The News Journal from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 107

THURSDAY, DEC. 16, 1993 THE NEWS JOURNAL CROSSROADS 3 CJSIKll3RC30PS Ho me To Generations AROUND TOWN Do you have news from around your town? Here's how to get your information to us: 7 Malli Box 10887 Wilmington 19850 Street address: 950 W. Basin Road New Castle 19720 TDD number for the hearing Impaired: 324-2580 Items of interest must arrive 10 days before publication. I NEW CASTLE COUNTY MSC OFFERS HOLIDAY TRANSPORTATION: The Medical Service Corps is offering "Home for the Holiday" rides to health-care facility residents In need of ambulance transportation to and from their holiday destination Dec. 25 through 27.

Transports must be scheduled at least 24 hours in advance. Call 994-4477. ELSMERE LUMINARY DISPLAY: More than 200 houses in the Brack-Ex and Roselle developments will be lit and decorated for the holidays about 9 p.m. Sunday. Santa and singing will be featured.

PRICES CORNER TOYS FOR TOTS DROP-OFF SITE: Through Dec. 24, donations of new, unwrapped toys can be taken to Blockbuster Video, Depot Shopping Center. For every donation, get a kids' video rental coupon valued at $1.50. UtJ 9: The Lights Fantastic The News JournalBRIAN PfllCE OUT FOR A STROLL John and Irene Matarese enjoy a walk down Clayton Avenue in Cleland Heights, the community that's been their home for 40 years. i 'id.

Crossroads recently asked readers who have set up holiday light displays outside their homes to contact us so we could prepare this listing. The list will be updated and reprinted next week. To add your home to the list, call 324-2706 today or Friday. Next week, Crossroads will feature a holiday light display in your area. BRANDYWINE HUNDRED AFTON: 2900 Fair Hope Road.

CLAYMONT ROLLING HILLS: 2004 Philadelphia Pike. HOLLY OAK TOP OF THE HILLi 1900 Prior Road. WILMINGTON QUAKER HILU 310 West St. NINTH WARD: 41 1 and 413 W. 39th St.

WEST CENTER CITY: 609 N. Harrison St. NEWPORT AREA WESTVIEW: 419 Burnside Blvd. NEWARK AREA BROOKSIDE PARK: Houses on Kullen Drive and Kollman Drive. BROOKSIDE PARK: 58 Kollman Drive.

BIRCHWOOD PARK: 800 S. Gerald Drive. NEW CASTLE AREA CHELSEA ESTATES: 25 Paul Road. CHELSEA ESTATES: 35 Paul Road. COLLINS PARK: 141 Bellanca Drive.

GARFIELD PARK: 27 Memorial Drive. MINQUADALE: 12 Lewis St. RAMBLETON ACRES: 37 Stevens Drive. RAMBLETON ACRES: 38 Stevens Drive. SWANWYCK ESTATES: 133 Edge Ave.

ELKTON, AREA GREEN RIDGE: 4 Jaquette Circle. ELKTON: 110 Park Circle. MIDDLETOWNAREA MIDDLETOWN: 302 Elizabeth St. SHENANDOAH: 1 Blue Ridge Drive. TOWNSENDAREA TOWNSEND: Summit Bridge and Ratledge roads.

BLACKBIRD: 415 Gum Bush Road. TOWNSEND: 6038 Summit Bridge Road. SMYRNA AREA HOLLY HILL ESTATES: 236 Holly Hill Estates, off Laurel Circle. He 'A i mtii.iiitei.i-Viiii NEIGHBORLY JOG: Joe Sama, 50, pounds the pavement SECOND GENERATION: Lifelong resident Fran Corrigan in the neighborhood where he's lived 36 years. with his children Joseph, 6 months, Owen, 4, and Daniel, 6.

Cleland Heights neighbors work and play in harmony with each other. By JEFF WILLIAMS Special to Crossroads WILMINGTON When Joe Rago decided he had had enough of living in the Sunshine State of Florida, he told everyone he was moving back to his old neighborhood, Cleland Heights. "They all told me I'd be sorry if I moved back to Delaware," says Rago, who originally moved into the development in 1953. "They said that the old neighborhood wouldn't be the same. I told them they didn't know Cleland Heights.

Two days after we moved back here, there were people all over our front yard talking and catching up. It was as if we had never left." 1 To many people who live in the community of 450-plus homes, Ra-go's words ring true. Some never leave many of the red-brick dwellings shelter second or third generations of the same family. "It's just the way we are," says John Matarese, a 40-year veteran of the community. "My granddaughter even told me the other day that our house was where she plans to live.

Around here, you don't get rid of your kids. They keep coming back." For Matarese and his wife, Irene, that's just fine. Cleland Heights is family, both by blood and by proximity. I "We were one of the first people to move in here. The road out there was just dirt.

Everybody get along When Hurricane Hazel hit way back when, we all helped put up each other's aerials. Even today on our block, five of the original 12 families still live here," he says. "It isn't surprising to see 10 or more people gathered on somebody's front yard in the summer," says Irene Matarese. Cleland Heights, built in the early 1950s, offered row houses as well as free-standing one- and two-story homes ranging in price from $7,500 to $18,500. From the beginning, the community has been a mix of white-collar and blue-collar workers as well as people of various religions and ethnic descents.

At first the community was mostly young couples and budding families. After a while, Rago says, there were so many children that people teased him, saying he lived in "Kiddietown." "There were always children going from one house to another," he says. "They helped to get us to know our neighbors." For others, religious preference was a catalyst for moving to Cleland Heights. "We didn't want to move out of St. Elizabeth's parish," Matarese says.

"That's why we moved here." If St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church were an oak, the people of Cleland Heights would be the acorns that didn't fall far from the tree. For Leo and Peggy Papili, St. Elizabeth's is a place where Leo's father planted the trees at the rectory, where he and his siblings and cousins went to school. At one point there was a Papili in every one of the school's 12 grades.

St. Elizabeth's is the place the Papilis' children were baptized, went to school and were married. "You could say that it is the center of life here," Peggy Papili says. "It's been a good influence here for the residents." Cleland Heights residents may follow church precepts, but that Community Profile 1 si-i i Road Warrior rd '0ZJ "WE ALL SHARE THE SAME VALUES. I THINK THAT'S WHAT DRAWS US." JOHN MATARESE, Cleland Heights resident COMMUNITY: Cleland Heights.

THE HOMES: More than 450, a blend of single-family and duplex one- and two-story houses. First homes constructed in the 1950s. The average selling price ranges from $100,000 to $175,000. SCHOOL DISTRICT: Red Clay Consolidated. SCHOOL FEEDER PATTERN: Richardson Park Elementary (K-5), Conrad Middle (6-8), Wilmington High School.

CIVIC ASSOCIATION: None. There is a crime watch association. (3) Heald Street off-ramp, from Heald Street to New Castle Avenue. Closed through Friday. (4) Interstate 409 from I-295 to Terminal Avenue: Northbound traffic shifts to southbound lanes through June 1.

(5) Stanton Heights: Argonne, Verdun and St. Mihiel avenues closed, local traffic only through Dec. 24. (0) Forest Avenue bridge, Elsmere, closed. This listing of road construction and closings in the area is provided by the state Department of Transportation.

ELSMERE-NEWPORT-NEW CASTLE-DELAWARE CITY (1) Walnut Street bridge on U.S. 13B south of Wilmington Amtrak station: Traffic reduced to two lanes through Mayl (2) South Market Street bridge, U.S. 13, Wilmington: 3-ton weight limit. One lane each direction through December. i i The News Journal tyimuet yom PriatM at Cwuwd Ucadema "COLLEGE PREPARATORY" 2801 Del Laws Road Bear, DE 19701 toward that bill." "Even with newer families moving in, everyone's made to feel welcome," Matarese says.

"Not everybody has grown up with us or our kids, but we all seem to feel the same way. There's a pride here. If there's litter in front of somebody's house, somebody picks it up." amazing how well the people and community have stuck together here," Rago says. "There's no place like it the community. "He cuts my mother-in-law's lawn she is also a Cleland Heights resident and what should only take him an hour takes three because so many people stop and chat," Peggy Papili says.

"People just get along here. When said that in order for us to get lighting in the alley behind our houses, somebody on the block would have to be billed for it, I took the responsibility but everyone chips in each month RIGHT AT HOME: Joe Rago came home to Cleland Heights after tiring of Florida and found Peggy Papili and other friends still in residence. hasn't been true of some people who pass through the community. "Two years ago, we started having a lot of problems with crime," Papili says. "Three different times my car was either vandalized or they tried to steal it.

One time a huge rock was thrown right through the windshield." The incidents prompted the Papilis to start community and crime watches. Since then, crime has dropped 90 percent as more than 100 people from the community and neighboring Latimer Estates patrol the streets and look out for others' homes. "I think it says a lot that we not only got a lot of people to participate in the watch programs, but that we still have more joining," Peggy Papili says. Residents get together not only for work, but for fun. There's been no official civic association for quite soem time, but Leo Papili has been dubbed "mayor" of Scholarship Testing JAN.

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