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FEBRUARY 25-MARCH 3, 2021
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Bath Food Bank receives Antibacterial wet wipes Donation
Looking by Back Ed Pany Spanish Flu of 1918, Part 4 of 5
Haff Hospital on Laubach Avenue. Photo courtesy of Larry Oberly.
From left to right: Korkmaz Horuz, Barbara Fischl, Doris Kern and Okan Ozkan. By CATHERINE STROH The Bath Area Food Bank received a donation of antibacterial wet wipes last Wednesday, February 17. Four hundred and sixteen packets of wet wipes were donated by Executive Director Okan Ozkan and board member Korkmaz Horuz of the Lehigh Dialogue Center and sister organization Embrace Relief. Bath Area Food Bank volunteers gratefully accepted this donation and gave a tour of the food bank’s facilities, located on the lower level of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Bath.
The Bath Area Food Bank began sometime in the 1980s and continues to distribute the second Tuesday of every month. Currently they serve around 100 families per month. If you’d like to donate to the Bath Area Food Bank, call 484-597-2105. They are currently in need of chicken noodle soup and kidney beans. If you are struggling and in need of food, the food bank is open from 9:30 until 11 a.m. and 6 until 7 p.m. the second Tuesday of every month. Please bring with you a form of identification showing your address.
The Lehigh Dialogue Center recently donated 5,000 wipes to the Allentown School District. The Lehigh Dialogue Center is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that strives for social justice, interfaith and cooperation and advocacy through positive change and connections, relationshipbuilding and partnership for the common good. To learn more about the Lehigh Dialogue Center, visit www.lehighdialogue.org. To learn more about their sister organization Embrace Relief, visit www.embracerelief.org.
Northampton Borough explores Possibility of stormwater fee By KERI LINDENMUTH During their meeting on Thursday, February 18, Northampton Borough Council asked Councilman Robert McHale to explore the benefits and costs of a stormwater fee for all borough property owners. The fee was proposed by McHale as a means of paying for MS4 improvement costs without needing to raise taxes.
“There are certainly areas we have to explore further,” McHale told council. However, he said the main advantage is that “once the fees have been collected for the appropriate amount of work... that fee structure is reduced.” One of the improvements McHale cited is the Dry Run Creek MS4 project, which will cost the borough roughly
$400,000 when it begins later this year. McHale said a fee could help cover these costs. When the project completes, the fee structure would change to cover whatever the next improvement project is. The fee, he added, would be applied to all entities in the borough, including those that do not Continued on page 7
By LARRY OBERLY and ED PANY In this fourth column the Cement News reported on the development of the flu in October and November. November showed no changes in conditions for our town. Reports of the epidemic were continuous, but some doctors only reported very serious cases. Some seemed to credit pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses such as heavy colds rather than the flu. This made it hard to reach a trustworthy report on this disease. There were reports of entire families with mild cases, but the number of cases had not decreased. Under this Board of Health, physicians and other authorities come into considerable blame for allowing this or refusing that…keeping the schools open and the hotels closed. There were reports of children going to school where the influenza had attacked one or more members of the family. But this was hardly true where a doctor had reported a case and the Health Officer had a placard on the door of the home. (When a case was reported the Health Department would order the inhabitants quarantined and designated that for all to see with a placard on the front
door. To remove the placard out of embarrassment or any other reason was a criminal offense. It could only be removed by the Board of Health or doctor.) If the doctor did not rule illness a case of the influenza, he could not say that the child had to stay home from school. By October 25, 37 deaths had occurred in Northampton. Of those, 22 deaths were from pneumonia and all but four of them were foreigners (a name given to many who had emigrated from Eastern Europe to work in our cement mills between 1895 and 1910). Four days later the death toll had risen to 51, and 88 families were under quarantine. Two weeks later the quarantine was adjusted by the Board of Health; the hotels, breweries, and wholesale liquor dealers were allowed to open for business. The Cement News reported that all this made it “Monkey-do” in Northampton. Next time we look at Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1918.
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