Category: Features
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Vineland Holocaust survivor remembers seeing John Demjanjuk at Sobibor death camp
(Published in The Press of Atlantic City on Dec. 1, 2009) VINELAND — Esther Raab says she remembers John Demjanjuk. She remembers him as a Ukrainian soldier, working in a Nazi death camp in Poland when she was a captive there in 1943. He would bring ammunition into the armory, where it would be fed […]
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Providing youth with sanctuary from local gangs
(Published in The Press of Atlantic City on Tuesday, April 28, 2009.) BRIDGETON Kevin Elliott and Davon McClendon work the basketball court at the Alms Center with the younger children. A juke here, finger roll there, stop and pop — fade-away jumper — and nail it. Their basketball season at Bridgeton High School ended in […]
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Program keeps area teens out of gangs, on the stage
(Published in The Press of Atlantic City on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2009.) BRIDGETON Rashaun Smith lies across two chairs, hands folded across his chest, eyes closed. Apparently, he’s dead. Nearby, his brother, Rome Smith Jr., sniffles. He’s a big guy, taller than 6 feet and weighing more than 200 pounds. “What you crying for?” asks […]
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30-year relationship culminated in Cumberland murder-suicide
(Published in The Press of Atlantic City on Sunday, Dec. 14, 2008.) UPPER DEERFIELD TOWNSHIP Lisa Gabriel was barely out of her teens when she met Teddy Marcantonis. She was Miss Vineland and had gotten a job as a hostess at The Grand Old House restaurant in Bridgeton. Marcantonis ran the place. He was 15 […]
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Weeds creep over heroes of Civil War
(Published in The Press of Atlantic City on Monday, Jan. 27, 2007.) GREENWICH TOWNSHIP The tattered and faded American flag lies crumpled in the overgrown grass. A large tree branch rests where it fell, propped across the tombstone of George H. Miller, Co. A, 25th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troop. The dead lie beneath the ground […]
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Getting to the bottom of the myths of the Blue Hole in the Pine Barrens
(Published in the Courier-Post on Feb. 7, 2003.) They say the Blue Hole’s bottomless. Surrounded by quicksand. Created by a meteor crash. Filled with water blue as the sky itself, quite unlike the murky brown cedar water elsewhere in the Pine Barrens. It’s been called the Bottomless Pit of Beelzebub and the Jersey Devil’s Bathtub, where swimmers […]