Assistant Director

Borough officials said yesterday they ended a nationwide search when Shelagh Purnell, the assistant director of the West Chester Recreation Department since 1995, said she was interested in the top spot. Borough manager Ernie McNeeley made the decision and the council approved her promotion Wednesday night. "I was pleased to discontinue the recruitment process when Shelagh elected to become a candidate for the position," McNeeley said yesterday in a news release. "She has been an excellent, hardworking assistant director and we are always happy to be able to promote from within when there are qualified candidates.

Holy Redeemer Hospital , Meadowbrook, has appointed Gabor A. Winkler chairman, surgery department. Winkler will provide direct clinical care along with leading the department. He most recently was attending surgeon at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood. GuestCounts Hospitality , a Philadelphia company, has hired Jan DeMarzo as vice president of off-premises catering. Most recently, DeMarzo worked at Wolfgang Puck Catering Inc. as vice president of East Coast catering sales.

John Stokes was a 29-year-old U.S. Department of the Interior fellow when, in 1979, at the behest of then-Gov. Brendan T. Byrne, he helped write a plan to safeguard the newly established Pinelands National Reserve. He has been at the center of the Pinelands preservation fight ever since. The plan he helped draft protects 1.1 million acres of sandy-soil forests and wetlands full of rare and endangered wildlife and plants, covering nearly a quarter of New Jersey. And, as the executive director of the Pinelands Commission since 2003, Stokes has been overseeing the independent state agency governing the area that includes parts of seven counties, including Burlington, Gloucester, and Camden.

JUST ABOUT everywhere Whitney Smith Williams went, someone would want to talk about her father. "Your dad helped me get into college," they would say. "Your dad gave me the opportunity to get a higher education. " Even in the hospital when her father was in his final illness, a young man came up to her and expressed his sympathy - but not without adding: "Your dad helped me get into college. " Scores of men and women leading successful lives today never would have gotten the education that led to their success without the help of Eldridge Witherspoon Smith Jr. As director of admissions for Temple University in the '70s and '80s, Eldridge was in a position help people not only with the admissions process, but also with the encouragement that many needed to be convinced that they could succeed in college.

John Demby has been named the interim athletic director at Rancocas Valley for the remainder of the school year. Demby has replaced Carmen Cella, the longtime athletic director at Rancocas Valley, who returned to become the interim AD in late December after athletic director Len Grzywacz left for personal reasons. Cella, who retired after the 1998 school year, said that this was his final week in the interim roll and that Demby only wants the job on an interim basis. "John doesn't want the position past this school year," Cella said yesterday.

The Rev. Jerome B. Coll, 82, former dean and retired assistant director of planning and giving at St. Joseph's University, died Wednesday, Feb. 15, of cancer at Manresa Hall, the Jesuit retirement residence in Merion. Father Coll taught English at St. Joseph's University from 1964 to 1966 and was dean from 1966 to 1970. He then spent several years teaching and in administration at Regis College in Denver and, for a decade, was president of Georgetown Preparatory School in Bethesda, Md. In 1990, he returned to St. Joseph's as director of national alumni giving.

The assistant director of the pharmacy at Mercy Catholic Medical Center's Fitzgerald Mercy Division, where mistakes caused the deaths of two patients last month, has been fired, and the pharmacy director has retired, hospital officials said yesterday. The firing and retirement came after the Darby, Delaware County, hospital's own investigators could not determine which pharmacist had prepared the intravenous solution given to a 5-month-old West Philadelphia baby who died Nov. 4. The county medical examiner ruled that the child, Tyhisha Smith, of Chestnut Street near 33rd, died after receiving a dose of muscle relaxant that was 15 times stronger than it should have been.

Maxine Elkin, 48, a public relations executive, died Thursday at her home in Abington, after suffering a pulmonary embolism. Mrs. Elkin was the public relations manager for Robert Morris Associates, a 3,000-member, Philadelphia-based national trade group of commercial bank loan and credit officers. She had held the job since 1981. From 1978 to 1981, she was Robert Morris' assistant director of communications. During her tenure, she helped generate national publicity for the association that resulted in articles appearing in major newspapers, as well as in appearances by Robert Morris officials on television and radio.

During six months of searching for a new executive director, the board of the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum looked hard and deep to find the museum's new leader - and yesterday came up with acting director Nannette Acker Clark. A mixed-media artist-turned-museum administrator, Clark, 45, was named acting director in November. She has worked at the museum off and on in various positions since 1984, when she was an intern. "I was the acting director," Clark said yesterday, "but since it's now official, it makes me feel a little better.

Veteran city park system employee William E. Mifflin yesterday was named executive director of the Fairmount Park Commission, succeeding Alexander L. Hoskins, who takes over today as streets commissioner. Mifflin, 41, joined the park system staff in 1968 and has held various administrative and supervisory positions, including chief park horticulturalist and acting assistant director. He left the park system June 1 to become a deputy to Recreation Commissioner Delores Williams-Andy.

The Rev. Jerome B. Coll, 82, former dean and retired assistant director of planning and giving at St. Joseph's University, died Wednesday, Feb. 15, of cancer at Manresa Hall, the Jesuit retirement residence in Merion. Father Coll taught English at St. Joseph's University from 1964 to 1966 and was dean from 1966 to 1970. He then spent several years teaching and in administration at Regis College in Denver and, for a decade, was president of Georgetown Preparatory School in Bethesda, Md. In 1990, he returned to St. Joseph's as director of national alumni giving.

J.M. Ada Mutch, formerly of Wynnewood, a nurse, World War II veteran, and volunteer for the elderly, died at Rosemont Presbyterian Village on Friday, Jan. 27, a week before her 107th birthday. In 1932, having taught physical education for eight years at the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, Miss Mutch had to have her appendix removed. "I went to the hospital for a week, and had the most wonderful time," she later told The Inquirer. "I decided to become a nurse. I figured I could take care of people as I got older, but I wouldn't be able to run up and down a hockey field forever.

JUST ABOUT everywhere Whitney Smith Williams went, someone would want to talk about her father. "Your dad helped me get into college," they would say. "Your dad gave me the opportunity to get a higher education. " Even in the hospital when her father was in his final illness, a young man came up to her and expressed his sympathy - but not without adding: "Your dad helped me get into college. " Scores of men and women leading successful lives today never would have gotten the education that led to their success without the help of Eldridge Witherspoon Smith Jr. As director of admissions for Temple University in the '70s and '80s, Eldridge was in a position help people not only with the admissions process, but also with the encouragement that many needed to be convinced that they could succeed in college.

Holy Redeemer Hospital , Meadowbrook, has appointed Gabor A. Winkler chairman, surgery department. Winkler will provide direct clinical care along with leading the department. He most recently was attending surgeon at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood. GuestCounts Hospitality , a Philadelphia company, has hired Jan DeMarzo as vice president of off-premises catering. Most recently, DeMarzo worked at Wolfgang Puck Catering Inc. as vice president of East Coast catering sales.

John Stokes was a 29-year-old U.S. Department of the Interior fellow when, in 1979, at the behest of then-Gov. Brendan T. Byrne, he helped write a plan to safeguard the newly established Pinelands National Reserve. He has been at the center of the Pinelands preservation fight ever since. The plan he helped draft protects 1.1 million acres of sandy-soil forests and wetlands full of rare and endangered wildlife and plants, covering nearly a quarter of New Jersey. And, as the executive director of the Pinelands Commission since 2003, Stokes has been overseeing the independent state agency governing the area that includes parts of seven counties, including Burlington, Gloucester, and Camden.

Susan M. Rademacher, former president of the Louisville Olmsted Parks Conservancy in Kentucky, has been named the new director of the Fairmount Park Conservancy, according to John K. Binswanger, president and chairman of the private Fairmount Park fund-raising vehicle. Since 1991, Rademacher led efforts to restore Louisville's historic park system, originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who created Manhattan's Central Park. In addition to serving as president of the Louisville-based conservancy, she also worked as assistant director of Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Parks.

Pssst! Hey, if you are ever accused of ripping off a grocery store or snatching a few watches from a jeweler's shop, just reimburse the business within, say, three years, and everything will be all right. Don't believe it? Well, consider the case of John McDaniel, assistant managing director for Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Black Conference for Higher Education accused McDaniel of stealing $13,000 after the money turned up missing from its bank account in 2000 and 2001. McDaniel had access to the bank account because he was chairing the group's 2001 convention.

A Street administration aide who had been accused of stealing $13,000 from a nonprofit agency was suspended without pay yesterday pending a review of whether he violated the City Charter on an unrelated matter. City Managing Director Philip R. Goldsmith said he took the action as he investigates whether John McDaniel, an assistant managing director, broke a rule that prohibits city employees from engaging in political activity. "I've asked the inspector general to look into it further," Goldsmith said.

Borough officials said yesterday they ended a nationwide search when Shelagh Purnell, the assistant director of the West Chester Recreation Department since 1995, said she was interested in the top spot. Borough manager Ernie McNeeley made the decision and the council approved her promotion Wednesday night. "I was pleased to discontinue the recruitment process when Shelagh elected to become a candidate for the position," McNeeley said yesterday in a news release. "She has been an excellent, hardworking assistant director and we are always happy to be able to promote from within when there are qualified candidates.

A longtime top aide at the Pinelands Commission has been suspended from his post, apparently after clashing with a superior. Assistant director William F. Harrison was suspended last week after a confrontation with executive director Annette M. Barbaccia, according to sources familiar with the incident. The exchange, during which Barbaccia accused Harrison of insubordination, was apparently sparked by Harrison's giving information on regional growth areas in Atlantic County to Bradley Campbell, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection.