http://www.centredaily.com/news/local/story/1505287.html

Community says goodbye to Mayor Welch

Gathering of tales, tears bids farewell to Welch

Mike Joseph
- mjoseph@centredaily.com

STATE COLLEGE — The people of State College on Sunday remembered and said goodbye to borough Mayor Bill Welch with wit, laughter, tears and song that sought to channel 10 days of sadness and mourning into a basis for moving on.

“Commit to something greater than yourself,” former Centre Daily Times reporter Adam Smeltz said, quoting the late mayor. “Do not shy away from differences. Seek them out.”

Smeltz and other friends and family members addressed hundreds of people Sunday afternoon in a “Celebration of Life” service to honor and bid farewell to Welch, the 15-year State College mayor who died Sept. 4 at age 67 from complications after leg-artery bypass surgery.

The mayor’s signature Panama hat lay alone atop a table in The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel’s President’s Hall, which was opened wide to hold 1,200 seats, though all were not taken. The table was flanked by wall-hung video screens showing a lifetime of photos of Welch and still more comments from friends. State College resident Bob Potter emceed the 90-minute celebration.

The speakers themselves invariably shared anecdotes attesting to Welch’s quick wit or humanity — sometimes both at once — and the sheer number and variety of tales suggested the abundance of the ones still circulating but left unrecorded.

Borough Manager Tom Fountaine recalled a council meeting moment when Schlow Centre Region Library director Betsy Allen reported that residents of a certain township adjacent to the borough had more book checkout renewals than residents of any other municipality.

Welch, Fountaine said, thanked Allen for letting him know “where in the Centre Region the slow readers lived.”

“Mayor Welch’s love of State College and his passion for the community was evident in everything he did,” Fountaine said.

Former Councilman Jeff Kern, who became breakfast friends with Welch after running against him for mayor eight years ago, said folks would constantly stop by their Corner Room table to tell the mayor stories that were often deeply personal.

After some such confession-like disclosures, Kern said, “he would look at me and go: ‘Who was that?’ ”

“Bill was that rare person who identified with everyone — and yet he was always himself,” Kern said.

Kern said it took an unusually long time to walk the borough streets with Welch.

“He never missed a chance to listen to someone else’s ideas or opinions,” Kern said. “Maybe that’s why it took so long.”

Welch’s brother, Hershey-area physician Patrick Welch, helped trace the roots of Welch’s playful mind by recalling his older brother’s fondness for the soft drink Pepsi, especially from the now-gone Hoy Brothers General Merchandise on West College Avenue.

When he came into the Hoy Brothers store, Patrick Welch said, “he came in with an entourage and the place just came alive.”

The eldest of five children, Welch often brought home a sixpack of Pepsi from Hoy Brothers. Despite claims on the drink from his siblings during the evening, he always managed at the end of the night to have preserved a full cold Pepsi for himself.

Asked how he could pull that off, Patrick Welch said, his brother told them he hid the Pepsi within the stalks of a celery bunch, “knowing that none of us would touch the celery.”

“Those were magical times,” Patrick Welch said. He said his brother wanted his grandchildren, Clarissa and Linden Theiss, to grow up in a magical town as he had.

“In my mind, Bill is at Hoy Brothers and he’s going to have one more Pepsi,” his brother said.

High school classmate Harry Kropp offered a glimpse of Welch’s teenage wit, recalling an incident in which unflattering remarks about a State High teacher were painted on a wall of the new high school then under construction.

The next day, Kropp said, students who drove to school were told to open their car trunks. In Welch’s car were found white paint and brushes. Asked to explain, Kropp said, Welch told the administrators there were so many kids in his household that “sometimes it was easier to paint than to clean.”

Penn State President Graham Spanier told the audience Welch was “a great humanitarian, leader and ambassador and he will be profoundly missed.” He was the town’s moral compass, Spanier said. “He was opinionated without being polarizing,” Spanier said. “He kept the conversation going.”

The poet Gabeba Baderoon, in verse that addressed the late mayor, noted the great number of public demands put on Welch. “You came to every wedding, every meeting,” she said.

Thomazine Weinstein Shanahan, eldest daughter of former Centre Daily Times editor Jerome Weinstein, recalled how Welch really enjoyed officiating at weddings and telling stories about what happened afterward.

“I favor love,” she said, quoting him.

Welch’s sister, the Rev. Elizabeth Parker, said Welch read a great deal as a child and then, at age 10 or so, began venturing on his own out into the world of State College and its residents.

“Books could give him stories and ideas, but it was people who gave him connections and meaning” to meet his deepest needs — to love and be loved, she said.

Smeltz composed a letter to Welch’s granddaughter Linden.

“He believed in our ability to learn, to adapt, to imagine,” Smeltz said. “He was delighted with himself. But he never made the mistake of taking himself too seriously.”