Laurels & Lances: The little highs and lows of 2021
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The Laurels & Lances are where we laud or lambaste the kind of good and bad stories each week that don’t quite rise to the level of a full-blown editorial but still deserve to be called out for attention.
January: The first laurel of the year went to two area restaurants named to Esquire’s “100 Restaurants America Can’t Afford to Lose” list. J&J’s Family Restaurant in Mt. Washington and Tessaro’s in Bloomfield were the face of the hundreds of eateries large and small, simple and fancy, that spent the pandemic doing the hard work of staying open.
February: The first female Eagle Scouts in the Westmoreland-Fayette Council were celebrated with a laurel. Elizabeth and Hannah Yothers, then 18, joined their triplet brother Matthew in the elite ranks of Boy Scouts of America’s highest honors.
March: A South Fayette High School assignment earned a lance. A social studies teacher was suspended for a lesson that asked students to run a virtual slave ship to determine if the slave trade was profitable.
April: The Rev. Tim Stradling of Mt. Pleasant Township got a laurel for his daring rescue of his Maltese-silky terrier mix from a backyard bear attack.
May: We gave a lance to former Mt. Pleasant police officer John Brown after his sexual assault conviction netted him a 5-to-10 year prison sentence plus five years probation.
June: The summer made sense again when the Westmoreland County Airshow returned after a 2020 hiatus that was actually not due to the pandemic. It was a scheduling issue announced in 2019. But the Blue Angels soared over the area again in June 2021.
July: Who would ever think it would be necessary to push municipalities to take money? But Westmoreland County was coming down to the deadline for a $2.5 million pot of pandemic relief funds with 18 municipalities not applying.
August: Emmett Hendrick made a spectacular arrival when he was born in an ambulance before his parents had a chance to get the hospital. On their way to West Penn Hospital, the Butler Township couple had to make an unexpected stop at Hammer’s Frozen Custard and Subs in Middlesex Township because Emmett was so eager to enter the world. An ambulance took them from the ice cream shop to UPMC Passavant.
September: How do you find an unexplained rhino head in Aspinwall? The mystery of the piece appearing randomly on a sidewalk earned a lance.
October: We gave a laurel to the growing film and television industry in the area as Greensburg became site of an Amazon Prime series based on the 1992 “A League of Their Own” movie.
November: The Armstrong High School crowd’s response to the female goalie from Mars Area merited a lance. We weren’t the only ones calling it out. The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Hockey League did, too.
December: It was a pleasure to give the four area schools of the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League a laurel for dominating the state football championships.