The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 81

Inside: City Region, B7 Friends recall Ippolito Gonzalez a year after he was killed in the line of duty. B7. State police crack down on organized auto-theft and insurance-fraud rings. B7. Obituaries, B8.

Weather, B9. Neighbors Sports, D8. J.jbb fl Jff wa Monday, May 6, 1996 Philadelphia Online: http:www.phillynews.com 3 Christian dieters saying faith can defeat fat Churches are reminding their weighty worshipers that they do not live on bread alone. nA1 By Kristin E. Holmes INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Terry Sanchez proudly held up the package of plain, not peanut.

She had been carrying the candies in her purse for a month without touching a single M. "I can do a pound of in a day and a half," Sanchez told the small group of women gathered at Delaware Valley Christian Church in Media. "This is amazing." Sanchez was not attributing her newfound discipline to some complex plan of dieting and food exchanges. She was touting a method of losing weight that tells Nashville, is one of at least three Christian weight-loss programs making their way around the country, church by church. Overeaters Victorious, a program started in the late 1970s by Neva Coyle, is viewed as the mother of weight-management programs based on faith.

First Place, based in Houston, is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention and can be found primarily in churches throughout the South. Weigh Down is now in 4,500 churches throughout the country. First Place is in 10,500. Coyle does not have figures for Overeaters Victorious, but Free to Be Thin, the first book she cowrote on the subject, has sold more than a million copies since it was published in 1979. The book was revised in 1994.

More than 40 churches in Southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey are participating in one of the programs. Several churches have designed their own programs with such names as the Light Bunch and Temple Repair. But most groups follow the Weigh Down Workshop plan. Churches enrolled in the programs purchase materials that include workbooks, videotapes, audiotapes, and manuals on how to start a church group. Fees for par-See DIETERS on B3 its disciples that God, prayer and Bible study are three of the best weapons in the battle against fat.

Sanchez is one of a growing number of area congregants who have become devotees of a new weight-loss gospel. Call it dieting with the Lord. "This was the only area of my life that I had not allowed God to be a part of," said Marilyn Blair, who has lost 20 pounds in the seven weeks since she began going to the Weigh Down Workshop at the church. "I tried to handle it myself, but now I'm admitting that I need God's help." The Weigh Down Workshop, based in I For The Inquirer BOB WILLIAMS Anna Lloyd shares her successes in the program at Delaware Valley Christian Church, Media. Utl- Threat of bomb empties school Suspected gambling operation raided Police seized about $30,000 from the Haverford Twp.

apartment. No arrests have been made. 'if 'mmm I'll I -s tr vyw HV t0 'im -X ivy. Hir I v' -t, -11 The caller said she was from Hezbollah. The message targeted Akiba Hebrew Academy in Lower Merion.

Officials said the call was a hoax. By George Anastasia INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Police in Lower Merion Township ordered the evacuation of the Akiba Hebrew Academy yesterday after re- -ceiving an anonymous phone call, from a woman claiming to be member of an Arab terrorist group and warning that bombs had been! planted in the school. After a search by police and bomb-sniffing dog from the Phila-: delphia Police Department's Canine Unit turned up nothing, authorities and the school principal, Rabbi Philip Field, said the call had appar- ently been a hoax. On Friday, the FBI warned Jewish groups throughout the country of an anonymous threat to 1,200 Jewish exec For The Inquirer BOB WILLIAMS The traditional maypole dance has been performed by students since Bryn Mawr College's first May Day celebration in 1900. Bryn Mawr students' spring frolic includes a celebration of womanhood.

Modern changes to an ancient rite 0 Vi By Justin Pritchard INQUIRER CORRESPONDENT HAVERFORD TOWNSHIP -Wedged between auto shops and beauty parlors, the second-floor apartment at 218 Darby Rd. is easy to miss. Over the winter and into spring, however, police kept a trained eye on it. They suspected the space was the nest of a gambling operation. Friday night, after months of surveillance, state and local authorities raided the apartment, according to Delaware County District Attorney Patrick Meehan.

Though police made no arrests, they collected about $30,000 in cash and betting slips for what Meehan described as "a broad variety of gambling on sports." According to a source knowledgeable about the investigation, police also seized several cars and computers. The source said authorities were also looking into bank accounts containing about $2 million that they believe represent revenues of the suspected gambling operation. According to the source, seven suspects, all of whom live in Philadelphia or its suburbs, have been questioned since the raid. The source said the suspects' houses had been searched. Meehan said he did not know whether or when any arrests might be made.

He said that because the investigation was continuing, he could not comment on who was involved in the alleged ring, which he described as having "roots beyond the local area." The owner of the property, William, J. Daley, said he did not know of the raid. He said he rented the apartment about six months ago to a man he described as "the epitome of a gentleman." Daley said he never received any complaints about the tenant, who always paid his rent without hassle. H.Q.said authorities had not contacted him about the raid. Security will be beefed up, the school's principal said.

By Clea Benson INQUIRER CORRESPONDENT BRYN MAWR As the sun chased away a spring-morning chill, more than 100 women gathered in a circle on the lawn at Bryn Mawr College yesterday and tied themselves together with toilet paper. Then, three women standing in the center of the group darted to the sides of the circle, each liberating one of the students from her bonds of bathroom tissue. After all were free, they ran to the edges of a pink silk parachute covered utives and physicians unless Israel withdrew its military forces from Lebanon. Authorities in Lower Merion said that they were aware of the threat but that there was no way to know whether 'ill i. 1 I.

Brenda Fishman of Denver holds one of the maypole ribbons. A May Hole dance was added 10 years ago by some who felt the rite outdated. with flower petals and lifted it into the air, showering themselves with pink and white. "The toilet paper is the bond of the patriarchy," explained Candice Morgan, a senior. "The chute is supposed to represent the roundness of women." For about 10 years, Bryn Mawr's Elizabethan-style May Day celebration has included this unusual celebration, called the May Hole dance.

It evolved in re- sponse to the traditional maypole dance that students have been performing since the college's first May Day in 1900. The maypole dance, rooted in ancient fertility rites, involves weaving ribbons around a 40-foot pole. And for some at the Main Line's bastion of intellectual womanhood, the idea of a fertility dance around a huge post is a little too, well, See MAY DAY on B5 it was related to the call received yesterday. Lower Merion Police Superintendent Joseph Daly said authorities had treated the threat seriously. Daly declined to provide details about what the caller had said, except to note that she claimed to represent Hezbollah, a Muslim extremist organization.

"It's frustrating, but thank God it was a false alarm," Rabbi Field said as he stood in the driveway of the school complex off Old Lancaster Road and Highland Avenue after he and police completed a search of the building. "If the intention was to disrupt life at the school, that was successful." About 75 students were attending Eschewing the traditional white gown for May Day are (from left) Tamar Blau, Mika Tajima and Slavica Naumovska. L. Merion High honors its highest a Sunday high school class, and about 12 to 15 more were involved in an independent school testing program, he said. Several students involved in a school play were also on hand to move sets and costumes.

The academy was evacuated shortly before 9 a.m. An alumni reunion scheduled for 11 a.m. was moved to a nearby park. Rabbi Field said that security would be tightened and that he intended to meet with students and faculty when school reopened today to discuss the situation. Akiba has 350 students in grades six through 12, he said.

Some students and several neigh-orhood residents stood outside the high wrought-iron fence that surrounds the academy as police cordoned off the grounds and waited By Anne Barnard INQUIRER CORRESPONDENT One had the serious job of running the nation's foreign policy and controlling armies of White House aides. The other could induce complete strangers to display dubious talents or confess intimate secrets to millions of television viewers. In their prime, they wielded very different kinds of power. Alexander Haig was chief of staff for Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R.

Ford, and secretary of state under Ronald Reagan. Chuck Barris was creator of The Newlywed Game, The Gongfihow and The Dating Game. But early in their lives, they had in soccer, which I played," said Lower Merion Township Commissioner Joe Manko, a member of the Class of 1958. Manko also was cocap-tain of the golf team with his colleague, Commissioner Jim Ettelson. Manko said those achievements bolstered his confidence in college and in his law career.

"Most of the people at Yale were preppies," he said. "I came out of a public high school, but I didn't feel behind." Haig, Class of 1942, credits his success, in part, to a principal who told him he would never make it through West Point. Haig said when he learned tfjiat-an earlier principal See GRADUATES on B5 one thing in common: They attended Lower Merion High School. The two were among 10 distinguished graduates honored at a banquet Friday marking Lower Mer-ion's 100th anniversary. About 450 alumni twentysomethings and octogenarians, surgeons and home-makers, professors and financiers gathered at the Valley Forge Sheraton ballroom to dance the pretzel, sing their alma mater, and honor a school that many say spurred them to excel.

"We had 19 National Merit Scholarship! finalists in our class. We won the sta'p football championship. We got to the state semifinals if i I For I he Inquirer SCO I b. HAMHICK An alumnus of '42, Alexander Haig meets with Lower Merion students at the high school's 100th-anniversary celebration. See THREAT on B6.