Mount Laurel diversified its chaplain program in 2023, ensured PAWS Farm would be open for future generations, and has residents stand-out with their achievements.
A new police chaplain
The township police department added a rabbi from Cinnaminson at the beginning of the year to diversify its chaplain program, initiated in 2016. It currently has six participants from different faiths.
Michael Perice is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and is the senior rabbi at Temple Sinai of Cinnaminson. Prior to his position there, Perice completed a unit of clinical pastoral education at Einstein Medical Center, where he served as chaplain during the pandemic. In 2015, he was named one of the top 20 emerging leaders in Burlington County for his rabbinical work.
Perice is also known nationally for his advocacy efforts on addiction and mental health. He publicly shared his own story of recovery from opioid addiction in 2021, and his goal is to end the stigma surrounding substance abuse. He currently sits on the advisory board of Safehouse Philadelphia, an organization dedicated to saving lives by providing a range of overdose prevention services.
Perice noted his appreciation for the appointment as police chaplain and explained the importance of the role as it relates to residents.
“Police chaplains provide an important service for both the (police) department and the community,” he explained. “We serve everyone in their time of need, from the officers and their families to the residents of our township, and we do so for people of all faiths and backgrounds.”
A place for generations
Mount Laurel officials, PAWS Farm volunteers and the new Shreiber School of Veterinary Medicine of Rowan University announced in September that starting next month, the farm will be run by the school, the first in the state to offer a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree and related degrees designed to shape the future of veterinary medicine and animal health care in New Jersey.
The school is expected to welcome its first class in 2025, pending accreditation from the American Veterinary Medical Association Council on Education.
“As the first veterinary school in New Jersey, we are honored to commence stewardship of PAWS Farm and hope to inspire young people to consider veterinary medicine as a future career path,” said Dr. Suzie Kovacs, an associate dean at Shreiber. She will oversee the team running programming at PAWS Farm once it is in place.
Kovacs also noted that there will be a transition period before new programming takes place on site.
“We are being very thoughtful about how we proceed,” she explained. “We are currently in the process of hiring the on-site team, developing curriculum, and making plans for the community … We want to make this (the farm) a place where people who remember it from their childhood will enjoy bringing their own children and grandchildren here.”
The veterinary school plans to keep the traditional experience of the farm alive and well through public access and plenty of programs for youth and families.
Nonagenarian Virginia Marchiondo stands in front of her acrylic painting at this year’s Burlington County Senior Art Show.
Still painting at 90
Local artist Virginia “Ginny” Marchiondo, a 40-year township resident, displayed her new acrylic painting, “A Distant View,” at the 2023 Burlington County Senior Art Show in July.
The 90-year-old cited the work of Vincent Van Gogh and Pierre Auguste Renoir, artists she began appreciating at a young age.
“(I was) about 12 years old,” Marchiondo recalled. “I was interested in the artists themselves. (Vincent) Van Gogh, and (Pierre Auguste) Renoir were my favorites. I loved their work.”
The mother of four went on to have her artwork displayed at exhibits and other venues across the state, including a two-month solo show at the Mount Laurel library in 2011 that resulted in Marchiondo selling five of her more than 30 displayed paintings.
But illness struck Marchiondo at 39, when she was diagnosed with an essential tremor disorder, a neurological condition that causes the hands, head, trunk, voice or legs to shake.
“The doctors told me there is no medication (to control the tremors),'” Marchiondo explained. “What you have to do is find ways to live with it, and adapt to it – which works sometimes.”
Her son Michael noted that while the ailment has negatively affected his mother’s day-to-day life, it hasn’t kept her from doing what she loves most.
“(She) has had (tremors) for most of her life,” he pointed out. “She shakes very bad; it’s gotten a lot worse in the last decade, but yet she still draws, sketches, and paints. It’s just amazing. If you see her when she’s not painting, she shakes so much, but when she’s painting … it’s whole different world.”
“A Distant View” took Marchiondo approximately two hours to paint, though she would go back to correct mistakes or to revisit the feeling she had when she first created it. The acrylic work was displayed at the senior art show from July 13 to Sept. 9 at Warden’s House Gallery in Mount Holly.
Marchiondo was the only nonagenarian out of the 37 seniors represented there.
