Levittown

Frank Cordero, 76, of Levittown, a retired refining company employee, died on Wednesday at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. He was the chief steward at Atlantic Richfield Co. for many years until his retirement in 1985. Mr. Cordero was born on the island of Samar in the Philippines, where he was a member of the Rotary Tennis Club. He came to the United States as a young man and served in the Navy during World War II. He was a longtime resident of Philadelphia before moving to Levittown in 1973.

A Levittown man was being held in the Bucks County Correctional Facility in Doylestown last week in connection with an assault of an off-duty Falls Township police officer. Jerald Matthews, 19, of the 100 block of Lower Orchard Drive, Levittown, was charged with two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of reckless endangerment after the attack Oct. 6 outside Matthews' home. He was arraigned before District Justice Catherine Ritter and was sent to prison when he did not post 10 percent of $500,000 bail.

When developer William J. Levitt built his third Levittown, sociologists doubted a sense of community could grow out of the Burlington County labyrinth of cookie-cutter houses. But 50 years later, original resident Lee Isackson, 74, tutors immigrants in a public library started from boxes of books stacked in her garage. Her husband, Richard, also 74, has devoted 39 years to the town's Rotary Club. Cliff and Dottie Anderson, charter members of the town's St. Paul Methodist Church, are planning their 60th wedding anniversary celebration at home in the first section Levitt built.

The Louis A. Galzerano Funeral Home, which has served the Bristol area for more than 75 years from 430 Radcliffe St., will open a second location in Levittown by late spring. Louis A. Galzerano 3d, whose grandfather founded the business and provided in-home service to his first clients, said the 12,000-square-foot building, under construction at 3500 Bristol-Oxford Valley Rd., will serve an expanded and more diverse market. The building, done in an eclectic Georgian design, features matching front and rear porticos, an elaborate interior lobby, and two viewing rooms.

One person was dead after a car accident Tuesday evening in Bucks County, authorities said. The accident occurred about 6:30 p.m. at Emilie Road and Indian Creek Place in Levittown, a dispatch supervisor said. The accident was initially described as a car hitting a tree. Authorities said that one person in the car was pronounced dead at the scene. The cause of the accident was under investigation. - Robert Moran

Philomena E. Christopher Dougherty, 80, a homemaker whose family members were the first non-Levitt employees to reside in Levittown, Bucks County, died Wednesday at her home in New Hope. "She and my father and the children were the first [non-Levitt employee] family to move into Levittown in June 1952," said her daughter Rita K. Calzerette. Levittown developer William Levitt "chose them as the all-American family and over the years she was presented with roses and was present at most ribbon-cutting ceremonies celebrating Levitt grand openings.

John T. Rossi, 55, formerly of Levittown, Bucks County, a former can-manufacturing company employee, died Tuesday at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pa., after a six-week illness. For 20 years, he was a machine mechanic for National Can Co. in Fairless Hills. At the time of his death, he had been employed for eight years as a custodian for the Mount Carmel Area School District. A native of Mount Carmel in Schuylkill County, Mr. Rossi was raised there and moved to Levittown 35 years ago. He returned to Mount Carmel in 1990.

A 4-year-old Levittown child nearly drowned Thursday in the family pool. The child's mother had left the child outside alone briefly while she went into the house. When she returned, she found the child on the bottom of the family's above-ground pool, police said. It happened Thursday morning around 11:30 a.m. in the unit block of Crestwood Road, police said. The woman, a registered nurse at St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne, jumped into the 4-foot-deep pool, pulled her child onto the deck, and began cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Growing up in lower Bucks County in the 1960's, Dale Frazier had a blast playing in the woods and vast fields near his home on the outskirts of Levittown, one of America's first single-home developments. Frazier moved away as an adult, but in his childhood memories, the community was forever young, clean, and thriving. So after living in other parts of the county and the country, he moved back, settling seven years ago in the Farmwood section with his wife and daughter. Levittown was not as he remembered.

Wolff Pools Co. , doing business as Wolff Pools Co. , 623 Marydell Dr., West Chester; Chapter 7; no schedules available. Robert Affet , formerly doing business as Affet Custom Painting , and Elizabeth Affet , also known as Lisa Affet , 134 Harmony Rd., Levittown; Chapter 13; no schedules available. Gregory Deeck , doing business as Grassman Landscaping , 908 Heathdale La., Wallingford; Chapter 13; no schedules available. Devon International Industries Inc. , formerly known as Devon International Trading Inc. , 1100 First Ave., King of Prussia; Chapter 7; no schedules available.

Isadore "Irv" Rosenthal, 87, an expert on chemical and environmental safety who served on the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, died Sunday, Feb. 10, of pneumonia at Pennswood Village, a retirement community in Newtown, Bucks County. Mr. Rosenthal, a longtime resident of Levittown, worked for 38 years at Rohm & Haas Co. in a variety of positions. He was corporate director of safety, health, environmental affairs, and product integrity for the last 13 years of his career at the Philadelphia-based company.

He was the coach who called her "babydoll" and promised to protect her like a father. She was his daughter's best friend. The Bucks County father of two was charged Monday with having sex with the girl, a minor who played on a Levittown fast-pitch softball traveling team. Early Friday, just hours before police planned to serve a search warrant on the former coach's residence, the trailer in which he lived was engulfed in flames, destroying its contents. The fire is under investigation.

By Allison Steele Jason Smith, the 36-year-old exterminator charged in the murder of Center City pediatrician Melissa Ketunuti, pleaded guilty last year to exposing himself to someone on I-95 n a fit of road rage, court records show. Smith, who was arrested last week for allegedly strangling Ketunuti and setting her body on fire in the basement of her home, received the citation in Bensalem for disorderly conduct on March 16. The circumstances were not clear, but Smith, of Levittown, paid $289 in fines, according to court papers.

She had an exterminator coming. Mice in the basement. Melissa Ketunuti hurried home through the morning cold, walking quickly the short distance from a parking garage to her Graduate Hospital-area rowhouse. A busy morning already. A work meeting at the hospital, errands. She clutched a CVS bag. Pooch, her black pit-bull/Lab mix of six years, would have greeted her at the door. Moments later, a tall, thin man wearing a NorthFace jacket and work gloves, carrying a work bag, walked onto the street, heading toward Ketunuti's home, out of camera view.

A Bucks County man was killed Sunday afternoon after crashing his motorcycle in Levittown, authorities said. Brandon Rogers, 20, of Levittown, was traveling south on Woodbourne Road at 3:15 p.m. when he lost control of his Yamaha bike, said Sgt. Mark Wert of the Middletown Township Police. Rogers was pronounced dead at Aria Health's Bucks County campus, Wert said. Though no other vehicles were involved, police are searching for the driver of a black BMW seen heading north on Woodbourne about the time of the crash.

Two teenage brothers were seriously hurt and rescue workers were endangered when a tree toppled onto a Levittown house at the height of Hurricane Sandy on Monday night. Ryan Dietrich, 19, was in stable condition in the intensive-care unit at Aria Health-Torresdale, and Kyle Dietrich, 15, was in stable condition, a nursing supervisor said Tuesday. Ryan Dietrich suffered a head injury and was in an induced coma, his grandmother Mary Landis said. Kyle Dietrich had a broken arm, she said.

Developer William Levitt created what he thought was "utopia" for the veterans of World War II as he used his wealth to buy farmland in Bucks County and turn it into affordable suburban living with simple homes, schools, and parks. "It was wonderful," said Army veteran Albert Wargo, who in 1956 bought his slice of the American Dream with his wife, June, both 88. Now married 65 years and living in North Wales near their three children, the two returned Sunday to Levittown to participate in the community's 60th anniversary and offer an oral history.

One person was dead after a car accident Tuesday evening in Bucks County, authorities said. The accident occurred about 6:30 p.m. at Emilie Road and Indian Creek Place in Levittown, a dispatch supervisor said. The accident was initially described as a car hitting a tree. Authorities said that one person in the car was pronounced dead at the scene. The cause of the accident was under investigation. - Robert Moran

At the headquarters of National Energy Solutions Inc., the warehouse out back is filled with products at the heart of the Levittown company's entrepreneurial mission: energy-efficient commercial lighting fixtures to help businesses save money. Out front, on the window of co-founder Ray Sizer's office, is a sticker in support of the Navy, another symbol of yet another NESI objective: to hire returning veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company, formed in 2007 to install new lighting systems at businesses anywhere in the country, has 12 employees, three of whom are military veterans.