Delaware County’s new emergency services director wants to build something sustainable.
Gary Vinnacombe is a Delco native who has spent the last two decades overseeing EMS teams across Delaware and Chester Counties. Last month, he took the helm of Delaware County’s emergency services department, a homecoming of sorts for the longtime first responder, who got his start at Haverford’s Manoa Fire Company.
Vinnacombe, 43, replaces interim director Ed Beebe, who oversaw Delaware County’s emergency services for 18 months after former director Timothy Boyce was charged with indecent assault, among other offenses, related to his alleged groping of a female coworker.
Vinnacombe is taking over Delco’s emergency services apparatus at a pivotal time. The county is continuing to navigate the fallout from Crozer-Chester Medical Center’s closure, and some of its municipalities are considering emergency service mergers and cooperative authorities to fill gaps in service. Now, Vinnacombe says he’s eager to work with emergency responders across the county to build a lasting system that can serve Delco’s residents.
A 911 dispatcher working at the Delaware County Emergency Services Center on Jan. 5, 2022. Delco native Gary Vinnacombe recently stepped up to lead the department. Thomas Hengge / Staff Photographer
Vinnacombe grew up in Delaware County and is a 2001 graduate of Haverford High School. He holds an associate’s degree in nursing science from Delaware County Community College, a bachelor’s degree in emergency and disaster management from American Military University, and a master’s of public administration from Anna Maria College.
Vinnacombe has worn many hats over his two-plus decades in emergency management. He joined the Manoa Fire Company as a teenager, where he rose up to become the company’s EMS captain. He spent over a decade as the deputy chief of EMS at Darby’s Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital and is a longtime adjunct faculty member at Delaware County Community College, where he teaches EMT classes, municipal police academy emergency responder training, and CPR. Most recently, Vinnacombe spent 14 years with the West Grove Fire Company in Chester County, where he was assistant chief and oversaw day-to-day operations and employee recruitment and retention. He currently lives in Chester County.
Vinnacombe said the Crozer fallout is an “ongoing evaluation” for his department. He’s optimistic about ChristianaCare’s soon-to-open Aston and Springfield micro hospitals (the Aston facility is set to open this summer, and the Springfield facility next summer). The region’s existing hospitals have “done a fantastic job of absorbing that volume,” Vinnacombe said, and local municipalities have made a strong effort in “coming together to ensure that service continues to get delivered.”
As the county rebuilds its emergency services, Vinnacombe said, sustainability is top of mind.
“We can build all these great things all day long,” he said. “If we don’t have a plan or a mechanism to sustain them, it doesn’t matter what we build.”
However, he added, it’s important to take a close look at the funding mechanisms for different regional service models, as “every one of them has pros and cons.”
“I would certainly say, obviously anything that we can do to help people collaborate, or bring the right people to the table, we certainly want to,” he said.
The difference is night and day for Vinnacombe’s first responders, he said. Now, police, fire, and EMS officials can get real-time notes from 911 calls, fortifying them with a detailed report before they even get on the scene.
“The residents of Delaware County are in such a better space because of it,” Vinnacombe said.
Vinnacombe’s department is preparing for a busy summer. The PGA Tour Championship, FIFA World Cup, MLB All-Star Game, and Semiquincentennial are all descending on the Philly area in the coming months, and Delaware County officials are expecting a wave of tourists — and with them, an increased need for emergency responders.
Delco’s emergency services department is planning to support the upcoming PGA Tour at Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square with extra first responders, and Vinnacombe’s team has been busy filling requests for backup from municipalities.
As he settles in, Vinnacombe is confident that Delco is “only going up.”
“The services are only going to get better. Technology’s only going to continue to evolve,” he said. “The investments that the county has made into technology and public safety have improved the services that get delivered.”
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
ATLANTIC CITY — When the nation’s largest smoke shop expo descended on the convention center here earlier this spring, sales reps scrambled to offload pallets of a controversial synthetic kratom product known as “7-OH” before lawmakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey ban their products.
The addictive drug 7-Hydroxymitragynine, a highly concentrated lab-made compound derived from the kratom plant, flooded the bustling floor of the CHAMPS trade show.
Yet some vendors said they weren’t worried about bills working their way through Harrisburg and Trenton.
Their suppliers had already cooked up new recipes.
Matt Swann, a real estate investor turned 7-OH distributor from Salt Lake City, promoted a new product called “Cori,” a four-pack of tablets wrapped in a sleek green package. Swann’s offering draws from corydalis, yet another plant from East Asia that produces similar pain-killing alkaloids to kratom — but is not the target of any proposed bans.
“Legislation is what shuts me down,” Swann said, at his one-man expo booth in March. “This is how we stay ahead.”
Half a dozen 7-OH sales reps told The Inquirer that companies are changing their formulas to preemptively sidestep legislation prompted by concerns over the drug widely dubbed “gas station heroin” for its promised high and addictive potential.
Federal authorities began taking steps last summer to classify 7-OH as a controlled substance due to its widespread availability and reports of abuse. At least a dozen states have moved to outlaw the substance, and bills in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are being considered.
But in the booming gray market for synthetic drugs — from kratom to lab-made THC to psychedelics — the difference between legal and illegal can be as small as a molecule.
Perks’ booth at the CHAMPS B2B trade show at the Atlantic City Convention Center on March 19.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
To dodge the crackdown, some companies are swapping their active ingredient from 7-OH to a related compound called mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, or “pseudo.” Others are pivoting to 13-Hydroxy Mitragynine, or “13-OH.” Both function in similar ways, binding to opioid receptors in the brain.
And vendors promised the variants are just as powerful.
Some kratom advocates welcome restrictions on 7-OH and other chemically concentrated alkaloids. But they also worry that lower potency, natural kratom products will get caught up in sweeping bans.
Swann criticized the panic around 7-OH. He described both it and his new corydalis product as safer alternatives to opioids that can help people living with chronic pain.
Swann said he is clear with buyers about the risk of dependency. Kratom-derived pain relievers are far less fatal than opioids, whose pharmaceutical producers, he argued, are threatened by the drug’s popularity.
“It’s the safest alternative,” he said. “Kratom is 10-fold the product.”
Matt Swann at his Siete 7 / Coco Distro booth At the CHAMPS B2B trade show at the Atlantic City Convention Center.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
A game of molecules
Last summer, Florida passed an emergency ban specifically targeting 7-OH. Other states, like Vermont, have banned kratom altogether, as well as any related alkaloids, preemptively cutting out alternative compounds like 13-OH or pseudo.
New Jersey lawmakers are advancing legislation that would similarly classify 7-OH as a controlled substance, although it makes no mention of these related alkaloids.
Another bill under consideration in Harrisburg mimics Vermont’s strategy by outlawing all products that contain over 2% 7-Hydroxymitragynine, as well as any other “synthetic, semi-synthetic, or chemically manipulated alkaloid” derived from the kratom plant.
“They can call it whatever they want,” said Sen. Tracy Pennycuick (R., Montgomery County), the bill’s lead sponsor. “If it comes up 2%, it’s still banned.”
Still, as written, the ban might cover new variants like “pseudo” and 13-OH but not the latest extracts from the corydalis plant.
Meanwhile, pro-kratom lobbying groups have pushed lawmakers to create clear legal definitions between naturally sourced, low-potency kratom products and those ultra-concentrated, synthetic forms like 7-OH.
Dallas Vasquez, CEO of Mitra9, a Florida-based company that distributes kratom and kava-infused beverages across the country, said the two products are “not equivalent from a chemistry or pharmacological standpoint.”
He said Mitra9 does not use concentrated 7-OH to make the drinks more potent. His products contain less than 2% total kratom alkaloids, with low levels of 7-OH that occur naturally in extracts from the plant leaves, according to lab tests reported on Mitra9’s website.
“My business is built on the bet that the responsible segment of the market will survive,” Vasquez said. “If it doesn’t, I lose too. So I have every incentive to be honest about what the products are.”
Kratom booth at the CHAMPS B2B trade show at the Atlantic City Convention Center on March 19.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Booming profits, clandestine makers
The CHAMPS trade show traditionally serves as a meetup for recreational drugmakers and retailers of cannabis. That the kiosks were dominated by 7-OH vendors is a sign of kratom’s growing popularity and profitability.
Large kratom companies pushing products with opioid-inspired names like “Opia” and “Perks” can bring in millions in revenue per month, according to Swann, the vendor from Salt Lake City.
Many companies are supplied by a small network of kratom manufacturers that synthesize products, often on condition that the makers’ names be kept secret, according to Swann and company owners who spoke with The Inquirer. So long as the compounds remain legal at the federal level, there are labs willing to make them en masse, which sellers like Swann can distribute in states without total bans.
For everyone involved, profits are high.
“[Manufacturer] profit margins are in the 5 to 10% range, but they’re doing millions and millions of dollars,” Swann said. “My profit margin is closer to 200% to 300%. If I invest a quarter-million dollars, I can usually come out with a million.”
Swann said he started his own business with $250,000 in capital and a phone call to a lab in Utah. His brand, Siete, launched within months. He estimated that his new “Cori” product had a life span of three years before it, too, would be banned.
Camille Winans, a sales representative for a company selling new 13-OH products, argued that kratom had been demonized by lawmakers and that keeping the products on shelves amounted to “harm reduction.”
However, medical experts say there has been an uptick in admissions to rehabs from people who got hooked on kratom, including in Pennsylvania.
Jason Kirby, chief medical officer of Recovery Centers of America, worries that states would ban 7-OH without the necessary medical resources for people who are dependent on it. He said hospitals struggle with an influx of kratom users in states that passed sweeping bans.
“One day it’s legal, and the next day it’s not,” he said. “So I’m going into the vape shop to refill my need, and it’s not there anymore, and I’m going to the emergency room in withdrawal.”
Bans would also not prevent manufacturers from finding new loopholes, he said.
“We’re gonna be dealing with a brand new synthetic substance that we’re gonna have to figure out all over again, and figure out pathways and management for,” he said. “We always have to stay ahead of them.”
The new owner of the shuttered Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Delaware County shared what he called an “aspirational” plan to restore healthcare services to the Upland facility at a town hall meeting Tuesday in Chester.
The vision includesreopening of the emergency department, creating a small hospital above the ED, and developing outpatient services — all operated by one or more local nonprofit health systems, Yoel Polack told a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 at Widener University.
Polack isCEO of Chariot Allaire, the for-profitpartnership that paid $10 million for Crozer in January. His group has been talking to all the regional health systems for months and expects soon to begin “a study process with two and hopefully three of the major academic medical centers in the region,” he said.
That is expected to last up to 90 days, he said, “and hopefully at the end of that period, we’re going to be having some outline of partnership with the system.” Polack described his anticipated partner as an institution “you know and trust.”
The entire process could take two or three years after a partnership is formed, he said Polack, whose company is registered in Lakewood, N.J.
He provided no details on how much Chariot Allaire would be willing to invest to attract a health system to the site, where state-led efforts previously failed to savea major safety-net provider for Delaware County that closed last May amid the bankruptcy of its California-based owner, Prospect Medical Holdings Inc.
Chariot Allaire paid relatively little for the 64-acre campus, which gives the company a low cost basis for owning the site. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy to attract a partner at a time of thin to nonexistent profit margins for the region’s health systems.
“It does not seem like there’s an easy and obvious candidate,” said Dan Grauman, managing director at VMG Health, a national healthcare consulting firm.
“There’s no question there’s need for care and for services, said Grauman, who has decades of familiarity with the Philadelphia region’s healthcare market.
A welcome public meeting
During an hourlong question and answer session, residents expressed gratitude for the meeting with Polack and his senior medical adviser, Arthur Klein, a pediatric cardiologist who spent decades as an executive at nonprofit health systems in New York.
A town hall meeting Tuesday in Chester about plans for the former Crozer-Chester Medical Center drew a large crowd.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
“Many times things happen in our community, and we are the last to know, so you started off very, very well,” said Zulene Mayfield, chairperson of Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living, a community group known for the fight to close alarge trash incinerator in the city.
Some residents pushed back againstPolack and Klein’s plans for a much smaller hospital than the more than 400 beds Crozer-Chester Medical Center had at its peak. During a March interview with The Inquirer, Klein suggested the new hospital could have 80 beds.
“You don’t want a hospital of the 1990s,” Klein said Tuesday.
The current hospital structure encompasses 750,000 square feet — now completely empty. Crozer’s shuttered ED took up 30,000 of the square feet. Chariot Allaire contemplates opening a hospital a tenth of the size of the old hospital.
Operating that hospitalcost way too much, Polack said. ”It also doesn’t meet the way medical care is done today, which is mainly on the outpatient side,” said Polack,who has worked in healthcare real estate development in New York.
Simone Development Cos., where Polack worked before striking out on his own, often collaborated on real estate deals with Montefiore, a health system in the Bronx that serves many patients with Medicaid insurance, Grauman said.
That experience is relevant to the effort here, he said, given that Crozer also served large numbers of people with Medicaid, which pays significantly lower rates than private insurers.
The role of local health systems
Before Prospect’s bankruptcy filing in January 2025, a few local health systems explored establishing a new nonprofit to take over Crozer-Chester Medical Center. Those talks continued during the bankruptcy, but failed to produce a solution.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System saidit remains at the table.
“We continue to work with committed partners to restore crucial healthcare services for Delaware County residents,” Penn said in a statement. “It’s important that any new models for the former Crozer-Chester site are built to be sustainable amid a rapidly changing healthcare landscape and persistent financial challenges.”
ChristianaCare, which plans to open a micro-hospital in Aston in June, is not in discussions with Chariot Allaire, it said, but supports “their efforts to expand access to quality heath care in Delaware County.”
Arthur Klein, senior medical adviser (left), and Yoel Polack, CEO of Chariot Allaire, greet attendees during a town hall in Chester on Tuesday.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
While Chariot Allaire is wooing health systems, the new owners of two other closed Crozer Health hospitals,Taylor and Springfield, are doing the same thing. Local investors paid $1 million each for those hospitals. Those low prices could allow the owners to offer below market rate leases to attract tenants.
Polack noted that if no local systems want to bring services to the Crozer site, he would look farther afield.
“We don’t control hospital systems and operators, but we are doing everything that we can to put the pieces together to illustrate the opportunity that we see here to those hospital systems,” he said.
John Linehan and Kobe Bryant used to talk. A lot. This would not have been unusual for other AAU teammates, but these two were fierce high school rivals.
Linehan was a scrappy point guard for Chester. Bryant was a relentless shooting guard for Lower Merion. Both were competitive, almost to a fault, and in the days leading up to big games, they’d get chippy.
The week before the 1996 PIAA Class AAAA District 1 title game, for example, the players talked every day on bulky landline phones, with Bryant often calling Linehan at his home in Chester.
“I just said, ‘You know, John, I haven’t won a championship yet, and you have,’” Bryant told The Inquirer in 1996.
Linehan knew what his friend was doing. The future NBA star did the same thing a few weeks later, on March 19, a day before the teams met again in the state semifinal.
“He was trying to get me to trash talk,” Linehan said. “I think he needed a little edge. I didn’t want to give him too much. I was like, ‘Man, you crazy.’”
The late Kobe Bryant, a former Lower Merion basketball star, announcing he will go directly into the NBA draft out of high school.ALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / Staff Photographer
Lower Merion wasn’t a basketball school when Bryant arrived in the fallof 1992. It paled in comparison to the local powerhouses like Simon Gratz, Coatesville, and Chester.
But Bryant changed that. Even in his freshman year, a season in which the Aces went 4-20, he brought a new standard, working out before class and introducing a level of toughness that was foreign to his teammates.
Bythe mid-1990s, Lower Merion was among the best high school teams in the Philadelphia area. Its players were more confident, celebrating after big shots, and talking loud on the court.
The Aces didn’t play as many games against Coatesville, a rising power led by Rip Hamilton. They couldn’t consistently measure themselves against Gratz, which didn’t participate in the PIAA playoffs untilthe 2004-05 season.
But they could against Chester. And so, a decades-long rivalry was born.
From 1996 through the mid-2010s, Chester and Lower Merion put on some of the greatest high school basketball games in the area. They’d often sell out venues like the Palestra and Villanova’s Pavilion. Some fans would even scalp tickets.
Their communities were almost diametrically opposed. Chester was predominantly Black; Lower Merion was predominantly white. Chester was plaguedby poverty; Lower Merion was considered affluent.
Chester, with its Biddy League, had a legacy of basketball greatness, and a steady pipeline of talent. Lower Merion had nothing comparable. But these differences melted away on the court.
And while the rivalry is not what it once was, it lives on today.
“The pride and the intensity and the history will never fade,” said Lower Merion coach Gregg Downer. “I mean, if we played them tomorrow night, that would be an intense game.”
The Bryant-Linehan era
When Downer was named head coach in 1990, he already was well-aware of Chester’s tradition. He’d played youth basketball growing up in Media and had heard about the stars who’d come out of the Biddy League.
It was obvious that his team would have to go through the Clippers to win any sort of accolade. But it wasn’t until Bryant’s arrival that Downer’s aspirations became a real possibility.
The shooting guard, who was the son of former 76er Joe “Jelly Bean” Bryant, was mature for his age. He’d demand more, mentally and physically, of older teammates. Doug Young, a former Lower Merion forward, remembered seeing Bryant leaving the locker room at 7 o’clock one September morning in 1993.
He’d been at the high school gym since 5 a.m., working out by himself. To the Lower Merion basketball team, this was a “crazy” concept, so Young and his cohorts decided to join him.
In the District 1 championship game against Chester, Kobe Bryant goes to the hoop over the Clippers’ John Linehan.Jay Gorodetzer / Staff Photographer
They arrived the next day at 5:06 a.m. The players knocked on the door. Bryant didn’t answer.
“He wouldn’t open it,” said Young, who graduated in 1995. “You’re either there or you’re not. We were six minutes late.”
His teammates waited outside until 6:30 a.m., when the school opened. They made sure to show up before 5 a.m. from that day on.
Downer was wired the same way. The coach — and his NBA-bound pupil — would push the team in practice. Losses were particularly tough. The players would go through endless sprints and rebounding drills that sent them running to the trash can.
It wasn’t fun. But over time, the method created a newfound tenacity.
“No one walked into high school saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I want to win a state championship,’” Young said. “But [Kobe] knew what that was. He was like, ‘I don’t know any other way. If we’re not going to win a championship, what the heck are we playing for?’”
Chester was always going to be an obstacle, so Downer tried to play into the battle. He’d use analogies for the tough, hard-nosed team, comparing it to an animal stalking its prey.
The coach began to screen movies to underscore this point. Together, in a Lower Merion classroom, Downer’s players watched Jaws and other tales of survival, like The Edge, a 1997 thriller about a plane that crashes in the Alaskan wilderness.
“This bear is stalking them, and the couple is saying, ’What are we going to do about this bear?’” Downer said. “And one of them says, ‘The only thing we can do is kill the bear.’
“And I remember being like, ‘We can do this.’ But the only solution is to — not to be overly graphic — but to kill them.”
(The bear in this analogy was Chester.)
He added: “We tried everything humanly possible to get through to this team.”
The first few games were ugly. In 1995, Lower Merion met the Clippers in the District 1 championship, only to lose by 27 points. But they came back with a renewed focus the following year, in 1995-96, going 25-3 in the regular season to earn a district final rematch against Chester.
The Aces showed up at the arena with “27″ printed on their warmup shirts. Bryant, armed with fresh bulletin board material from Linehan, dropped 34 points against the Clippers en route to a 60-53 Aces win.
The shooting guard scored 39 points later that month — with a broken nose — in a 77-69 state semifinal win over Chester. Lower Merion went on to beat Erie Cathedral Prep, 48-43, to win its first state championship since 1943.
Kobe Bryant celebrates after defeating Chester at the Palestra in 1996 to advance to the state final.Ron Cortes / Staff Photographer
To Linehan, the difference Bryant made was obvious. He joked that he’d “never heard of Lower Merion” before his friend arrived. But once he did, Chester realized it would have to go to great lengths to prepare for the phenom.
Ahead of a big game against Lower Merion in the mid-1990s, the coaching staff reached out to Clippers alumnus Zain Shaw. He played at West Virginia and in Europe and possessed some of the same characteristics as Bryant — a tall frame and an athletic build with strong ballhandling skills.
The Clippers invited Shaw to practice, where he played the role of Bryant (to the best of his ability).
“Kobe was so special, we had to bring in a pro to help us prepare,” said Linehan, who later starred at Providence.
But there was another impact the future Lakers star had, one that had nothing to do with his own prowess. Linehan noticed that Bryant’s Lower Merion teammates started to take on some of his qualities. Suddenly, they were playing brash, confident basketball.
“We didn’t have reason to believe, until Kobe got there, that we belonged on the court with Chester,” Young said. “The fear was real. Teams were afraid of Chester because they’d run you out of the building.
“The idea of Lower Merion being on the court in a meaningful game against [them] was such a crazy thought. But then, you started to believe.”
The buzzer-beater heard ’round Chester
Bryant never got over the rivalry, even after he embarked on his Hall of Fame NBA career in 1996. Sometimes, he’d call the coaching staff before big games against Chester, leaving expletive-laden voicemails to use as motivation.
The Lakers shooting guard also created an incentive structure for his former team.
“You couldn’t get a pair of Nike sneakers unless you qualified for the playoffs,” Young said. “If you don’t earn it, you don’t get it.”
He became especially involved in 2005-06. After a lull in the early 2000s, Chester and Lower Merion found themselves neck-and-neck again. The Aces were led by the duo of Ryan Brooks and Garrett Williamson, and the Clippers boasted a deep roster, headlined by Darrin Govens. All of them eventually played in the Big 5.
(Chester was so stacked that it brought a 1,000-point scorer off the bench in Noel Wilmore.)
Students from the class of 2005 show their support as Chester and Lower Merion play in the state final. Hinda Schuman / Staff Photographer
The rivals met in the state championship on March 19, 2005. Despite strong performances from Williamson and Brooks, the Clippers pulled away in the second half thanks to a dominant third quarter from Govens. Chester won, 74-61.
The teams reconvened the following season with their competitive spark fully reignited. They faced each other three times that year. Chester took Round 1, a one-point regular-season victory on Dec. 27.
Round 2 was in the district final on March 3. Before the game, in front of a packed crowd at the Pavilion, Chester sophomore Karon Burton walked up to the layup line.
Lower Merion’s student section caught his ear with a chant about coach Fred Pickett’s stout stature.
The dig didn’t intimidate Burton. If anything, it fueled him. He grew up playing street ball in Chester and always loved trash talk.
Instead of cowering, like the crowd hoped, the sophomore delivered an unforgettable outing. The game went into overtime, and was tied at 80 with only a few seconds remaining.During a timeout, assistant coach Keith Taylor pulled Burton aside.
“He was like, ‘Hey, listen,’” Burton said. “They’re going to double Darrin. If you get that ball, do your thing.’”
Taylor’s words proved prescient. As Lower Merion’s defenders swarmed Govens, the Clippers inbounded the ball to Burton.
He took a pull-up jumper from beyond the arc and drilled it for an 83-80 win. The Chester fans stormed the court. Burton, who later joined Wilmore in the 1,000-point club, said he felt like a celebrity in his hometown.
“It was like watching a buzzer-beater in the NBA,” he said. “I just ran to my teammates, they picked me up. It was a crazy feeling.
“I’m a big Kobe fan, too. Kobe’s my favorite player ever. So when I came and I hit the game-winner on that team …”
Round 3 took place a few weeks later, in a state semifinal rematch at the Palestra on March 22. Bryant called Lower Merion’s coaches before the game.
“I don’t remember specifically what he said, but I’m sure there were a lot of [expletives] dropped,” said Young. “Like, ‘Don’t call me back if you don’t beat those [expletives].’ That was a line we heard from him a couple times.”
This one didn’t go Chester’s way. After trailing the Clippers, 47-37, at the end of the third quarter, the Aces came roaring back in the fourth and put up 33 points to eke out a 70-65 win.
The celebration in the locker room was cathartic. Water sprayed into the air. Players sat atop each other’s shoulders and turned the showers into a slip ‘n slide. Bryant called in, again, as other members of the 1996 team filtered through.
Darrin Govens scored his 1,000th point for Chester against Lower Merion in the state championship in 2005.Hinda Schuman / Staff Photographer
This was not how Govens wanted to end his high school career. And a few months later, when he arrived at St. Joseph’s on a basketball scholarship, he saw a familiar foe.
It was Williamson, his new Hawks teammate.
“We were sitting on the opposite side of the bench,” Govens said. “I didn’t want to sit next to him; he didn’t want to sit next to me. We’d kind of avoid each other and just head nod.
“Even in running drills, it was a competition. He looked to the left. I looked to the right. We tried to beat each other in sprints. But then we realized, ‘All right bro, we’re teammates now.’”
‘Hero status’
Chester had always rallied around its high school basketball team. Linehan said it was akin to playing for the Sixers. The teenagers were treated like professional athletes — especially those who had been a part of big wins.
The Clippers’ public address announcer, James Howard, called this “hero status.”
“All of a sudden, your money’s no good,” he said. “Barbers take care of you, make sure your hair looks nice before games. Free food. Little kids look up to you and ask for your autograph. That’s how it is.”
In Chester, there were plenty of heroes to draw from. There was Linehan, but also Jameer Nelson, who met a young Burton in the late 1990s. Nelson, a friend of Burton’s cousin, gave the aspiring basketball player a gift before he left for St. Joe’s: his MVP medal from the Chester summer league.
“He was one of the biggest guys in our city,” Burton said, “so it’s definitely something that I’ll always remember.”
By the early 2010s, when the rivalry was reignited for a third time, Lower Merion had built more of a basketball tradition. Aces guard Justin McFadden said he’d get stopped in Wawa before big games against the Clippers.
Chester celebrates its win over Lower Merion for the state championship in 2012. Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer
“It became a community thing,” he said. “People would be asking, ‘What do you guys think about Chester? Do you think we can get it done?’”
In 2012, the schools met in the state championship for the first time since 2005. Junior forward and future NBA starter Rondae Hollis-Jefferson put up a double-double to lead the Clippers to a resounding 59-33 win over the Aces. It was their second straight title and their 58th straight victory.
A year later, after going 17-0 in the Central League, the Aces met the Clippers in the state final again. Chester had won 78 straight games against in-state opponents. Snapping that streak would be daunting, but Downer had a plethora of motivational tactics at his disposal.
Just as they had in the 1990s, The Aces again spent pockets of the season watching Jaws, The Edge, as well as an addition: Al Pacino’s “Inch by Inch” speech in Any Given Sunday.
“He would have that fired up on YouTube, ready to go,” McFadden said. “Looking back, [your reaction] is a chuckle, but in the moment, it worked. We knew that this was the hill that needed to be climbed.
“And every time they played that speech, we got goose bumps. We were ready to fire.”
Chester got out to an early lead, but Lower Merion rallied behind a 22-point, 11-rebound performance from B.J. Johnson, who later starred at La Salle. The Aces snapped the streak and won their seventh state title with a 63-47 victory.
Lower Merion’s Jaquan Johnson goes to the net as Diamonte Reason guards him in the Chester-Lower Merion state championship game in 2013.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
The Clippers then were coached by Larry Yarbray. Pickett, who was diagnosed with cancer in2010, was in declining health. Just before he died in 2014, Downer decided to say goodbye.
He and his former assistant coach Jeremy Treatman drove out to Pickett’s home in Chester. They went to his bedside.
“And we talked,” Downer said. “And we held hands. It was a really touching moment for me. This is a man that carried Chester on his back. That tried to carry Lower Merion on his back. And I knew it was the last time I was going to see Fred.
“We walked out the door, and we told each other that we loved each other. And I never thought he would say that to me, or vice versa. But it was just kind of like, ‘You know what? We’ve had some amazing battles, and there’s a lot of respect there.’”
Keeping the tradition alive
In recent years, the Chester-Lower Merion rivalry has diminished.
There was a brief period when the teams were in different classifications. Both programs have lost players to private schools that can recruit, and the addition of the Philadelphia Catholic League to the PIAA has made the state playoffs more competitive.
One place the Aces and Clippers could meet is in the district tournament, where they reunited in 2024. But they haven’t played each other since. And Howard says the contests don’t have the same feel.
“Both teams have lost D-I talent,” he said. “It’s not as high-flying, above the rim, as it was in the past. But still a great game. Sold out at Lower Merion, and at Chester, same thing.”
The history will always be there, though, and Burton is doing his best to keep it alive. His 8-year-old son, Karon Burton Jr., is playing in the Biddy League. His father is his coach.
Sometimes, they go on YouTube and watch old Clippers games. Junior’s favorite, of course, is the 2006 district final.
Burton believes that his son has a promising future, but isn’t sure of where he’ll go to high school yet. He doesn’t want Karon Jr. to feel obligated to follow his father’s path.
But if it worked out that way, what a story that would be.
“I’d love to be the first father and son to have 1,000 points,” Burton said. “With the same name? That would be crazy.”
Tonya Robertson was working one of her three jobs at a charter school in Chester when she broke down crying to a colleague: She was homeless, living in a domestic violence shelter with three children, and pregnant with twins.
Her co-workers suggested she talk to the school’s counselor, who gave her a stack of applications to apply for federally funded food support, at-home prenatal nurse visits, and maternal health resources, all coordinated through The Foundation for Delaware County.
The nonprofit has for almost a decade provided access to safety net programs such as Women, Infants, and Children, the nutrition program known as WIC; Healthy Start; and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the food program for low-income families. It also offers a menu of other support services for families, such as a program that provides at-home prenatal visits, housing assistance, legal aid, doulas, mental health resources for new mothers, and a fathers’ support group.
“They had so many resources — things I was scared to open up my mouth about, things I didn’t want to say I needed,” said Robertson, 39, of Marcus Hook.
She said she wishes she’d known about the organization sooner, during the years she struggled to raise her three older children as a single mother.
Now the foundation is rebranding its offerings as the Family Village, in an effort to raise awareness about the nonprofit’s full range of services. Foundation leaders said that in the past, people may have connected with the organization for a specific resource, such as WIC or SNAP, without learning about other programs they could benefit from. The idea of the Family Village is to make the foundation’s services more cohesive, wrapping around those in need.
The initiative has been years in the making, but is especially timely after the county’s largest health provider, Crozer Health, closed earlier this year when its for-profit owner filed for bankruptcy. The health system had long been an anchor for Chester and the surrounding communities, providing critical access to maternity, pediatric, and mental health services.
“Children don’t come with instructions. We all need a helping hand at some point,” said Joanne Craig, the foundation’s chief impact officer. “We have this great continuum of resources for families, but from the outside looking in, it wasn’t always easy to see and understand.”
An ambulance drove by the entrance to Crozer-Chester Medical Center, in Upland. This hospital closed earlier this year. Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
Filling gaps in Delaware County
The Foundation for Delaware County was formed in 2016, when the nonprofit Crozer-Keystone Health System was sold to Prospect Medical Holdings. When for-profit companies acquire nonprofit health systems, Pennsylvania law requires the nonprofit assets be set aside in an independent charity. Crozer’s nonprofit assets became the Foundation for Delaware County.
The foundation’s overarching mission is to support the health and welfare of Delaware County residents by coordinating government safety-net programs and creating its own offerings to help families in need. The foundation also provides millions of dollars in grants to nonprofits and charities to support public health, housing, and youth development.
With $53.9 million in net assets as of October, the foundation is the largest philanthropic organization in Delaware County, serving some 8,000 people a year.
Many of the foundation’s most used programs, such as Healthy Start, a federally funded prenatal and early childhood initiative, began before the foundation was spun out of Crozer, in response to the high infant mortality rate in Chester.
When Prospect said it would close the remaining Crozer hospitals, The Foundation for Delaware County was pressured by the case’s bankruptcy judge to take on part of the company’s debt to keep the hospital open until a new operator was found. The foundation shelled out $20 million to extend operations temporarily and later contributed $3 million to help former patients obtain their medical records.
The foundation’s new Family Village initiative can’t close all the gaps Crozer’s closure left — the area lost its largest emergency department and maternity ward, the only 24-7 mental health crisis center, and critical pediatric care.
ChristianaCare won an auction to take over five former Crozer outpatient locations in Broomall, Media, Glen Mills, and Havertown, and has plans to open two new micro hospitals in Aston and Springfield.
Delaware County in August selected Belmont Behavioral Health to establish a new crisis response center and expand mental health services.
But Craig said she hopes the foundation’s new approach will help families better access resources that remain available — and that they may not have known about.
Help without judgment
Before connecting with the foundation, Robertson was skeptical of organizations and programs that offered help.
Her grandfather, for instance, berated her for enrolling in SNAP and the at-home nurse program, warning her that she could end up losing her children, if coordinators decided her home and parenting weren’t good enough.
“I’m so scared to let someone in, let them come in my house and see that my house is not up to par, see that I’m struggling with this, or that I can’t feed them,” Robertson said.
“If I can’t feed them, they’re going to take my kids, and I’m going to go to jail,” she added.
Research has found that these fears are often justified, with social service workers deeming parents of color unfit at higher rates than white parents, and equating poverty with neglect.
Healthcare workers, social workers, and teachers are among so-called mandated reporters, who are required to report to Child Protective Services any suspicion of abuse. Only a fraction of reports are substantiated after being investigated, but they stoke fear and can dissuade families from seeking help.
But Robertson was working three jobs and still couldn’t feed her family, so she filled out the forms the school counselor had given her.
Her first prenatal visits through the Nurse-Family Partnership were at the domestic violence shelter where she was living.
Robertson was proud when she was able to afford to move her family into an apartment in Chester. But her nurse told her the gaping hole in the ceiling and mold growing in the corners were unsafe. She connected Robertson with the foundation’s Housing Opportunities Program for Equity, which helps people secure safe housing and navigate problems with landlords.
After her twins were born, the foundation’s Moving Beyond Depression program helped Robertson work through postpartum depression, which may have otherwise affected her ability to work and care for her children.
Two years later, Robertson said she still faces challenges. The recent government shutdown cut off the family’s food stamps, making for tough budgeting decisions earlier this month.
But now she knows where to turn for help, if the load ever becomes too heavy again.
Editor’s note: This story was updated with additional information on the foundation’s mission.
