Southampton

The Philadelphia Phillies are off to a slow start and the fans, especially the talk-show variety, are asking for wholesale personnel changes. However, American Legion baseball doesn't get the same attention and even though Southampton is off to a shaky 1-8 start in the Lower Montco American Legion season, head coach Rich Lennon doesn't feel any pressure to make any drastic changes. "We have a very young team and I really didn't expect us to get off to a good start," said Lennon.

Residents in Southampton and in Shamong will have the chance to speak out Tuesday on a proposal to save money by merging the two townships' municipal courts. Southampton's township committee will hold a public hearing on an ordinance, introduced Jan. 5, calling for Shamong to dissolve its own court and use Southampton's facilities and staff. And in Shamong, Mayor Rosemary "Mitzi" Stinsman plans to introduce a similar ordinance the same night. "We think it's a good thing," said Southampton committee member John S. Hicks.

Mayor James Young's attire was the first clue that Saturday's Township Committee meeting was going to be a bit different. Dressed in a red-and-black-check wool suit, the Southampton mayor, who was busy greeting residents as they entered the township's Old Town Hall, looked like an extra in The Music Man, and his colleagues on the board, Robert Moore and John Hicks, looked alike in their plaid suits and straw hats. "Welcome to the year 1845," said Young. The township solicitor, Stacey Moore, sporting a gray morning coat and top hat, seemed ready to try out for the role of U.S. attorney general - for the Polk administration.

The township has hired its first-ever administrator. The first one, that is, who will not serve simultaneously as mayor. James R. White, 38, who is currently administrative director in Bensalem, Pa., is scheduled to start in Southampton on Aug. 1 at a yearly salary of $55,000. The township has been without a full-time administrator since January, when Mayor William D. Conner quit his second job as "office manager" - the equivalent of administrator. That practice began in 1987 with Mayor Robert L. Thompson.

A baby shower of donated items for newborns at Bethanna Children's Home in Southampton was held March 11 by the Bucks County Association for Retired and Senior Citizens. The Christian home serves abused, neglected and needy children.

Students from the Klinger Middle School in Southampton decorated 700 paper shopping bags with messages calling for an end to violence locally and around the world, after studying violence. The bags were donated by the store.

Fred W. Green, 77, of Southampton, whose Northeast Philadelphia restaurant featured hard-shell crabs, died Wednesday at Holy Redeemer Hospital in Meadowbrook after a long illness. "My father introduced [seafood eaters in] the Philadelphia area to hard-shell crabs when he opened the Blue Point Crab House on Harbison Avenue near Bridge Street," said a son, Fred M. Green. "He made his restaurant a Philadelphia institution through his personality and Southern hospitality, as well as the great food.

An Upper Southampton police officer died Friday of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler said. Richard Lizzio, 56, was found at about 8:30 a.m. in his patrol car in the parking lot of the Jesus Focus Ministry Church at Bristol and Churchville Roads, according to Bucks County Coroner Joseph Campbell. "It's just a horrible tragedy," Campbell said. An autopsy was scheduled for Saturday morning. Lizzio had been on the force for more than 20 years and was married, Campbell said.

The Churchville Inn in Southampton, a local landmark in Bucks County, was left in ruins by a fire that forced the two managers to flee their apartments above the restaurant early Sunday. "I woke up gagging on smoke . . . coming through the ceiling," said Andrew Wallace, 27, whose two-bedroom apartment is one floor above the historic restaurant. Gasping, Wallace said he had run to his bedroom window to gulp fresh air. He woke his girlfriend, Nicole Sidorchuck, 25. She scooped up Wallace's beagle, Sammy, and together they fled to safety down an interior staircase.

Eric Nordberg divides his life into two parts - before the fire and after. Before, he had a nice house in the suburbs, an established business in Center City, a wife who made him laugh, and three happy daughters. Fire consumed his Bucks County house on May 25, killing baby Katie, 17 months, and critically injuring his wife, Susan Thomas. Initially, doctors told Nordberg that because of smoke and carbon monoxide inhalation and the length of time her brain went without oxygen, the prognosis for middle daughter Julia, 4, was grim.

As a team of 10 investigators searched Wednesday through the sooty aftermath of a house fire that killed a 17-month-old girl in Upper Southampton, neighbors reminisced about the generosity of her family. Margaret Binsfeld recalled the day that the girl's mother, Susan Thomas, who was injured along with an older daughter in Tuesday's fire, had given her a load of toys. Binsfeld told Thomas she wished she had more toys for her visiting grandson. "She went back home, and the next thing I know, she's ringing the bell with a basketful of toys," said Binsfeld, 60, a nurse at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

As a team of 10 investigators searched Wednesday through the sooty aftermath of a house fire that killed a 17-month-old girl in Upper Southampton, neighbors reminisced about the generosity of her family. Margaret Binsfeld recalled the day that the girl's mother, Susan Thomas, who was injured along with an older daughter in Tuesday's fire, had given her a load of toys. Binsfeld told Thomas she wished she had more toys for her visiting grandson. "She went back home, and the next thing I know, she's ringing the bell with a basketful of toys," said Binsfeld, 60, a nurse at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

The teachers in a second South Jersey school district have tentatively agreed to take a wage freeze in the coming school year, according to information released by the district's superintendent Thursday. The Southampton Township Education Association and the school board reached a tentative agreement that calls for the district's 87 teachers to take no raise next year, according to Superintendent Michael L. Harris. The year after that, the teachers would get a 2.75 percent raise but contribute 1.5 percent of their salary for health benefits.

Bill O'Neill started bowling when he was 5, maybe younger. He used to go to the old Fairlanes in Fairless Hills with his "grandpop," and attended his father's league matches at Jubilee Lanes in Levittown. He watched PBA Tour events on television, and followed Pete Weber and Amleto Monacelli. Two decades later, Weber and Monacelli are still part of the tour, sitting in the top third of the player-of-the year standings. And O'Neill? Here's looking up at you, kid. The 28-year-old Bucks County resident, born two years after Weber joined the pro tour, is tied for the lead in the player-of-the-year race with one tournament remaining.

For the second time in a week, an auto accident has claimed the life of a Moorestown High School senior. Eric Messick, 17, was pronounced dead Friday night on Route 38 in Southampton after the car in which he was riding with a friend was struck head-on at high speed. Another car hit theirs moments later, flipping it onto its roof, state police said. Last Sunday, Moorestown senior Evan M. Welch was killed when the car in which he was a passenger veered off a Moorestown road and struck a tree.

A blaze at New Jersey's largest hog farm killed 1,000 pigs - nearly 15 percent of the state's swine population - on Monday, and left many structures on the Burlington County property "completely devastated," authorities said. The fire had burned for 45 minutes at the remote Pig Farm Recycling facility in Southampton before flames were spotted at 8 p.m. by a farm employee at home more than a half-mile away, the Burlington County fire marshal said yesterday. Nine hundred pigs housed in one of three barns died of smoke inhalation before firefighters arrived, Fire Marshal Robert Rose said.

ON OCT. 25, it was announced that 2,000 of our troops have been killed in Iraq, with 15,220 maimed in varying degrees of horror. "Shock and awe" for a "Mission accomplished!" When will the American people wise up? When will enough be enough? Are Karl, Don, Dick and George trying to break the record of Johnson, McNamara and Nixon in Vietnam? It sure looks that way. Let's stop the useless killing of innocents BEFORE the 2006 election! Robert D. Eckel, Southampton