The Morning Call from Allentown, Pennsylvania • 24

THIRD THE MORNING CALL MONDAY, AUGUST 14. 1989 B5 Palmeir Hire damages deptosft office By KAREN YURCONIC Of The Morning Call home. Homoki, who was on the scene to try to recover personal belongings, is staying with her mother. Chief Ed Dean of the Palmer Township Fire Department pointed to a ventilation fan in the attic as the cause of the blaze, which was under control in about 15 minutes and extinguished within half an hour. James Young, assistant fire chief, said the fan's motor apparently malfunctioned.

"We think the fan was old enough that it just went It overheated or seized or did something of that sort" Young said the fan did not appear to be an attic fan but a free-standing type that may have been permanently fastened to the attic eves next to a brick fireplace chimney, where smoke was first spotted by neighbors who called the fire department and other members of the department arrived. "Flames were rolling out of north corner of the roof," he said. Dean said exact losses could not be determined, but he estimated $20,000 building damage, plus contents of Homoki's residence. Structural damage was mainly to the roof, which was burned through a 150-square-foot area, or about 25 percent, and dry wall that collapsed in places because of water saturation. Young said officials were still attempting to contact insurance investigators last night.

There was also smoke damage to the main part of the home, where Homoki had a living room, kitchen, dining room, sitting room, two bedrooms and bath, and some water damage to her living room. Wood end Sternberg, who was shaken and crying after she was called to the scene by her hy-gienist, Nancy Arenberg, praised the firefighters' efforts, saying, "1 have to say they did a fantastic job downstairs." Dean said aside from water that dripped, from the roof, where firefighters initially attacked the blaze, and through the first floor, "nothing in the dentist's office was disturbed." Sternberg said she had operated the practice out of the home since 1978 and lived there until 1986, when she and her family moved to Bethlehem and Homoki moved in. "We'll have to clean up for a week at least," said the dentist, who worked out of the office five days a week. Dean said be observed "heavy dark brown smoke" coming from the house as he tables and a coffee table, apparently removed from the living room by firefighters and standing in the driveway of the brick and aluminum home, appeared to have minimal damage. A total of 22 Palmer firefighters worked from three pumpers and a snorkel truck at the scene.

Cpl. Glenn Kehler of the Palmer Police Department coordinated crowd control efforts and other members of the police department assisted for about 2 hours while Route 248 was blocked to traffic from Newburg to Van Buren roads. The Nazareth Fire Department responded with their Cascade Unit air system to fill the firefighter's oxygen bottles. The Suburban Rescue Squad of Palmer also respond- The Palmer fire department remained on the scene until about 5:30 p.m. A fire in a Palmer Township home yesterday left a dentist without a place to run her business and a tenant homeless and caused about $20,000 worth of structural damage.

There were no occupants at the time the fire was called in shortly before 2 p.m. Officials had some difficulty notifying the owner, Dr. Miriam Sternberg of Bethlehem, who runs a practice for children and adolescents in the basement portion of the house at 3305 Nazareth Road, or Route 248. Jill Homoki, who lives in an apartment on the entire upper level of the home, was visiting with her mother in the township when she was told there was a fire at her AIDS center files papers to incorporate The AIDS Services Center of the Lehigh Valley, 742 Hamilton Mall, Allentown, has filed articles of incorporation with the state to become an independent, non-profit corporation. Formerly associated with the Lambda Center, the AIDS Services Center was created to provide information, referrals and support services to a growing number of people "infected or affected" by acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

AIDS, a fatal disease with no known cure, is caused by a virus known as HIV. The virus can be transmitted through sex, the sharing of intravenous needles, blood transfusions and birth. Time moves on." An Allentown woman who is not as receptive, said, "The changes upset me a little. I remember going to Dorney Park in the evenings, walking in, getting an ice cream and just sitting there enjoying the smells and sounds. Can't do that now.

I also remember taking the kids to Dorney during Allentown Fair week, packing a picnic lunch and spending the whole day there because rides were cheaper and there was more to do." She added, "Now, to take kids to Dorney Park, it's expensive. Everyone pays an entrance fee even if they don't go on any of the rides. Glad my kids are grown up. I guess that I liked the hometown touch." But despite the general admission money they need for a much higher overhead Dorney Park and Wild-water Kingdown this summer has 3,000 employees park officials insist that the hometown touch is still there. Says Crowther, a vice president who has spent 19 years with the organization, "Dorney Park and Wild-water Kingdom has grown tremendously over the past five years, and our markets have expanded way beyond the local area.

But the old Dorney Park is really still here. We are still a family-oriented park. Most of our rides are designed for the family to enjoy together. We have picnic groves all over the place. The family tradition continues." And remember Alfundo is there, looking down, watching you.

among the few old rides remaining in the original Dorney Park, which is now essentially occupied by Kid-dieland. Dorney Park Road used to be a public road cutting through the middle of the facility. Following a fatal accident, a petition drive and heated controversy, the South Whitehall commissioners decided to close the road, which is now the park's northwest midway. The Sky Ride, a "medium-old feature," provides aerial views of the old section filled with many new attractions. The once-popular Mill Chute, with its short boat ride, has been redesigned into Journey to the Center of the Earth.

More than a dozen old rides have disappeared. Benjamin Franklin Knauss, who wears bifocal eyeglasses invented by his illustrious namesake, is best known as the owner of Knauss' Cheese Shop on Hamilton Street that he operated from 1929 to 1969. He recalls that his parents brought him to the site of future Dorney Park in a horse and buggy in the early 1900s. "It was called The Fishwire then. It was just a fish hatchery and they had chicken wire stretched around it.

There was also a picnic grove. It was at the end of the trolley line," he said. After the carousel was installed, Knauss, as a teen-ager, worked five summers at the park. "I worked for Chester Betz, who had the hotel, arcade and restaurant. I worked seven days a week and got $20 a week for working noon to midnight.

The area was open but you paid for the rides. We catered the Hess Brothers picnic for their employees. Hess's gave them everything they wanted." Knauss, his son Frank, Zwarych and Shellhammer, agreed that every generation has its pleasures, its time in history and cannot expect people-oriented things, including amusement parks, to be frozen like the contents of a time capsule. Zwarych, who brings grandson Andrew Derr of Ormrod to Dorney Park, commented, "I think the park is beautiful, even though I can hardly believe all of the changes. I accept them because nothing in life stays the same.

In addition to filine the leeal na- amined daily. Frank Knauss, assistant plant engineer at Cedarbrook, the Lehigh County home, was still in a stroller when his parents first wheeled him the three blocks to Dorney Park. Several years later, he entered Dorney Park wth his sister Barbara as though it were another world; so close and yet so exotic. 'It was a real thrill for a kid, like going on a mini-vacation. I remember feeding the ducks in the pond, riding the carousel and spending hours in the Penny Arcade.

The arcade was real cheap. You'd put a penny in a machine and get a card of Hopalong Cassidy or Gene Autry. I always took the free Zephyr train ride," said Knauss, who is a railroad buff and has model train sets. Knauss lamented that the "Grande Carrousel," housed in a wooden rotunda, was destroyed by fire in September 1983. The attraction had become one of the best-known fixtures in Lehigh County.

was a firefighter with the Cetronia Fire Company at the time, and I was the third man to arrive at the fire scene," said Knauss, who is now fire prevention officer with the volunteer company. The carousel, a Philadelphia toboggan-type ride similar to the nationally famous Dentzel carousel, was installed at Dorney Park in 1915. "It was a handmade custom ride and was irreplaceable," said Harry Schmerling, the park's public relations director. Also destroyed in the 1983 fire were the Bucket O'Blood, Skee-Ball alleys, Flying Bob, a elty shop and an open-air theater. When the merry-go-round was leveled, Knauss regarded it as a personal loss.

It had been a tender part of his boyhood. "I recall reaching for the brass ring good for a free ridel and -Grandma Wil Tracey Plarr sitting in the booth selling tickets. I loved the sound of the organ. The only thing that came close to it was the sound of the barrel organs that I heard in Holland, and 1 bought recordings of those," Knauss said, Knauss recalls the airplane ride now called The Rockets, Bumping Cars and the Water Skooters in the river (Cedar Creek) that were guided by underwater tracks. They are "Three of us worked at the pony ride for nothing.

We would feed the nine ponies for Harvey Ziegenf uss in the morning and walk them around the ring with the children riding them. We were with the ponies all day and we smelled like them when we got home," Zwarych recalled. Her sister Marie, now living in Salmon River, Idaho, used to be the checkroom girl at the once popular roller skating rink. "We kids also worked the picnics, which were a big thing in those days. There were seven groves and the biggest was the Silver and Blue, which is still here at the top of the hill.

Mack Trucks used to throw a picnic there for its workers and the park catered it," Zwarych said. There were deer and peacocks in Zoorama where the Hercules roller coaster is now, and the kids could reach in and pet the deer." Steve Plarr used to let the Shell-hammer children keep the carousel area clean. "There was a space where people dropped money and things. He would let us crawl underneath for coins. And we found skunks under there, too," Zwarych remembered with a laugh.

Seated next to her was her father, who had operated the ThunderHawk roller coaster and had parked cars at the former Castle Garden when Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and other music-world celebrities brought their big bands in for dance dates. "On Children's Day I used to ride on the outside of the roller coaster to keep the kids from sticking their arms out I did that until the insurance company found out and I had to stop it, said Shellhammer, who later worked at the Atlantic Refining Co. fuel depot in Allentown. Incredulous spectators thought it was daring of Shellhammer to cling to a train as the coaster made its near-freefall plunge and zipped around the curves. "But I enjoyed it all The Plarr family treated me very well" Shellhammer said.

The roller coaster was so close to the Shellhammer home that Jean could look out of her bedroom window and watch employee Howard Knecht "walk it every morning." Highly safety-minded, the Plarr and Ott families, who owned and operated the park over many decades, had the coaster tracks and wooden ties ex perwork to incorporate with the Pennsylvania Department of State, the center's organizing committee is working on the development of by DORNEY Continued From Page B1 side. I'm a member of the Saar-bruecken Exchange Society, and I have been host to Germans who visited the Lehigh Valley. When I take them to Dorney Park, they point that out to me the old blended with the new. They like that; it reminds them of Germany's amusement parks." Solomon Dorney started it all by developing a fishing pond and picnic grove along Cedar Creek in 1884 on a former dairy farm owned by Tilghman Helfrich. About 1900, it was sold to the Allentown-Kutztown Traction which operated a trolley company between the two municipalities.

It was known as the Dorney Line. Dorney Park had a long and colorful history when it was taken over by entrepreneur Harris Weinstein in 1986. Joining corporate officers like Craig Cope, Robert Plarr and Mike Crowther, Weinstein, who made a fortune in garment manufacturing, brought creative financing techniques to an economically ailing corporation. Today, he is board chairman and the prime mover of all new projects. "The big day at Dorney Park was 'Children's Day' in July.

The Morning Call contained strips of tickets for free rides and one for a free hot dog," said Jean Zwarych, who lived only two minutes' walk from the park at 3739 Dorney Park Road. ''There was always a big drawing that day and the big prize was a bicycle. The park used to be jammed." There also was "Promotion Day," which was literally a promotion. The students would bring their report cards to Dorney Park, where officials would reward them with numerous free rides for an and other treats for a Even a might be worth one circuit on the fabulous carousel with its huge music box and handcarved wooden horses and swans. For years the merry-go-round was operated by Steve Plarr.

One enticement of old Dorney Park was that there was no general admission charge. But many rides and attractions required the purchase of a ticket And the company also made a profit on food and souvenir sales. Zwarych's maiden name was Shellhammer and there were six Shellhammer children who made Dorney a part of their lives. Four generations of the family worked there. Jean's late brother Robert was the lone lifeguard at the swimming pool that had concrete walls but a sandy bottom.

In comparison, Wildwater Kingdom employs 130 lifeguards for its gigantic pool, artificial rivers and water slides. Another brother, Corky, operated the former shooting gallery. laws and a board of directors. Services Center Director Dixie White called it "a critical process that will provide the framework in -which to operate." The AIDS Services Center serves about 100 people from Lehigh, Northampton, Monroe, Carbon and Schuylkill counties. Besides education and advocacy, the organization provides a speak- CPM Continued From Page B1 er bureau, AIDS information tele- nknna lino All CH0 for bankruptcy in February.

Houser said that the bank had not responded to the letter, but had used it to petition the court to get the stay lifted. The board, following Houser's recommendation, agreed to send a letter to the bank on Sept. 4 urging it to follow through with the foreclosure if it doesn't appear that CPM will have a plan by Sept 30. gram, food, housing and hospital visits. Outgrowing its office space on Hamilton Mall, the center is seeking new quarters, preferably in the east, side of Allentown.

"In the last two years, we've seen a significant change in our consumer base," White said. Sign of the dcLxficntcx 3or the bride pewter, picture frames, functional and decorative pottery, tamps, pictures and so muck more 21 71. 2nd JJiiloric jbiitrict, Caito, 215-250-0875 se.v i vJ Mm. horks Diner 3315 Sullivan Trail, Easton Phone (215) 252-1038 3 XV. L.

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