Daniel Kucharik Wins Shandy Hill Essay Award

Submitted Photos

From left, Greater Pottstown Foundation board members Robert Morgan, board president Paul Prince, Alan Altchul and Patricia Crosson along with this yewar's essay contest winner Daniel Kurcharik.

 Blogger's Note: The following was provided by the Greater Pottstown Foundation.

Each year the Greater Pottstown Foundation sponsors the Shandy Hill Essay Contest for senior students from The Hill School, Owen J. Roberts, Pottsgrove and Pottstown High Schools. The essay contest and award honor Shandy Hill, the Foundation’s founder and the original editor of the Pottstown Mercury from 1931 until he retired in 1967. Mr. Hill was an ardent believer in supporting education opportunities for students within the Pottstown Community. The Greater Pottstown Foundation strives to continue that worthy objective through various education related grants and student scholarship awards.

Each year senior students from the four area schools, compete in the writing of an original essay which is to focus on some aspect of life in the Greater Pottstown Area. The Foundation seeks the writer’s original and personal interpretation of how any aspect of life is effected by living in this area as opposed to somewhere else. In any year that a winning essay is chosen, the writer is granted a $30,000 college scholarship to be used over four years.

This year, the Foundation received essays from 31 applicants. The Board was happy to note that, while the majority of essays always seem to come in from The Hill School, and Owen J Roberts High School, the participation from Pottstown and Pottsgrove was indeed somewhat greater this year. Ideally, the Foundation would be pleased to see a more proportional participation from all four Pottstown Area high schools.

The Board of Directors of the Greater Pottstown Foundation is proud to announce that the 2019 winner of the Shandy Hill Essay Contest is Daniel Kucharik, of North Coventry Township, and a graduating senior from Owen J. Roberts High School. Dan has been a member of the National Honor Society his junior and senior years. He also participates in various school instrumental music programs including the Marching Band, Concert Band, Indoor Percussion Ensemble, and Jazz Band, playing mostly mallet percussion instruments like the marimba and others.

Dan is also a proud member of Leo, the youth arm of Lions Club International. Leo Club members

Daniel Kucharik

work with local Lions Clubs around the world in the performance of service and humanitarian projects for their communities. Leo was started here in Pennsylvania in 1957, but now has more than 175,000 youth members in 145 different countries.

Dan will be attending West Chester University next year where he will pursue his interests in music education and composition.

Dan bravely contributed a very poignant and personal essay about his experiences growing up with the medical and psychological condition known as gender dysphoria. According to the American Psychiatric Association, people with gender dysphoria (GD) typically experience significant distress (and/or problems functioning) associated with conflict between the way they feel and think of themselves (their experienced or expressed gender), and their physical or assigned gender. In the past, this condition was called “gender identity disorder”, but medical and psychology professionals now identify the condition by the more descriptive and less pejorative name.

Gender dysphoria is NOT the same as gender nonconformity, which refers to certain exhibited behaviors not matching the gender norms or stereotypes of the birth assigned gender (for example, girls behaving and dressing more like boys, or occasional cross-dressing in adult men). It is also NOT the same as being gay or lesbian.

Dan, who was born a female, describes how he remembers knowing that he was in the wrong body as early as the age of five or six. Of course he didn’t understand why he felt that way then, but he talks about how he prayed to God every night for years that that he would wake up as a boy. By middle school, the time when most boys and girls are entering puberty, the condition had become increasingly more traumatic and emotionally crippling for him, resulting from his internal feelings and identity, as well as numerous external social pressures.

It was not until eighth grade, when an understanding teacher showed a video about Caitlyn Jenner and explained what true transgenderism is, that Dan (then still using his female name) really began to understand why he had always felt the way he did. But, unfortunately, due mostly to continuing social pressures and fear of rejection, it was not until his sophomore year that he was able to confide his true feelings to some of his closest friends and begin to present himself in a more masculine way. In so doing, he was able to gain more personal confidence. In eleventh grade he changed his name to Daniel, and found, to his great relief, that the transition was not as worrisome as he thought it might be, due to the positive support of his teachers and the majority of his classmates.

Dan attributes his “mostly smooth” transition, in part, to the wide diversification of the people in the Greater Pottstown Area – not only from an ethnic perspective, but also the sociological and even the political diversification that people in this area exhibit. Dan describes how the amount of diversity among the people in the Pottstown area actually encourages most folks to listen to each other’s ideas, often discussing opposing viewpoints with a degree of acceptance that might not be possible somewhere else. He feels that he might not have become the confident young man he is proud to be today, in another area where most people think more similarly to one another. The Greater Pottstown Foundation salutes Dan’s well-worded reference to the inclusion and tolerance of our community which is all too often disparaged. He makes us all proud to be Greater Pottstownians.

Engineering Better Technical Education in Pottstown

This new  programmable control unit will help Pottstown High School engineering students learn about industrial controls, thanks to the Greater Pottstown Foundation and the Foundation for Pottstown Education.

Blogger's Note: The following was provided by the Foundation for Pottstown Education.

Engineering students at Pottstown High School now have a programmable control unit like those used in industrial applications thanks to the Pottstown Foundation for Education.

The board of directors approved funding which was requested by Andrew Bachman, the high school's engineering and technology teacher.

With this system the students will learn how to program, operate, and interface programmable controllers in a variety of industrial applications used in the automotive, packaging, and technological assembly industries, to name a few. 

The programmable controller is one of the most important developments in industrial automation because of its ability to be quickly programmed to control a wide range of industrial processes and machines. Typical applications include: robots, conveyors, electric motor controls, air conditioning, process control, plastic injection molding, and CNC machines.

This system will work with the Robotics 1 and 2 Learning System that the Foundation for Pottstown Education funded the beginning of the school year. This program works with the students to teach them articulated arm servo robotics and how it is applied in industrial tasks like assembly, material handling, machine tending, gluing and inspection. Students also learn basic robot operation programming, interfacing, flexible manufacturing cells quality control and production control.

The funding for both of these requests is made possible by a grant secured by the Foundation for Pottstown Education though a gift from the Greater Pottstown Foundation. 

The gift by the Greater Pottstown Foundation was given in support of the Robotics Program in the Pottstown School District. 

OJR Grad Wins $30K Scholarship in Essay Contest

Paul Prince, chairman of the board of the Greater Pottstown Foundation, presents Owen J. Roberts senior Chandler Kalitsi, with the first installment of a $30,000 scholarship she won in the foundation's annual essay contest.

A recent Owen J. Roberts High School graduate has earned a $30,000 college scholarship from the Greater Pottstown Foundation as a result of her submission in the Shandy Hill Essay Contest.

Named after the founder and first editor of The Pottstown Mercury, He retired in 1967 after 36 years at the helm of The Mercury.

Hill was an ardent believer in supporting education opportunities for students within the Pottstown community.

The Greater Pottstown Foundation strives to continue that worthy objective through various education-related grants and student scholarship awards.

Each year senior students from Pottstown, Pottsgrove, The Hill School and Owen J. Roberts high schools are invited to write an original essay on some aspect of life in the greater Pottstown area.

The Foundation seeks the writer’s original and personal interpretation of how any aspect of life (including, but not limited to art, culture, race, bigotry, employment, poverty, etc.) is effected by living in this area as opposed to somewhere else.

Essay winner Chandler Kalitsi,
plans to study chemistry at Temple University.

In any year that a winning essay is chosen, the writer is granted a $30,000 college scholarship.

This year, the Foundation received a total of 34 essays submitted by students of the four eligible high schools.

The Foundation Board of Directors chose the essay written by Kalitsi, daughter of Annette Harper-Kalitsi.

Kalitsi wrote a heart-rending, if not eye-opening, essay about what it means to be an African-American in a predominantly white school, according to information provided by the Foundation.

The essay, while expressing very personal thoughts, was not critical or cynical as much as it was analytical,
focusing on the evolution of the writer’s personal feelings toward racism, and occasionally the lack thereof, over her 12 years of education.

It concludes with a justification for a more racially tolerant society.

The scholarship award was presented to Kalitsi by Paul Prince, the President of the
Greater Pottstown Foundation Board.

Chandler has been accepted at Temple University where she will be majoring in chemistry. Her current plan is to go on to medical school after receiving her undergraduate degree.

College Scholarship for Artists Offered

We've all heard the trope about the starving artist and, as the son of a freelance writer, I can tell you there is some truth to the axiom.

But sometimes art can pay, or at least help pay for school.

A $10,000 scholarship from the Greater Pottstown Foundation is being offered to help student artists pay for college.

The Greater Pottstown Foundation Scholarship for the Arts is designed to financially assist a qualified applicant in obtaining a degree from accredited academic institutions of higher learning for study in the arts. 

The program is open to any Pottstown, Pottsgrove, Hill School, or Owen J. Roberts High School senior who will be pursing an arts major or an arts minor in college.

The scholarship is awarded based on two criteria: artistic performance as displayed at the Greater Pottstown Foundation Scholarship Art Exhibit at ArtFusion 19464, and an essay on why the applicant wants to continue their education in the arts. 

 For complete details and rules of the competition, you can download an application by clicking here.

Applications and essays are due by Feb. 28. 

The artwork for the show does not need to be submitted until May 9.

Questions? Please email top info@artfusion19464.org or call 610-326-2506.

Pottsgrove Senior Wins $10,000 Arts Scholarship

Scholarship winner Jaid Mark with her work, "Her Flaws."

Blogger's Note: The following was provided by ArtFusion 19464.

On Saturday, May 31, the Greater Pottstown Foundation awarded a $10,000 scholarship to Jaid Mark, a Pottsgrove High School senior.

"Selfless" by Jaid Mark.

Jaid is the 2014 winner of The Greater Pottstown Foundation Scholarship for the Arts, which is designed to financially assist a local high school senior in obtaining a degree from accredited academic institutions of higher learning for study in the arts.

Jaid will be attending Philadelphia University this fall to pursue a degree in art therapy. 

Cynthia Scherer, her high school art teacher, said “this young lady has a wonderful work ethic, a motivational spirit that influences others and creativity which will help her to excel in her college endeavor.”

The scholarship was awarded based on an essay and on artwork that Jaid created for a show currently on display at ArtFusion 19464. 

"Siblings" by Jaid Mark.

The three pieces she entered into the competition will become part of the foundation’s permanent collection. This is the fourth year that ArtFusion has partnered with the foundation to present this scholarship.

The show will be on display at ArtFusion through June 14 and can be seen any time during normal gallery hours: Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

ArtFusion is closed on Sundays and Mondays.

ArtFusion 19464 is a 501(c)3 non-profit community art center located at 254 E. High St. in downtown Pottstown. 

The school offers day, evening and weekend classes to all ages. The goal of these classes is to help students develop their creative skills through self-expression and independence. 

ArtFusion’s gallery hosts rotating shows featuring local artists. The gallery also sells handcrafted, one-of-a-kind gift items. 

A Story Shandy Hill Would Have Loved

Sage Reinhart, Pottstown, in foreground, working with youngsters at a Trojan Youth Camp work shop. This year, Reinhart was the quarterback for Pottstown High School's football team.

The Greater Pottstown Foundation has awarded a $30,000 scholarship to a graduating Pottstown High School senior as the result of an essay he wrote about the impact of growing up and going to school in Pottstown.

The Shandy Hill Scholarship, named after the founding editor and publisher of The Mercury, was awarded to Sage Reinhart.

Paul Prince, chairman of the foundation, called Reinhart's essay "intriguing" in the May 30 letter he sent to Pottstown High School Principal Stephen Rodriguez announcing the award.

Reinhart "perceptively comes to understand that quality is not inherently fiar and skill and talent do not necessarily result in advancement," Prince wrote.

"On a different note, I must inform you that Pottstown offered a number of excellent essays," Prince wrote. "In fact, we were confronted with the greatest quantity of quality essays we have seen in many years." 

Reinhart was awarded a $30,000 scholarship to be used over the next four years. 

He competed against senior students from The Hill School, OJR, Pottsgrove and Pottstown.

Here, in its entirety is Reinhart's essay:

“It’s not fair!”

That complaint would earn you laps. And more laps. And probably even more. Coach just let you run until he decided -- or remembered -- to tell you to stop. Even those of us who didn’t pick up stuff too quickly learned pretty fast that “fair” wasn’t a word we used on the football field.

Reinhart received a "Mini-Maxwell this year.

As a Pottstown High School athlete, I played on a level playing field. Once the pads, the uniform, and the helmets went on, we were all the same. The only thing that made us different was what we brought THAT day -- the effort, the skill, and the attitude during THAT practice or THAT game. The past was the past and we only got as far as what we contributed and worked for at that moment.

That focus -- on the practice, on the game -- made everyone equal. We didn’t have to worry about “fair” because we all got the same shot at success, and that was fair in coach’s book.

Up until a little bit ago, I thought those lessons I learned on the playing field pretty much summed up life. With practice, skill, and determination, anyone could accomplish anything. But, in the spring of my senior year, as college acceptances rolled in, my eyes opened to a much larger playing field; and I saw that not all arenas are quite as “even” as the ones I played in. Two of my friends were pretty equal as students. Both excelled in the classroom, both were athletes, both wanted to go to Yale. Only one got admitted.

Now I always heard people talking smack on other people. That was nothing new. But, when my white friend did not get into Yale, and my black friend did -- there was more talk than just the usual trash. It was all about race and how “blacks got everything.” I’ll admit, it didn’t seem fair -- actually, it went against everything that I thought I had learned about life: You get in the game and give it all you have -- and the best team wins. Yale wasn’t even letting my white friend on the field.

As a lifelong Pottstown resident, I have been around diverse groups of people everywhere I’ve gone. In a town that has been transformed by the loss of factories and steel mills, Pottstown has developed a large rental-housing base. Many people with low paying jobs or no jobs at all are attracted to the low-cost housing available here. As a school district, Pottstown has the highest poverty rate in Montgomery County at almost 16%. We have one of the most racially diverse schools in the local area, ranking even statewide in the top 10% of both black / African-American populations as well as Hispanic populations. Having so much diversity around me, I am not accustomed to the levels of resentment that this college admissions process exposed. I began to examine my beliefs.

Reinhart, right, giving a few football lessons.

I come from a family of small business owners. My great grandparents and grandparents on both my mom’s and dad’s sides began businesses in Pottstown. They grew up in this town, made friends, and needed to make their way in this world. Though they didn’t work at any of the foundries, steel or textile mills or machine shops throughout the region, their businesses served the people that worked in these places. A bridal shoppe and a painting business were the ways that my family invested in both Pottstown and in the future. No one handed my family anything. They got in the game by working hard; and they kept up the success by never quitting, never complaining, and never whining about things being “fair.”

My grandfather, in particular, believed in practice, skill, and determination -- just like my football coach. As I heard more and more people talk about how some people didn’t get into Yale and others did, I really began to think. In talking to my brother, I remembered a family story that helped me get a perspective on the situation and to think about what I believe. My grandfather was called “Deacon” by everyone in town. He was an outstanding high school football player and a well-respected person in Pottstown. We always talked about how he had been written about in Earl Davis’s autobiography From Carolina Chain Gangs to Earl of Alaska. Davis had been a criminal, who eventually was in federal prison, but my grandfather Deacon Reinhart gave him a job -- and that was the start of a turn around in Davis’s life, the beginning of his success. Deacon looked at a man who had less than nothing and gave him something -- a chance.

Maybe that is what this admissions thing is -- a chance. Because no matter how else I look at it and no matter how diverse my friends are, one thing remains: Pottstown’s poverty is largely black-faced. When our big businesses and factories closed, many of our white workers relocated. Our changing town provided a chance for many without housing and a good school system to have just that. Maybe Yale was just “upping the ante” -- giving a chance to someone who historically had been denied that by white America.

I have always known that “fair” isn’t a rule in the game of life, just like on the football field. Now, I realize more than ever, that the field is not level -- and it is not because of me or because of any of my friends. It’s not because Pottstown has low-income housing or because we are diverse. The field of life is not level because not everyone comes to the game with the same equipment. Some Americans have been denied the chance for their great-grandparents and grandparents to get in the game. They never HAD a chance to play because of decades of racial discrimination, exploitation, and outright slavery. If we as a society expect everyone to be able to compete, we have to make sure that we give chances to those who might be different than we are. Some, like Earl Davis, might have issues that prevent them from being “employable,” but given the opportunity might be able to contribute significant things to society. Others might find that decades of lost opportunity means that they need both a “hand out” and a “hand up.” Either way, I know two things: one, I am glad to have had the chance to be educated and trained in a color-blind system, the Pottstown School District; and, two, I am realizing that equipping people to play the game might not be as uniform as some think. Everyone deserves a chance -- that chance might just look different for different people.

Reinhart, No. 9, with his fellow Trojans.

$10,000 Art Scholarship Awarded

A compilation of the work from all 8 scholarship candidates.

Blogger's Note: The following is a press release issued by The Gallery School of Pottstown.

The Greater Pottstown Foundation along with the Gallery School of Pottstown awarded a $10,000 scholarship in a ceremony held at the school. 

Scholarship winner Raelyn Hedgepeth, center, with
Greater Pottstown Foundation representative Paul Prince, left,
and Eva Yashinsky, Pottstown High School art teacher.

Eight local high school seniors competed to win the scholarship, which is designed to financially assist a qualified applicant in pursuing their further education in the arts. 

The scholarship candidates were:  Georgia Brum, Donna Chu, Trevon Clifford, Raelyn Hedgepeth, Meghan Luna, Lauren Niedelman, Sarah Walsh, Colleen Young. 

Pottstown senior Raelyn Hedgepeth won the close contest and will receive the $10,000 scholarship. 

Trevon Clifford, also a Pottstown senior, was the runner up.

Paul Prince, from the Greater Pottstown Foundation, and Cathy Paretti, from the Gallery School, presented the award.

Yashinksy with runner-up Trevon Clifford and his work.

The scholarship was based on two criteria: A artistic performance as displayed at the Greater Pottstown Foundation Scholarship Show at the Gallery School of Pottstown, and an essay on why the applicant wanted to continue their education in the arts. 

The applicant's intended field of study had to include a major in an arts related field.

In addition to submitting a completed application form and essay, each student was required to participate in the art exhibit at the Gallery School of Pottstown. 

Hedgepeth's work

Students created pieces of art from three of four categories:

• watercolor or pastel; 
• pencil, charcoal or ink; 
• oil or acrylic; 
• sculpture, which included pottery, stone, glass, metal, fiber or wood.

The Gallery School of Pottstown is a 501c3 non-profit community art school and gallery. The School offers day, evening and weekend classes to all ages. 

The goal of these classes is to help students develop their creative skills through self-expression and independence. 

The Gallery on High hosts rotating shows featuring local artists. 

The Gallery also sells handcrafted, one-of-a-kind gift items.   

Every Picture Tells a Story ... Our Story

The Casselberry Home, by Peter Ehlinger,  was the home of Pottstown's first library.

I confess to being not only a history buff, but a local history buff.

It is constantly remarkable to me how much history lives all around us, how it is connected to the great events about which we learn in school, and thus as a reminder that the events of the day will become the same -- local history that connects us to the great events of our day.

Celebrating that local history is the Gallery on High, which is now offering the third of its Signature Series of art depicting important people, places and events in Pottstown history.

The Pottstown Signature Series is a series of collectible, high-end lithographs that will be released annually. Each edition will focus on a significant aspect of Pottstown’s rich history. The Signature Series is sponsored by the Greater Pottstown Foundation. The first edition in the series, titled Look for the Rope Edge, is centered on Mrs. Smith’s Pies. Drawn by local artist and Gallery Member Artist Steve Kent, this inaugural image is limited to a run of 100 prints.

The Gallery School of Pottstown's second edition of the Pottstown Signature Series honors the Pottstown Firebirds football team.

The second series, by Mary Ellen Christ, celebrates the Pottstown
Firebirds football team.

Relive that time in our town's history when the Firebirds were all the buzz, and everyone was a fan.

Created by Gallery Member Artist Mary Ellen Christ, this tribute is titled Hometown Champions and is available in a limited edition of signed and numbered lithographs.


The third edition is now available for order. This latest Signature Series features the Casselberry home, which was Pottstown's first library. This watercolor was created by Gallery School Member Artist Peter Ehlinger.

You can learn more about the Signature Series by clicking here.

Each Signature Series is $60, and can be purchased online at the Gallery's website, or in person at 254 E. High St. Questions? For details, call 610-326-2506 or email them.