Sharing the Gifts
Louis J. Castriota, Jr. Leg Up Farm, York President and CEO
When Louie Castriota and his wife, Laurie, couldn’t find services for their special-needs daughter, he undertook a 13-year journey. Educating donors and rounding up volunteers, he finally opened Leg Up Farm in 2010, a one-of-a-kind, one-stop pediatric therapy facility created from scratch on donated land.
“Honestly, if somebody had handed me the money early on, this probably would not have been as successful,” Castriota says today. “Every day, it was hard, but I knew that Brooke needed Leg Up Farm, and thousands and thousands of children in our area needed Leg Up Farm.”
Leg Up Farm (legupfarm.org) offers a world of therapeutic experiences, including an adaptive movement room for dance, therapeutic horsemanship, and 18 acres of therapy gardens. In the replicated village Matthew’s Town, children practice life skills like shopping, posting mail and navigating busy streets.
The welcoming environment is “part of the therapy,” so children practice challenging skills in fun ways, and parents get more time to spend with their special-needs child’s siblings because they aren’t driving from one doctor’s office to another.
Leg Up Farm’s unique lifespan approach provides services that transition with the child into adulthood. Through its new nonprofit, Able-Services, participants learn screen printing and grow produce in a greenhouse. They sell their goods—the greens, herbs and coffee mugs—at the Leg Up Farmers Market, “working on communication and sales and marketing and all the process of selling to consumers.”
“It’s educational and it’s vocational, but it’s also bringing joy and fulfillment to their lives,” says Castriota. “I think that’s why we’re here.”
During 20 years in marketing and advertising, Castriota sometimes wondered why he was in sales, but the skills learned were invaluable in developing the network of committed donors eager to support the venture and the army of volunteers needed to run Leg Up Farm.
“The impact to our families and our volunteers is a tossup of who is getting more out of that relationship,” says Castriota.
Sometimes, he tells Brooke’s classmates that she inspired Leg Up Farm, and she beams with pride. It’s a moment that always warms his heart, and it’s a feeling he has written into a book, Leg Up: The Courage to Dream.
“We can all look at the challenges in our lives, or we can look at the gifts,” he says. “Brooke is one of those gifts. Because of her, now thousands of other children are benefiting.”
The Storytellers
Vito Grippi and Gabriel Dunmire Story Supply Co., York
Vito Grippi was teaching storytelling to teenagers who kept asking, “What do you want me to write about?” The self-proclaimed “stationery, pen, pencil and paper nerd” admits he was baffled.
“When I was 15 or 16, I had a notebook where I expressed myself,” Grippi says. “Some kids don’t have that outlet, so they don’t know it exists. They have a voice, and they’re allowed to tell their story.”
This, then, is the story of Story Supply Co. Grippi, a creative writing teacher at York College of Pennsylvania and the York County Youth Development Center, had the business idea for a storytelling-enabling craft stationery and design firm. For each notebook sold, a Story Supply Kit of notebook and pencil would be donated to organizations providing free tutoring, writing and arts instruction to children in underserved communities.
Grippi recruited Gabriel Dunmire, the designer for York College’s literary magazine, as the design half of the partnership. A 2015 Kickstarter campaign hit its goal in 24 hours, and Story Supply Co. was born (storysupplyco.com).
The tagline “Analog Tools for Storytelling” emerged from a 21st century method of communication—texting ideas back and forth—but it makes its point. A pencil and notebook are barrier-free tools of expression—no expensive technology required. “You can put it in your pocket, and it can be with you and be part of you,” says Grippi.
Products are sustainably produced and USA-made. One paper supplier has its own story to tell, as a fifth-generation business in Michigan. Storytelling is as old as humanity, but as Grippi notes, it’s “very much in the spotlight right now.” (Think the line from Hamilton: “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”) It’s about “people connecting to one another and to an idea.”
In their team, Grippi provides the “creative vision,” says Dunmire. “He’s good at reaching out to other people and creating rapport.” Grippi says that Dunmire is the one who turns ideas into “something better than the thing I envisioned.”
Both have young families. The children of Grippi and his wife, Amy Grippi, are ages 13, 9 and 3. Dunmire and his wife, Jaime, have a 14-year-old and “a 4-year-old skateboarder.” Their children are learning to express themselves through words and art, and the two hope they are giving more children the same opportunities. The young recipients of Story Supply Kits are “excited to get a thing to call their own,” says Grippi. “They decorate them and make them their own unique things.”
To Dunmire, children deeply engaged with their SSC notebooks are undergoing “a butterfly effect. The smallest little thing can change a life. All it takes is getting a notebook.”
Revitalizing Gathering
Joshua Kesler The Millworks, Harrisburg Founder
Early in the life of The Millworks, Joshua Kesler was scanning the restaurant crowd, doing what business owners do, “trying to figure out what’s the demographic, what’s the income, what’s the age?” And he realized that the group spanned from young to mature.
“That was really cool, because I think we created something attractive to people on many different levels, and that’s hard to do in this business,” he says now.
Kesler is the entrepreneur who took a giant leap of faith with his wife, Rachel, and transformed an abandoned millworks into a hopping farm-to-table restaurant, artist studios and craft brewery. The Millworks instantly took its place as a linchpin of Harrisburg’s revitalizing Midtown neighborhood, with Kesler himself a cheerleader for Midtown as a destination.
Kesler blends his blue-collar, work-ethic upbringing with a belief in the value of creativity to solve problems and rethink old notions. He cultivated his creative skills as a musician, playing in bands over the years and now, he says, tackling classical-guitar transcriptions of Bach cello suites “when I try to get my blood pressure down a couple points.”
Although The Millworks has been a hit from day one, Kesler never settles for the status quo (millworksharrisburg.com). “Part of the passion is setting a standard that can never be met,” he says. “That can be frustrating at times, but it’s also rewarding after the fact because you didn’t leave anything out there. You did everything you could to make it an experience you want people to have.”
He has been among the many players helping revive the fortunes of the Broad Street Market, the nation’s oldest continuously operating market house. Its two iconic buildings, one in brick and one in stone, stand directly across from The Millworks. “Taking such a large risk across the street, I think, gave a lot of confidence to market vendors that things were going to change and gave them a little confidence to hang in there, which they did. It is a scene now, and the energy is very positive.”
Kesler loves to see the market, The Millworks and Midtown on a Saturday, “full of people, in probably the most diverse setting anywhere in central Pennsylvania. When you come to the Broad Street Market, there are all different kinds of folks there. There are divisions within society that are evident to everyone, but when you’re at the market, it feels like what society should be. That is so much fun. Everybody comes together around food.”
Blessing the Community
Rick Rodgers Rodgers & Associates, Lancaster Co-Founder and President
“Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is within your power to do so,” reads Proverbs 3:27. For Rick Rodgers, “that puts the burden on me to look for the needs that God brings to my attention and how to best fulfill those.”
“The Bible teaches us we are here to take care of each other,” says Rodgers, a committed Christian. “We have a responsibility when we are blessed, like God has blessed my business, to take care of others...the blessings are not to be spent on my own selfishness.”
The Hanover native is now an all-in Lancastrian, living in the city since the early 1980s. As philanthropists, he and his wife Jessica, known as Jessy, “uniquely complement each other.” He’s the analytical brains, asking how their support will make a difference. She’s the creative envisioner, the one who piloted conversion of excess space in Rodgers & Associates historic and elegant headquarters into a gathering area for free use by community nonprofits (rodgers-associates.com).
“It’s a great use that I would not have thought of,” he says.
While charity “treats the symptom but doesn’t solve the problem,” Rodgers’ philanthropy addresses root causes. In just one example, his support for the Lancaster County Council of Churches’ food pantry means that people get not just food but additional guidance toward self-sufficiency.
The first year of Lancaster County Community Foundation’s Extraordinary Give, Rodgers helped secure participating nonprofits, skeptical of collective fundraising just as many were involved in year-end appeals. When the effort raised an astounding $1.6 million, participants realized they had “all worked together to accomplish something pretty spectacular.”
In Extra Give’s second year, Rodgers & Associates stepped up as presenting sponsor. Now, on Extra Give day, Rodgers rises early for a day of TV and radio appearances and “cheering on the troops,” who raised over $7 million in 2016.
“When the community succeeds, we all succeed,” he says. “You give because you’ve been blessed and you feel the responsibility of sharing those blessings with others to help others do well.”
Philanthropy has taught Rodgers that “it’s not about me. It’s about us. It’s about people.”
“The tendency is to think that if we have more things we’ll be happy, and it never satisfies,” he says. “That’s what Ecclesiastes tries to teach us. When we care about other people, we find that even though we’re not doing it for ourselves, the benefits far outweigh the effort.”
The Optimist
George Nahodil Members 1st Federal Credit Union Executive VP, Retail Delivery, Public Relations and Marketing
George Nahodil’s dad came back from World War II and bought a home in Levittown, PA, the vast suburb built for hard-working, baby-booming families. There, “no one had anything, but they had something.”
“It was a great place to grow up, and I never knew the haves and have-nots,” says Nahodil today.
The first in his family to go to college, Nahodil worked in teaching, accounting and bank sales before Members 1st Federal Credit Union recruited him to help the company grow.
“It’s so nice to work at an organization that I can say is good to their associates, which is pretty hard to find today,” says Nahodil.
In the broad swath of Members 1st operations that Nahodil oversees, community service is a guiding principle (members1st.org).
“We want to support the causes important to our associates,” he says. “It’s good for the community. It’s good for business. It’s a win-win-win across the board. For me personally, it’s about helping people in need.”
The personal connections to his causes run deep. Nahodil’s sister died from breast cancer at 42 years old, and today his wife, Kelley, is a nurse in reconstructive surgery for breast cancer patients. In college, he worked in a group home, in the days when families often put special-needs children in group homes, “and, poof, they were gone.”
He couldn’t know then that he and Kelley would have a son with special needs. Josh, now 25, “is so good, and he’s innocent. There’s innocence about him. What a gift.”
Nahodil is determined that people with special needs stay engaged in their communities. The Nahodils are avid supporters of the Arc of Cumberland & Perry Counties and the D.R.E.A.M. Partnership, which works with colleges and universities to help students with intellectual disabilities pursue higher education and achieve their goals.
In one D.R.E.A.M. Partnership initiative, special-needs students from Penn State Harrisburg spend time with Members 1st staff, who provide experiences and projects that expose the students to real-world expectations.
“It’s good for their self-esteem,” Nahodil says. “They want to feel proud about what they do. When they have that pride, it makes them want to continue to do more and more.”
Nahodil spends several evenings a week at community events, meeting people and demonstrating the personal commitment of Members 1st. Often, Kelley is with him.
“The world is a good place,” he says. “There’s a lot to be thankful for.”
The Innovator
John G. Swanson Willow Valley Living, Lancaster President
Willow Valley Communities “takes chronological age out of the equation” in its planning, says John Swanson. When he entered the senior living field in the 1980s, much of the industry focused on “passing time,” but today’s older generations want meaningful engagement.
“Now, it’s really providing more innovation and lifestyle and creating this rich and vibrant world of possibilities,” he says.
That includes Willow Valley’s renovation of its cultural center to “set a new standard in resident engagement in senior living,” with its fitness and aquatic center, ballroom, broadcast studio and workshop spaces (willowvalleycommunities.org).
The center’s 500-seat theater has taken center stage in Lancaster County’s revitalized arts scene as a venue for productions by Prima Theatre, the groundbreaking production company founded by Mitch and Diana Nugent in 2010. Willow Valley is a Prima community partner, supporting its productions and its Youth Experience Initiative, which connects young people with theatrical opportunities that help them think creatively, boost academic performance, and explore career options.
“It felt like Mitch’s mission was to bring something new, something fresh, something unique to theater in Lancaster,” says Swanson. “They’re innovative. They’re not afraid to take risks. I like to partner with innovative organizations, and they’re one of them.”
Swanson founded Viva, a celebration spotlighting the “youthful vibrancy” of Willow Valley residents and “the vibrancy of the Lancaster community and the community and business leaders who are making that happen.”
With Swanson in the leadership team, Willow Valley has become a community asset, deeply engaged in its surroundings. Three-quarters of Willow Valley residents come from outside Lancaster County, but they collect sneakers and socks for local schoolkids, mentor School District of Lancaster students and volunteer at city shelters. Willow Valley supports Music For Everyone, bringing music to schools and spaces countywide.
“There’s this great resurgence in the city,” says Swanson, who lives in the city with his girlfriend, Amy, and has two grown sons. “We’ve enjoyed being part of that. We want to be part of that.”
When offered choices, Swanson opts for the unusual and challenging. Realizing around 2009 that he needed to get in shape, he joined a boxing gym. It’s where he spends about five nights a week, working out and mentoring young boxers, helping them overcome setbacks and pursue their goals. It’s all part of “unleashing the creativity in younger people.”
“I don’t like to follow,” he says. “I like to do things that have never been done before. I like to wow people with the unexpected.”
By M. Diane McCormick | Photography by Donovan Roberts Witmer
