From the monthly archives: "August 2016"

The Founder of Boys Town Returns to the Town that Gave Him His Start

By On · Add Comment · In Columns

style=”text-align: left;”>                                                                                                                 1945

by James Rada, Jr.

The second of his back-to-back Best Actor Oscars that the legendary Spencer Tracy won was for his role in the 1938 movie Boys Town. He played the role of Father Edward Flanagan, the Catholic priest who founded the pioneering boys’ home in Nebraska. The boys’ home is credited for giving many disadvantaged youths a better life and helping them through their turbulent childhood.

Flanagan was a graduate of Mount St. Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, and he also experienced some struggles while there.

During his first day on campus, a schoolmate pushed him into St. Anthony’s Lake.

“I learned to swim because I had to,” Flanagan told the Frederick Post in a 1945 interview. He later credited that experience, along with the forced swimming lessons, for allowing him to save his father from drowning on a fishing trip at age seventy-five.

His second day on campus was just as noteworthy. “When a schoolmate challenged him to a fight in the gym, the youngster from Ireland proved himself a willing mixer. The battle lasted four hours,” the Frederick Post reported. His opponent spent the next week in bed. “I was in worse shape than he was and the only reason I didn’t go to bed, too, was because I was new in this country and too green to know that I should have,” Flanagan told the newspaper.

Luckily, most of his time at the Mount was not so exciting. He applied himself to his studies and developed a focused concentration on his work that would help him later in life.
Flanagan’s biographers have noted that Flanagan enjoyed his time in Emmitsburg and his frequent visits to his alma mater bear this out. He sang with the glee club and chapel choir and was elected to the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Frederick News also noted in a 1982 article that Flanagan was considered the best handball player on campus.

When he graduated in 1906 as the youngest in his class, he was recognized for his distinguished study in Latin and Greek and for a speech called “The Gaelic Revival,” during the college elocution contest.

His one regret apparently was that he didn’t get into any trouble. According to the Frederick News, it was a tradition at the time that a boy had to get in trouble with the administration at least once during his time at the Mount to be considered a true “Mountaineer.” “Perhaps I should have misbehaved a little,” Flanagan was quoted in one of his biographies.

He was granted a Master’s Degree from the Mount in 1911, while he was working in Austria. It was during this time overseas in Austria and Rome when he was also ordained a priest.

When he returned to the United States in 1913, he worked in Omaha as the assistant pastor at St. Patrick’s and as the proprietor of the Workingmen’s Hotel, which was temporary housing for vagrants. Seeing these men, Flanagan began wondering if they would have led different lives if they had been helped as boys.

This led to his idea of opening a home for boys in 1917. The Boys’ Industrial Home began with only five boys. It was more than just an orphanage, it was a home for boys that also used new parenting methods to raise and educate the boys so that they would be productive adults. As it grew in size, it was renamed Boys’ Town.

While the Spencer Tracy film was great PR for the organization, the film actually caused cutbacks in donations. “Viewers apparently made the judgement that if Boys’ Town could survive all the crises contained in the film, Flanagan and his troops might then withstand anything else that might happen,” according to the Frederick News.

In 1938, Mount St. Mary’s awarded Flanagan an honorary Doctor of Laws in recognition of his work at Boys’ Town.
Flanagan died in 1948 at the age of fifty-two.

“To have actually lived Flanagan is perhaps too much the perpetrator of the happy ending, too strong the personification of the American dream come true,” the Frederick News noted.
20160607_112320                                                                                                                                                                Father Edward Flanagan

Thurmont Teen to Tour with National Dance Group

By On · Add Comment · In Columns

James Rada, Jr.

Charley-Bennett---article-tIt seems as if Charley Bennett (pictured right) has been dancing all her life. She began taking lessons at age three, and this year and next, she will be touring with Artists Simply Human (ASH).

“It’s going to be a lot of fun, and I’ll gain a lot of experience,” said Charley, now age fourteen.

ASH brings together dancers, choreographers, students, and parents for dance events around the country.

Charley will be assisting the choreographers and helping teach the classes, but she will also be performing and getting her own instruction as well. “It’s exciting because you get to work with the choreographer one on one.” She will also dance in the final performances.

The tour will take her to sixteen different cities, beginning in October and running through next year.

“It’s a big commitment, but she loves it,” said Claire Bennett, Charley’s mother.

Charley began her dance instruction at the Sicilia Elower Studio in Thurmont. As her skills improved, she began to compete and attend dance conventions for further instruction. She currently dances four to five days a week.

“I do all types of dance, but I like contemporary the best,” said Charley. She also competes in many different types of dance, but her solo performances are always contemporary.
Before her tour begins, Charley will be participating in Nigel Lythgoe’s Celebration of Dance Gala in Los Angeles on September 10, 2016. Lythgoe, producer of American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, among other shows, founded the “Dizzy Feet Foundation” in 2009 and has since held the gala, co-hosting with active foundation members such as Katie Holmes. Charley was among eight dancers chosen from among sixty.

As for her future, Charley thinks she can make it as a professional dancer. “I’ve thought about moving to L.A. and joining a contemporary dance company or hip-hop crew. There are a lot of things you can do with dance.”

Guest Poet at “Catoctin Voices” Evening of Poetry

By On · Add Comment · In Columns

ARTS--Entertainment---DavidDavid Salner (pictured right) will be the guest poet at “Catoctin Voices” Evening of Poetry on September 16, 2016, at 7:00 p.m. at The Creeger House, located at 11 N. Church Street in Thurmont.

Salner worked for twenty-five years as an iron ore worker, steelworker, and general laborer. His writing has appeared in Threepenny Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Salmagundi, River Styx, and many other magazines. His third book, Blue Morning Light (2016, Pond Road Press), features poems on the paintings of American artist, George Bellows. Says Elizabeth Knapp, recent guest poet at “Catoctin Voices” and assistant professor of English at Hood College, “…clear-eyed, luminous poems. Longing permeates this book, the language thrumming with desire…these poems ache their way toward revelation with a startling clarity and brilliance.” Salner holds an MFA degree from the University of Iowa and resides in Frederick, Maryland.

mountain talk

By On · Add Comment · In Columns

by James Rada, Jr.
20160808_143927When Raymond Sanders (pictured right) first came to Sabillasville, it was because he needed a bigger house. His family was growing, and the Sanders needed space to expand. They found a two-story home at the end of a dead-end road and set down roots.

“It’s a nice place to live,” Sanders said. “The dead-end road was good for the children, and my wife’s father and stepmother lived nearby.”

His children started attending Sabillasville School when it was still in the building that is now the Walkersville Christian Fellowship Church. At that time, local students up to grade eight all fit into a three-room school. For high school, the students were bussed down the mountain to Thurmont High.

“I didn’t worry about them going down to Thurmont,” Sanders said. “People were careful on the road, and there were no accidents.”

Sanders was born in Iron Springs, Pennsylvania in 1922, but his family moved to Fountaindale, Pennsylvania, when he was six. From there, they would eventually move to Charmain and Highfield.

Although his work would take him far from Catoctin Mountain, to travel to all of his homes is no more than a ten-mile round trip.

“I’ve been working since the time I was twelve,” Sanders said.

His early work was hauling vegetables for a farmer, but he has also been a fruit picker, worked at the pipe and nipple factory, Landis Machine, and a brick factory.
His longest-lasting job was as a truck driver for Fort Ritchie. He worked there for twenty-two years, retiring in 1975 because of a back injury.

“They wouldn’t give me another job, and I couldn’t work anymore because I couldn’t pull rigs.”

Instead, he wound up retiring at age fifty-two. He was also a member of the Maryland National Guard. He was able to continue his service for five more years, before he needed to retire from that as well. Between his service in the National Guard and in the Army, Sanders served thirty-three years in the military.

Sanders is also a Veteran of World War II. He enlisted in the Army on March 18, 1943, and trained with the 8th Armored Division. However, when he shipped out to Europe, he was sent as part of the green troops, being sent to replace the soldiers who were dying in the war.

Once in Europe, though, he never saw combat.

“I was close to being called up a couple times, but it never happened,” said Sanders.

He mustered out after three years and returned home, which at the time, was Highfield. The following year, he “really met” Betty Jane Fox. He had first met her when she was ten and he was fifteen, but that was just in passing because he was friends with the boys in her family.

Sanders was in Waynesboro one time with Betty Jane’s uncle, when her uncle tried to convince Sanders to come to Frederick with him to a dance. Sanders wanted to go, but said he didn’t have a date. Betty Jane’s uncle then fixed her up with Sanders and the two hit it off. They were married on September 13, 1947.

Together, they raised seven children (Debbie, Becky, Rita, Larry, Mary, David, and James), and one grandson (Jeffrey). They also have twelve grandchildren and twenty-two great-grandchildren.

“When we had family picnics, we would have forty-five to eighty people show up,” Sanders said.

He has always enjoyed living in Sabillasville and says that he has pretty much anything he might need nearby. He attends church at St. Rita’s Catholic Church in Blue Ridge Summit. He belongs to the Cascade American Legion, Waynesboro VFW, and Knights of Columbus.

“I think we have the nicest people that any community could have up here,” expressed Sanders. “They make great neighbors.”
Betty Jane passed away last year, and while Sanders lives alone now, he still has plenty of family looking out for him and plenty of memories.