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Exeter Grad to help at President’s Inauguration

As planning continues for the presidential inauguration in Washington, a Berks County native is working behind the scenes to help prepare for the Jan. 21 event. Christopher Bevins, a 1996 Exeter High School graduate and an Air Force staff sergeant, recently learned he was assigned to work with personnel from other military branches in providing media coverage and sparking extra interest in the event.

“It’s potentially a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Bevins, 34, who is stationed at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. “It’s really an honor to support my country and my commander in chief.” Bevins’ role with the military task force will include putting together broadcast pieces about the event and working with media members assigned to cover the inauguration. “There’s a lot of moving pieces to something of this magnitude,” Bevins said of the inauguration. “It takes support from every area that each service has to offer.”

Bevins has previous experience working with the media. One of his responsibilities with the Air Force is to usher media members to interviews with President Barack Obama. While he gets within about 50 feet of the president on a weekly basis, Bevins said he has not had the opportunity to meet him. “I think it would be a great honor to meet the commander in chief,” he said. “In the meantime, I’ll support in any way I can.”

Bevins moved to Berks County as a teenager and worked various retail jobs at the Berkshire Mall and the Reading outlets before attending Reading Area Community College for a few semesters. He decided to join the Air Force in 2006 for the benefits and travel it offered.
He said the Air Force has taken him to Iraq, Japan and all over the Pacific. He is excited to be a part of history and to work with other military members leading up to Inauguration Day.

“I’ll remember it for the rest of my life,” he said.

Berks Natives Pen Hollywood Movie

Terrorists have taken over Washington, D.C., the White House is in ruins, the president has been taken hostage, and it’s all the fault of former Berks residents Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt.  Of course it’s all fiction, but the married screenwriting duo promises that it won’t look that way on screen when their movie “Olympus Has Fallen” opens Friday at theaters across the country, including several in the Reading area. The action-thriller is ripped from the post-9/11 headlines, with a huge helping of imagination and character.

Rothenberger came up with the idea of having the White House taken over by terrorists nine years and nearly two dozen scripts ago.  “I thought I had an interesting character with an agent in his prime,” said Rothenberger, a former Boyertown resident. “And I had been a fan of the ‘Die Hard’ movies.”  “Olympus Has Fallen” tells the story of disgraced Secret Service agent Mike Banning trying to save the day and his reputation when the White House is destroyed by terrorists and the president is taken hostage. Banning, played by Gerard Butler, who liked the movie so much he’s one of its producers, had been relegated to desk duty after an incident with the first family ended badly. His redemption lies in the struggle to save the White House, the president and the country. And the disasters keep coming.

Benedikt, formerly of Exeter Township (by way of Reykjavik, Iceland) and Rothenberger worked on the script together. The pair met in a screenwriting class in Philadelphia in 2000 and have collaborated since then. While they have come close to selling screenplays, “Olympus Has Fallen,” is their first script to be developed into a full-length feature film.  And while the timeline from sale to screen was pretty quick (the script sold in March, 2012 and the movie comes out Friday), Rothenberger and Benedikt’s overnight success took nearly a decade.  “We both had corporate jobs and would get up early to write,” said Benedikt of her 4 a.m. wake-up time. “You had to find a way to fit it in.”  Success came in fits and starts, though, always giving them hope that this was what they were intended to do.

In 2002 Rothenberger won the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting for the Korean War epic, “The Chosin,” and that allowed him to quit his corporate job and devote himself full time to writing.  And rewriting.  “Olympus Has Fallen” was rewritten four times between getting an agent to represent it in 2011 and when it sold in 2012.  “And then we rewrote it eight more times,” said Rothenberger, thanks to input from director Antoine Fuqua and key actors and producers. “That’s 12 full rewrites.”

The writers were on site in Shreveport, La., where a partial model of the White House was built (and destroyed) for the film, and they got to mingle with leading man Butler. The film also stars Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart, Dylan McDermott, Angela Bassett and Melissa Leo.  Intensive discussions led to notepads full of changes, but it was worth it to be open to those changes, they said, and they are very proud of the film.
“We’ve only seen the rough cut,” Benedikt said, “But it was excellent.”

As with most artists, the couple has relied on family and friends for support during the lean and less hopeful times. Benedikt’s mother, Sigridur “Sigga” Benediktsdottir of Reading, brother Marco Soto and best friend Andrea Funk are planning a family party to celebrate the opening on Friday in Reading that will include Rothenberger’s mom Joyce of New Berlinville.  “Our only wish is that Creighton’s late father, George C. Rothenberger, and my late brother, Stefan Soto, could be here to celebrate with us,” Katrin said.  It’s likely they’ll hear the celebrating wherever they are, though, as the $80 million movie is on track to be a blockbuster.  And it will give Benedikt and Rothernberger the opportunity to continue to work on their next script – a thriller with a supernatural twist.

“We were out here for six years,” Benedikt said of the couple’s move to Newport Beach, Calif., in 2007. “With no money coming in. We were down to our last $5,000 when we sold the script.”

Dr. Terry Smith (1965)

On April 11th 2013, by order of the Secretary of the Army, Dr. Terry Smith was inducted as a Distinguished Member of the Regiment of the 506th Infantry Regiment (Airborne/Airmobile) of the 101st Airborne Division, at Ft. Campbell, KY.

Michael Senick

Michael Senick: Kindergarten Teacher
I grew up in: Exeter Township.  I now live in: Cumru Township. My parents are Heidi and John Senick. I have four siblings: Melissa, Kim, Anthony and Ricky. I also am engaged to my beautiful fiancee, Holly Kowalski.  
Education: Exeter High School; associate degree, Reading Area Community College; bachelor’s degree in elementary education, Alvernia University; master’s degree in English as a second language, University of Turabo.
How I spend my free time: Holly likes to point out that during the school year I pretty much live at Millmont. To make up for it, we go to the beach in the summer whenever we can. I am a big Philadelphia Flyers fan and try to watch every game. I am always interested in reading books on evolution, history or behavioral psychology. That being said, by far my favorite way to spend free time is traveling with Holly.

Teacher who inspired me: Mrs. Barbara Voelker, who teaches here at Millmont, was my cooperating teacher when I was student teaching. She taught me all the little things that need to be taken care of so you can be at your best when teaching. She is always thinking about what is best for the kids, not about what is easiest to do. I try to keep that same attitude in my teaching.

Funniest classroom moment: I wanted to set up a math lesson by presenting the kids with a situation they could help me solve through addition. I started the lesson by saying, “Kids, I have a problem.” Right after I said that, one of my students said very seriously, “You work with kids?” It may be the best one-liner I have heard while teaching.

If I weren’t an educator, I’d be: I would definitely be doing something in the sciences. I watch and read everything I can on space and evolution. I also wouldn’t mind playing hockey for a living, if the Flyers are interested.

You might not know: I have gone swimming with sharks twice in my life. I “waded” with sharks, as my dad likes to say, at the Camden, N.J., aquarium. I also swam with sharks in the Dominican Republic. I hope someday to go cage diving with great white sharks.

Exeter Graduate in Step at Inaugural Parade

When graduation day was upon him and the rest of the Exeter Senior High School class of 2011, Christopher Revell knew he was interested in enlisting in the armed services.  The only question was, which branch? And the only problem was, he didn’t have an answer.  The then-Exeter Township resident tried his hand at heavy construction, working for the first six months after graduation in Philadelphia. But when business went cold that December, Revell found himself out of a job.  “Things weren’t going too good,” he said. “And I decided to do something better.”
That decision was to join the family business: following the footsteps of his father, grandfather, aunt and uncle into the military. That “something better” was the 1.5-mile-long path he marched in last week’s Inauguration Day Parade as an airman first class in the Air Force.  “I decided to do the military,” he said. “It was the best decision I could have made with my life.”

Revell, who turned 20 Saturday, always had seemed to be following a well-worn path into the armed services. On his high school’s football and lacrosse teams, he learned to overcome adversity, to work as part of a unit toward a common goal. As a volunteer firefighter with the Lower Alsace Fire Company, he was instilled with a sense of duty, a sense that only deepened when he became an Eagle Scout in 2011.  But it wasn’t until last year that Revell finally decided the Air Force would be the best fit.  His original plan was to go into the Coast Guard. But one day, something inside Revell drove him to the Air Force website.

Between the various locations and emphasis on selflessness, he liked what he saw. And in August, he was on a plane to basic training in San Antonio, where he applied for a position in the Air Force Honor Guard. Four weeks later, he was accepted, and in October, his honor guard training began.  “It finally hit me that I was going to be in the Inauguration Parade,” he said. “It got bigger as it got closer. I was bouncing off the walls. I was ecstatic.”

On a blustery Monday, that moment finally came. Walking in a nine-by-nine-person column, he made his way along the parade route to President Barack Obama, turning eyes left and presenting arms.  “Seeing and hearing everybody out there was incredible,” he said. “To hear them yell ‘Air Force’ and chant for the Air Force made it even better. There is no feeling like there is when a million people watching you give the president the honors he deserves.”

Exeter’s Famous Houck Twins (1965) in the News Again

Thomas Penn Houck of Spring Township turned 65 just before midnight.

His twin brother, Richard Penn Houck of Stonersville, turned 65 just after midnight.

Born minutes apart and yet in different years, their 15 minutes of fame came about because of when their first minutes of life began.

They were born in Reading in St. Joseph Medical Center as 1947 turned to 1948, which happened to be the city’s bicentennial.
Somebody decided to make them a big deal. They were proclaimed as Reading’s “Bicentennial Twins.”
“Any celebrity who came to town, we had our picture taken with them,” Tom said Monday.
Those celebrities included President Harry S. Truman; comedian, singer and actor Eddie Cantor; and comic duo Abbott and Costello.
Younger readers might be wondering who any of those people are.
Those were celebrities from an age when fame wasn’t achieved by releasing sex tapes but by having talent and working hard … except in the case of the Houck boys, who gained fame just by the happenstance of their birth.
Older readers might be wondering whether Abbott and Costello conducted an impromptu routine for the twins called “Who was born first?”
Older readers are also probably grateful that Abbott and Costello never made a sex tape.
For some unexplained reason, a photo of the “Bicentennial Twins” was on the front page of the Reading Eagle every New Year’s Day for a decade or so.
“Then we got to fifth grade and said, ‘That’s enough,’” Tom said. “We rebelled a little bit.”
Perhaps because the city wanted to make their birth a big deal, their mother, Ellen, named her sons after Thomas and Richard Penn, the brothers who planned Reading and who were the sons of state founder William Penn.
Was Ellen a history buff?
Tom never asked, and she died in 2006.
“Somebody came up with the idea (for our names), but I guess we’ll never find out,” Tom said.
Tom, who had four sons, retired from teaching in the Exeter School District. Richard, who had three sons, retired as an electrical engineer.
They aren’t famous anymore. They chose to allow their acclaim to fade.
They also aren’t on the front page every New Year’s Day anymore, but, hey, they’re on page B1 today, and that’s pretty neat.