Harlem Township Days honors seniors

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Harlem Town­ship Days is becom­ing an annual anchor event for the still largely rural south­east­ern Delaware County township.

With near per­fect weather, the casual fes­ti­val hon­ored Harlem Town­ship senior cit­i­zens dur­ing a 10 a.m. open­ing parade. The rec­og­nized seniors were those over 90 years of age, and the 80 to 90 crowd, all town­ship res­i­dents for more than 50 years.

Sev­eral Big Wal­nut High School stu­dents were fea­tured at Harlem Town­ship Days this year. Sopho­more Kyle Davis dis­played his award win­ning sci­ence fair projects about spar­rows set up in the Main­te­nance Build­ing. Alli­son Daw­son, Olivia Evans and Spencer Mohney per­formed in the Main Tent. And Forge Garrabrant had an area set up near the Fire Depart­ment for his Eagle Scout project to raise money to buy a defib­ril­la­tor for the township.

For those inter­ested in antiq­ui­ties and Native Amer­i­cans, Greg Pey­ton, flint-knapper, and Ralph Arms, Lenape story-teller, were at Harlem Town­ship Days both days. They were joined on Sun­day by Thomas Grooms, a pre­his­toric pot­tery specialist.

Also, Nation­wide Insur­ance spon­sored a Car Show that included clas­sic cars, trucks and street rods; and the Ohio Vil­lage Muffins and Harlem Township’s home team played base­ball 1860’s style – no gloves, no cleats, no cussing, and a few quirky rules like no sliding.

Other Harlem Town­ship Days activ­i­ties included a Trac­tor Pull; an Author Meet-and-Greet, a Cake Walk and Pedal Pull for Chil­dren; enter­tain­ment by jug­gler Matt Jer­gens, gui­tarist Steve Ball, Pete Con­rad of the Trav­el­ing Beat­le­burys; edu­ca­tional pre­sen­ta­tions on the Civil War by mem­bers of the Rose­crans Unit; and danc­ing with John Wargowsky.

On the final day, a pan­cake break­fast was fol­lowed by a non-denominational church ser­vice pre­sented by Pas­tor Bud; a trac­tor slow race and quick start con­test; and enter­tain­ment by Sean Erick­son, singer and songwriter.

Posted by Gary Henery on Oct 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.