fascist vs. socialist is counter productive and even obstructionist, that both parties are controlled by statists.

As he wrote: “The real problem is… the statist’s quest for power and control over all aspects of our lives, not because of political ideology, but because of greed and elitist privilege. … Rather than a struggle between left and right politics, it is a divide and conquer effort that exploits ideological differences, and both political parties use the same tactics to cover their real agenda-keep out new, unknown players.”

Well said.

And it’s nice to hear that local voice echoing one from the national scene. Here we must, again, cite Judge Andrew Napolitano, the legal analyst at Fox News and possibly the only national commentator who has a clue.

Speaking at the Ohio Rally for State Sovereignty on Aug. 1 the judge said, “We wrote a Constitution to ensure that the government would never interfere with these rights. Think about it–if rights come from the government, then the government, by ordinary legislation, or presidential decree can take them away. But if the rights come from our humanity, then unless we violate someone else’s natural rights, the government cannot take our rights away.

“This is not just a democrat, upper case D, or a republican, upper case R, problem. It’s a problem with government today. There’s a republican version of big government just as assaultive to our liberties as the democrat version of big government.”

Indeed, the American political culture has been so twisted–over the last century at least–as to become meaningless. Those elected to office, president, congressman, senator, even governor and state legislator all take an oath to support, protect and defend the Constitution then blithely ignore that oath as they go about some bogus agenda that destroys even the concept behind the Constitution.

As Judge Napolitano also said in his speech, “You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, ‘my first job is to keep you safe.’ He’s wrong! His first job is to keep us free. It is his only job to keep us free.”

To be more accurate, though in the same keeping, it’s the elected politicians job to fight for the condition of liberty. Instead, they fight for the private agendas of special interest, both left and right, all at the expense of liberty.

Why do they do that? Because they can, because the American people have learned they can vote for bread and circuses and now that’s all they do vote for.

A Chadds Ford Live subscriber from the other side of the aisle, a staunch Obamakin during the 2008 election recently forwarded a quote from economist Milton Friedman: “Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

It goes beyond that. The American electorate has forsaken the concept of liberty, not because of what liberty allows, but because of what it demands. With liberty comes responsibility, and far too many people can’t deal with that. And power hungry politicians are all too eager to intercede, taking away the liberty along with the responsibility just to achieve more power.

About CFLive Staff

See Contributors Page https://chaddsfordlive.com/writers/

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Blogging Along the Brandywine

Along the Ford

At some future time, 2009 may be viewed as a pivotal year for Chadds Ford, as we lost two institutions we naively thought would define our little village forever.

First, Andrew Wyeth’s death the morning of Jan. 16, at the age of 91 was shocking and heartbreaking to say the least, but in the great circle of life, not unexpected.

On June 30, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission formally severed the Brandywine Battlefield State Park from their budget. Then earlier this week, Brandywine Battlefield Park Associates, the non-profit group founded 30 years ago to support the PHMC with programming and fundraising, announced that despite their interventions, the Battlefield Park would be closing its doors on Friday, Aug. 14.

The Sept. 11, 1777 Battle of the Brandywine, was the largest land battle of the American Revolution and one of the few where Gens. Washington and Howe actually faced one another in combat. The 55-acre state park on Route 1 was established in 1947 to commemorate that day.

With the state now virtually out of the picture, the person whose increased responsibilities I would not wish on my worst enemy, would be the president of the Brandywine Battlefield Park Associates.

But BBPA President Linda Kaat of Marshallton said, “It is such an honor to be the president during these difficult days. I look forward to a new revitalized future.”

Indeed, Kaat’s neighbor and past BBPA president Rich Bowers says, “Linda is both tireless and relentless in achieving her goals. She is a driving force for keeping the Battlefield not only open, but improving and expanding our programs and services to our visitors.”

So just where does this unbridled optimism and energy come from?

As Kaat relates she was, “raised on a farm in southern Illinois, the sixth generation of pioneering mid-west dirt farmers.”

After studying at Southern Illinois University, she went to work on Capital Hill for the late Congressman Melvin Price of Illinois. As Kaat recalled,

“It trained me for everything in future life”.

After putting in five years in banking, Kaat then spent 10 years in Major League Baseball.

Wait, Major League Baseball?

In 1976, Kaat’s former husband, Jim Kaat was traded to the Phillies from the Chicago White Sox and started the season as opening day pitcher, while Linda fell in love with the Delaware Valley’s Revolutionary War history, old stone barns and historic houses.

“The Revolutionary War is just plainly my era,” she said. “I have a library filled with American Revolution history.”

They bought a stone farmhouse in Glen Mills where Linda ran Sweetwater Farm, a multi award-winning 17-room country inn and bed and breakfast.

Some years later Sweetwater Farm was sold, and Kaat moved to Marshallton, where she met her neighbor and then BBPA president Rich Bowers who subsequently invited her onto the BBPA board.

When Kaat was elected president of the BBPA in January of this year, there were already rumors about the park’s future. But since the park had been without a site administrator for almost a year, there was, as Kaat relates, not much communication coming out from the State.

Kaat sees this crisis as an opportunity to expand certain programs at the park as well as to increase awareness of the park’s precarious welfare, and invites Chadds Ford residents to come to the park’s museum bookstore to buy the replica of the Brandywine Battle flag and fly it proudly the weekend of September 9–13.

But with the sudden announcement of Friday’s closing she added, “We did not expect it this week and we sure hope it’s temporary.”

The associates are hoping for an agreement with Chadds Ford Township in the interim.

How is she coping with all the added pressure? “My bar bills have been higher,” she joked.

In 1976, the year Kaat moved to the Delaware Valley, Al Stewart sang his memorable haunting lyrics,

“On a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turn back time”…

He finished with the now iconic lines,

“But the drum-beat strains of the night remain, in the rhythm of the new-born day…
And for now you’re going to stay…in the year of the cat.

So maybe 2009 will not be a total loss for Chadds Ford, but with the drumbeat strains of the Revolutionary War echoing in the rhythm of a newborn day, we will hopefully stay in the year of the Kaat.

About Sally Denk Hoey

Sally Denk Hoey, is a Gemini - one part music and one part history. She holds a masters degree cum laude from the School of Music at West Chester University. She taught 14 years in both public and private school. Her CD "Bard of the Brandywine" was critically received during her almost 30 years as a folk singer. She currently cantors masses at St Agnes Church in West Chester where she also performs with the select Motet Choir. A recognized historian, Sally serves as a judge-captain for the south-east Pennsylvania regionals of the National History Day Competition. She has served as president of the Brandywine Battlefield Park Associates as well as the Sanderson Museum in Chadds Ford where she now curates the violin collection. Sally re-enacted with the 43rd Regiment of Foot and the 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment for 19 years where she interpreted the role of a campfollower at encampments in Valley Forge, Williamsburg, Va., Monmouth, N.J. and Lexington and Concord, Mass. Sally is married to her college classmate, Thomas Hoey, otherwise known as "Mr. Sousa.”

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