Elevator

Delaware County's Department of Human Services needs a lift to move into its new office at 20 S. 69th St. in Upper Darby. Until it gets it, the whole department will have to stay put. The problem is the freight elevator at the new quarters, which has been broken for about a week. The department plans to move between 300 and 325 people onto the third and fourth floor of the building. But with the World War II-era elevator acting finicky and the furniture on ground level, it means work on the floor or wait for the furniture.

The elevator man's conversation is sprinkled with numbers. Forty years later, Joe Costello still remembers which store was where. Swank Jewelers, where Costello got the silver "JC" tie clip he still wears today, was on 5. The Girl Scouts were on 12. Towne Jewelers and Becker & Burns furs on 11. And the credit union, where all the excitement broke out one Sunday when Costello was on duty, was on 10. Those were the days when every Center...

Albert Overton took his last ride yesterday. For 25 years, at the Acme building at 15th and Arch, Overton has piloted elevator No. 1, ferrying clerks and accountants and corporate execs between the first and 11th floors, always with a kind word, a smile - and usually a recommendation for the Daily Number. "I hit four times with Albert," said Mattie Wilder, a data-entry clerk, one of scores yesterday who bid Overton farewell with hugs, tears and good wishes. "Everybody loves Albert," she added.

A veteran Bucks County police chief and a young officer were seriously injured when they fell down an open elevator shaft late Thursday at a rural winery along the Delaware River. Tinicum Township Chief James Sabath, 48, and Officer Mark Compas, 26, suffered numerous broken bones in the 30- to 40-foot plunge at Sand Castle Winery, Tinicum Officer William Mooney said. Sabath and Compas were in stable condition yesterday morning before surgery at St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem, Mooney said.

Elnora Carrecter is loving this, entertaining a visitor in her domain - a space roughly as wide as a two telephone booths. It's old but elegant, with forest green walls that glimmer under tiled flower moldings, set off by a stately brass lever that speaks to a grander time. Carrecter, 66, runs the elevator at Fitz-Simons Middle School in North Philadelphia. This is where she has sat, six hours a day, five days a week, for the last seven years. But Carrecter will be getting up soon.

Peter A. Ubel, a University of Pennsylvania Medical Center doctor and teacher, has ridden the elevator into history. Ubel has conducted the world's only study of what doctors and nurses say while riding up and down. His conclusion: Way, way too much. On Friday, while riding in an elevator for two hours, he discussed his pioneering research. "I admit, lives and deaths aren't decided by conversations in elevators," he said. "But people need to know they can trust the doctor.

Elevator operators, administrators, and clerks are among the 325 positions that have been eliminated from the Philadelphia School District, saving it $21.9 million annually, officials announced yesterday. The job cuts, identified by the School Reform Commission, will take effect by the end of July. The cutbacks, first announced in March, represent nearly 30 percent of the 1,100 jobs run out of the district's central office. "No one likes to do this, but we have to bring financial order and stability to the operation.

A U.S. District Court judge yesterday directed Camden Mayor Milton Milan not to have any contact with potential jurors in his federal corruption case after the mayor was spotted taking the elevator with members of the jury pool. Milan, 37, who faces charges that he sold his office in return for cash and gifts, was seen taking the elevator down with potential jurors yesterday during a break in jury selection, which started Monday and is expected to last all week. The mayor said in court that he would abide by Judge Joel A. Pisano's instructions, but later said he did not know who was on the elevator with him, since the jurors were not wearing juror tags.

The Carl Singley story - Singley's dismissal as Temple Law dean - puts this column in mind of "The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang. " Mr. Bang was the inspired creation of the late cartoonist Fontaine Fox. He was one of Fox's "Toonerville Folks" - and a hero to a dispirited generation. He could always elicit a smile at a time when there was gloom aplenty and smiles didn't come easily, in the Depression. Mr. Bang's rages were monumental: He railed, fumed, at the petty aggravations of life.

A Philadelphia woman was killed early Sunday when she took an elevator to her 12th-floor apartment in Chicago and was immediately overcome as the doors opened on a raging fire. Shantel McCoy, 32, lived in a high-rise building on the North Side. She had moved after losing her job at a Center City accounting firm, reported the Chicago Tribune. McCoy was returning to her apartment after picking up some takeout food, the Tribune reported. She boarded the elevator, hit the button for her floor, and sped up the 21-story building.