The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 13

Me IPfiUaMpfua Ihtqmrcr Section 'Speed limit up, fatalities down on New Jersey's highways. B2. Obituaries, B4. Wpnthr rig News in Brief B2 The Scene B2 I -i Saturday, January 2, 1999 Philadelphia Online: http:www.phillynews.com CitycRegioii 'J uiiiiir Mm.1 'Hfffi 1 i Jl 1 I 1 1 'r 1 il.Ul 1 I Boy is hit IjyNew eark gunfire A stray bullet hit the 11 -year-old in the head in Pennsport. He clung to life in a hospital.

i Ml David Peatross, 5, plays at the feet of the statue, at the Municipal Z'- Services Building at 15th Street and JFK Boulevard across from City k.l Hall. David's father, Charles, was a photographer for Rizzo. hint -rr OjU 1 ZZWt Statue of Frank Rizzo is unveiled as crowd cheers, Mummers play 1 1 i A-. Mi ill BP iim in 1 i 1 't till S-. kM 1 aMaMnwv MMmMtfi mmmmm pwiwv -a mm- councilman, the memory was of a day when he and his father approached the mayor's entrance at the northeast corner of City Hall and a bus driver stopped his bus, got out and shook the mayor's hand.

Or when father and son went to a Phillies game and had to move to a back By Jere Downs INQUIRER STAFF WHITER It's tradition on Fernon Street. After midnight, to ring in the New Year, children and parents run to Second Street to hear the Mummers' music. That's what an 11-year-old boy was doing when another custom er and less innocent dropped him to the sidewalk. Someone firing a gun to mark the New Year shot him in the head with a stray bullet, police said. "My husband heard his friends say, 'Come on, get nearby resident Kathy Hewitt said.

"Then there was a puddle on the sidewalk. All I saw was blood." With a bullet lodged in his brain, the boy clung to life in critical condition yesterday at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. His name was not released. Detectives, meanwhile, were canvassing the Pennsport neighborhood for the shooter. "The bullet just fell from the sky," homicide Sgt.

Alex Strong said. "It hit him on top of the head." The boy and his family live in Del By Cynthia Burton INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Frank Lazzaro Rizzo was a man in motion, which is why his wife and son and a sculptor who came to know him decided that his monument should be a statue walking toward the people, hand upheld in a greeting. yjutr -fi -1 row so that all the people coming up to greet the big man would not block the fans' view of the game. Or when they would go to the Country Club Restaurant on Cottman Avenue and the waitresses would stop serving customers to greet him. "This is how I remembered him," his son, Frank Rizzo, said.

"He was always waving at people." Until yesterday, only a handful of Rizzo lov-' ers had seen the Zenos tFrudakis sculpture of 'the late Philadelphia 4 mayor and police com- missioner. The statue, I permanently affixed to the steps of the city's Municipal Services Building and facing 1 tr -Til II 4 "This is how I remembered him," his son said. "He was always waving at people." For his wife, Carmella, the unveiling was a moment of triumph tinged with sadness. "I would rather have had him here. He would have been thrilled," she said.

And, for Martin Weinberg, Rizzo's closest political strategist, it was a memory of a St. Patrick's Day parade in 1972 where the two were marching together. A photograph of Rizzo waving during that parade was used as the model for the sculpture. "As people go by here, they're go-See RIZZO on B2 the north wall of City Hall, was unveiled as the Broomall String Band played in the background at the Mummers Parade. ,1 The crowd was small about ISO.

people but spirited. As Mayor Rendell came to the microphone to make a ceremonial speech, they chanted "Eddie, Eddie." When they counted down from 10 to the moment the blue plastic tarp was pulled from the bronze statue, they drowned out the Mummers. i They braved piercing cold to once more tell Rizzo stories and talk about how he was "larger than life." For his son, Frank Rizzo, a city CHARLES FOX Inquirer Stall Photographer As the statue of Frank L. Rizzo is unveiled, members of his family look on. They are (foreground, from left) his son, City Councilman Frank Rizzo, the late mayor's wife, Carmella, and daughter, Joanna.

aware; they had come to celebrate New Year's Eve with the boy's grandmother at her house near Fernon Street and Moyamensing Avenue, Strong said. Family members who answered the door yesterday declined to comment. Though the roots of Mummery date back 300 years, when Swedish men in clown suits fired off muskets in South Philadelphia, people around Second Street have grown used to safer celebrations. Word of the shooting stunned them. Father Michael Sheehan began the 7:30 a.m.

Mass at nearby Sacred Heart of Jesus Church with a prayer for the boy and his family. "News travels fast in this neighborhood," Father Sheehan said. "We'll keep the prayers going." As the news spread, men in outrageous costumes grew somber as they returned from Broad Street. Longshoreman Daniel Duffy was resting after his morning strut as a pink-suited, futuristic mutant for the Jokers fancy brigade. The shooting made it "harder to get out here and dance," said Duffy, who lives on Fernon Street.

"It could have been my 14-year-old son." Carol Aliulis said she had heard a boom just after midnight and ran to her front door. The boy lay on the sidewalk. "Our Christmas tree lights lit up his face," said her husband, George. "It looked like he was sleeping." Yesterday morning, Carol Aliulis recalled standing on her porch in bare feet and dialing 911 while the boy's family held him and cried. Got a year-end job bonus? You're almost alone Few companies are doling out holiday cash these days.

Merit raises and profit-sharing are their preferred pat on the back. ners, David Rosenberg and Frank Piliero, agreed again this year to share the wealth with all employees, as they have for the last nine years. "We look at it as a gift," Kronenberg said. Weirsky and the rest of the approximately 475 ECS employees received a gift equal to 90 percent of their weekly salary, capped at $2,000, Kronenberg said. This is in addition to performance bonuses.

At Philadelphia Suburban, the board-approved stock bonus was a way to reward nonmanagement employees and recognize productivity, efficiency and cost containment, spokesman Chris Franklin said. Managers receive performance-based incentives, he said. See BONUSES on B2 flect their extra efforts. "You can win when things are flush or when you give very generous bonuses," Slutsky said. "But otherwise, you don't get the bang for your buck." Prosperous times prompted both ECS and Philadelphia Suburban to give bonuses this year, according to company representatives.

"Things are going well; we're still growing," said William Kronenberg 3d, ECS president and chief executive officer. The private ECS family of companies provides environmental risk-management services to clients. It does not disclose its revenues, but Kronenberg said it annually writes insurance with more than $200 million in gross premiums. Kronenberg said he and his two part tion, not the rule, a sampling of area businesses indicates. "Companies have moved pretty much to performance bonuses or profit sharing," said Jim Bowers, a Philadelphia-based vice president with the Hay Group, a management-consulting firm.

Steven Slutsky, a senior compensation specialist with William M. Mercer Inc. in Philadelphia, concurred. Holiday bonuses can pose pitfalls for well-meaning employers, he said. Workers can come to view them as entitlements, and very productive employees may feel shortchanged if their bonuses do not re By Mary Blakingcr INljUlliER SUBURBAN STAFF Public-relations specialist Christine Weirsky had an enviable extra errand this holiday season: a trip to the bank to deposit a cash gift from her employer, Environmental Compliance Services Inc.

in Exton. And at Philadelphia Suburban Corp. in Bryn Mawr, parent corporation of Philadelphia Suburban Water, nonmanagement employees received a bonus of $250 worth of stock during the fourth quarter. But these ECS and Philadelphia Suburban workers are among the lucky few. Year-end holiday bonuses are the excep Soon the narrow street filled with police cars.

"You hate to see a child lying there," said the mother of two, pulling her green robe closer around her. "It makes you feel like he's one 4'1'J of your own." Til i Likely sale gives hospital community relief Frankford Hospital has plans to buy Delaware Valley Medical Center. The news has ended years of rumors. 1 i urn utt nancial squeeze. "We always got new vacuum cleaners if we needed them," she said.

"It's not that we ever had to cut back on buying or hiring when we needed to, but it has come to the point now that we probably, would begin to feel the effects of the money problems." A few employees expressed regret that the hospital would be renamed, probably becoming Frankford-Bucks County. "With that, we'll lose the hospital's sense of history," said Ginny Cavanaugh, a volunteer in the patient advocacy department. Cavanaugh, 80, is the former head of pediatric nursing for Delaware Valley. "When you work somewhere, you take pride in the name," she said. "The hospital has been sort of a landmark of 70-some years." ferson Health System, also expects to invest nearly $20 million to improve the hospital.

Although the 81-year-old institution will lose its identity, Piskorski and others said they would gladly exchange that for job security. Taking a short break from registering patients, Piskorski, who has been at Delaware Valley for 22 years, said morale had been low for the last couple of years as rumors about the hospital's future circulated. She said many employees were worried that Delaware Valley would be forced to lay off workers, or worse, shut down. Patricia Dea, who has worked at the hospital for 31 years and is now head of housekeeping, said that in thfe past her department had not felt the pinch from Delaware Valley's fi tient center lor the Philadelphia-based Frankford Hospital system. Delaware Valley officials announced plans on Tuesday to sell the facility to Frankford.

They cited a severe cash shortage and operating costs that far exceeded the ISO-bed hospital's dwindling revenues. Frankford officials said they would probably keep all direct-care employees and some administrators after the sale went through in February. The sale must still be approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Philadelphia. Frankford said it expected to lend Delaware Valley S3 million to $5 million over the next six weeks.

Frankford, which is part of. the Jef By Jack Brown INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF LANGIIORNE For Donna Pis-korski and many other workers at the Delaware Valley Medical Center in Langhorne, the news that the facility would be sold to Frankford Hospital but would stay open ended a long period of Things could have been worse. "I have three kids in college right now," said Piskorski, 49. "You could say I was a little bit apprehensive." Many department heads, staff members and volunteers interviewed this week said they were relieved that the hospital, which recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, would become an in-pa 1 i HINDA SCHUMAN Inquirer Suburban Stall The Philadelphia area's first baby of 1999 arrived 15 seconds after midnight at Paoli Memorial Hospital. Rhys Foulke, an 8-pound, 12-ounce boy, was born to Ailsa Foulke, 30, and Adam Foulke, 29.

He is the Chadds Ford couple's first child. "It was a great way to usher in Ailsa Foulke said. Both mother aftd son were doing fine -and were expected to go home tomorrow..