Lawncrest residents pin hopes on 100th July Fourth parade

AFTER MONTHS of gloom, Lawncrest could use some light. And its residents, besieged by bad news at every turn, are hoping the brilliance of fireworks will do the trick.

Tomorrow marks the 100th time the Northeast Philly neighborhood will hold its Fourth of July celebration, a platinum anniversary beyond precious to the people planning it.

Because it's about more than just sparklers and water ice. The pride of an aging community battered by turmoil hangs in the balance of the grass-roots celebration, one of the city's oldest.

And if the organizers have their way, Lawncrest will rise again, basking in headlines that don't hinge on crime and controversy.

"We want people to know that Lawncrest isn't a bad place, that the things that have happened here haven't stopped us," said Jean Pleis, treasurer of the Lawncrest Community Association.

"The parade is a good way to do that."

Chances are, you've recently read about Lawncrest, the colloquial name for the area encompassing Lawndale and Crescentville. Just not for the right reasons.

Sandwiched between the pockmarked streets of North Philly and the bucolic peace of the Far Northeast, Lawncrest has played reluctant host to some high-profile incidents:

* January 2014: Donna Muller and her son Richard were found executed in their home on Stevens Street in Crescentville. The case remains unsolved.

* February 2014: Three men were found slain in a house on Martins Mill Road in Crescentville. Cori Thompson is slated to go on trial in September for their deaths, which police say were sparked by a drug feud.

* April 2014: Two men were found bound, gagged and shot on a secluded side street in Crescentville. One of them, Carl Johnson, died. The case is unsolved.

* December 2014: Joyce Craig, a firefighter with Engine 64 in Crescentville, lost her life battling a blaze.

* March 2015: A town-hall meeting at the Lawncrest Recreation Center - the venue of tomorrow's festivities - was interrupted by a melee between anti-police protesters and cops.

* Last month: Detective Mark Flacco fatally shot Andrew Ellerbe, a robber who fired at him inside Rising Sun Pizza, an eatery at the edge of Lawndale.

Native sons and daughters share a sense of urgency about this year's July Fourth milestone, with an emphasis on bouncing back.

More entertainment has been booked. The food court has been bolstered to include crab cakes, shish kebabs and frozen yogurt alongside the usual burgers and hot dogs. The paintball tent, a hit last year with younger attendees, will make a return.

"We have to keep going, to keep celebrating what makes Lawncrest special," said Pleis. "People still care about this community and want to preserve it."

Pleis and her colleagues expect a big draw this year: Through social media, they've connected with far-flung former Lawncresters from Florida to Washington state who've made donations.

They do so with a chip on their shoulder: Most media listings skip over Lawncrest in their Fourth of July guides. Even the city's official tourism website makes no mention of it.

A meeting of the Lawncrest Fourth of July Committee includes an impromptu lesson in logistics.

"How many T-shirts did we sell?" "He's got about two dozen folding chairs; I think we can use them." "Where is the chicken lady going to set up her grill?"

Call it holiday arithmetic.

Speaking of numbers: Lawncrest's annual celebration has a $25,000 price tag, more than half spent on the end-of-the-night fireworks display, and all amassed through the elbow grease of door-to-door fundraising and letter-writing to sponsors.

It's going to be a daylong affair, starting with an early morning parade down Rising Sun Avenue that culminates at the community rec center, where performers, a flea market, car show and food court run until the fireworks go off at dusk.

The festivities may not seem like much, compared to the city's blockbuster Wawa Welcome America Festival on the Ben Franklin Parkway.

But that bash has corporate sponsors and pop-chart headliners.

Lawncrest, by comparison, has a core group of organizers who juggle planning the day with full-time jobs, families and whatever else life throws at them.

A friend once asked Steve Cartledge if he could "help out" with the parade. That was 20 years ago.

Now, Cartledge, 49, is the event's point man, booking vendors and soliciting sponsors.

He even hand-paints the grid where the tables and chairs get set up at the rec center.

"It's a lot of work," said the Bustleton resident. "I'm already getting 10, 20, 30 phone calls a day."

A big workload, for sure, but he has plenty of help, including from his son Christopher, 19, who came up with this year's theme:

A Century of Tradition.

Thelma Saunders remembers just about every Fourth of July in her 94 years, all of them spent in Lawncrest.

Images flash in her mind, starbursts of memories as intense as a rocket's glare: The colorful streamers on her daughter's bike, the only thing identifying her in a sea of kids pedaling like mad down Rising Sun Avenue. Technicolor Mummers strutting. Antique cars. Homemade parade floats. Smoldering charcoal.

"The street was jammed full of people, three or four deep," she said recently. "You knew everyone was there."

In her youth, the parade was much more elaborate, weaving in and out of residential streets.

It was Americana in its purest form: The bike parade and handmade floats; a parade marshal cruising by in a convertible; Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts marching in uniform.

City politicians would flock to the event. Carl Gerhart, who lives in the Lawndale house his grandmother bought in 1909, recalls walking alongside mayors Frank Rizzo and Wilson Goode.

"It was an all-day party," said Gerhart, a retired Philly cop who served in the 15th District, next door to Lawncrest in Mayfair.

"Used to be, you'd have to get to the street an hour early just to secure your spot."

The modern parade is shorter - it now sticks to Rising Sun Avenue between Longshore Avenue and Comly Street.

But, like the neighborhood that spawned it, it has become more diverse.

What was once a predominantly Irish and German community has given way to sizable pockets of African-American, Japanese and Cambodian residents.

So the string bands of years past have been swapped for Northeast's Finest, Command Performance and the Foot Stompers, local drill and dance teams. Buddhist monks from the Soryarangsky temple on Rising Sun Avenue in Olney have become fixtures with their bright orange robes and banners.

Last year, Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez hooked the organizers up with a mariachi band.

"The parade, in my estimation, really reflects the community," said Brad El, who oversees the parade for the Fourth of July Committee. "If you see what's in the parade, you can, no matter where you're from, find something you identify with."

El, who runs the parade alongside his wife, Crystal, said the event has a powerful influence over people far beyond the community.

"People build their vacations around this," he said. "Our neighbors have relatives fly in from Hawaii and Puerto Rico just to see what we have going on."

That sentiment encapsulates the theme of the day: Reaching out and meeting the people around you. It's designed to draw Lawncrest together, to strengthen bonds between neighbors.

In Thelma Saunders' day, when families cultivated deep roots in the neighborhood, that required little coaxing.

But in the intervening years, as people flocked to the suburbs and beyond, the sense of community became frayed.

Crime came to the streets of Lawncrest.

Now, the community leaders want to mend that break, to get people out from behind locked doors and into the street to share an ice cream cone or a beer.

Given the recent track record of the neighborhood, that's needed now more than ever.

"If you live in the world, you gotta press the flesh," El said.

"That's not just limited to politicians: You have to meet the people standing next to you."