Amy Gerstman

Elizabeth Hall Pursell, my dear friend whom I occasionally blog about, enjoyed a triumphant moment last month when Bucks County, Pennsylvania, celebrated the dedication of a new National Veterans Cemetery.

See the news clip:

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=6508436

The cemetery had actually been slated for an extensive, pricey-housing development by the billionaire firm Toll Brothers. Elizabeth was the founder and president of Save Historic Dolington, an organization that fought to stop the development. Eastern Pennsylvania is already extensively overly-developed and the housing plan by Toll Bros would have destroyed the historic, pre-Revolutionary War, Dolington Village.

Bucks County is rich in American history and was actually founded by Quaker William Penn in 1682. It has always possessed a strong community identity, as Penn believed in concentrating political power at the county level rather than in towns and cities.

I visited Elizabeth in Dolington a few years ago and found it very beautiful. Her neighborhood in particular, Washington Crossing, is an exquisitely preserved snippet of Colonial America.

Penn wrote of Bucks County: "the woods yield us plums, grapes, peaches, strawberries and chestnuts in abundance.” (As posted on Bucks County website: http://www.buckscounty.org/about/index.aspx)

1/2009, Footnote: Elizabeth is also an artist. I've attached a photo of her unfinished painting to this blog entry.