Photo taken at a gun shop protest, used with permission from the Heeding God's Call Media Library.

This is a followup to our feature on the vigil held for slain jeweler William Glatz.

It is 2 a.m. on Jan. 17, 2009. Mennonite Pastor J. Fred Kauffman is handcuffed, standing in a dingy holding cell somewhere between Spring Garden and Ninth Streets, divulging his personal information to a judge through closed-circuit TV.

“What are you in for?” The female Judge asks.

“Oh, I was sitting in front of Colosimos”

“Oh, really? You were in the paper! See here!” she says, holding up a copy of that day’s edition of the Metro.

“Listen, brother,” she continues. “We are living in the last days and we need to take a stand against this violence!”

Kauffman says later “I felt like I was in church.”

The judge would continue to speak with Kauffman for “about half an hour about pastors and religious leaders having to do what they are called to do to confront this violence,” Kauffman recalls. continue reading »

More than 60 local residents turned out for the vigil held out front of Glatz Jewelers on Rising Sun Avenue.

A preacher is standing on a street corner in a white jacket with a megaphone. He is wearing an “I Love Jesus” cap and spouting his message loudly to oblivious passersby on Rising Sun Avenue in Lawncrest.

“I was an alcoholic. I was a drug addict. But I found Jesus and Jesus’ message changed my life,” said Jimmy Gardner, 52, an aspiring Bible teacher from North Philadelphia. “Only in Jesus can we all see the error of our ways and can we find salvation.”

An older woman with sleek gray strands pulled back into a bun ran over to him holding her pink jacket closed with her right hand, informing the megaphone preacher that he was disrupting the vigil for a murdered jeweler being held across the street.

So touched was the megaphone preacher, and so apologetic for his disruption, he joined the others in prayer.

“We are all God’s children,” Gardner said.

The vigil was held Saturday in honor of William Glatz, hosted by pastors from several local churches in front of his former jewelry store, in response to the man’s shocking death during a robbery attempt on Oct. 21. Glatz was 67. continue reading »

A customer buys four dozen original glazed doughnuts at Krispy Kreme's grand opening, Tuesday, Nov. 9.

ON THE MAIN STREET of a little neighborhood sitting on the edge of Philadelphia’s border bleeding into suburbia, a once popular pastry factory is resurrecting its namesake and the hot glazed doughnut.

Standing underneath the “HOT NOW” sign on the front lawn, standing amid gorging customers and intrigued blue suits on a soft Fall morning yesterday, the store’s owners are joined by a councilman, a cop, a general manager and a CEO — each placing a hand on the oversized novelty scissors and cutting the long, red tape in front of a small, pale-brick box of sugar and spice.

It’s official. Krispy Kreme is back in business. continue reading »

Norman and Colleen Millan help to fill the pantry at the Klein JCC in Northeast Philadelphia. Photo by Tom Rowan Jr.

IN THE BASEMENT of a Jewish Community Center, in an office no larger than a college student’s dorm room, six adult women operate a pantry aiding the effort to feed Philadelphia’s seniors.

Meet Nina Cohen. She’s sitting in her angel-blue upholstered desk chair swiveling in the middle of the office, leaning across a round table to grab, unfold and then rotate back around to hold up the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer, with the top story addressing the city’s hunger epidemic.

“This is very real. This is not in some third-world country, this in the United States of America, this is in Philadelphia,” says Cohen, director of emergency food and home delivered meals at JCC Klein in Bustleton, referencing the newspaper’s report. “In this city, there are people who are not eating, so it’s very important to us to not only distribute food but try and educate people about poverty as well.”

The pantry operates a program called Kosher Meals on Wheels and provides supplemental foodstuffs to senior citizens’ doorsteps on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis, as needed. The pantry counts on volunteers to help prepare, package and deliver the more than 1,000 rations a week to residents of the Northeast, as well as parts of Lower Bucks County and Abington Township.

“You will find no age group that is hungrier than another,” Cohen says. “But, what you will find with many of the seniors is a difficulty to ask for assistance. Remember, this is a generation that survived the Holocaust, survived the Depression and survived World War II, and they never expected to live as long as they have, and are really starting to run out of resources now at this late age, and we try to help bridge this gap.” continue reading »

Photo by Tom Rowan Jr.

The term “assembly required” took on a whole new meaning at 9 a.m. on Saturday when 200 volunteers unwrapped St. Stephen’s preschool’s very large present -piece by piece, box after box – in the middle of a closed-off street.

Amid the sea of flattened brown boxes and sheets of stray bubble-wrap, volunteers were assigned to teams of three and five people, making small clusters sporadically spread out across the barely visible black asphalt road. The altruists were sitting, standing, bending, twisting and mulling over how to properly screw, hook, join, attach and connect colorful poles with potato chip-shaped plastic chunks.

Lowell Hartzell, consulting his consolidated 12-page instruction manuel with worn corners at the staple, moved from station to station, continually running his hands through his short, salt-and-peppered colored hair and pulling at his white socks that barely stuck out from his tan Timberland work boots. He first instructed one build team, then another, troubleshooting his way through a field of questions and concerns.

Hartzell, a former Lumberyard Manager, had a deadline of 2:30 p.m. to deliver to the children of St. Steven’s Daycare Center in Tacony the gift of a brand new playground. continue reading »

The team ambushes Tony D’Aulerio in the base paths after he drives home the winning run for the Blue Sox in their extra-inning championship effort. Photo by Tom Rowan.

Eighteen active Philadelphia Police Officers are huddled together in front of the dugout at LaSalle High School’s state-of-the-art Ward Field on a humid Sunday afternoon in August. Most of the players are hunched over with their hands on their knees and listening intently as their manager below them, resting on one knee in the dirt, looks up at his team with his circular-framed eye glasses and reminds them that they were good enough to reach the championship game, and are good enough to win it.

Meet the Philadelphia Police Blue Sox: an amateur baseball team composed entirely of Philly’s finest, ranging in age from 22 to 50. The team is preparing to take the field against the Cherry Hill Phillies in the championship game of an 18-and-older, New Jersey-based, independent baseball league for working class heroes with a hobby. A league full of weekend warriors.

“Where’s Cappy?” The Team Manager Bill Stephan, celebrating his 30th year as a cop, asks while scanning the players faces. From the back of the group, along the protective fence on the dugouts rim, a wide man with a sweat-stain halo forming around the crown of his cap speaks clearly, slowly and in a low tone.

“Same things he just said,” Joe Gillespie, 42, the ace starting pitcher begins. “Make this guy throw pitches… lay off the umpires… you know, just stay in the game. The whole game. No clowning around, no talking in here about work. We have the rest of the afternoon to talk about that. We can hit this guy, we proved it last time we played them. Let’s just give it everything.”

“Nine innings, 27 outs,” added PAL officer and three-hole hitter Tony D’Aulerio, 50, clapping his hands together.

“Let’s go play hard fellas,” Timmy Stephan, 24, says with black war paint outlining his high cheekbones.

“Alright guys,” the skipper regains the group’s attention with a direct tone, then lowers it. “We dedicate this year to all the fallen cops, OK? Dedicate the playoffs to everybody, OK? We play this game for them…do it for yourselves, and do it for them…Let’s get it in.”

Both players and coaches, in their matching gray and blue uniforms, all join hands at the middle of the huddle.

“Listen to me, and repeat after me, OK?”

Repeating after the skipper, the team shouts in unison.

“SKERSKI! CASSIDY! MCDONALD! NAZARIO! LICZBINSKI! SIMPSON! PAWLOWSKI! HEROES!”

continue reading »

Bob McCool keeps track on his laptop of how manytickets event coordinator Steve Kiszely (shirt and tie)hands out to each volunteer to sell. Photo by Tom Rowan.

A fire left Mike and Franni Prendergast homeless.

A lack of enrollment at the couples alma matter, Cardinal Dougherty High School, left Mike, the school’s alumni director for 30 years, without a job.

A night of recognition planned by Dougherty alumni and friends in reaction to these latest developments, as well as a celebration of the Prendergast family’s dedication to the Dougherty community, will hopefully become a stepping stone to restoring this family’s fortune.

Last night, the committee organizing the affair had its second meeting in the cafeteria of Torresdale’s St. Katherine of Sienna School to discuss various volunteering responsibilities and to hand out the tickets. The event will be held on October 16 at the Cardinal Dougherty cafeteria.

This story was reported by Northeast native Tom Rowan, and will be featured — along with several other stories — both on NEast Philly and Philadelphia Neighborhoods. You can read the rest here.