Fairless Hills

Margaret E. Pickering Tufo, 68, of Fairless Hills, Bucks County, a retired assembly-line worker and delivery person for The Inquirer, died Wednesday at Frankford Hospital's Bucks County Campus in Fairless Hills after a long illness. For many years, she was an assembler for Keystone Pen Co. in Tullytown, Bucks County. She also had been a Bucks County route delivery person for The Inquirer during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Born in Philadelphia and educated in local parochial schools, Mrs. Tufo traveled across much of the United States as a Navy wife.

Chalk up another state championship for a Lower Bucks Little League team. Just a week after the Levittown Eastern 11- and 12-year-olds knocked off State College American for the right to represent Pennsylvania in the Eastern Region tournament, the 9- and 10-year-olds from Fairless Hills earned bragging rights among the state's 500 or so Little League teams in their age group with a 3-1 win Thursday over Bullskin Township, from Fayette County....

Clayton E. Sager, 76, of Levittown, a retired steelworker who was active with the American Legion, died Saturday at Chandler Hall in Newtown Township after an illness. He had retired on disability after 40 years with U.S. Steel Corp., now USX Corp. He was a finishing mill roller at the Fairless Works in Fairless Hills, and earlier was employed at the company's Donora Works near Pittsburgh. With the American Legion, Mr. Sager had served as commander of John F. Kennedy Post 377 in California, Pa., been deputy commander of the 25th District in Western Pennsylvania, and held various positions in the Department of Pennsylvania.

A new gun-lock giveaway program announced yesterday by two Bucks County organizations will offer free cable gun locks to area residents who own firearms. The Bucks County Center for Church and Community in Levittown and the Lower Bucks Family YMCA in Fairless Hills are giving away the locks to encourage gun safety and keep firearms out of the reach of children. "We've visited representatives, we've talked to legislators about gun control," said Bill Matthews, of the Lower Bucks Center for Church and Community, at a news conference yesterday.

Guy Brudahl can remember the days when it took heavy-duty shop vacs to clean out the water puddles that inevitably soaked the bedraggled baseball fields at the Austin Drive Sports Complex. "It was kind of comical," he said. Just a year ago, he and the handful of volunteers who run the Fairless Hills Athletic Association were piecing together the ragged fences and rutted infields of 47-year-old fields for one more season. But not any more. On Saturday, a new Little League season will open on three brand-new fields at the Austin Drive Sports Complex, and athletic association members couldn't be happier.

A Fairless Hills steel company has been awarded a $4.3 million state loan that could bring a few jobs to an area still suffering from the steel industry's decline. Waste Gas Fabricating Co. Inc. will use the money to buy powerful lasers capable of cutting through inch-thick steel plates, company officials said yesterday. It also will expand its 20,000-square-foot facility at 450 Newbold Rd. to 50,000 square feet. The company produces steel parts for construction cranes, dump trucks and other industrial vehicles.

Two Bristol Borough men were sentenced to state prison terms yesterday for killing a Bucks County musician in a bloody street brawl last year. Jeremiah Reeves Jr., 21, was sentenced to to 8 to 16 years behind bars, and James Galione, 20, was sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison by Bucks County Court Judge David Heckler. Reeves was found guilty of third-degree murder in January. Galione was convicted of conspiring with him in the murder of David Albert, 26, of Fairless Hills.

Kacie Moore, 4, who perished in a house fire in Levittown along with her mother and grandparents on Sunday, was described by friends and neighbors as a bright child who loved playing with her cousins, neighborhood friends and family pets. Her death and the deaths of her family members last week saddened those who knew them. Kacie's grandparents, Dale P. and Donald R. Connor Jr., also died in the fire, along with her mother, Colleen C. Connor. The four were killed on Sunday morning in a fire at the elder Connors' home on Nightingale Lane in the North Park section of Levittown, Bucks County.

David Albert, 26, of Fairless Hills, knew the two men accused of attacking him after a late-night band practice last April and beating him to death, Albert's wife and sister said yesterday. As jury selection proceeded in the Bucks County Court case against James Galione, 19, and Jeremiah Reeves, 21, Albert's relatives said he had been at the same party with the defendants a month or so before the deadly confrontation. Birna Albert, 23, the victim's wife, and Denise DaPonte, his sister, said that Albert, Galione and Reeves were all at a going-away party for James Brinkerhof, who had joined the Army.

A 52-year-old Fairless Hills woman was critically burned in a fire that heavily damaged her one-story home shortly after noon yesterday. Firefighters found Joanne Berger collapsed and lying just inside the front door of the home in the 600 block of Oxford Valley Road after she made an apparent attempt to escape the blaze. "She was breathing when they got her out but had second- and third-degree burns on her face and arms and may have suffered burns to her lungs," said Chief Bill Raymond of Levittown Fire Company 2. Firefighter Chuck Buscavage of the Fairless Hills Fire Company discovered Berger and carried her outside with the aid of three others, a fire official said.