Stoverdale still struggles a year after storm hit

by Megan Walde of The Patriot-News

A concrete slab surrounded by weeds is all that remains of a home that once meant everything to Chris Looney.

At 5:19 p.m. on Aug. 4, 2004, the tree-hugged lot in the Stoverdale neighborhood of Derry Twp. held memories of a middle-class childhood and dreams of nothing less for her own children.  A minute later, chaos in the form of menacing winds and falling trees swept across Swatara Creek and changed everything.

Four minutes later, it was gone.

The tornado.  The house.  The dreams.

But not the tears.

A year and a day later, Looney still fights to hold them back as she surveys the neighborhood she says will never be the same.  She clenches her fists.  Her lower lip trembles.

“We grew up here and now there’s nothing,” she says.  “There’ll never be another Stoverdale.”

It’s not the tornado that gets most of the blame from residents such as Looney.  The F1 storm destroyed four homes, including the one Looney, her husband Daniel and their two children shared with her mother, and damaged dozens of others.

A storm that hit the Campbelltown community near Palmyra the month before did more damage.

But unlike Campbelltown, where survivors have rebuilt their homes with help and money from government officials and churches, Stoverdale hasn’t been able to recover.

Residents say the 2004 tornado was simply the beginning of the end for their community.

Many of them declined to talk about those four minutes that changed their lives, still harboring too much sadness and anger about being old the owners of the 20-acre community they’ve called home for generations are likely to sell to developers within five years.

The owners told residents after last year’s storm that rebuilding there wouldn’t be prudent, citing “development pressure.”

“It was hard enough losing part of our home and to have to face rebuilding,”   Looney says.  “To not even be given that choice, but be told to count our losses and move on was that much harder.”

Stoverdale is one of Derry Twp.’s oldest neighborhoods.  It began as a church campground and evolved into a summer-home community.  When World War II began, people began turning the cabins and cottages into year round homes, then moving in mobile homes.

When campground founder Edward Stover died, the property went into a trust.  The Stover family allowed residents to rent their lots for $25 to $50 a month.  Most people owned their homes.

Lot dimensions were fluid, and nobody argued over property.  Whatever a resident felt like maintaining was considered his, residents say.

These days, Stoverdale residents say they don’t feel like doing much more than mowing their lawns.  Additions sit unfinished.  Progress on decks and sun porches is stalled because of the uncertainty of how long Stoverdale will remain home.

“Nobody wants to put the money in now because they have no idea how long they’ll be there,”  Looney said.

Stover family representative Bradley Miller met with residents after the storm to give them their options.  He said the family would likely be forced to sell the land within three to five years, because land is at a premium in Derry Twp.

Modern zoning laws require residential lots within so many yards of a public sewer line to hook up to the system.  That can cost thousands of dollars per lot, Miller says, and the mostly gravel roads in the community also would need to be upgraded to meet township standards.

Miller, 55, says about 25 families live in Stoverdale.  Miller has known most of them all his life.  He says that; despite many rumors, the family has not sold the land and is no hurry to do so.

“We don’t really know any more now about what we’re going to do in the future than we did a year ago,” he says.  “These are no $300,000 homes back there, but there are a lot of good people there.  My family’s not going to walk out on them.  We’re not running anybody out the door.”

The handful of residents that left scattered like debris, mostly to apartments or mobile home parks in Hummelstown, Elizabethtown, Palmyra.

“You went from owning a home to paying $800 a month plus a car payment, lot rent and all the other associated costs,”  Looney says.  “I’m still struggling.”

The Looneys lived in a motel for a month after last year’s storm.  After the initial emergency response, attention and help for the victims faded.  Disaster relief and church money were largely depleted by the Campbelltown disaster.  Many Stoverdale residents were uninsured or underinsured.

Looney watches the newest phase of the Deer Run subdivision evolve out of the earth just yards from what was once her grandmother’s backyard.

Bulldozers and asphalt creep closer, tearing up ground that just last year was a baseball diamond where Stoverdale kids played.

Looney and her family now live in a mobile home park near Palymra.  She says it is far from the Stoverdale neighborhood where she and other children of “the originals” grew up together with their grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

She shakes her head in disbelief.

“That’s all gone now,” she says.  “Where we are, we look out the door and see people, but we don’t know them.  You have a booklet of rules to live by.  It’s not living.  You can build a house anywhere, but it’s hard to build a home.  There’ll never by another Stoverdale.”

MEGAN WALDE:  717 255-8454 or mwalde@pnco.com

This article was first printed in The Patriot-News, Friday, August 5, 2005 (page A1 and A11) it has been REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION GRANTED FROM MEGAN WALDE AND THE PATRIOT-NEWS.  We Thank them for this permission.

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