The News Journal from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 71

THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 1993 THE NEWS JOURNAL CROSSROADS RETTY FERSUASION Do you have news from Here's how to get your around your town? information to us: Mall: Box 10887 Wilmington 19850 TDD number for the hearing Impaired: 324-2580 Items of interest must be to us 10 days prior to publication date. WILMINGTON ACCESS WILMINGTON AWARDS PROGRAM: Nominations are being accepted for the Access Wilmington Awards for citizenship, agency excellence and community service. The deadline for nominations is March 19. Nominees should demonstrate initiative, leadership and dedication in providing equal opportunities for persons with disabilities. The award presentations will be May 24 at the Hotel du Pont Gold Ballroom.

Call 571-4100. BPA AWARDS DINNER: The Brandywine Professional Association will hold its annual awards ceremony April 19 at the Hotel du Pont's Gold Ballroom. More than 350 representatives from the local community will honor the achievements of selected minority professionals in Delaware. Invitations have been mailed, and the cost will be $45 for BPA members, $50 for others. Call 429-0242.

LU The News JournalBRIAN PfllCI STUCK IN THE MIDDLE: Delaire residents are lucky to have a quiet setting between two major roadways. it li ft T-- t' i mi i til iw" lMM ml In i If Convenience is the greatest lure of the sedate setting nurtured by Delaire. By JIM PARKS Special to Crossroads BELLEVUE Folks in Delaire figure they're riding in the catbird seat. "This is an exciting time. It seems we have everything going for us right now," said Elizabeth Fountain, a Delaire resident for more than 30 years and chairwoman of its civic association's zoning committee.

At a time when many other northern Delaware communities are wary of encroachment by development, the area around Delaire, east of Philadelphia Pike between Bellevue and Silverside Roads, is tagged for the kind of projects most residents welcome. Backing up to the hillside properties along its southern rim is a piece of land known as the Volpe Tract. Once eyed as a site for town houses, it will become the location of an aquatic center built and operated by the state Parks Division. Just to the south of the Volpe Tract is a former farm known as the Cauffiel Estate. The state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control is negotiating its purchase to become part of the Northern Delaware Greenway.

If that's accomplished, said Fountain, it would be "like icing on the cake." Delaire, built in the 1930s and perched on the hillside with a view of the Delaware River, has undergone what Fountain calls "positive maturation" in recent years. It boasts older residents who were attracted to the hillside by its combination of relative seclusion and convenience to professional jobs in Wilmington. Having settled there, they stayed well into retirement. In the 1980s, the process was repeated by another generation. "When the baby boomers came, they renovated well-built old houses and landscaped around them and kept Delaire the nice place it had always been," Fountain said.

The proximity to the planned Fox Point State Park, which will take shape on the bank of the Delaware in coming years, and the popular Bellevue State Park are added perks for the neighborhood. As a consequence, "we range in age from infants to 93," she said. About a third of the 85 single-family houses are occupied by families that have lived there for 30 years or more; half by young families that have come during the past decade. The mix, she added, has proven compatible. She describes the older generation as generally happy to be near young children once their own have grown and moved on.

Most Delaire residents, young and old, share concern about noise and other nuisances associated with the crowds expected at the swimming facility, but are pleased with the efforts of state authorities to minimize any problems. "The state has been positively outstanding in including Delaire in all its planning," said Jon Husband, president of the civic association. "We've been assured it will be attractive and well-screened." Some Delaire residents, he said, are eager to buy season passes to the center. The civic association is represented on the community liaison committee helping to plan the center. And part of the Cauffiel Estate, whether or not Greenway plans materialize, reportedly is slated to be the location of a new road linking the drive through Bellevue Corporate Center with Governor Printz.

"The boulevard" as many in the Fox Point area have dubbed the line on highway planners' maps most certainly SERENE SETTING: The oldest house set, owned by Mark and Beth Williams, in Delaire on Sun- AWAITING SUMMER: Elizabeth Fountain stands at the was built in 1939. proposed entrance to Bellevue State Park Aquatic Center. Street address: 950 W. Basin Road New Castle 19720 BRANDYWINE HUNDRED LADIES AUXILIARY: The following officers were recently elected and will serve the Brandywine Hundred Fire Company during 1993: Virginia A. Yeager, president; Bonnie Wrightson, vice president; Sandra Kilpatrick, recording secretary; Debbie Huber, assistant recording secretary; Dorothy Morris, corresponding secretary; Clare Hurst, financial secretary; Ruth Gaul, treasurer; Mary Fulks, assistant treasurer; Allison DiMauro, marshall; Gerry Hurst and Nancy McCracken, board of directors.

TAVISTOCK ELECTION Tavistock Civic Association will hold its annual meeting tonight at 7:30 at the Concord Pike Library Community Room. Officers will be elected. New Castle County Councilman Joseph Miro, R-Pike Creek, will discuss county government and the present and future of Concord Pike. Call Donna Pfarrer, 478-1385. Wilmington Housing Authority high-rise.

At times she stayed with her sister or brother. But mostly it has been a constant move from one shelter to another, many of which allow residents to stay for only about a month. "Me and my kids, we used to be so close," Peak said. "Now it's like my family's falling apart." Peak's 11-year-old son often gets suspended from school for fighting. One of her daughters keeps missing the school bus "on accident." The other daughter threatened to kill herself if Peak went back to shelter life.

Because of moving to various shelters, the children have changed schools many times, so many times that Peak has lost count. "I don't want everyone to think I'm a bad mom because I came back to the shelter. It's like a depression. It's like nobody in the world cares about you. Then sometimes I wonder is there really a God.

I'm tired of praying. I'm tired of being like this," she said. Peak is on various waiting lists for subsidized housing which allows tenants to pay about 30 percent of their income for rent and utilities. When her children were younger, being homeless was easier on them, Peak said. Now that they are teenagers, they know what it feels like to be stigmatized.

They don't tell their friends where they live. Peak hopes to find subsidized housing where she won't be afraid to leave her children while she works. Then, she hopes to pursue her dream of working as a nurse's aide. For now, she can only pray. She said, "We live day by day by day by day." Community Profile The News JournalFRED COMEGYS NO PLACE TO CALL HOME: Violet Peak stays at the Salvation Army's shelter for the homeless.

Homeless mother dreams of a permanent place to live I Delaire if ilj7 WlTljninon. Jewarlu "THERE ARE NOT MANY OTHER PLACES THAT ARE WITHIN WALKING DISTANCEOFNOTONE BUT TWO GREAT PARKS." JONATHAN HUSBAND, president. COMMUNITY: Delaire THE HOMES: 85, built in 1930s, sell for $120,000 to $180,000. SCHOOL DISTRICT: Brandywine FEEDER PATTERN: Carrcroft and Harlan elementary, Talley Junior High School, Mount Pleasant High School. CIVIC ASSOCIATION: Yes Jonathan Husband, president.

Road have continued to serve as a shortcut between the pike and Governor Printz. Outsider traffic blithely ignoring the 25 mph speed limit and the posted ban on trucks has imperiled Delaire's children, Fountain said. "It has become a thruway," she said. That's ironic, she said, because Sunset Drive originally was de The News Journal jV signed as a dead-end egress for Delaire. "That's the way it still is on the official map.

It was opened years ago by the Wright family to Governor Printz partly to reach their business but mostly as a favor and convenience to Delaire people," she said. Anne Holt, immediate past president of the civic association, said Sunset Drive has become the only divisive element in the community. "We're split on the issue of whether it should be kept open to Governor Printz," she said. While running counter to the trend among civic associations in supporting the building of a new highway, the Delaire group also is singular in its feelings about business development in the area. Husband calls Bellevue Corporate Center a "well designed asset." Husband's family moved in 10 years ago.

"We fell in love with the place right away and still feel that way," he said. He describes Delaire as a friendly community where people, "even if we don't know each other, still say hello." Holt and her husband arrived in 1987, six months after they married. "We thought it was ideal private and pretty," she said. "We're right between two major highways, but you'd never know that sitting here." lmfrM would have a positive traffic impact on Delaire by diverting cars and trucks from Sunset Drive, the community's only through street. When a summer flood destroyed part of the bridge that carries Philadelphia Pike across Stony Run Creek a few years ago, drivers discovered Sunset Drive.

Since the bridge reopened, Sunset Drive and nearby Bellevue BYALISA BAUMAN Staff reporter WILMINGTON Violet Peak's dream seems simple. She wants to work as a nurse's aide, earn enough money to pay her rent, feed her children and buy them clothes, have some time to think about herself, and every once in a while have her kids surprise her with a meal. Clinic to offer dental services for homeless Pagel However, for a 33-year-old homeless woman with three children who have lived on welfare for about 10 years and lived in every homeless shelter in Wilmington, nightmares are more common. Peak dreads the worst having her 13-year-old twin daughters end up in her shoes. "My mother always told me you have to crawl before you can walk.

But, gosh, I've been on my knees too long," Peak said. Peak lived in an apartment on West Fourth street for two years until early February. Her welfare check of $379 only left her $52 a month after she paid her rent. The apartment was in the heart of Wilmington's drug district, with dealers selling their wares in her building and others smoking drugs in the hallways. She was too scared to leave her children home alone.

And she was tired of not being able to pay for their school trips or buy them clothes, so she decided to move back into shelter. Since she gave birth to twins when she was 20 and another child when she was 22, Peak's life has gone downhill. She and her children lived with her mother until her mother moved into a CsQ0G3 CSuiXI 5C3H3 0 Offer Expires IVIarch 20tti tfityrzz: PRINT SALE Save 25 on Framed Prints By Carolyn Anderson, Carolyri Blish, Richard Bollinger, Dawson, Vernon Good, John Matassa, James McGlynn. Terry Newitt, Wm. Renzulli, Paul Scarborough, Peter Sculthrope.

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