Chester CountyPRESS
www.chestercounty.com
Covering Avon Grove, Chadds Ford, Kennett Square, Oxford, & Unionville Areas
Volume 151, No. 15
INSIDE
60 Cents
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Tales of drug abuse from the front line State Representatives hear from former addicts, law enforcement and counselors about the opioid epidemic By John Chambless Staff Writer
Butler County, Pike County and Blair County. They all came to learn from those on The statistics were soberthe front lines of the opioid ing, the first-person accounts epidemic that has spread were harrowing, and the one throughout Pennsylvania thing that everyone could and the nation. agree on during a meetOpening the meeting, Benninghoff said that overdoses of opioids – often heroin laced with the Losing their hair for a powerful painkiller fengood cause...5A tanyl -- are killing about 10 people every day in Pennsylvania. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, overdose deaths involving opioids have quadrupled in America since 1999. There are about 91 people in the United States dying every Photo by John Chambless day from opioid overdoses. Mike Noone of the Chester County District Attorney’s Office addresses Rep. Becky An untold number of others Corbin, Kerry Benninghoff and Chester County Rep. Eric Roe, among others, on come close to dying. April 6. Mike Noone was on
New book traces the contributions of Alexander Hamilton...12A
Additional $1K given by business leader
INDEX Police Blotter..............6A Opinion........................7A Calendar of Events......2B Obituaries...................3B
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ed over a meeting of the House Marjority Policy Committee held at the East Brandywine Township Building in Guthriesville that brought together state legislators from Chester County and as far away as
the first panel to address the representatives. As the Chester County First Assistant District Attorney, he classified the drug crisis as “the number-one public health epidemic in this country right now. We are riding the crest of a wave that started a decade ago with over-prescription of painkillers. We are seeing the consequences of that perfect storm.” Drug overdoses, he said, have recently taken over from car accidents as the leading cause of accidental deaths in the United States. “No one ever woke up in the morning and said, ‘I think I’ll become a drug addict,’” Noone said. “They didn’t go into a dark alley to buy drugs from a dealer. Continued on Page 8A
Batter up!
Township contributes $4,000 to Kennett HS robotics team By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer
The art of Ellen Catanzaro ...1B
ing of State Representatives on April 6 is that the drug problem in Chester County is bad and getting worse. Rep. Becky Corbin (R-East Brandywine) and Kerry Benninghoff (R-Centre/Mifflin) presid-
The Kennett Township Board of Supervisors approved a $4,000 contribution from the township to Kennett High School’s Demon Robotics team, to help defray team expenses. The decision, reached at the board’s April 5 meeting, came after a presentation by team secretary and marketing director Molly Hohner, a sophomore at Kennett, and adult mentor Christina Gorman, that gave a summary of the team’s quick rise to becoming one of the most successful robotics teams in the Mid-Atlantic Region.
With a current record of 31-7, the 25-member team, which began six years ago, is ranked fourth of 120 teams in the region. Through diligent work and counsel from its 10 active adult mentors, the team built, programmed and tested a robot in six weeks. While Hohner and Gorman gave their presentation, they said that the remainder of the team was at the team’s competition – with their robot – at the MidAtlantic Region District Championships at Lehigh University. Gorman told the board that the team expenses range between $15,000 to $20,000 a year, much of
Photo by Steven Hoffman
The spring sports season is in full swing. Please see Page 10A for details about an April 5 baseball game between Downingtown East and Oxford.
which is raised independently by the students and their families, with contributions also coming for local businesses. Gorman said that the robotics team attracts students with a wide variety of interests. “It’s more than robots, and that’s the angle we try to push with our team and the
high school,” Gorman said. “This isn’t just students who want to be engineers. It’s also kids who like woodworking and construction. Kennett has a very strong initiative for STEMbased education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), and this is a fabulous outlet for that. “We are helping to grow
the STEM initiative in our community,” Hohner said. “We’re taking kids who are interested in the STEM program and showing them that anything that they want to do with their mind, with their hands – and anything they can think of that they wish to build, is what they can do with our robotics team.” Continued on Page 9A
Together they soar The KX Athletics Headliners, comprised of 15 cheerleaders with special needs, reach new heights through tenacity and teamwork By Steven Hoffman Staff Writer Each Sunday night, the 15 members of the KX Athletics Headliners team gather at the gym in West Grove and practice their lifts and jumps and dance routines. The work is hard. The atmosphere is electric as 15 young cheerleaders bubble with enthusiasm and energy. There’s nothing unusual about cheerleaders working hard or being enthusiastic. What is different about this team of competitive cheerleaders is that each member of the squad faces a unique physical or cognitive challenge. The team trains under the watchful eyes of Elizabeth Reber, who led the effort last year to form a cheerleading squad for youngsters with special needs. Reber recalled traveling with the KX Athletics cheerleading squads to various competitions around the country and seeing other programs that had teams
Your property taxes may be subject to change! By Uncle Irvin
They range in age from 3 to 22, and each one is facing their own physical, emotional, or cognitive challenges. They started practicing as a team last July. “We’re a part of the KX Athletics family,” Reber said. “This has been an accepted endeavor from the start.” She said that the benefits of participating on the team are ample: the youngsters get to enjoy the sport, and they build positive
Recently, a Delaware County Common Pleas Judge ordered Delaware County to reassess all 200,000 buildings in the county. The judge’s order came from a lawsuit that stated that Delaware County has not reassessed properties in more than a generation, so they are now not uniform. Chester, Montgomery, and Bucks counties have similar records of no regular reassessments of all real estate in more than a generation. Uncle Irvin was around when Chester County was last reassessed, more than 20
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Courtesy Photo
The KX Athletics Headliners team has 15 members from throughout southern Chester County.
comprised of individuals with special needs. “I’d see other teams and I’d think, ‘why aren’t we doing this?’” Reber explained. “It became a dream of mine to start this team.” Reber approached Karla Andrews, the owner of KX Athletics, about the possibility of starting a new team and she was very supportive. They utilized social media and online message boards to promote the fact that a team was forming, and when word began to
spread they were soon being contacted by interested families throughout southern Chester County. The team quickly reached 15 participants, a good number to start the team. The inaugural team includes Carter Skiles, Mikaylah Reed, Khloe Reed, Addison Brunnquell, Madison Hostetter, Chloe Mudgett, Megan Wood, Sierra Wilson, Dylan Jesse, Charlie Rappa, Luke Waggonner, Eva Nelson, Caitlyn Reed, Chesapeake Wood, and Laura Connell.