FACES of the Celebration

ANNETTE EARLING (Titusville)

Annette Earling might have been destined to play a central role in New Jersey’s celebration of America’s 250th birthday. Her father, H. David Earling, was executive director of the New Jersey Bicentennial Commission in 1976. “We kids participated in countless reenactments and celebrations back in the day,” says Earling, who heads the friends organization that supports the park. A graphic designer (with a side gig as a jazz and blues singer), Earling says it’s been gratifying to assist in the “renaissance” of the park, with its new museum and visitor center scheduled to open this summer. “I can’t wait for everyone to see the fruits of the labor of the many folks who have loved the park through all these years,” she says. “I feel like we’re all making history even as we celebrate it.”

JENNIFER MARTIN (Southampton, Pennsylvania)

Jennifer Martin loves to observe the schoolchildren who visit Washington Crossing Historic Park, some 10,000 every year. It reminds her of her childhood, growing up in Princeton and taking field trips to the Princeton Battlefield State Park. With her staff of two dozen, she’s overseen the restoration and freshening of the entire park in anticipation of the 250th, more than $10 million worth of work, including new displays in the visitor center. Martin calls the semiquincentennial a “once-in-a-lifetime celebration.”

The park embraces living history, most notably through its regular schedule of reenactments. “We want people to learn micro-histories,” Martin says, “the contributions of women, of black soldiers, of average Americans, not just generals.” But the park still embraces spectacle: On July 4, after a day of living history demonstrations, the park will present a fireworks display (and live music) for the first time since 2018. A car show called “Rebels and Redcoats”—American, British, French, and German cars only—follows on July 12.

Martin, who holds a master’s degree in history from La Salle University, has been at the park for twelve years. She met her husband, Jared Pierce, when he was a ranger there, and they were married at the park. “Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to do this work,” she says. “My greatest joy and hope for the work I do here is that someone on these field trips will feel inspired and one day step into these roles.”

KYLE MCKOY (Perkasie)

Kyle McKoy is well-versed in large-scale commemorative celebrations. She served as museum director for the Arizona Historical Society during the 100th anniversary of Arizona statehood in 2012 and vice president for education and exhibitions at the Indiana Historical Society during the 200th anniversary of Indiana statehood in 2016.

For McKoy, one notable event marking America’s 250th anniversary is the Mercer Museum exhibition “Doan Gang: Outlaws of the Revolution,” on display through December 31. A notorious band of River Towns Loyalists, the Doan Gang went so far as to rob the Bucks County Treasury in its zeal to support the British. “Today, many people lament that our country has never been so divided,” McKoy says. “This exhibit challenges that notion by exploring the surprising tale of the Doan Gang, set against a backdrop of 1770s and 1780s America. In that era, neighbors, friends, and families were often torn apart as they were forced to choose between remaining loyal to the English Crown or forging ahead to create a new nation.”

JENNIFER LIN AND BILL STIEG (Doylestown Township)

PRODUCERS, REVOLUTIONARY REELS

Throughout their long careers in journalism, Doylestown residents Jennifer Lin and Bill Stieg have served as each other’s sounding boards, cheering squads, and unsparing critics. “He’s sometimes brutally honest,” Lin says of her husband, “but I trust him implicitly to tell me the truth.”

This year, the couple, married for forty-three years come September, have become something more: co-producer collaborators in filmmaking. Together, they’ve taken on the task—daunting yet deeply satisfying—of producing fifty-two short films chronicling Bucks County’s role in the American Revolution, releasing one episode a week, throughout 2026, in the Bucks County Herald–sponsored series Revolutionary Reels (streaming at buckscountyherald.com/bucks250 and on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok).

“Some are hers. Some are mine. Most are both,” says Stieg, describing the project’s division of labor. His learning curve has no doubt been steeper than his wife’s. In 2015, after thirty-two years as a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Lin pivoted to a career in documentary filmmaking and has achieved what Stieg calls “crazy success.” Two of her films were picked up by PBS.

Stieg brings to the partnership a lifelong passion for history. (A former editor at Men’s Health magazine, he continues to write, often on historic subjects, for River Towns.) “I was an amateur history buff,” he says, “but now I’m really learning the details of life in Bucks 250 years ago, and it’s endlessly fascinating.”

In its extraordinary breadth, the series covers little-known history (such as the important role taverns played in the revolution), current-day ties to the revolution (a profile of John Godzieba, the retired Langhorne police chief who, since 2009, has reenacted the role of George Washington during the Christmas Day crossing of the Delaware River), and critical events like Washington’s original crossing, in 1776.

Viewers of Revolutionary Reels, Stieg says, “are going to meet people from long ago and their own twenty-first-century neighbors who are keeping the history alive.” The latter, of course, include Lin and Stieg.

BOB HARVIE (Falls Township)

A former high school social studies teacher with twenty-six years in the classroom, Bob Harvie leads the group that’s helping to support events across Bucks County in commemoration of America’s 250th anniversary. Of the county’s pivotal role in the country’s founding, Harvie says, “It’s a pretty unique history.”

Harvie says the goal of Bucks250PA is to promote events being organized by Bucks County municipalities and local history groups. (An events calendar is posted on the commission’s website: bucks250pa.org.) The panel’s signature project is an interactive map, called the Revolutionary War Trail, with information on the county’s many historic sites.

This fall Harvie, a Bucks County Commissioner, is hoping to make some history of his own. A Democrat, he’s running for Congress against Republican incumbent Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania’s first Congressional district.

“This country was built by people who, 250 years ago, took a chance and risked their lives to build something better,” Harvie says. “We’re very proud of our history and we want to celebrate it.”

DICK CRETER (New Hope)

Dick Creter has been in the business of honoring Americans since 2005, when he co-founded a construction company that designs and builds national cemeteries across the United States. Twenty years later, he founded America Celebrates, the nonprofit group working with the chambers of commerce in New Hope and Lambertville to organize a three-day semiquincentennial extravaganza that is expected to draw more than 10,000 people to free events on both sides of the New Hope–Lambertville Bridge, including a July 3 fireworks display featuring 200 choreographed drones conjuring patriotic images over the Delaware River.

Creter attributes his burgeoning love of country to a more distant celestial event. He’s taken to traveling far and wide to witness solar eclipse events, having visited more than a dozen countries since witnessing his first total solar eclipse, in Hawaii, in 1991. “Half of them occur in really poor places, where people have nothing,” he says. “When you see that, it impacts you and when you come back, you realize we’ve got so much in this country.”

MIKE BARLOW (Ewing)

DAVE GALLAGHER (New Hope)

Emergency response teams on both sides of the Delaware River are preparing for the crowds expected at the America Celebrates 250 festivities planned for July 3–5. “We’re always at the ready,” says Mike Barlow, the Lambertville fire chief. “In that way, it’s business as usual.”

The city’s fire department has established mutual aid agreements with nearby towns, Barlow says, for responding to emergency situations on land and water. “That takes the guesswork out of it,” says Barlow, who has served in the department for thirty-eight years, the last seven as chief.

Across the river, it’s an all-hands-on-deck response for the New Hope Eagle Fire Company. Dave Gallagher, the fire company’s battalion chief, says New Hope Eagle relies on forty-five firefighters and eight emergency medical technicians on its all-volunteer crew.

The volunteers are preparing how to respond to fire and medical emergencies when the town is swelled with people. “Crowds present logistical challenges,” says Gallagher, who has served with the fire company for six years. “We will be pre-staging trucks with crews at both ends of town, so if there is a call, we’ll be able to get to it.”

Gallagher says one of the units will be on the water in the event of water rescues, which will be coordinated with Lambertville, West Amwell, and Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania. “We have a very active, very large swift water and marine rescue unit, which trains all year long,” he says.

Barlow and Gallagher note that both towns are accustomed to the large crowds that flock to events such as Shad Fest, PrideFest, and the Fourth of July fireworks. “The town gets swelled up every weekend with tourists,” Gallagher says. “We love having visitors and we love to make sure that everybody celebrates and goes home safely.”