Down River

By John Lipez

A Four-Decade-Old Good Deal:
You saw the story last week about the Bucktail Medical Center as the most recent recipient of a loan from the Clinton County Revolving Loan Fund. In this case it was $300,000 in low interest money to assist the medical center in upgrading its South Renovo facility crucial to the health care wellbeing of western Clinton County.

But did you know the history of the county’s revolving loan fund? It’s been around a while and has assisted innumerable county businesses, big and small, in providing capital for worthwhile projects. And here is how it came to be:

It all goes back nearly four decades, to the local demise of Piper Aircraft Corporation. The Piper Lock Haven plant closing ultimately proved to be the springboard for the loan fund’s creation. People who know about these things say Piper sold its local complex to Mackeyville businessman George Ruckle for just under $700,000 and the proceeds were donated to Clinton County. Then the federal Economic Development Administration put in just over $300,000 to build a $1 million pot to get started.

(Ruckle had purchased the vacant Piper building after its closing in 1984. By 1985 he was turning out a few Taylorcraft airplanes at the Piper location but that never quite took off).

So that $1 million was turned over to Clinton County government for establishment of the revolving loan fund and the rest is history; dozens and dozens of local firms able to obtain loans at a low interest rate to allow them to expand.

Some further history: Bill “Punkin’” Marino was the first RLF chairman for the nine-member board, serving in that capacity for over two decades. Renovo’s gift to the local financial system was followed by another western Clinton County resident as chairman, the late Tim Horner. Present RLF chairman is former Bald Eagle-Nittany football great/Bald Eagle Township supervisor Clarence “Tuff” Rine.

Most recently, Clinton County Economic Partnership CEO Mike Flanagan, a RLF board member, told the county commissioners the loan board still has about $1 million available for lending. In this era of rising interest rates, three percent money is a pretty good deal.

And it never would have happened had Piper Aircraft not consolidated its operations to Florida some 40 years ago.

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Better Know Your Opponent:
There’s been a longtime interest here in geography, furthered along by a high school decision to take geography from teacher/basketball coach Ray Kodish, in the hopes of garnering some extra minutes of play with the Bobcat basketball team (the other senior class option was physics from Mr. Eisemann, a prospectively tougher hurdle but not needed for college, so there you go).

As a result, periodically Down River likes to combine geography with sports, especially when one of our local teams takes on an out-of-the-area foe, such as happens this Friday when the Central Mountain boys basketball team hosts the Lampeter-Strasburg Pioneers (a mouthful for broadcasters if there ever was one) in a first-round PIAA playoff game.

Here’s what we learned from Wikipedia: The Lampeter-Strasburg School District covers Strasburg Borough (population 3,117), Strasburg Township (4,467) and West Lampeter Township (17,365). The district is in the heart of Lancaster County, bordering on the city of Lancaster.

The fairly compact district has four schools, an elementary school for grades K-two and one for grades three to five; a middle school for grades six through eight, and the high school for grades nine through twelve; in all some 3,000 students.

Strasburg is noted for its railroad, its National Toy Train Museum and let’s not forget the Choo Choo Barn.
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