It was an ordinary day. Reading the headline on my LancasterOnline Sunday newspaper. It read "Famous Faces." The subhead above the large artist's rendering, read "If You Were To Carve Lancaster County Icons Into The White Cliffs Of Conoy, Who Would You Pick? This past May, the Sunday Newspaper asked their readers a hypothetical, just for fun, question: If there were a Mount Rushmore for Lancaster County, who should be on it? They suggested a long list of names, from the mythical Albatwitch to a former president, with educators, celebrities, musicians, philanthropists, a former Miss America and a "Jeopardy!" champion in between. The results were printed on page one of Sunday, July 2 front page. Nearly everyone who responded named Thaddeus Stevens, Maj. Richard D. Winters, Charles Demuth and Barney Ewell. I have lived all my life in Lancaster, so I knew all the names that were suggested, but for those of you whom are not familiar with Lancaster County, Pennsylvania history, I can see how you might have no idea whom these people might be. So...I will try and give you a closer look at the top four "Famous Residents" of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Thaddeus Stevens was born in Vermont in 1762 and was Lancaster's U.S. House Representative during the years before and after the Civil War. He began his legal career as an attorney, first in Gettysburg then in Lancaster. He was a member of the state house who was instrumental in saving public education in Pennsylvania in the 1830s. He was an abolitionist and civil rights activist and a participant in the Underground Railroad along with Lydia Hamilton Smith. He served in the U.S. House from 1849-53 and again from 1859-68. He was a member of the Radical Republicans. Thaddeus had a club foot and used a cane and special boot to walk. He was considered by historians to be the architect of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which defined U.S. citizenship and extended citizen's rights to the states and has been cited in cases over LGBTQ+ rights, civil rights and abortion rights. He was also seen as a driving force behind the 13th and 15th amendments which outlawed slavery and gave African American men the right to vote. He died at the age of 76 in 1868 and is buried in the Shriner-Concord Cemetery. He willed money to found a school for orphans in Lancaster which eventually became the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology.
Mag. Richard "Dick" Winters rose to worldwide fame as leader of the Band of Brothers during WWII. His courageous leadership in combat was the focus of the best-selling book "Band of Brothers." He was born January 21, 1918 at Lancaster General Hospital and lived with his family in nearby New Holland before moving to Ephrata. He later moved to South West End Ave. in Lancaster. He was the Commanding Officer of Easy Company on D-Day, hours after his superior officer was killed. On that day he led 13 men ini taking out German gunners that were decimating Allied troops in Carentan, France, shortly after D-Day. He and his men than occupied Adolf Hitler's mountainside retreat, the Eagle's Nest. Winters died January 2, 2011 in Campbelltown, Lebanon County at the age of 92.
Charles Demuth was a noted American artist who was born in 1883 on Lime Street in Lancaster city. He died in his Lancaster home in 1935. Throughout his career as an artist, his artwork was displayed in galleries around the U.S. Among his most famous pieces are "I Saw the Figure Five in Gold" and "My Egypt." His work is celebrated in Lancaster's Demuth Museum, which opened in 1981. The museum is in the home where Demuth lived most of his life, 120 E. King St.
Barney Ewell, the only Lancaster resident ever to win an Olympic Gold Medal, is buried in Conestoga Memorial Park. He died at the age of 78 in 1996. He won dozens of national and international track and field titles, and was likely the fastest man in the world at some point in the early 1940s. He reached his prime when Adolf Hitler did. The Olympic Games of 1940 and 1944, one or both of which could have been Ewell's Olympics, were canceled because of WWII. Barney finally got to the 1948 Olympics in London at the age of 30. He won a gold medal in the 400 relay, and silvers in the 100 and 200 meter dashes. He was a member of the first graduating class of J.P. McCaskey High School in 1938 when he graduated with my father. The plaza at 101 N. Queen Street in Lancaster city is named for him.
Follow along tomorrow when I present a few more famous Lancastrians. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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