PRH: Breaking Grounds

The sun shone bright on the afternoon of November 1, All Saints Day and the day of the groundbreaking ceremony for the field house being built on the site of the McNichol Athletic Field on Moore Street between 25^th and 26^th Streets. Cheerleaders from Saints Neumann-Goretti High School stood in two rows facing each other, black and gold pom-poms in hand, to welcome guests to the field used by the school’s football and baseball teams. Nearly 100 alumni and friends turned out.

Once the crowd had assembled, the football and baseball teams and the cheerleaders gathered behind the podium set up on the southeast corner of the field. After John Murawski, the school’s president, led a prayer service, he spoke about the meaning of the field house that would be built on the site of the old Saint John Neumann school, which is now a senior citizens housing facility.

“God approves of recreation for the relaxation of the mind and the exercise of the body to foster mental, physical and spiritual well-being,” Murawski said.

In the early 1980s, the McNichol family, who used to run a trucking company, donated the land to the Saint John Neumann High School. Since the 2004 merging of Neumann, founded in 1934, and Saint Maria Goretti High School, established in 1955, the high schools have retained use of the field, although the athletes have had no where to change and shower. The Development staff at Neumann-Goretti wrote a grant and, in 2005, received a Department of Community and Economic Development grant in the amount of $250,000.

John Wagner, class of 1974, works in Health Care Services, the division of the Archdiocese that now owns the property where the field house will be built. While the school owns the field, but “so as to not take away from the field space we requested that Health Care Services allow us to build on their property,” Murawski said in a follow-up interview. Joe Sweeney, Secretary for Health Care Services, and Susanne Lurato O'Grady from Health Care Services were also instrumental in the process. “The largest contributor to moving this process along was Hank Clinton, class of 1971,” Murawski said. “Hank worked tirelessly to push all of the architectural through zoning properly, met with architect in the design phase and continues to oversee the legal aspects of building the field house.”

The field house represents the continued fulfillment of the Neumann-Goretti community’s commitment to “an unparalleled education for the youth of Philadelphia,” Murawski said. “This addition along with the recent additions of two new science labs, a media center, the City's first Nintendo Wii Fitness Lab and the City's first iPad Lab are proof that Neumann-Goretti has made this commitment and that we will continue our strides to offer a top notch Catholic Education here in South Philadelphia.”

The building of a field house, equipped with a coach’s office, a concession stand, a film room, 90 lockers, a storage area and a weight room, shows the 710 students currently enrolled in Neumann-Goretti “that the diocese and the school care enough for them to provide them with a state of the art facility that they will be able to be proud of,” Murawski said. “The students are chomping at the bit to say they were the first team to use the facility and they are all excited to be the first team to hang their championship plaque on the wall.”

Construction on the field house should be completed April 1, 2012 – just in time for baseball season, Murawski said.

This 600-word story appeared on page 92 in the Schoolyard section of Philadelphia RowHome Magazine's February/March/April 2012 issue.

Salute to Service: Volunteer Plugs Into School's Needs

This article appears in Philadelphia RowHome Magazine's latest Salute to Service issue, which came out just a few days ago.

Salute to Service: Service Is Music To Her Ears

This piece appears in Philadelphia RowHome Magazine's Salute to Service issue, which came out just a few days ago.

PRH Schoolyard: Mighty Writers

"Do you need to run around the block five times to get that energy out?" Rachel Loeper asks a young boy standing on the front step.

Loeper is the program director of Mighty Writers, a non-profit that aims to improve the writing skills of students ages 5 to 17. The young boy to whom she speaks is one of 50 students enrolled. Like most of his peers and Loeper herself, the young writer is a bundle of energy.

According to Loeper, she started holding meet and greets with people interested in starting a project like Dave Egger's 826 Valencia, a writing center that helps students ages 8-18 develop writing skills. In the meantime, Loeper quit her job in educational technology and took a position substitute teaching at Universal Institute Charter School in South Philadelphia.

That's when someone handed her Tim Whitaker's business card. Whitaker, a former editor of Philadelphia Weekly, was looking to start a similar project. The two met "and talked for about two weeks straight and eventually just kind of merged our forces," Loeper says, sitting at a table in the reception area at the Mighty Writers headquarters.

At the time, Loeper had between 50 and 100 volunteers signed on when Universal Institute, through its parent organization Universal Companies, offered Loeper the 1501 Christian Street storefront that was once the location for an "Obama for President" effort.

"Tim had funding for a year and a board of directors and a logo that I loved and we just took off running. So after meeting in April, we opened July 1st. We had 12 workshops last summer and then the after-school workshop started in the fall," Loeper says.

Mighty Writers is open Monday through Thursday from 3 to 6 pm for the after-school program, during which kids do homework before opening their red folders and working on their writing. On Sundays from 3 to 6 pm, Mighty Writers is open for tutoring and the community is welcome to walk in.

There are also workshops, hosted after 6 pm on weekdays and between 1 and 4 pm on Sundays. These workshops include "Graphic Memoirs," "Writing Like a Ninja" and "Girl Power Poetry."

Now, Loeper says the hope is to expand with a second location in West Philly. The group is always looking for people who want to join the list of 300 volunteers or who want to teach workshops to some talented students and community members.


This article appeared in Philadelphia RowHome Magazine's April/May/June 2010 issue (Vol. 8, Issue 18) in the PRH Schoolyard section.

Runaway to Vintage Connection

Shop at Vintage Connection for a chance to win Joan Jett’s book.

The well-edited collection of vintage clothing and accessories found at Vintage Connection will surely have you swooning and scooping up valuable additions to your wardrobe.

Heather Waity, the owner of the 9th & Bainbridge store, curates the collection with a keen eye. She looks for pieces that are on trend by studying magazines and blogs. She aims to sell pieces that people can easily mix into their wardrobes.

You can read the rest of post at Philadelphia RowHome Magazine's blog.