Renovo at 150 – Teenagers

Escape to New York

by Lou Bernard

RENOVO – Teenagers. Am I right?

With that statement, I could pretty much end the article right now and most people would understand what I mean. A lot of teens are great, but just about all of them have their wild and rebellious moments. And most of them (Me included, as a teen) have times when they try some ridiculous idea that four seconds’ thought would have revealed as a terrible one. It’s part of growing up. About five percent of you have never really had to deal with teenagers and have no idea what I’m talking about. The rest of you are sitting there nodding their heads.

But, no, I didn’t just write this column to rant and tell kids to get off my lawn. I wrote it to help recall the wonderful heritage that Renovo has, all of its incidents and its people.

Four of those people were teenaged girls in 1934. And all four of them had an interesting couple of days.

It was September 28, 1934. Lillian Maggs was fourteen, and her friends Hazel Wadsworth, Sarah Saiers, and Betty Orndorf were all fifteen. All of them lived in Lock Haven. And they decided they wanted to see New York City.

They decided to go by way of Renovo. They also decided to not inform any parents of this plan, because when has mentioning things to a parent ever done any good? They went to the Junior High on Wednesday morning, and then didn’t return in the afternoon. They were seen in Renovo on that afternoon, and then disappeared.

It didn’t take long for panicky calls to start going out from parents. When word was reached that the girls had been seen in Renovo, the Orndorf parents ran up there to look, but the girls had moved on by then. They spoke with Police Chief Mike Sicuranza, who promised to find the girls.

This could be considered fairly reliable. Mike Sicuranza was the closest thing Renovo ever had to a superhero, making hundreds of arrests over the course of his career. He sent out word to nearby municipalities, and began searching for the girls himself.

The girls, meanwhile, had gotten as far as Driftwood, which is nowhere near New York City, but still a pretty impressive distance. They spent the night in Driftwood, and then continued on in the morning.

On Thursday morning, the girls got a ride from a woman going north, and she took them to Saint Marys before dropping them off. As they rode with her, she heard the girls talking about going to New York, and no adults were around, which was a little suspicious even by 1934 standards. After she dropped the girls off in Saint Marys, she stopped for gas and contacted the authorities.

The police chief of Saint Marys was a man named Goetz. Chief Goetz went out and checked the streets, finding the girls and picking them up. He figured these were the same girls that Sicuranza had called him about the previous day, so he took them to Emporium, where he met with Sicuranza. Sicuranza picked up the girls there, took them back to Renovo, where the Orndorf parents returned for the second time in two days. The Orndorfs picked up the girls, and brought them home.

And, after that, they were probably in considerable trouble. Not so much trouble, however, that someone didn’t think to contact the papers, and the story ran on the front page the next day. “Wanted To See City, Took Wrong Road.”

All in all, it was the typical sort of teenaged adventure: The girls decided to go see New York, which was 212 miles away. They traveled ninety-two miles to get to Saint Marys, which is 298 miles away from New York. Also in the wrong direction.

Kids these days.

I wasn’t able to find out what happened to most of the girls. However, Sarah Saiers got married three years later, becoming Sarah Jones. I assume that if any of the others ever had kids, they never let them out of their sight.