Lancaster County

There will be no high-profile funerals or church services for the Amish children killed yesterday in Lancaster County, Pa. The Old Order Amish have no churches. They worship, and dispatch the dead to God's care, from their homes and barns. The Amish have been in the United States for nearly 270 years but, following the tenets of their faith, they have always lived apart, eschewing the conveniences of modern America, embracing pacifism and maintaining strong ties to the land. Their homes have no electricity, their clothes no zippers.

A lot of prominent scientists have dreamed of using the genetics revolution to cure or prevent disease. Few have done as much to make that dream a reality as has a gray-haired 55-year-old pediatrician in Strasburg, Pa. Dr. D. Holmes Morton, with his Harry Potter glasses and walrus mustache, has helped find the altered genes that cause a dozen rare disorders through studies of the traditional Amish and Mennonite communities of Lancaster County, Pa. ...

With 211 square miles to cover, few of the seven District D candidates have the stamina for a door-to-door campaign. They are instead attending forums, community council meetings, church dinners and firehouse fundraisers. They are waving to motorists at busy intersections - the friendliest crossing is at Routes 165 and 23 in Jarrettsville, one waver said - and planting political signs throughout Harford's most rural area. Signs have crossed district lines and a few have been spotted in Lancaster County, Pa. One candidate is getting a lot of campaign mileage from slogans painted on his shrink-wrapped car. District D - which comprises all of northern Harford County - has drawn five Republicans and two Democrats, the most candidates of any of the six council races.

On November 14, 2005, HEIDI M. MITCHEM, beloved daughter of Elsa and the late Francis J. Mitchem, dear sister of Ingrid Mitchem and Christopher Mitchem and his wife Susie; loving aunt of Maximilian Mitchem-Bobick and Camden Mitchem. Friends may call at the family owned Peaceful Alternatives Funeral & Cremation Center, P.A., 2325 York Rd., Timonium 2 to 5 Saturday. A time of remembrance will be held at 3:30 PM. Memorial Contributions may be made to the Catastrophic Health Planners, Inc., 3000 Gamber Rd., Ste. 400, Finksburg, MD 21048-1550 or to the Humane League of Lancaster County, 2195 Lincoln Hwy., Lancaster, PA 17602.

LITITZ, Pa. -- It's not unusual for residents in small towns struck by unexpected violence to wonder how such a thing could happen in their community. But in this quiet village, tucked among the Amish dairy farms and unabashedly Christian communities of Lancaster County, residents are having an especially tough time comprehending the recent arrest of an 18-year-old suspected of killing his girlfriend's parents after an argument about her curfew. That the families of both David Ludwig, the suspect, and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Kara Borden, were people of faith, involved in their children's lives and active in a local home-schooling support network makes the Sunday morning shootings all the more incomprehensible, area residents said yesterday.

PHILADELPHIA - They lend charm and character to the roads of Lancaster County, Pa., but horse-drawn buggies and their operators may be more susceptible to roadway perils than other drivers. So for the first time, a distinctively attuned "Horse and Buggy Driver's Manual," which draws upon the Golden Rule as much as modern traffic laws, has been published for Amish and others who rely on the kind of horsepower that has hooves. The manual, prepared with assistance from the Lancaster County Planning Department and the state's police and Department of Transportation, is meant to help buggy drivers understand how to be safer on roads dominated by motor traffic.

On December 9, 2004, Pennsylvania attorney, MICHAEL G. NAST, 37, died in an underwater diving accident near Cancun, Mexico. Nast, was born in Mount Holly, New Jersey on June 6, 1967. He was the husband of Baltimore resident Julie R. Brahmer, M.D., a thoracic oncologist at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland, to whom he was married in June, 2004. Nast was the son of Dianne M. Nast and Joseph F. Roda, of Lancaster, and Michael Gallucci, of Philadelphia. He had three brothers, Daniel N. husband of Kimberly, Joseph, and Joshua and one sister, Anastasia, all of Lancaster.

After a year of interviews and months of studying forensic evidence, FBI and Pennsylvania investigators said yesterday they still cannot explain the circumstances surrounding the death of federal prosecutor Jonathan P. Luna. They have found no evidence that the lawyer "met with" anyone in the hours before his body was discovered with multiple stab wounds in a Pennsylvania field. But they did not label Luna's death a suicide and said they are committed "to obtaining all the facts surrounding that evening and subsequent morning."

PERHAPS IT WAS inevitable. Casting is reportedly under way for the UPN television network's newest "reality" series: Amish in the City. The idea, which is patently offensive, is to plunk down a group of Amish teen-agers in a big city - apparently Los Angeles - and watch them get "freaked out" by their environs. So said CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves, who oversees UPN programming. Mr. Moonves' words are worth quoting in greater length: "To have people who don't have television walk down Rodeo Drive and be freaked out by what they see, I think, will be interesting television."

On February 16, 2004, MARY D. NOLTE, of Lancaster, PA; daughter of the late John Joseph and Pasqualina Todesco Farinetti; beloved mother of Elenora L. Gregory and Shirley M. Burkhardt; beloved grandmother of six and dear great-grandmother of seven; beloved sister of Anna Clasing and Louise Rinaudo and Rose Dandy. Viewing, Thursday, 10 to 11 A.M. at ANDREW T. SCHEID FUNERAL HOME, 320 Blue Rock Road (Rt 999), Millersville, PA. followed by Funeral Services at 11 A.M. Graveside Service, Thursday at 2:30 P.M. in Glen Haven Memorial Park, Glen Burnie, MD. Contributions may be made to Hospice of Lancaster County, 685 Good Drive, P.O. Box 4125, Lancaster, PA, 17604-4125.