Chartered in 1826 and named for the Marquis de Lafayette, the Easton liberal arts college is selling bicentennial-themed merchandise while supplies last online and in person at the Lafayette College Store at 211 McCartney St.

“It feels amazing,” store manager Pete Violante said of seeing Lafayette College reach its bicentennial, adding that he was proud to be part of the celebration.

Special from Abercrombie & Fitch are “200”-themed hoodies, T-shirts and fleece pants.

Other non-Abercrombie & Fitch apparel and accessories include pullovers, polo shirts, keychains, lapel pins and hats.

Abercrombie CEO Fran Horowitz, who graduated from Lafayette in 1985, isn’t the only alum participating in the 200th anniversary merch.

Crayola, which has its corporate headquarters in Forks Township, created commemorative crayon boxes that include the limited edition colors, said Pam Pearson, commercialization specialization solutions director and a 1994 alum. Colors are Marquis Maroon, Cur Non Royal, Golden Leopard and Day on the Quad.

“This project was a lot of fun,” Pearson said. “It’s kind of like worlds collide. My work world and my college world came together.”

Pete Ruggiero, Crayola president and CEO and a member of the college’s board of trustees, said in a written statement, “Crayola celebrates Lafayette College’s historic celebration and its substantial impact on our world. Given Crayola’s long-standing partnership with Lafayette in building the Easton community, it has been an honor for us to participate in the bicentennial by producing the [commemorative] box of crayons.”

Finally, the gardening company Burpee is offering seeds for the bi-colored Marquis Marigolds, said Jamie Mattikow, a 1986 alum and president and CEO of the Bucks County company.

“Lafayette was a great university to help you experience different possibilities,” Mattikow said. “I went in as an undeclared liberal arts major and I tried different courses, and different areas captured my interest. The economics and business and government and law were nice complimentary majors with different curriculums.”

Additional 200th anniversary plans include the unveiling of a bronze statue dedicated to Adrienne de Noailles, wife of the Marquis de Lafayette. The work, by artist Audrey Flack and completed by Brian Booth Craig after Flack’s death, will be installed near Skillman Library and unveiled and dedicated in March.

Lafayette College President Nicole Hurd said the college’s celebrations are celebrating “our very democratic origin story.”

“I love the fact that we are named for a founding father that was the same age as our students when he came over to participate in the Revolution, who fought for freedom, for liberty, for democracy, but also spoke out against slavery,” she said. “He was somebody who was very committed to these ideas that are the American experiment.”

“We’re going to court,” Marc B. Kaplin said Tuesday.

Wilson plans to join the company’s lawsuit.

Kaplin said Scannell officials might also appeal the Easton Planning Board’s decision to Easton City Council and bring “several independent lawsuits.”

“The reasons that were given for rejecting us, they are not legally sufficient,” Kaplin said. Representatives with Indianapolis-based Scannell did not respond to requests for comment.

City officials have spent months reviewing plans for the Easton Commerce Center, a 1 million-square-foot warehouse on Wood Avenue, near North 13th Street and Route 22. On Dec. 3, the city planning commission denied Scannell’s plans.

The site is the former Pfizer Pigments plant, which was demolished about five years ago to make way for future development.

The company provided expert testimony over several hearings on how it would deal with the property, including a plan to reroute a stream connected to the Bushkill Creek.

But the planning commission was not satisfied with the company’s presentations.

Commission members “felt [Scannell] didn’t adequately submit information for the application,” said Dwayne Tillman, the city’s director of codes and planning, which earlier in the hearings had recommended the company’s proposal to the commission.

“It was a really big win,” said Cody J. Harding, an attorney representing the Stop the Wood Ave Warehouse Coalition, which formed to oppose the warehouse over concerns including environment, traffic, noise and neighborhood impacts.

Harding said the planning commission listed a host of reasons for denying the project. “If [Scannell officials] want to appeal this, they have a very steep hill.”

The building is 90% in Wilson, and Borough Council approved the proposed development in September 2024. But 10% of the warehouse would be in Easton, with about 30% of the land in city boundaries, so Scannell also needs Easton’s approval.

Wilson solicitor Stanley J. Margle said Borough Council voted Monday night to join Scannell’s lawsuit, which he said would be filed against Easton’s planning commission.

“We stand to benefit by the improvements of that brownfield, which is an eyesore,” Margle said. “And the warehouse is a minimally intrusive development located far away from any housing.”

The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission and Easton Area School Board also opposed the proposal over traffic congestion concerns, but Margle said Scannell was planning to “sink millions of dollars” into traffic improvements.

Easton is not finished reviewing Scannell’s proposal. The city’s zoning hearing board is scheduled to continue a hearing at 6 p.m. Jan. 15 over exceptions Scannell wants, including a plan to reroute the Bushkill Creek tributary and build a road.

The anti-warehouse coalition’s work also has not ended, according to Harding. The group has presented changes to zoning it would like to see for that land. Current zoning for Wilson and Easton allows more than 60 types of “adaptive” reuses, including warehousing, he said. Warehousing is a by-right permitted use for the site in Wilson and Easton.

“Years ago, they made sense, when you had more industry,” Harding said of the reuses. “But [Easton] has changed.”

The pigment plant operated from the late 1800s until 2017, including as Pfizer from 1962 to 1990. A maker of rust-colored pigments used in various businesses, the plant was later known as Harcros Pigments, then Elementis Pigments, and was owned by Hunstman Corp. of Texas when it closed.

Contact Morning Call reporter Anthony Salamone at asalamone@mcall.com.

The Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission approved new rates Monday that will go into effect Jan. 1.

The E-ZPass toll rate for Class 1 passenger vehicles — including motorcycles, cars, pickup trucks, vans and SUVs that are less than 8 feet high and have up to two axles — will rise 50 cents to $2. The toll-by-plate rate for the same vehicle without E-ZPass will increase $2 to $5.

The per-axle E-ZPass rate for vehicles 8 feet or above in height (classes 2 to 7) rises $2 to a $6.50-per-axle toll rate. The corresponding toll-by-plate rate for similar vehicles rises $3 to an $8-per-axle toll rate.

Bridges under the joint toll bridge commission’s jurisdiction include the Route 22 and Interstate 78 links between Easton and Phillipsburg, New Jersey; the Portland-Columbia, New Jersey, bridge; Interstate 80 at Delaware Water Gap; Route 202 between New Hope and Lambertville, New Jersey; Interstate 295 at Scudder Falls; Route 1 between Trenton and and Morrisville; and Route 206 at Milford, Pike County.

E-ZPass is used in nearly 87% of personal-vehicle transactions.

The additional money from the increases will finance infrastructure projects and improvements, offset rising construction costs and maintain favorable borrowing rates in the municipal bond market, the commission said.

See photos of the game action and Faces in the Crowd below.

Members of each community spray-paint the banners with jokes and insults about the rival school, and display them on building and residences.

View some of the banners displayed during the 2025 edition of their rivalry below.

See photos of the game action and Faces in the Crowd below.

Sharon Camp, a public policy expert and advocate for women’s reproductive health who was known as the mother of Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill, and who founded what was surely one of the world’s smallest pharmaceutical companies to bring it to market, died Oct. 25 in La Plata, Maryland. She was 81.

Talcott Camp, a cousin, confirmed the death, in a rehabilitation facility, but did not specify a cause.

For nearly a half-century, doctors have known that women can prevent pregnancy within 72 hours of unprotected sex by taking a high dose of oral contraceptives. Initially, this remedy was not widely promoted; instead, it was used mostly in rape crisis centers in the United States and later in international refugee communities to help women who had been raped as an act of war, notably victims of sexual assault in the former Yugoslavia.

Camp, who had a doctorate in international relations, was a family-planning veteran. But for years she was only vaguely aware of emergency contraception, or the morning-after pill, as it is widely known.

A seasoned Capitol Hill lobbyist, she had come up during the 1970s, when family planning was a bipartisan issue. Even opponents of abortion were supportive, because effective contraception meant fewer abortions.

As vice president of the Population Crisis Committee (now Population Action International), a nonprofit focused on reproductive health care, particularly in developing nations, she had traveled throughout in Africa and had seen the consequences of poor reproductive care and lack of information in communities there. And like many women of her generation, she had firsthand experience: When she was 23, she had nearly died after having an illegal abortion in Mexico.

Following years of policy work, Camp was determined to get contraception directly into the hands of women and to make abortions safer. In the late 1980s, she and others founded the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, which worked to bring mifepristone, the so-called abortion pill, to the United States.

Then, Camp turned her attention to emergency contraception.

She studied its use in Europe, where it was not only legal but also mainstream, and learned of efforts to make it available in the United States. In California, clinics had come up with an expensive and complicated workaround: cutting up packets of birth control pills and repackaging them in sets of eight, the dosage required in most cases to prevent pregnancy during the first 72 hours after sex.

What was needed, Camp realized, was a simple pharmaceutical product. A Hungarian company was already making one and willing to partner with an American pharmaceutical company, but she was unable to find one that was interested.

In January 1997, Camp founded Women’s Capital Corp. — initially, she said, it was a company of just three people, including herself — and began the daunting process for a business novice of figuring out how to get the drug packaged, marketed, distributed and, most important, approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

She knew she would need some deep-pocket investors, and she approached 150 venture capital firms. They all turned her down.

Then she approached donors from the reproductive health community, Planned Parenthood affiliates and other foundations, cobbling together their investments with grants and loans. Garnering them, she got to work.

A naming company was hired to come up with something to call the pill. Plan B, one of 25 suggestions, was the clear winner.

In one of many setbacks, the FDA rejected the name, declaring that it “was unacceptable because it’s flippant and has a meaningless B suffix,” as Camp learned later, when she got hold of the agency’s naming committee minutes through a Freedom of Information Act request.

“But we knew this was the right name for this product,” she said, in no small part because it was easy to remember. “Given all the barriers to access,” she added, “it seemed very important to us that people could remember what to ask for.”

The twists and turns of how Plan B got to market, as Camp recounted in her oral history, played out like a thriller.

“It was a thriller,” said Francine Coeytaux, a veteran of the reproductive health movement who worked alongside Camp, “and Sharon was the author.”

In 1999, the drug and its name were proved by the FDA, but it stipulated that Plan B would be available only with a doctor’s prescription.

The next hurdle was approval for over-the-counter sales, Camp’s ultimate goal, which the drug received in 2006, though it was available only to women over the age of 18 (those 17 and under still needed a prescription), and only after pressure from Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Patty Murray of Washington state, who had threatened to block the appointment of a new FDA commissioner. A year earlier, Susan F. Wood, the director of the agency’s office of women’s health, had resigned to protest the delay.

“This is a way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and thereby prevent abortion,” Wood told The New York Times in 2005. “This should be something that we should all agree on.”

By then, she had moved on, wooed away by the Guttmacher Institute, a global research and policy organization focused on reproductive health, to become its president and CEO. She had sold her company to Barr Pharmaceuticals in 2003; many company acquisitions later, the pill is now known as Plan B One-Step.

Plan B did not make Camp rich. Half of the proceeds went to the nonprofits that financed the product’s development; the rest went into a charitable trust. One beneficiary was Pomona College in California, Camp’s alma mater.

Sharon Lee Camp was born Nov. 7, 1943, in Easton, Pennsylvania, the eldest of three daughters of June (Stout) and Albert Camp, a scientist who worked for the Navy. Part of her childhood was spent on a base in China Lake, California, where her father was developing rocket fuels.

She graduated from Pomona, where she majored in international relations, in 1965, and later earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in the same subject from Johns Hopkins University.

Camp’s first job after graduate school was as a lobbyist, working on food programs for children and Native Americans. She then joined the Population Crisis Committee, where she remained for nearly two decades.

She is survived by a sister, Cindy Lou Hampton.

Camp retired from the Guttmacher Institute in 2013, the same year, coincidently, that Plan B and generic versions of the drug were finally approved for over-the-counter use without age restrictions.

There continued to be challenges, as many on the right contended that the drug was an abortifacient — meaning that it caused the premature termination of a pregnancy. (It does not; it prevents conception, as regular birth control pills do.) The labeling was confusing, and it wasn’t until 2022 that the FDA revised the enclosed leaflets to clarify that the medication acts before fertilization occurs.

Camp decried the growing polarization over women’s reproductive health issues that she had seen during her years in Washington; she had hoped that Plan B would bring the warring factions together.

“One of the things that has attracted me about emergency contraception from the beginning is that the pro-choice movement doesn’t really own it,” she said in 2003. “It’s the anti-abortion pill.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

She calls it “unicorn breath,” and it’s the 10-year-old fourth grader’s own spin on mindfulness techniques that have been expanding into Bethlehem and Easton area schools.

“You can use the breathing techniques anywhere,” Chloe said. “You can always focus on the right here, right now.”

The techniques are being taught by the nonprofit Shanthi Project, which for more than 10 years has worked to provide mindfulness education to students across the Lehigh Valley. Chloe’s homebase of Clearview Elementary received additional grant money to expand the Shanthi Project curriculum to all grades. Elsewhere in Bethlehem Area School District, this is the second year the nonprofit has served all kindergarteners and fifth graders. Easton Area kindergarteners also participate.

The 16-week kindergarten curriculum starts in October and focuses on fundamental concepts such as intentional breathing and mindful listening.

“It would be the last thing I would ever want to see go,” Clearview kindergarten teacher Lisa Koski said.

Students are entering school struggling with emotional regulation, and no learning can happen until they learn to calm their bodies, Koski said.

In a moment of chaos, teachers can use the Shanthi Project techniques to recapture students’ attention, Koski said.

Fellow kindergarten teacher Juliana Maffea said the mindfulness rituals also benefit the adults in the room. Teachers engage in the exercises alongside their students, and allowing students to choose which breaths to practice gives them agency, she said.

“The students really feel like they have a voice,” Maffea said.

Shanthi Project curriculum also emphasizes relationship skills like kindness and gratitude.

“It makes a huge difference in their level of empathy,” Clearview fourth grade teacher Jacqueline Jimenez said.

As the students get older, the lessons shift toward skills needed to conquer the anxiety that comes with the transition to middle school.

“If you’re really stressed out, you can just stay calm and relaxed by breathing in and breathing out,” Clearview fourth grader Caleb Lopez said.

Lopez said he’s learned to recognize when he’s “crazed out” and needs a reset.

Breathing techniques are useful for daily transitions like entering school in the morning or coming back to class from lunch. Shanthi Project instructor Jody Millspaugh said the practices can also inspire creativity.

Millspaugh aims to teach students awareness of themselves, others and the environment. Along with the breathing techniques, a lifelong skill, she wants to impart calmness and compassion.

As Millspaugh surveyed the kindergarteners gathered on Maffea’s carpet, she guided them through the transition from “mindful bodies” to “wiggly bodies” and back again.

“We can switch into our mindful bodies when we need to or want to,” Millspaugh reminded the students.

The long-term goal is to build emotional resilience, stress management and self-confidence while improving focus and executive function, Millspaugh said.

“If you can teach a kid how to be mindful and notice their emotions as they’re happening and teach them to respond rather than react very suddenly, it is a resource that they can call on not only in the classroom but for the rest of their lives,” Shanthi Project Executive Director Kimberly Hopkins said.

Learning mindfulness early is like learning a language at a young age in that it’s easier to pick up, Clearview Principal Heather Bennett-Knerr said.

“I think it helps them keep that pause and stay present,” Bennett-Knerr said.

It was near the end of World War II, and the retired Bangor Area School District art teacher’s father was far from home, in France, helping liberate Europe from the grasp of Nazis.

A chance meeting last month, and the kindness of a stranger, helped Neal see where her father is buried.

Neal was visiting Arlington National Cemetery with a group of retired Pennsylvania teachers the weekend of Oct. 18. Neal and about two dozen other visitors got detoured to Alexandria, Virginia, during the trip due to a No Kings protest in the Washington area and the federal government shutdown.

Sitting in a restaurant before heading to the cemetery, Neal and a stranger, Niek Hendrix, struck up a conversation. Neal said she and Hendrix, who lives in the Netherlands, were exchanging small talk.

“Then I said about my dad being killed in France. I was 4½ when this happened,” Neal said. The Saylorsburg resident said she has visited France and Italy, where her father also served during the war, but the distance to travel from where she was in France prevented her from getting to his grave.

“He said, ‘If you give me your email, I might be able to get a picture of his grave,’ ” Neal said.

Within three hours, she said, Hendrix had emailed information about her father’s burial place. Pvt. Emory L. Kreeger was fatally wounded Feb. 5, 1945, in Oberhoffein, France, and is buried in Epinal American Cemetery and Memorial outside Lorraine.

“What I find so fascinating, here they are strangers and the circumstances that led them to meet,” said Norma Shriver, a retired Easton Area School District teacher who organized the trip to Arlington. Like Neal, she belongs to the Northampton County Chapter of the Pennsylvania Association of School Retirees.

The website findagrave.com included short articles on Kreeger, with an account of his death and burial in France, from newspapers in York County, where he lived before being inducted June 16, 1944, into the Army.

What did Neal think when Hendrix provided her with information about a father she had hardly known, and whose burial site she had never seen?

“Just kind of like, wow, I don’t believe this,” she said. “I think the thing that surprised me the most is so many people are interested in this.”

Hendrix, via email and FaceTime from his home in Ospel, Netherlands, said: “I met Louise in Alexandria, and when I heard that Louise never visited her father’s grave, I told her I would reach out to find a photo of her father’s grave. I was astonished they did not find it online.”

Hendrix has a fond and strong connection to American servicemen.

His village, Ospel, was the scene for a bloody battle in 1944 between the Allies and Germans.

Hendrix said his father was 17 years old when American soldiers like Kreeger liberated him from the Axis forces. Hendrix, who is a poultry farmer living on the same land his father tended, researched the liberation of Ospel with a military historian, Wesley Johnston.

He said after the research, his family built a memorial on the farm that contains the names of 54 Americans who were killed during the Ospel liberation.

Hendrix helped create a 2020 documentary for Amazon Prime Video called “Some Will Never Return,” which honors fallen soldiers buried at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten.

“Two friends of mine who make documentaries were impressed with my research, memorials, etc.,” Hendrix said. “They told me they wanted to make a video on account of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands and Europe, and the adoption of the graves program at Margraten cemetery.”

Hendrix said he obtained a grant for the film through the American embassy in The Hague. When the grant money ran out, Hendrix and his family paid for the balance of production costs, he said.

“We will never forget the sacrifices of these men,” Hendrix said. “There is no greater honor then to live on in the hearts of those who were liberated.”

Epilogue: The day after she met Hendrix, Neal joined several veterans, including Dan Chiavaroli and Nick Ackerman, for a wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They recounted their Arlington trip and service experiences Thursday during a Veterans Day ceremony at Gracedale sponsored by Memorial Library of Nazareth and Vicinity.

Veterans Day, Nov. 11, formerly Armistice Day, commemorates the anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I in 1918. The federal legal holiday, observed on the fourth Monday in October during the mid-1970s, reverted to Nov. 11 in 1978.

Contact Morning Call reporter Anthony Salamone at asalamone@mcall.com.

See photos below.