[PRCo] Alpha and Omega

[Fred Schneider]

Very interesting Weekend ...

The Alpha and Omega ...

The Beginning and the End ...

It started out with the wedding of two very wonderful and charitable people on Saturday afternoon in East Liberty Presbyterian Church.   Fred Schneider used to go to Sunday School there as a kid until we moved out of that area in 1949.   Of course S'Liberty was a whole different place then ... vibrant ... stores ... people.   Well, there were some stores on Saturday.   Some people too.  I saw one sleeping behind a dumpster.   But inside the church my best estimate of the crowd was about 300 people.     It really takes two great people to draw out draw out as many people as they did.   Congratulations to Gwendolyn Schmidt and Derrick Brashear on the occasion of their wedding.   

I might add that this was the first wedding I ever attended where the bride and groom said 'we don't want gifts ... we have it all ... but here is a list of 501.c.3 charities and foundations that we favor.   You can give to them in lieu of a gift to us.'   Says a hell of lot for those two people.  Great show.

And Sunday was the funeral service for Barbara Myers-Ciccone, who proudly wore the honorary title "First Lady of the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum."   At the funeral it was announced that the kitchen at the museum will be named in her honor, perhaps because she cooked so many meals for so many others.   The local chapter of the Business and Professional Women of American established a scholarship fund in her honor.   She was honored by the travel agency people for whom she worked and by the church which I think she just about ran.   .  It was one of the more socially prestigious funerals I've attended.   Her church holds about 160 in the pews.   I was told that they normally accommodate about 150 on Sunday (75 in each of two services).   Barb's funeral packed the house.   There were about 225 inside (that's about 175 jammed in the pews, perhaps 40 more on folding chairs, and 10 standing in the aisles.   I counted another 6 who could not even get into the building.

For those who do not know Barb, she was Ralph Ciccone's wife and Ed Lybarger's first cousin.   

At an East Penn Traction Club meeting, ten days ago, one of their past presidents approached me and said he had heard Barb died.   Mr. Gallagher went on to weave a wonderful story about how Barb had spent the better part of a day cooking for a group of railfans.   That was Barb.   

This morning, Carol, my favorite waitress at Eat and Park in Washington, Pa., told me she knew of Barb ... that she had quite a reputation in the area.   

Seems she was known from one end of the state to the other.