Tredyffrin Supervisors make one wish to bang one’s head on the table. Sometimes this collective band of bloviators should say less when they have a lack of knowledge on a topic.
Shall we start with the Bhaskar dude who when he is at the meetings seems to be ever so condescending towards people. He explained AI to people. And has he heard about the people in Georgia with a Meta data center?
Yeah soooo they spoke in Tredyffrin about water issues with data centers tonight and where they can’t buy their clue is public or well water is it not true how it sucks up water?
And Tredyffrin glosses over power usage and again they can’t buy a clue there either. It’s astounding to listen to them. Do they not even realize that our electric rates are already affected by data centers? Do they not realize that data centers are not self sufficient with their own power generation?
Tredyffrin’s board chair waxes poetically about how wunderbar the Chester County Planning Commission is on data centers but are they? I think not. Just look at the crappy Penn Futures sample ordinance that they are whacking off to.
Chester County has a Democrat majority who suck up to Shapiro who wants data centers, correct? (I will answer the rhetorical question for you- yes.)
And then there is Hans the Mole, who is looking very much like Violet Beauregard this evening at this meeting. He had to opine about East Whiteland. Now I am less than thrilled about East Whiteland and the data center issue there, but Hans the Mole is factually inaccurate because when the data center issue came to East Whiteland initially is around 2018 (and it started even before that) and nobody knew about them. Even when things started to get busy in 2022 people didn’t know enough about them around the area.
So Hans likes his glass house apparently?
Anyway, if they think what the Chester County Planning Commission put out there is going to save them, they also should be looking to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
And if Tredyffrin thinks a data center can’t be shoved into a corner of their township, they had better pay attention to a lot of their dying corporate parks, leftover industrial etc. Actually they can look into Montgomery County at Upper Merion, which really doesn’t have much room yet residents are fighting five or is it eight data centers there?
But hey, Tredyffrin tonight was talking about how they could make the building better if there was one? Priorities and maybe get that arts committee on it because do they even do anything?
Tredyffrin has a pretty large list of what’s wrong in their township, and data centers just got plunked on said list. And they really should get rid of that ridiculously dumb woman who does the zoning.
The data center. At this point, people are saying “which data center” because every time you turn around another municipality in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and all across the state are being faced with data centers.
And with few exceptions like our wonderful State Senator Katie Muth, so many elected officials are walking lock step with Josh Shapiro ruining areas one day to center at a time, aren’t they?
This post is primarily focused on the East Whiteland data center. But it’s an insidious problem. I’m going to share a video I found on Instagram from Missouri’s JeffCoHousewife on Instagram- she proved my point about this is just a real estate deal/development meaning data centers.
It’s the new warehouse, it’s the new condo development, it’s the new apartment building. It’s nothing about the good of the community, etc. etc. She also poses an interesting thing about how there the data center operators or want to be developers are packaging their scheme to the Republican majority that is this county in Missouri. That’s exactly what’s being done across the state of Pennsylvania only it’s being packaged for the Democrats, primarily. These data centers are just being packaged to sell, period. You could belong to the purple people eater political party and they would tell you why it was so fabulous for your political party and your constituents.
Let’s get real: they’re bad. Data centers aren’t good for anyone except the developers making money and then the data center operators making money. They suck our resources dry, they pollute our water, our land, our air. And if you want to tell me that it won’t affect real estate values in a community, maybe they should offer the Brooklyn Bridge for sale while they’re at it.
Now I have tons of questions about the data center in East Whiteland, but my voice isn’t the most important one. It’s the thousands of other people.
I will mention, however, that when this first started, I couldn’t understand why people in Malvern Hunt didn’t seem more concerned? I think that’s a question that I would ask board members of the homeowners association at the initial time this surfaced a few years ago, wouldn’t you? Which board members were on the board at the time this was initially proposed? Did the developer at the time a.k.a. Green Fig before Sentinel go meet with them? What was said?
Now, I’ve said before that the Green Fig developer is a glad-hander. His personal career roots are in sales and retail brokerage, correct? He described himself as a stock picker. See here:
Some brokers almost cringe at the term “stock-picker.” It can conjure up visions of reps with frayed nerves and churned accounts.
Not Charlie Lyddane.
“I’m not ashamed to admit that I pick stocks,” says Lyddane, a soloist at Legg Mason in West Chester, Pa. “It’s what a broker is supposed to do. My clients like that kind of help.”
Apparently so. Lyddane reports $1 million in production and $120 million under management. He’s been a broker for 19 years and has never been part of a team….With 400 clients and 1,000 accounts, Lyddane uses discretionary account management as a time-saving technique. “I can’t call everybody when I move stuff around. So I pick investments as I see fit.”
He also wants to tell you he’s a son of the environmentally, friendly, but is he really and remember when he ran for school board as an endorsed Republican?
Here’s an interesting quote from that Patch article years ago when he ran for school board:
Mr. Lyddane has lived in Great Valley School District for 15 years and has graduated two children from the District. A graduate of Union College in Schenectady, NY, Mr. Lyddane has a BA in History and also attended the Business School at Union. He started his career at Xerox. He was Vice President of Merrill Lynch and Legg Mason in West Chester for 23 years. As a real estate developer and investor in Chester County for the past 9 years, Mr. Lyddane has significant experience in budget development and implementation, as well as achieving strategic goals in a timely and cost efficient manner. He also has significant experience in Property Management….According to Mr. Lyddane, “When you are managing shareholder’s money, you must produce a product that is beneficial to those shareholders.
They are not us. They don’t get us and don’t care about us, do they?
Why not simply admit who they are and what they are about except they kind of did that at the meeting last week didn’t they? They were like if you don’t comply, we will make you comply, and if you’re bad, we’ll build a Walmart wasn’t that kind of the gist of it?
Then again, one of these East Whiteland Supervisors also told us who he was last week didn’t he? ⬇️
Nothing about this since at first began has felt normal has it?
Why should we have to deal with this and can we deal with this on an EPA super fund site that was polluted with lithium and more? And what good will the EPA prove in this given the fact that they have been gutted by the Trump administration? And then there is the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection our good old PA DEP? (Somebody explain to me what they do exactly that is substantive because as an adult I’m still wondering.)
I know, I know. The eternal conversation of what do you do with old super fund sites, but is a data center really it?
And neighbors have really worked hard to bring up valid points. And I’m going to turn it over to residents.
Listen to these people who I excerpted out of the whole meeting:
East Whiteland should say no to this giant expansion but will they? I think Peter Fixler the data center apologist will vote yes, I’m not sure about the other two votes just now, and it pains me to say that, but they have to decide whether they’re going to have the balls to say no to something or just capitulate?
And then there are the people that work at the township. My biggest area of concern lies with the assistant township manager. Her name is Catherine Ricardo. I haven’t interacted with her personally, but she always has concerned me. She came to East Whiteland from East Vincent Township where she was the township manager. I’ve always wondered why someone would leave a manager’s job for the underling’s job of assistant manager?
Note what I highlighted. Note her comment as a manager, saying once the zoning hearing board approved something they are locked in to that amount and nothing more. Yes, I’m paraphrasing, but you can read it yourself in the screenshot or the hyperlink by clicking on it. It makes you wonder why she could say that there yet they couldn’t say something similar in East Whiteland when Green Fig kept coming back to the pot for more porridge before even getting a shovel in the ground?
There’s also something about data centers being mentioned in 2022 if you read the same minutes.
There’s this old Parch article from way before then 2011 actually. About Pennhurst before it was sold I guess to the current owners? Read it and tell me if a familiar name shows up, or should I be more specific, a more familiar name sitting on the East Whiteland bench?
I will freely admit I think the Pennhurst site should be cleared of all of those buildings because it was literally a campus of horrors, but that’s not for me to say. What I don’t think should happen there is a giant data center. What I’m eternally curious about is if that land was supposed to be cleaned up because there are toxic issues there as well why hasn’t it been cleaned up and they’re talking about building a data center on top of it?
And whether we like it or not the whole data center issue in East Vincent is something East Whiteland needs to pay attention to in my opinion because East Vincent’s old manager became East Whiteland’s current assistant manager. Actually in the overall scheme of things it might be helpful if East Vincent data center fighters and East Whiteland data center fighters joined forces and then there’s Upper Merion and Limerick also facing giant data centers. And then we move upstate don’t we?
So everyone who says this is a NIMBY issue to people in each community facing this horror show needs to buy a clue. Data centers are being shoved into everyone’s backyard and isn’t that the truth? It’s not NIMBY. It’s everywhere and it doesn’t matter what political persuasion you are if you live in one of these affected areas, we’re all affected.
My final thoughts include still trying to figure out why it is that Green Fig got approved and never did anything except try to change everything after the initial approvals? I will also note that last meeting, Charlie Lyddane was uncharacteristically quiet and why was that?
Above is their proposed Valhalla, but that’s not the residents Valhalla is it? I mean it was former Supervisor Sue Drummond’s idea of Valhalla was it not? Did we ever send her a thank you note?
Aren’t we tired of these discussions of do the opinions of residents matter yet? When do our voices matter here? Do our voices matter?
I think because no one knows enough about data centers, they shouldn’t just be plugged into our communities. Why do we have to havethem? But who am I but a mere mortal and a female?
Along that vein, I will never understand as a plain old ordinary person a site that was a superfund site got approved for a nursing home or whatever that once proposed senior facility was could have the same zoning for a monster data center? Like many other things in involving this topic in East Whiteland, it does not compute.
Here are some links to recent media about the East Whiteland data center issue and other communities somewhat close by and a website that seems to be pure propaganda about data centers in East Whiteland:
Back to Villa Blue Tarp in Mt. Pleasant (Tredyffrin.)
When is enough enough out of off campus student party houses?
I have been keeping tabs on Villanova off campus student housing for probably 20 years or better in Mount Pleasant. I discovered the issues years ago completely by accident when I was in Mount Pleasant photographing the history of the place because it is a very historic black area in Chester County. It was the home of Miss Mazie Hall, for example. (As a related aside, I watch them tear down her house for predatory development years ago.)
This area for those not from Chester County or familiar with the history is in what is known as the “panhandle of Tredyffrin.” In recent years, it has been truly plagued by off-campus student rentals and wanton development from both the Upper Merion side of this area and the Tredyffrin side. It’s just far enough away from campus and the Tredyffrin township building etc. that they think no one ever pays attention, so if they have not been paying attention, maybe they all should be?
Not all off-campus student rentals are bad. And that can be said of any student rental in any location, but you never hear about the nice kids, it’s these others who stand out.
When I lived in Lower Merion Township for a bunch of years I lived next to one of these animal houses until it burnt to the ground two days before Thanksgiving one year. That was the early 2000s. November 22, 2000 to be precise, and the fire was covered in The Philadelphia Inquirer and Main Line Life (now Main Line Media News) at the time.
This house on Booth Lane was gorgeous at one time. I was in it when friends of mine and I snuck into a party when it was the rugby house around 1981. I actually didn’t stay very long because it literally was like animal house inside (I was like 16 or 17 and had never quite ever at that point seen a party like that so it was more than a little intimidating), but I will never forget what the inside of that house looked like even with a bunch of college students destroying it more and more every day.
10:04 PM 4/12/26
At that point, it was still a single-family home. It had this magnificent staircase with a carved dark wood newel post. the fireplaces were still intact although I think long since boarded up, but the surrounds were this amazing tile and there were stained glass windows and pocket doors. There were also a couple of really old chandeliers and lights that survived in the ceilings somehow and sconces on the walls.
This house had been the home of a banker or financier type of person named Henry B. Reinhart until he died in 1948. He had a son who died in World War II, who was remembered in local papers as being one of the victims of World War II, who died with the fifth army in Italy on Anzio Beach. When it went up for sale in 1954 you could have bought it for $19,500. And eventually it became this off-campus party house.
I knew from a very elderly neighbor when I first moved to the neighborhood that at one point in time, it had wonderful gardens, a beautiful lawn, which was planted with crocuses that still came up every spring, even when I was there. At one point in time, there was actually a small orchard behind it. The crocuses in the lawn, actually survived the fire and when it became an empty lot, we used to dig some of them up for our own gardens.
After that fire it was an empty lot for gosh, easily almost 15 years after that fire. I always wondered if they built on the old foundation because the foundation wasn’t dug up when they demolished the house after the fire it was just covered over. We didn’t mind it as an empty lot. It gave us some open space for a while.
The house made quite an impression because it had been a party house since I had been of high school age. It had been this huge yellow Victorian and up until the time of the fire had these great stained glass windows still intact in parts of the house, and this amazing wraparound porch.
This house, which was once located at 20 Booth Lane in Lower Merion, was just one of the wonderful houses that used to exist in a row from Old Lancaster Road to Lancaster Avenue.
At that time of the fire (November 22, 2000 and reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer as being started by a roofer’s torch doing repairs), the house had been split into two duplexes (previously, I believe it had served I think as the rugby house when I was of high school and college age and was not split in to more than one unit until 1985.)
Until the fire which made us all fear for our own roof lines because it was a windy day as the firefighters were trying to fight the fire in a small neighborhood, we had been held hostage by this house.
It didn’t matter how many times we called the police or the township, or Villanova. No one was interested atall in the plight of the neighbors trying to coexist with off campus students who were horrible. And for years, the neighbors did try to ask the students who were renting to just please keep it to a dull roar but no, every weekend it was party central complete with more cars than you want to know parked on their lawn and some of ours sometimes, kids vomiting in the street, peeing on neighbors properties, and so on. I remember at the time neighbors who complained about the house woke up one morning to find their cars keyed. I remember they were just a young married couple or maybe they weren’t even married yet but we’re saving for their wedding and the car repairs were expensive to fix the paint.
At that time, I believed the university official we were dealing with was a Father John Stack. As a matter of fact, it was his office we phoned as the fire was happening then so the university could find these kids places to live, etc. These off campus students (girls at this point) never did the right thing by any of us but we knew they were losing all of their college memories and school work, and also practically speaking needed a safe place to land after a day like that fire created. We also knew how scary that fire was for us watching it and those students were living it watching everything they owned from college burn.
Because of this experience in my past, I completely understand how the residents of Mount Pleasant in Tredyffrin feel today and have felt for years as my (then) neighborhood lived it until the house burned to the ground . As a blogger, I have written about this topic over the years in Mount Pleasant because it is thatbad. This is why Villanova had so many people from this area of Tredyffrin Township and even folks from bordering Radnor Township show up at their community meeting after they acquired Cabrini. These people fear that it will only get worse.
For some reason this year, the students seem more aggressive than before, which I didn’t think was possible. They think they are invincible and untouchable, and the lack of consistent attention to this on the part of Tredyffrin and Villanova University officials does make you wonder if this is the case, doesn’t it? I mean, if even the rental housing inspector/zoning officer did her job half of the time in that township would there be so many people all of the time in that house or other student rentals back there? I remember it came up not that long ago that another student rental has occurred and by Tredyffrin’s student rental housing ordinance should that even be allowed?
And I have to ask in the video I’m sharing from this weekend, are they referring to me because I’ve written about this problem house before or are they referring to a supervisor of Tredyffrin Township whose first name is Carlotta?
That’s not the name of any resident in Mount Pleasant that I know of, but I think you will agree that constitutes harassment of the neighbors and others and is that the message that Villanova University wants to send to the public at large out here?
Why should any full time resident be subjected to this behavior constantly in Mount Pleasant? Why does Villanova and Tredyffrin turn a blind eye?
This is wrong, and they all know it’s wrong. And again, I don’t live in that area, but if that’s my name in their mouth because I write occasionally on this topic, that is also harassing me personally. I will note I have been harassed before. A couple of years ago give or take, I was able to track messages back to I believe a computer at Bartley Hall.
These kids are young and dumb, but life is not without consequences, and they just need to behave better. Their behavior is something I doubt would be allowed at home in their parents’ houses and where they grew up and where they live when they’re not at school, correct?
Again, students living off campus in other areas don’t all act this way. But I don’t know what it is about this house year in and year out that it attracts the sametype of off campus student. And in my mind, they are not representative of the university community as an entirety.
This problem is not unique to this university. As we’ve heard the spring, there are also problems currently in West Chester Borough with students there.
These people who are full-time residents of this neighborhood, deserve respect, and a good night’s sleep once in a while. They accept that kids are going to be kids, but do they have to be so awful and does this have to be the continuing pattern of behavior?
Properties with same P.O. Box and business entities:
Hey there, sadly as happens, the East Whiteland anti-data center group on What’s App has interlopers except maybe they are spies sent to disrupt or divide the community? If you recognize the names or numbers, please drop a comment.
‼️ If you are in the group just block and report the people in the screenshots below. They are there for their tea and if you block them, they don’t get any. ‼️
This is why making groups as private as possible sometimes even if you have a public facing page is a good idea. The big meeting in East Whiteland is next week on the 14th, so this isn’t a shock.
These people always have the same objective they want to infiltrate, they want to get a rise out of people, they want to spy, and above all else disrupt.
These are our communities, not theirs. If you are only seeing part of a screenshot because this is a gallery below, just click on the individual screenshot.
I will note this has nothing to do with the township, it has to do with the data center advocates and who knows all who is involved in the company that wants to put them in East Whiteland, right?
All I know is this is predictable and obvious. People like this look for pressure points to divide a community. These people appeared interestingly enough after concerned residents spoke up at a Chester County Planning Commission meeting.
My last word on this is because they are doing this. Somebody somewhere is very nervous about the community involvement now. Keep up the good work.
For more information involving the East Whiteland Data Center you can also look here:
And we thought school districts around here were crazy?
In a nutshell, a Montgomery County school board director seems to have had a massive fit of Fibbar McGees after an Inquirer reporter researched an article they must’ve not liked?
Souderton Area School District? Souderton School Board Member Kim Wheeler apparently said an Inquirer reporter was under investigation? And police responded yeah no it’s reporting and it’s protected by the first amendment?
So yep, I thought that’s crazy and then there’s a video so is she crazy? I mean to make up something about a reporter or to repeat something made up? I mean, what’s wrong with this woman and what’s wrong with the school board that if you look at her political past as a member of that school board and as a politician, why is she still on the board?
Now what this is about is spending, including lavish trips by Montgomery County Intermediate Unit? And apparently this school Bird person said she got her information from I guess the person who runs the intermediate unit Regina Speaker? I have to ask how was the African safari?
Of course the best thing is this isn’t the first time the school board member has been shall we say controversial and that’s being kind?
Do you want to start with the reports of fake Facebook pages? Or the whole ACLU of it all?
I want to say thank you to the community group Right to Know Souderton for having all the information at my fingertips. And NO they didn’t ask me to write anything I found all this on my own because once I read the Inquirer article I was like what the Sam Hell is going on in Montgomery County?
And the best of all there is a connection to Chester county, because the woman who is head of the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit used to be the Superintendent of the Great Valley School District. Yep….her. And remember before she was at Great Valley she was at Phoenixville School District . 
The craziness in Bucks County School Districts is bucolic by comparison.
I hope The Philadelphia Inquirer publishes MORE articles about Souderton. Also note one of my readers referred to Souderton as the Alabama of Montgomery County and I don’t think they meant it to be flattering do you? 
Such nice people such delicious food – they serve real Crema with their dishes.
Everything is super fresh and the place is spotlessly clean inside.
Please note I’m not an influencer. I’m just a local and we paid for our lunch. We are happy customers and that’s it
We had chips and salsa, a steak, quesadilla, and the birra tacos.
We use them for take out and delivery all of the time but today we went inside and it’s nice to have a pleasant experience with just really simple fresh good food.
And we had enough leftover, that we took some home. Their guacamole is literally the best I have ever had, same with their quesadillas. And although I didn’t have them today if you are a fish taco fan, theirs will blow your mind.
I haven’t had Mexican food this good in this area since the place that used to exist on Gay Street in West Chester Borough. I don’t remember the name of it. I just remember when you were coming into the Borough off of Route 3, it was on your left and it was a storefront restaurant. I wish I could remember the name of the restaurant. I do know that it was kind of across Gay street from where Gilmore’s was (which I also miss!)
Anyway, Taco Mar is not just has really good fresh food. Very fresh and bright flavors, and if you are vegetarian, there’s plenty for you to eat on the menu as well.
They have several locations in the area we were in the one that was the old Frazer Diner. The address is 189 Lancaster Avenue, Malvern, PA. Please note they are closed on Mondays.
Tredyffrin Township seems to be riding the crazy train. This happened this evening. I don’t know if anything still going on my last reports from that municipality from residents who happened upon this is the cars we’re leaving and headed towards King of Prussia…. except I’m told if you can here Route 202 from where you live it sounds like they’re racing on it and not necessarily in King of Prussia.
So this is like some kind of drag racing thing I guess?
Whatever it is I am thankful that the officer who responded recognize that but what I want to know is why are all these things happening that are weird in this township lately? Is it just their turn?
I know for a fact from friends of mine who have teenagers who like to hang around this McDonald’s (and I think I forgot to mention this was at the McDonald’s in Tredyffrin.)
So if you can, I would keep your teens away from this place at night because right now it seems to be a trouble spot and you don’t want them getting caught in it, especially if they are young drivers.
There may be a chance they actually got the license plate, etc., of whoever the organizer was.
I don’t know how or IF this fits together but these are BOTH publicly accessible documents. Someone sent me the federal court record was sent to me and it has a similar name in it is on the data center application???
Whiteland Holdings LP.???
Are they talking about the same property? Apparently they are? So I don’t know what to do with all of that, but it made me go look at the property records and I found something else interesting.
What did I find? That was interesting how about a New York address now for Green Fig?
So they were described to us as being from New Jersey, but it’s really New York? Maybe I misheard? Take a look at this link and you will see the guy that spoke at the data center planning commission meeting.
Here in Chester County we have reached the non-answers to questions phase of life, making it feel like we’re in the City of Philadelphia. It seems when people ask them questions these days they don’t even remotely answer the question and then there’s the whole thing over data centers. Are they really that obtuse deliberately ?
You’ll notice whomever does the socials for the county gave that lady a link to Chester County Planning Commission. Has anyone else realized that all the questionable planners from Montgomery County seemed to end up in Chester County not to be a conspiracy theorist but like are they trying to populate the region with their shall we say interesting or maybe Stepford trained planners? It’s something to consider.
And look at the link they posted and who’s on it. That bad ordinance model from Penn Futures is on it. Penn Futures went from annoying door-to-door solicitation to basically being sellouts didn’t they?
And there is supposedly some model ordinance they’re looking at from Montgomery County (shocker do you see a pattern yet?) but it’s not there and would you really trust anything coming out of Montgomery County given the total sheit show of Limerick and that other location near Conshohocken for a data center?
Our county needs to get off of Josh Shapiro‘s data center bus. So do other counties basically residents can’t depend on anyone when it comes to data centers and protect protecting us. And it affects our water. It affects our power. It affects our cost of power which PS PECO has said in a press release that they’re raising rates and it has to do with that – data centers.
📌On Monday, 15 months after receiving a nearly 12 percent rate increase for electricity and a 12.5 percent increase for natural gas, PECO Energy filed a request with the Public Utility Commission seeking an additional 12 percent increase in electric rates and another 11.4 percent increase in natural gas rates…. In its press release, PECO said providing power to data centers is one of the reasons the utility is seeking a rate hike.📌
And you’ll know they all dance around the topic of water usage of these things, and you can find videos from a county in Georgia who’ve literally had their water supply sucked dry by a data center.
And they don’t want to talk about the noise, or the fact that these data centers are muscling their way in to get approvals and before they even have a shovel in the ground, they want to make everything bigger like in East Whiteland and East Vincent.
It’s kind of like the pipelines except even worse. We as residents are being hung out to dry while they pander to a governor with political aspirations. I don’t mind political aspirations as long as it is not at the expense of all of us and even on a county level now you have to wonder?
Approximately location where I saw all of the police cars
I obviously couldn’t stop and take a picture where they wouldn’t have been thrilled with but earlier today there were about six West Whiteland police cars on Burke Road on the side of the road where it’s like a little trail and stuff?
I had just turned off of S. Whitford Rd. onto Burke and I saw lights. I slowed down because I thought oh boy another tree had fallen because there are big trees that go smoosh across the road there from time to time.
But there were literally a bunch of police cars. I don’t know if all of them were West Whiteland or if some were other agencies?
I don’t think whatever happened was good and it wasn’t a car accident. It was something in the woods.
And I remember one or two of the officers looked up at me as I was driving by and their faces were quite somber.
I was told by some people that a couple was walking on a trail and came upon a person who had ended their own life. I don’t know who or why or the age, somebody said they thought they were on the young side, which is so sad.
It just shows you once again what a mental health crisis exists in this country. And in this area, if you could get an appointment, there are therapists, but there’s not really the inpatient availability that used to exist even on a temporary basis.
Someone else came through there after I had gone through and there was a coroner’s vehicle added to the assortment of law-enforcement.
Say a prayer for whoever that was and their family.
And I will tell you another little story that I remembered with astounding clarity after so many years yesterday.
This memory, I believe was triggered by the faces of a couple of the members of law-enforcement looking up as I went by, and it was one of those weird slow motion things where you caught the look on their faces which again was totally somber. It wasn’t the normal look. I don’t know how to explain it.
I couldn’t get the look out of my head so that is what made me look for information which was out there publicly.
Driving by made me think of my freshman year in college. I had a nightmare roommate first semester freshman year, but there was no room in our suite for me to go into another bedroom so the RA’s found a single room that had opened up in an upper class person suite on the first floor of the same dorm. Obviously I took it because that was like dorm gold: a single room in a more quiet suite.
Flash forward to right before parents’ weekend and I don’t remember when I went to sleep. It wasn’t particularly late because it was kind of a chill night since so many people‘s parents were showing up that Saturday.
And then I was woken up at some point in the middle of the night by lights coming through the blinds in my room, and I looked outside and it was somebody I knew, actually one of the first people I met freshman year because I had arrived early for field hockey. He had jumped out of his girlfriend’s window in a suite above. It was only a four story building. What I don’t remember now is if it was the third or fourth floor.
He was still alive when he fell because it really wasn’t (I guess) that high or something, so I have that whole visual forever burned in my brain of paramedics and fire and police putting this guy on a stretcher and taking him to the hospital where he was on life-support a brief time and then gone.
It’s been how many decades and I can still see it in my minds eye? Of course, the other terrible thing about that event is I found out later on at an high school class reunion that he was some kind of a cousin to one of my classmates.
And the thing about somebody thinking of killing themselves is they really aren’t thinking about the people whom they are leaving behind and how it will affect them. In a sense it’s a rather selfish act. Perhaps you think I’m harsh for saying that, but that’s how I feel.
Another thing I know I will never forget about the after shocks of this was the student run memorial service afterwards in the quad. There was that bad PA system that was somewhat portable and it was warm and I watched a lot of the people around me who never knew the kid. That was sort of a surreal experience remembered in more of a slow motion than it was because I was wondering at the time how they were mourning someone they never knew? And then I remember another weird thing they had like a portable stereo outside in the quad and somebody played Genesis “follow you, follow me.”
And here I am utterly middle-aged and when I drove past that scene yesterday I remembered it all again. And all I kept thinking was the people on that trail who found this person. Because this is something when you come upon something like this, you will never forget. Just like whoever this is, they left a family behind who will never forget.
I had some guy judging because I wrote about this and I didn’t disclose any non-public information. I have no idea who it was or how old they were, just that it happened and what made me look to find out what happened was the almost visceral reaction I had driving past the scene.
So again say prayers for the friends and family this person left behind, and think good thoughts about the people who stumbled upon this through no fault of their own, and the law-enforcement and first responders , who had to deal with it.
And to our elected officials out there, not only do we need another hospital in Chester County, but the region needs actual mental health services as well that everyone can access in times of need.
As means of a postscript, I received a note from this young man’s mother and I would like to share what she said in her comment which is public on this post and my response to her that explains why I wrote about this and what exactly what I saw and why it made me feel compelled to write.
My verbatim email:
Dear Terry,
I rarely respond to comments personally but I do believe that you deserve that. First of all I am sorry about your son.
The scene I saw contained NO body. It was just law enforcement. It was the poses and the body language of the law enforcement on the scene – no coroner’s wagon etc. just regular law enforcement. THAT is what I would have taken a photo of had I driven by as a passenger, and not as a driver.
You have to understand at that point, I had no idea what had happened. There are a lot of accidents around there and honestly when it is really windy around there I don’t even drive Burke Road because of all the trees that come down.
The body language especially their facial expressions is something I will never forget. I am not trying to upset you, I am trying to tell you WHY it struck me and I went digging through the 911 recordings and the accident as it showed up on Pulse Point.
It was a weird slow motion kind of thing that was just a blink of a moment so to speak- like when they run a slow motion scene in a movie. It’s only a few seconds, but feels longer.
When I realized later what had happened, I also realized why it struck a chord. I had seen facial expressions like that before, only the scene was more than what I saw last week. That time, it was 1982 and a 19 year old boy I knew freshman year in college. It wasn’t a person I had dated, just someone I knew from around campus, one of the literally first people I met when I first stepped foot on campus. No one knew why.
That is why I wrote about this. It is the whole not knowing if you knew the person. Young men keep it tucked away inside. Your son made me remember something I should never have forgotten. There are not enough resources for mental health and definitely not enough for young men. Heck we still live in a society where boys aren’t supposed to cry.
I don’t know if you care about my thoughts, but I wanted you to understand clearly what I saw and why I wrote.
I can’t even begin to imagine how you feel. No mother should ever go through what you are going through and I am truly sorry.
