Chip Lutz has a flair for accomplishing whatever he sets out to do. In 2010, the year he celebrated his 55th birthday and joined the world of senior amateur golf, he set his sights on winning the most prestigious tournaments in his age bracket.

Lutz did just that, becoming one of the most dominant senior amateurs in the world. This week, Lutz, a lifelong Berks County resident, has been honored for his long list of accomplishments in five short years.

Lutz was inducted into the National  Senior Amateur Hall of Fame Wednesday night at High Point, N.C. Lutz was this year’s only inductee. He joins a list of members that includes former USGA president Fred Ridley and Philadelphia area players O. Gordon Brewer and William Hyndman III.

The Hall holds a tournament each year in conjunction with the induction ceremony. The 54-hole event is being played at High Point Country Club and concludes Friday. Lutz won last year’s tournament. He shot 2-over 74 Wednesday and trails leader Gary Robinson of Fayetteville, N.C., by six shots.

Lutz, who also will be inducted into the Pennsylvania State Sports Hall of Fame this year, has a nearly flawless senior amateur record.

Lutz won British Senior Amateur and Canadian Senior Amateur titles in 2011 and 2012. He’s a three-time U.S. Senior Amateur semifinalist. He was the silver medal winner for lower amateur at the British Senior Open in 2012, ’13 and ’14.  Lutz also is a five-time Golf Association of Philadelphia Senior Player of the Year. His win at the Philadelphia Senior Amateur last September helped him become the first player to win Philadelphia’s Junior (1972), Amateur (1977), Mid-Amateur (1998, 2007) and Senior Amateur championships. Lutz also was the Golfweek National Senior Player of the Year in 2010 and ’11.

If you turn your television to CMT around 9:30 tonight, you might see a familiar face.

Bobby Grey, who graduated from Exeter High School in 2002, will be featured on the CMT special, “Ron White’s Comedy Salute to the Troops.”

Grey, 31, now of Thomasville, N.C., served in Iraq in the Marines. That tour left him struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD ultimately led him to attempt suicide. As an ambassador for the Armed Forces Foundation, Grey shares his story with other soldiers to dispel stigmas and encourage others to seek help.

When the terrorist attacks happened on Sept. 11, 2001, Grey was a senior in high school. He decided then that he would join the Marine Corps.Grey left for boot camp in December 2003 and was deployed to Iraq by September of the following year.

He said it was a pretty quick turnaround for a 19-year-old, going from a classroom to a combat zone.

Leaving the Marines in 2007, Grey fell deep into depression, experiencing survivor’s guilt and PTSD. This culminated on Memorial Day 2013.

Grey has no memories of that fateful day. What he knows of the day comes from his wife, Kia, and neighbors.That day Grey posted on Facebook about his buddies who had died at his feet after a truck bomb exploded in Iraq. When he arrived home from work, he fought with his wife, taking out his anger on her. Grey went to the bedroom, trying to cool his temper, so Kia gave him space.

Then Kia’s phone rang. Grey doesn’t know if he pocket-dialed his wife, but when she picked up the phone, Kia heard the sound of a struggle. She found him hanging from a tree in the backyard by an electrical cord.

Kia’s screams reached the neighbor’s ears. Together, they cut Grey down and called 9-1-1. Kia performed CPR on her husband’s limp body until the ambulance arrived.

“If she wasn’t there, we wouldn’t have Bobby here today,” said Ricky Grey, 23, of Exeter Township, Bobby’s younger brother.

When Bobby Grey woke up from a coma in the hospital two weeks later, he had no idea what had happened.

For the next year, he attended his counseling sessions and PTSD classes at the Department of Veterans Affairs facility.

“I still didn’t believe it was me,” he said. “I didn’t want to have PTSD.”

Finally, he realized he was going to fall back into deep depression if he didn’t fight back. He decided to make a video to tell his story, down to the last gritty detail.

Bobby Grey had been worried about the stigma of PTSD. But he found that by telling his story, he helped others find strength to face PTSD. Now, he has told his story to other veterans at various events, been on two television shows on Fox, and tonight he will appear on CMT. In telling his story, he has found that he is not alone.

Grey’s advice for veterans struggling with PTSD is that “not talking is your worst enemy.”

Once you start speaking up, he said, veterans will find “there are more people for you than there are against you.”

Daniel M. Simon, a 1993 graduate of Exeter High School who has served with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for 14 years, has been named commander of the NOAA Ship Hi’ialakai that’s moored just off Howland Island in the South Pacific to map and assess the reefs in the area.

The promotion for the 39-year-old son of Ronald and Lorraine Simon of Exeter Township came in October and makes him among NOAA’s youngest commanders.

“I didn’t expect to be promoted in rank or sea assignments as quickly as I have,” Simon said in an email interview.

Once stationed in cold outposts such as Greenland and the South Pole, Simon said the Hawaiian island of Oahu where the Hi’ialakai is based is better.

“Oahu really is a beautiful place,” he said. “It’s pretty far removed, although nothing like the South Pole, but the weather is always great and a beach is never far away.”

The 224-foot Hi’ialakai was built in 1984 for the Navy as the USNS Vindicator that hunted Russian submarines until the end of the Cold War. The ship then was turned over to the Coast Guard and recommissioned by NOAA as the Hi’ialakai in 2004.

With up to 50 crew and scientists, it works in the tropical areas of the Pacific Ocean.

Simon said among its main missions are conducting coral reef ecosystem mapping, and coral reef health and fish stock studies.

“Much of the data is collected by divers that we deploy on small boats,” he said, noting that by project’s end in May, the crews will have made about 2,500 dives.

The reef assessments will occur around the islands of American Samoa, Johnston Atoll, Howland Island, Baker Island, Jarvis Island, and Palmyra and Kingman Reefs.

Simon had a hands-on part in data collection during other assignments, but noted his scientific role now is smaller because he has to make sure the ship and its systems are working, allowing the crews to work safely.

“However, I was able to look off the ship and watch dolphins chase tuna this morning,” he said. “If that’s the role I have to play in the science, I’ll take it!”

In 2002, on his first sea assignment on the NOAA Ship Miller Freeman, Simon met a deck hand named Shelagh Baird from Big Sur, Cal.

He said they became friends but both traveled a lot. However, they met again in Seattle in 2006. They married in 2010, and have two boys.

Simon said he’d taken more adventurous trips when he was single.

“Getting married was definitely worth the change,” he said. “But in the end, as I look out my porthole on to the Amelia Earhart Memorial on Howland Island surrounded by endless ocean, I’m not sure this is less adventurous.”

After more than 25 years as the emcee of the Reading Holiday Parade, Charles J. Adams III gets to lead the march this year. “It’s such an honor after emceeing it for all those years,” Adams said. “But I think that giant screeching sound you may have heard is them scraping the bottom of the barrel. Honestly, I was almost in tears. I can’t wait to wave at everyone.” The parade starts on Saturday at 9 a.m. at 11th and Penn streets and continues down Penn to Second Street, ending at about noon. New this year will be an area at Fifth and Penn streets where some groups can stop and perform.

Despite his self-deprecating comments, Adams has more than earned the honor to lead the parade he emceed for more than a quarter-century. In fact, some of his fondest memories are of standing in all sorts of weather waiting for Santa’s arrival in Reading. “We had the normal swings in temperature,” he said. “There was one time when it was 15 degrees out there. Literally my lips were freezing together. Then other times it was so warm that I was taking off layer after layer of clothing. It’s all really just a matter of coping with what happens.” A particular honor, he said, was getting to chat with Pittsburgh Pirates hall-of-famer Willie Stargell. “I am such a huge baseball fan, so it was a real hoot when he was the grand marshal, and really just horsing around with that guy is probably my fondest memory,” Adams said. There were issues every year that the public didn’t know about, he said: grand marshals who were late, marching groups who were out of order. “The sound system was notorious for failing,” he said. “Or it wasn’t pointing in the right direction. But really, it was always so well-organized that all problems were immediately rectified.”

He credits volunteers, including Reading Eagle Company employee Dana Hoffman, for keeping things moving.

“Dana was my left hand person,” he said. “She kept things moving so by the time things got up to the podium I was announcing the right people.”

Even the inevitable gaps in the parade were smoothed over by Adams well-known brand of humor.

“I would just tell people those were the ghosts of Berks County marching,” he said.

Although he retired from his radio show on WEEU 830 AM, Berks County’s only locally owned radio station, last year, Adams is still busy telling and writing his ghost stories, leading ghost tours and making divining rods.

“(Retirement) lets me spend more time doing those things,” he said. “But I don’t really like to sleep, so I’ve got even more time.”

Charles Broad, executive director of the Downtown Improvement District, which sponsors the parade, said events actually get started Friday night with the tree-lighting ceremony.

That begins at 6:30 p.m. when Reading Mayor Vaughn D. Spencer lights the tree at the intersection of Fifth and Penn streets. Free hot chocolate and cookies will be provided by Outside In Restaurant, and live music will be provided by city elementary schools and church choirs. The 20-plus-foottall tree is from a farm in Auburn, Schuylkill County.
Saturday morning’s parade promises to draw more than 10,000 onlookers who’ll get to see marching bands, civic and youth organizations, nonprofit groups and a large helium balloon, which debuted last year. And of course, the jolly old elf himself.

“We’re fortunate to have so much support and enthusiasm for both the tree-lighting ceremony and the parade,” Broad said. “And we are privileged to have Charlie Adams serve as our parade marshal. Charlie has a huge following in this area.”

Adams said he’s up to the task, too.

“I’ve rented a couple of movies of the Queen (Elizabeth II) so I can get that queenie wave,” he said. “And I’ve practiced dealing with the paparazzi.”

Ginny was born about eight years before Barbie, whose official introduction was on March 9, 1959.

Like Barbie, Ginny has a lot of outfits, hats, purses and shoes made especially for her. But she’s not a grown-up doll like Barbie. Her shape was made to look more like the little girls who played with her. She is 7 1/2 inches tall.

Susan Doll had three Ginnys when she was a girl in the 1950s. It was and still is her favorite toy. Her maternal grandmother made outfits for her dolls. Her maternal grandfather made furniture for them. Susan made a sofa when she was 11.

“My sister had chairs and a bed,” Susan said. “We would set up little rooms and play for hours just like some girls play with Barbies today. They call Ginny America’s Sweetheart before Barbie.”

Susan, an artist, treasured her three dolls and all the outfits, taking good care of them over the years. About 18 years ago, she decided to expand her doll family so she could display the outfits her grandmother made.

She purchased more Ginnys and similar dolls at flea markets and auctions. She also bought accessories. She taught herself to make little wigs. Thirty dressed dolls now reside in a cabinet in the guest room of her Pennside home.

Some of the dolls wear original Ginny outfits that were sold in stores. Others show off her grandmother’s handiwork, either sewn or crocheted. One looks like a ballerina. Another is dressed as a bride. One looks like she’s ready for school. Another wears a hooded cape, ready for rain.

“The best ones I have I bought at auctions for not much money,” Susan said. “The most I spent for a Ginny is $45.”

Finding one at that kind of price today would be difficult. Ginny and her imitators — including Ginger, Lucy, Pam, Muffie, Vicky, Norma and Joanie Pigtails — are popular among doll collectors, so prices for the originals have gone up.

Ginny has undergone a lot of changes since Jennie Adler Graves introduced her forerunner in 1948. The doll was so popular that Jennie created the Ginny line in 1951, naming the doll after her daughter Virginia. She sold them from her Ye Olde Vogue Doll Shoppe in Somerville, Mass.

The early dolls were made of hard plastic and had sleepy eyes. A doll that walked from the hip was introduced in 1954. A few years later, the doll was changed to walk from the knee.

According to the current producer, The Vogue Doll Co., Jennie’s sales rose rapidly until 1953, when she sold more than $2 million. By 1957, sales were more than $5 million, and imitators began to appear on the market. Jennie retired in 1960, and her family ran the business until 1972, when it was sold to Tonka Corp.

The company changed hands several times after that until The Vogue Doll Co. took over in 1995. The new company’s website, www.voguedolls.com, states that its intent is to restore Ginny to her deserved place in the modern doll era.

Susan stopped buying dolls about two years ago and isn’t planning on adding more to her collection. She’s content with what she has and the nostalgia her dolls evoke when she looks at them.

“It was a really special time in my past,” she said. “Some people love dolls, and some people don’t. I loved dolls, and I loved these dolls the best.”

Mary Young is a freelance writer and collector. Tell her about your treasures, where you go to find them and the fun you have on the hunt. You can reach her at you1949@nullgmail.com.