Stories From Tinicum: New Conservancy Brochure tells the inspiring ...

Giving back to the community
Ask around Tinicum Township to find out what
Kris Becker does and the list keeps growing:
• She designs and lays out the biannual
Tinicum Conservancy newsletter.
• She designs and helps with various
mailings for the Conservancy effort.
• She monitors more than 400 acres for
the Conservancy, usually on horseback.
And that’s just for the Conservancy.
Kris and her husband, Jerome, also clean up a
two-mile section of local roadway, a volunteer
effort through the state’s Adopt-a-Highway
program. Kris serves on one of the township’s
committees and is “placemat queen” for the
Tinicum Civic Association’s annual Art Festival,
while Jerry, after serving two years on the
Conservancy Board, now volunteers with the area
Fire Police, responding to local emergencies.
Their reason for such involvement is simple,
Kris says: “Until I moved here, I didn’t realize
how much a small community depends on
volunteers.”
Once upon a time, the Beckers were highoctane
New Yorkers, living on the 34th floor of
a Manhattan apartment building, but, after
“We felt embraced by the community
and wanted to know what we could do
to help protect it.”
20 years, city life was wearing thin. “I reached
the point where I was losing perspective,”
Kris says. “It was literally, find a weekend
place or move out of the city.”
They moved to Tinicum in 1994 and put their
5.5 acres under conservation easement five
years later. The switch to rural life was like
coming home, she says. She grew up in
Indiana farm country and missed the open
spaces and elbow room of her childhood.
In Tinicum, the Beckers quickly found a circle
of friends and a neighborhood vibrant with
kris and Jerome Becker
energy. “We felt embraced by the community
and wanted to know what we could do to help
protect it,” she says.
One volunteer project led to another—and
another. But she and Jerry don’t resent the
time they spend helping out. “This is our
home. I’m doing this for me as much as for
the community,” Kris says.
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