Deneen “Neenie” Bewley, 57, of West Grove, died Friday, Nov. 11, at her residence. She was the wife of Don Bewley, with whom she shared 23 years of marriage.
Deneen “Neenie” Bewley
Born in Boone, N.C., she was the daughter of the late Raymond and Rose Osborne Miller.
She was a homemaker.
Neenie enjoyed fishing, the outdoors, gardening, and being with her family and friends.
In addition to her husband, she is survived by two daughters, Chrystal Dugger and her husband Tim of Kennett Square, and Julia Whisman of Elkton, Md.; one brother, Blake Miller of Reading; four sisters, Richina Peterson of West Grove, Rita Venuto of Lancaster, Christine Eckman of Landenberg, and Jorena Bonsall of Lancaster; and seven grandchildren.
You are invited to visit with her family and friends from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 17, at the Foulk & Grieco Funeral Home, 200 Rose Hill Road in West Grove. Her service and burial will be private.
George Baily Scarlett II, 71, of Kennett Square, died Wednesday, Nov. 9, at his home in Kennett Square where he lived all his life. He was the loving husband of Dorothy Kirmse Scarlett with whom he shared 40 years of marriage.
George Baily Scarlett II
Born in Coatesville, on May 25, 1945, he was the son of the late William J. and the late Anne (Stone) Scarlett.
He attended George School, Rollins College, Penn State, and Tyler School of Art in Rome, Italy. His love of art led to the founding of The George B. Scarlett Gallery and over the years he nurtured many emerging artists. His love of architecture lead him to a successful career in real estate with Berkshire Hathaway Home Service in Greenville, Del. and Brandywine Fine Properties Sotheby’s International Realty in Centerville. He was director emeritus of The Kennett Symphony and an active board member of the Union Hill Cemetery. George was the consummate host. He taught so many to appreciate the finer things in life. He was a true gentleman, with a twinkle in his eye, an infectious laugh, and a generous heart, who always saw the bright side of life.
In addition to his wife Dorothy, George is survived by two sisters, Joan Winebrenner (Parse) and Elsie Anne Gerard; brothers-in-law Andy (Christie) and Steve (Barbara), and close cousins in the Halsted and Jackson families. He was a very special uncle to Anne, Peter, Jonathan, Nathalie, Pierre, David, Christopher, McRae, Lisa and Colby and so many others to whom George was a favorite “uncle”.
In addition to his parents, he was predeceased by a sister Elizabeth.
George’s life celebration service and reception will be held at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at the Vicmead Hunt Club, 903 Owls Nest Rd Wilmington DE, 19807. Interment will be held privately. Contributions in his memory may be made to the Union Hill Cemetery Association, 424 N. Union Street, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, 19348 or to the Kennett Symphony, PO Box 72,106 West State Street, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, 19348.
Arrangements are being handled by the Kuzo & Grieco Funeral Home Inc. (610-444-4116) of Kennett Square. To view his online tribute and to share a memory with his family, please visit www.griecocares.com
Photographs submitted by Lindy Powers from the the 82nd running of the historic Pennsylvania Hunt Cup races on Sunday, Nov. 6. Proceeds from the event benefit the Chester County Food Bank.
Bill Oliver, Carol Pyle , Charlie FiferFrank Marcucci and Lesley BrownClaire Bailey and Wayne GraftonTony Cephas and Bob ParrettChristian Guest and Rachel CallowayDavid Harshow and Lydia Willits BartholomewCharlie Fifer
The Chadds Ford Historical Society is hosting two big holiday events in 2016. The first event offers a non-traditional start to the shopping season, and the second is the traditional Candlelight Christmas Tour.
On Saturday, November 26 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. our museum store is open to holiday shoppers as part of the nationwide Small Business Saturday promotion. We’ll help kick off the holiday shopping season with a refreshing change from big box stores! Visit our revamped museum shop, freshly stocked with new and unique items – reflecting the heritage of Chadds Ford and the Brandywine Valley – that will be sure to make memorable holiday gifts. Some of our specialty items include: locally handmade soaps, books on local history subjects, historically-inspired treats like jams, chocolate, and beverages, vintage home décor, greeting cards by local artists…and much more!
Throughout the day, we’ll offer flash sales for a limited time on select items. Check our website, www.chaddsfordhistory.org, for a list of flash sales times. While you’re in Chadds Ford be sure to visit the other small businesses in the area – unique gift shops, museum shops, antique shops and restaurants. So make your holiday gifts ones to remember, and don’t forget to shop smart and Shop Small on Saturday, November 26 in Chadds Ford and at the Chadds Ford Historical Society!
On Saturday, December 3rd from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., get in the holiday mood by touring historic sites with us throughout Chadds Ford and Pennsbury Townships on our 31st annual Candlelight Christmas Tour. Candlelight Christmas truly ushers in the holiday season, and celebrates the history and scenic beauty of the Brandywine Valley by offering tours of historic sites as you’ve never seen them before.
This year’s tour is unique because it includes important sites related to the Battle of Brandywine in 1777 including Thornbury Farm, the Old Kennett Meetinghouse, Brandywine Baptist Church, the John Chads House and the Barns-Brinton House. At Thornbury Farm visitors can join in a Christmas sing-along with the SAI music sorority from Temple University accompanied on a restored 1926 Mudler Hunter pipe organ. At the Old Kennett Meetinghouse, the public will have a rare chance to see one of the most-authentic 18th century meetinghouses in the nation. Virtually untouched since the 18th century, the Old Kennett Meetinghouse does not even have heat or electricity.
Tours begin at the Historical Society’s Barn Visitors’ Center where guest may purchase tour tickets, and pick up tour programs. While here, guests will enjoy holiday refreshments, and visit the Historical Society’s new museum store to find the perfect historically inspired gift for the holidays!
Tickets for Candlelight Christmas tours are $20 in advance and $25 the day of the event. Please visit our website at www.candlelightchristmasinchaddsford.com for additional information or to purchase tickets in advance. The Barn Visitors’ Center is at 1736 N. Creek Road, Chadds Ford, PA 19317.
The Chadds Ford Historical Society is a non-profit organization in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Our mission is to preserve the properties, records, and artifacts; to interpret the history; to educate the public concerning the way of life in the Chadds Ford area with emphasis on the eighteenth century. Our vision is to be the finest community historical society, preserving the history and interpreting the life and times of the Chadds Ford area.
The Society aspires to be known for providing excellent educational opportunities to visitors, schools and residents, as well as being an active supporter of and a focal point for community activities. We operate three historic buildings, the John Chads House, the Barns-Britons House, and the Chads Springhouse as well as the Barn Visitors Center. Proceeds from our events help support the Society’s educational programs and our ongoing research projects on the history of the Chadds Ford area.
Ethan Healey is shown with the first-ever President’s Award for Meritorious Service from the Chester County Association of Township Officials.
A 20-year-old West Chester University student has defied the belief that a single person can make a difference: Ninety-one people’s lives were saved in Chester County in less than two years because of his efforts.
Robert Kagel (from left), state Rep. Dan Truitt; state Sen. Andy Dinniman, Ethan Healey, Ernie Holling, and U.S. Rep. Ryan Costello pose at the CCATO conference.
Ethan Healey of West Chester would be the first to insist that he received assistance from many others; however, it was his initiative and passion that led the Chester County Association of Township Officials (CCATO) to present him with the organization’s first-ever President’s Award for Meritorious Service.
Healey, the manager of Project Naloxone, received the award at CCATO’s Fall Conference at the Mendenhall Inn on Thursday, Nov. 10. “I almost fainted,” Healey said. “It was quite a shock.”
The CCATO award goes to an individual or organization that performs an outstanding service for the residents of Chester County. Healey, the law enforcement liaison at Good Fellowship Ambulance and EMS Training Institute, worked to ensure that first-responders had access to naloxone, also known as Narcan, a spray that reverses the effects of a heroin or opioid overdose, according to a CCATO press release.
“Ethan’s determination to make Narcan available throughout Chester County has resulted in more than 90 cases since January 2015 where the administration of Narcan has reversed the effect of a potentially deadly opioid overdose,” Ernie Holling, president of CCATO, said in the release. “His focus is now on educating and deploying Narcan in schools throughout the county, to increase awareness, and potentially to save even more lives.”
Healey has also worked with legislators to give members of the public access to Narcan and to assure that Good Samaritan laws protect individuals who administer Narcan. In the past, when someone called 911 because a friend or associate had overdosed, they risked prosecution for drug offenses.
In 2014, Good Fellowship took the lead in organizing Project Naloxone, a program designed to provide all 45 police departments and law-enforcement agencies throughout Chester County with the training and medication to reverse opioid overdoses. Since 1990, drug overdoses have nearly tripled nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
In 2014, 57 men and women in Chester County died from an accidental overdose of heroin, fentanyl or other opioids; they ranged in age from 17 to 63. In 2015, overdoses claimed the lives of 56 victims in the county, ranging in age from 18 to 72, according to statistics provided recently by Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan.
Healey, a full-time student majoring in business management at West Chester University, also works full-time as a telecommunications officer with the West Goshen Police Department. He explained that he generally has enough down time on the 3 to 11 p.m. shift that he can get some of his schoolwork done.
He is also a member of the board of directors at Good Fellowship and achieved certification as a state emergency medical technician instructor in 2014. He received certification as an EMT when he was 16, the release said.
“His hard work and commitment makes him a very worthy recipient of this first CCATO President’s Award,” Holling said in the release.
At Thursday night’s presentation, Healey also received certificates of recognition from Sen. Pat Toomey on behalf of the U.S. Senate, Rep. Ryan Costello on behalf of the House, state Sen. Andy Dinniman on behalf of the Pennsylvania Senate, state Rep. Dan Truitt on behalf of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, Chester County Emergency Services Director Robert Kagel on behalf of the Chester County.
For his part, Healey expressed appreciation for the recognition but is still shaking his head about how CCATO managed to pull off such a surprise.
“I didn’t suspect a thing,” he said. “Ernie Holling asked me if I would come to the conference and set up a table” with educational materials about Narcan. Healey said he had worked with Holling in his quest to get Narcan training and materials into the schools.
“They did a really good job and caught me completely off-guard,” he said.
Healey said Holling had attempted to reach out through Facebook to Healey’s father, a retired state trooper, so that Healey’s family could sneak in for the ceremony. “I think that probably didn’t work because of my dad’s privacy settings,” Healey said.
But even though his family wasn’t there for the presentation, Healey said he wasted no time contacting them by phone to share the happy news, which still hasn’t sunk in. “I think I’m still stunned,” he said.
Some talk of thresholds as being sacred, a liminal space between worlds: a time of transition where you’re neither here nor there. Certainly in the past month or two, I have been ironically feeling homeless and caught between worlds not really having landed anywhere yet. This is absurdly ironic because we are dealing, at present, with two houses with mortgages, the one we’re leaving in Chadds Ford and the one we have bought in Massachusetts. Save for a queen-size Aerobed, computers and a chair and food and beer in the refrigerator, our home of 30 years is empty. Meanwhile, the attempt to downsize into one floor of a two-family home in Massachusetts has had the ludicrous outcome of having had boxes piled to the dining room ceiling there.
Transitions are generally not easy and they entail loss even when there is a gain.
But this move, while it is a beginning of new life with daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter, also marks an end. When we moved to Chadds Ford, it was difficult too, but I was forty-one years old, creating a future filled with plans, building my practice, raising two wonderful children, caring for aging, then dying, parents. We also envisioned an addition to our house that was a dream come true, with a kitchen any chef could love and views that made it feel like a very comfortable tree house. Those walls witnessed joyful times and sad times, from illness and dying to weddings and babies and baptisms.
Never have I ever lived in a house where light beams in such miraculous ways. Is it the Brandywine River light that the Wyeths and others are drawn to (pun not intended) that also comes into our house and touches on a painting or a corner and dazzles the eye? Once, another person and I witnessed the Wyeth print of the Kuerner Farm come alive when a ray of sun beamed in straight to a window in the print. Another time, at one of our many Easter Sunday feasts, light struck a Gorman print on the wall above our fireplace. A friend called me to come “look, quick!” The light was such that the entire picture of a desert moonrise came alive.
Some may go “tsk, tsk” at these stories, but these startling events of light never happened anywhere else for me. The artist Jacqueline Beam has painted our house in perspectives that show it bathed in light. It is a special place and as such it is hard to leave—hard to leave its spiritual light.
Right now I sit writing at the Brandywine River Museum of Art, peering out the windows down at Miss Gratz, the cow sculpture, that resides by the water. I will miss her and this museum where our children played and my daughter had her wedding. There is so much to love here: the beauty of the river, of Longwood, of Winterthur. In the past week, I have been trying to bathe all my pores with Brandywine light—the trees, the hills; ah, the shadows, the shadows that counterpoint the light.
I never missed my childhood row home. In fact, I always wanted to escape it, but then so did my parents. They finally did build their little dream house with trees, but not until I was almost out of high school.
So our Chadds Ford home of 30 years is the longest I have lived anywhere and I did fulfill my dreams here — of both a solid career, while raising children, and bringing to fruition a beautiful addition.
It would mean my living to one hundred and one to have 30 years in our next home. Whether 101 or not, even at 71, I need to envision a larger life that allows me to continue to grow. Until I die, I refuse to stop living. So what does that mean? Where will I next find meaning to life and beauty in life? Certainly our grandchild (grandchildren?) will be a large part of that.
Yet, I will also continue working and writing and discovering natural beauty wherever I am.
So, to thresholds I say, I let go of the past, and say, “Here I am” to the unknown that is the future.
* Kayta Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and is in private practice in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She welcomes comments at MindMatters@DrGajdos.com or 610-388-2888. Past columns are posted to www.drgajdos.com. See book.quietwisdom-loudtimes.com for information about her book,” Quiet Wisdom in Loud Times: The Rise of the Wounded Feminine.”
** The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the ownership or management of Chadds Ford Live. We welcome opposing viewpoints. Readers may comment in the comments section or they may submit a Letter to the Editor to: editor@chaddsfordlive.com
