Down River – April 16, 2015

Heartbreak in Renovo:

Yes, it was a tragic, almost unfathomable week or so in Renovo, the Easter Sunday disappearance of a young mother of three and the horrific ending, the discovery of her body six days later in Noyes Township.

But if any good can come out of such a tragedy it was how the greater Renovo community responded to the unfolding drama, residents doing everything within their power to try and find the missing Kelley Jo Snyder, hoping and praying for a happy ending.

That Renovo grit and compassion was perhaps best expressed in a Facebook posting attributed to the Renovo Fire Department. With a thanks to the fire department, we reprint it here:

“It’s times like this that show many, that little towns have a big heart. It shows that a community can come together to be part of something bigger than itself and it reflects the selflessness that lies within it and among it. Thank you to everyone who helped aid in the search for such a wonderful person and another huge thank you to all other departments and mutual aid who assisted. 
 It means a lot. 
 Prayers go out to family and friends in such a grief stricken time and prayers will also continue to keep all volunteers safe whenever and wherever they may respond.”

Hillary, Harry and Ulysses:

So Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton made a Monday pit stop at the Pilot truck stop at the Lamar Exit of Interstate 80? Part of her trip west to Iowa to test the political waters in the Hawkeye state 18 months out?

Had we known we would have commissioned former interchange truck stop employee Jackie Grenninger to do a quick interview: “Hey Hillary, do you think you’re going to win? Hey Hillary, what about Ted Cruz? Hey Hillary, what about Marc Rubio? Hey Hillary, how do you think Central Mountain will do this fall?”

Her quick traipse through Clinton County reminds us that visits by presidents and presidential candidates in our county have been relatively rare.

I can attest that then-President Harry Truman made a train whistle-stop at the old Lock Haven passenger station while running for re-election in 1948. I was in Miss Jane Mervine’s kindergarten class at Penn School and we were all paraded down to the train station.

Between 1948 and this Monday, I don’t recall a lot of others, although ex-President Bill Clinton spent some time in Lock Haven University’s Thomas Field House in 2008 as part of wife Hillary’s first venture for the presidency.

Occasional presidential candidate Jesse Jackson made a trip to Lock Haven back in 1988 but his visit was in support of striking workers at the International Paper Company (was present for that) and I think I read somewhere former President Ulysses S. Grant used to fish at Westport (not present for that).

But Then Johnstown’s Not San Diego:

I make a motion we send Clinton County Economic Partnership President Mike Flanagan to a food expo in California and here’s why:

Nick Felice, Flanagan’s counterpart in Cambria County, recently traveled to Sacramento to try and entice food producers there to ship their fruits and vegetables east for processing in Pennsylvania.

The head of the Cambria County Economic Development Authority made his pitch after California Gov. Jerry Brown ordered mandatory water use restrictions, the first in that state’s history, in the wake of a four-year drought.

Felice touted “25 million gallons of water to offer every day,” that number from the Cambria Somerset Authority.

Clinton County, with its semi-mighty west branch of the Susquehanna and Lock Haven, with its Ohl Reservoir and related facilities southeast of the city, has water in abundance and rarely has to impose any kind of rationing.

Felice said food crops with a relatively long shelf life could be picked and shipped east for processing in Pennsylvania, noting food producers already truck produce to the heavily populated East Coast.

Good luck to Cambria County on that effort.

An Apology:

At the bottom of this column last week appeared a Down River item relative to Washington Post columnist/Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer scheduled for an appearance this Saturday evening at the Williamsport Community Arts Center.

There was an attempt at that occasional impish column humor, something about Krauthammer and fellow Fox News personality Sean Hannity reprising, top hat, tux and tails and all, the Gene Wilder/Peter Boyle “Puttin’ On the Ritz” stage number from Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.”

A regular Record reader rightly passed along some post-printing criticism, pointing out something Down River didn’t know, that Krauthammer had been paralyzed from the waist down in a swimming accident in his college days and is wheelchair bound.

I apologize to all offended and had I known of Krauthammer’s condition would never have written such an item.