Edison High School

Edison High School outlasted George Washington in a wild baseball game that took 3 hours and 55 minutes to complete yesterday. Edison trailed by 8-0 and 13-2, then led by 20-15 before Washington rallied. Jake Wright made it 20-20 with a three-run homer in the home seventh. The Owls won it for reliever Gonzalo Lebron on Miguel Delgado's RBI single. Jose Sosa hit two homers for four RBI. Teammate Chris Lopez also homered, as did Washington's Dan Meade. One umpire tried to halt the game at 6:30.

Philadelphia Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said Wednesday that city students' state test scores are up for the eighth consecutive year. "For the first time ever, more than half of our students now score in the proficient or advanced level," Ackerman said in brief remarks before the School Reform Commission. Students in third through eighth grade and eleventh grade took the exams in reading and math this spring. Ackerman also said that the district's "Empowerment" schools - 105 chronically failing schools given extra supports and closer scrutiny by the central office - mostly showed "significant and dramatic" gains in reading and math.

Heidy Maneiro had just graduated from Edison High School last night when she found her aunt in the lobby of the Girls High School auditorium, where Edison's ceremony was held. They hugged each other and Heidy's dark eyes filled with tears. The 19-year-old said she was happy about graduating, but "very sad" too. "Especially when I think about Dr. Fareira," she said. "Every time they mentioned his name I started to cry. I used to go into his office to get candy," she added with a slight smile.

Funeral services for Russell E. Swartz 2d, 26, who died in a boating accident last week, will be held at 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Boylan Funeral Home, 10 Wooding Ave., Edison, N.J., followed at 9:30 a.m. by a Mass at St. Matthew's Roman Catholic Church in Edison. Burial will follow in Resurrection Cemetery in Piscataway, N.J. Mr. Swartz, a former star linebacker for the Rutgers University football team, was found dead Friday in the Delaware River after the boating accident near Palmyra.

They were not always names on a wall, an elegiac roll of young men whose breath was cut short in a war now 25 years in the past. Once, they were teenagers sauntering through the hallways of the old Edison High School, filling that fortress-like building at Eighth and Lehigh with gusts of laughter and the improbably hopeful dreams of youth. Once, Dennis Kuzer was a popular teen who loved to fish and camp and flirt with the girls. Once, Sam Burton was a quiet boy who sat in JoAnne McHugh's science class.

After more than 25 years of waiting for a new Edison High School, people in the North Philadelphia neighborhood surrounding the old, dilapidated school will have to wait a little longer. The new Edison will not be finished in October as promised. That means Edison's 2,000 students will not be moving into the school at Front and Luzerne streets in February. The completion date has been pushed back to next spring. The school now is not scheduled to open for students until September 1988.

After more than 25 years of waiting for a new Edison High School, people in the North Philadelphia neighborhood surrounding the old, dilapidated school will have to wait a little longer. The new Edison will not be finished in October as promised. That means Edison's 2,000 students will not be moving into the school at Front and Luzerne streets in February. The completion date has been pushed back to next spring. The school now is not scheduled to open for students until September 1988.

School board president Herman Mattleman stood on a plateau overlooking the steel superstructure that rose from the 25 acres of mud-covered terrain at Front Street and Hunting Park Avenue yesterday and smiled. "This was John Fareira's dream," Mattleman said to no one in particular as he scanned the construction site of the new Thomas A. Edison High School and Technical Center. "He would be proud to see this actually coming to fruition. " Fareira was the popular Edison principal who fought for years for a new school to replace the deteriorating, century-old Edison at 8th Street and Lehigh Avenue, which serves a heavily black and Hispanic neighborhood.

The Luzerne Street Bridge in North Philadelphia is a 200-foot-long mass of steel and concrete over Luzerne Street near Rising Sun Avenue. The bridge, part of the former Berks Industrial tract, is not open to traffic and is used for parking by Tony DePaul & Sons Co., a highway contractor. But for the nearly 2,300 students and teachers of Edison High School, two blocks east of the bridge, the area is a haven for muggers, rapists and other criminals. The contour of the bridge turns the passage underneath into a dark tunnel, creating a daily nightmare for students who walk under it. Yesterday, the school delayed the start of classes to allow about 400 students, teachers, and city and state officials to celebrate a small victory at the bridge.

Nearly 70 Hispanic residents demonstrated for 45 minutes yesterday outside the construction site of the new Edison High School, in Feltonville, to protest the lack of minorities working on the project. "We hope to make a public presence to demand that the Board of Education and other compliance offices make public their information on the numbers of workers in all levels of this construction project," said Rosemary Cubas, vice president of the Puerto Rican Alliance, which spearheaded the protest.

Philadelphia Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said Wednesday that city students' state test scores are up for the eighth consecutive year. "For the first time ever, more than half of our students now score in the proficient or advanced level," Ackerman said in brief remarks before the School Reform Commission. Students in third through eighth grade and eleventh grade took the exams in reading and math this spring. Ackerman also said that the district's "Empowerment" schools - 105 chronically failing schools given extra supports and closer scrutiny by the central office - mostly showed "significant and dramatic" gains in reading and math.

Daniel Guzmán gasps a little as his prom date walks down the stairs into the living room. "Ma, you look really nice," the 18-year-old Edison High School senior tells Wanda Alicea, a vision with magenta hair, a purple gown, and 4-inch turquoise Lady Gaga heels. Wanda, a 41-year-old mother of five and grandmother of two, blushes while trying not to fall. "Oh, Papi, I hope I don't kill myself in these shoes. " Death was not on Daniel's mind when he asked his mom to accompany him on arguably one of the most important nights in a teenager's life.

Edison High School outlasted George Washington in a wild baseball game that took 3 hours and 55 minutes to complete yesterday. Edison trailed by 8-0 and 13-2, then led by 20-15 before Washington rallied. Jake Wright made it 20-20 with a three-run homer in the home seventh. The Owls won it for reliever Gonzalo Lebron on Miguel Delgado's RBI single. Jose Sosa hit two homers for four RBI. Teammate Chris Lopez also homered, as did Washington's Dan Meade. One umpire tried to halt the game at 6:30.

They were not always names on a wall, an elegiac roll of young men whose breath was cut short in a war now 25 years in the past. Once, they were teenagers sauntering through the hallways of the old Edison High School, filling that fortress-like building at Eighth and Lehigh with gusts of laughter and the improbably hopeful dreams of youth. Once, Dennis Kuzer was a popular teen who loved to fish and camp and flirt with the girls. Once, Sam Burton was a quiet boy who sat in JoAnne McHugh's science class.

Funeral services for Russell E. Swartz 2d, 26, who died in a boating accident last week, will be held at 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Boylan Funeral Home, 10 Wooding Ave., Edison, N.J., followed at 9:30 a.m. by a Mass at St. Matthew's Roman Catholic Church in Edison. Burial will follow in Resurrection Cemetery in Piscataway, N.J. Mr. Swartz, a former star linebacker for the Rutgers University football team, was found dead Friday in the Delaware River after the boating accident near Palmyra.

The Luzerne Street Bridge in North Philadelphia is a 200-foot-long mass of steel and concrete over Luzerne Street near Rising Sun Avenue. The bridge, part of the former Berks Industrial tract, is not open to traffic and is used for parking by Tony DePaul & Sons Co., a highway contractor. But for the nearly 2,300 students and teachers of Edison High School, two blocks east of the bridge, the area is a haven for muggers, rapists and other criminals. The contour of the bridge turns the passage underneath into a dark tunnel, creating a daily nightmare for students who walk under it. Yesterday, the school delayed the start of classes to allow about 400 students, teachers, and city and state officials to celebrate a small victory at the bridge.

Webster Anderson says it was the stroke a year ago that slowed him down. Not Vietnam. Not the grenades that blasted away most of his legs, or the one that blew off his right hand. No "woe is me. " That's grit. And as he sat in a wheelchair at MossRehab in North Philadelphia last week, a robust man gone slight, it was the grit that spoke to 22 teenagers. They had gone to Anderson, 63, for insight into the Vietnam experience, which they are recalling in an Edison High School production.

Joimy was shot by robbers, angered that he had no money on him. Edwin took a bullet while saving a friend during a drive-by. And Yamira was shot when gunfire erupted as she watched a fight. Each died before the age of 21, casualties of the gun and drug violence going on in their North Philadelphia neighborhoods. Yesterday, all were remembered during an afternoon march from Edison High School to two adjacent cemeteries, where they are buried. The event was one of several anti-drug, anti-violence programs sponsored at the school this week in a campaign to stop the street carnage that has taken the lives of children in this neighborhood.

What does it mean when a dozen high school students converge on the Center City law offices of Wolf Block Schorr & Solis-Cohen to meet their lawyer? No, they are not in trouble with the law. They've come to practice with their coach. They're the crackerjack Edison High School mock-trial team - a group of amateur, teen-age attorneys that have become a Cinderella story in a gritty, inner-city school, most famous for its high dropout rate. For the past decade, Temple University's law school has sponsored a mock- trial competition for area high schools.

Reginald Beauchamp is a self-taught sculptor with a thing for memorials. He built the Living Flame memorial that honors fallen Philadelphia police officers and firefighters. He built the David Zinkoff memorial at the Spectrum and Connie Mack's bust at the Baseball Hall of Fame. He had wanted to build the Philadelphia Vietnam Veterans' Memorial at Penn's Landing and began to examine the list of the city's dead. He was startled to see, over and over, so many similar addresses on the list of 632 names.