Donegal townlively.com
MAY 18, 2022
SERVING THE LOCAL COMMUNITIES SINCE 1954
VOL LXIII • NO 14
Musical Mondays BY CATHY MOLITORIS
Jim Flowers, with a work in progress
A façade of a 19th-century house in Marietta, now home to The GateHouse
Downsizing The Details one foot and completes the façades in painstaking detail, any people find success by including bricks, shingles, stones thinking bigger. For Jim and shutters. Beginning in 1995, Jim operatFlowers, it’s all about ed Flowers in the Kitchen, an thinking smaller. Flowers, who lives in Marietta, Elizabethtown-based restaurant, has been creating scale replicas of with his wife, Pollyann, and his the façades of local buildings for daughter, Laura. While there, he the past few years. He typically created his first façade when he works in a scale of one inch to replicated the restaurant. The business eventually closed, and Jim didn’t think about doing another façade until his wife passed away three years ago. “I had nothing to do, and I needed something to do,” Jim said simply, describing how he got into the work. Jim has always had a creative side. He and his wife sold handmade items at craft shows throughout the region, featuring Pollyann’s counted cross stitch and Jim’s wooden folk art. His façade work is all Jim Flowers starts his projects with a photo self-taught, he said. and builds from there. BY CATHY MOLITORIS
“I do what I want when I want and how I want ... I just enjoy it.” His replicas typically begin with a frame of one-by-three-inch plywood. He then constructs the façade in detail, with special attention paid to paint colors and materials. Although he strives for accuracy, he will make one exception: “I put candles in each window,” he explained. “Even if you don’t have candles in the window of your house, I’m putting them in there. They look nice.” Jim can spend up to 80 hours working on a façade. He’s quick to
point out that although that’s technically two weeks of work, at 40 hours a week, he’s not putting in long days. At 83, he’s taking his time to complete each façade. “I might work an hour, then take a nap,” he said. “Sometimes, I’ll work for half an hour in a day. Some days, I’ll work for a few hours at a time.” His façade workshop is set up in the living room of the home he shares with his daughter, son-inlaw and granddaughter. Over the years, he’s completed façades of buildings throughout Lancaster County, including the Marietta Community House, the Maytown Historical Society museum, the Haldeman Mansion and countless private homes. Building the replicas not only fills his days with purpose, Jim said, but it allows him to indulge his creativity on his own schedule, and he doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. “I do what I want when I want and how I want,” he said. “I just enjoy it.” J i m w i l l t a k e o r d e r s fo r façades of homes or businesses. For more information, call him at 717-333-0593.
See Musical pg 2
INSIDE THIS ISSUE Searching For A Snake’s Family . . . . . . .5 Serving The Community . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Business Directory . . . . . .9 House Of Worship . . . . . .11 Classifieds . . . . . . . . . . .13
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To start a project, Jim finds a building that strikes his fancy. “Most of the time, I’ll get permission to make one, but if someone says ‘no,’ I’ll probably do it anyway,” he stated with a laugh. “I pick something I like, I measure it and I take pictures.” He also creates custom blueprints, making a layout of the building’s windows, doors and other special features.
Mondays are musical at Donegal Primary School. That’s when Matt Wheeler, known to students as “Mr. Matt,” presents a video series, focusing on music. The singer-songwriter has been offering “Music Mondays With Mr. Matt” since March, and he’ll wrap up the series - which features a shorter “Mr. Matt Moment” every other Monday - with a concert at the school on Wednesday, June 1. This is the second year Wheeler has worked with students at the school. Last year, he presented a series of videos encouraging students to learn the art of songwriting, and then he joined students virtually in their classrooms to listen to their creations. This year, he focused on socialemotional learning, specifically relationships and gratitude, and the vocabulary associated with that topic. “I’ve found that, besides being fun and the source of a lot of joy, music is a very good way to help
