By TERRI EPSTEIN
Bucks County steps into the spotlight in a new five-part documentary, Bucks County, USA, which debuts on PBS September 20. With the county serving as something of a template for America’s political divide, directors Robert May and Barry Levinson explore the conflicts that roiled parents across the county and across the political spectrum during the COVID pandemic. “We’re a purple county in a purple state,” says a resident interviewed in the film. “We’re kind of divided between Republicans and Democrats.”
A public screening of the film’s first two episodes is scheduled for September 15 at Bucks County Community College in Newtown. Following the screening, a panel discussion and question-and-answer session will be moderated by Judy Woodruff, a senior correspondent and former anchor for PBS New Hour.
In the film, interviews and footage of vitriolic school board meetings—parents outraged at pandemic protocol, book banning, gender ideology, and curriculum policies—set the stage. Yet the story is anchored by two 14-year-old best friends, Evi Casey and Vanessa Martino, both of Doylestown, caught between their parents’ fiercely opposing politics. The girls, then students at Lenape Middle School, now seniors at Central Bucks West High School, set the example. “We put aside our differences and we just bond over shared interests,” Vanessa says in the film’s official trailer. “We need to band together and still find human empathy for the people and not tear the whole community apart,” Evi says.
In an interview with Variety days before premiering the first two episodes at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, May said, “We internally do not see this as a political documentary at all. We feel that this is a story about humanity and the way that we look at someone who has a different point of view from our own.”
Levinson, who directed feature hits such as Diner, Good Morning, Viet Nam, and The Natural and won Oscars with Rain Man, recalled growing up in the Nixon-Kennedy era. He supported Kennedy; a close cousin was for Nixon. “But that did not affect anything,” he told Variety. “Why is it that now we can’t have different points of view without becoming enemies?”
A National Nod for Peddler’s Village
If you are one of the two million people who enjoy shopping at Peddler’s Village in Lahaska each year, you know why it’s a River Towns shopping mecca. Now, all of America knows it. In June, USA Today named the sprawling, forty-two-acre shoppers’ destination “America’s No. 1 Shopping Center.”
The brainchild of the late Earl and Sheila Jamison, who transformed a six-acre chicken hatchery into a charming, eighteenth-century-style village of fourteen shops and a restaurant in 1962, Peddler’s Village remains a family-run business. In October 2025, Donna Jamison Cave, daughter of Earl and Sheila, was named CEO. “People appreciate this type of shopping,” Cave says, “where it’s peaceful, green, and beautiful, with unique shops you can’t find elsewhere.”
New Jersey at the Crossroads
Ewing historians Patricia Millen and Robert W. Sands Jr. have co-authored their second “Images of America” book: New Jersey: The Crossroads of the American Revolution (Arcadia Publishing), due out October 27.
“So much of it happened right here,” Millen says of the eight-year-long conflict that birthed the country. The book recalls George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River in December 1776, of course, but also the battles fought at Trenton, Princeton, Monmouth, Red Bank, and Springfield.
“Plus hundreds of skirmishes all over the state,” Millen says. “There were so many famous people who were right here: the Marquis de Lafayette, Alexander Hamilton, General Rochambeau, the Baron von Steuben. Thomas Paine lived right in Bordentown.”
The capstone event, according to Millen: After the war, Washington wrote his farewell orders to his troops from Rocky Hill, near Princeton.
High Honors for River Towns Artists
Jennifer Hansen Rolli of Yardley and John Kane of Erwinna have been singled out by the Phillips’ Mill Community Association Juried Art Show Committee. Rolli is the show’s 2026 Honored Artist, while a painting by Kane is the show’s Signature Image.
Both artists were strongly inspired by the Pennsylvania Impressionists, a movement born at the historic mill nearly a century ago by founders William Lathrop, Daniel Garber, Edward Redfield, and others from the New Hope School. Kane’s Signature Image painting, Phillips’ Mill in Winter, has been compared to the snowy scenes emblematic of the noted Pennsylvania Impressionist Fern Coppedge. Rolli, a former art show committee volunteer who helped develop the show’s prospectus, has also been a frequent exhibitor in the show.
Of the Honored Artist award, Rolli says, “There is no other recognition like it for a painter in this area. This is something I had hoped to achieve in this lifetime.”
Robert Costa Comes Home
Yardley native Robert Costa returns home September 23 to receive the Bucks County Herald Foundation’s Excellence in Journalism Award at Happy to Be Here, the Herald’s anniversary bash at the Michener Art Museum.
Costa is the Emmy Award-winning chief Washington analyst for CBS News and a national correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning. He previously moderated PBS’s Washington Week and co-authored the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Peril with Bob Woodward. For more information, visit buckscountyherald.com/ HappytoBeHere2026.
Pride Takes to the Street
Five years after the idea was first conceived, the Progress Pride street mural on New Hope’s West Mechanic Street was unveiled at a celebratory ribbon-cutting ceremony this summer. The rainbow-infused landmark, a tribute to New Hope’s history as an LGBTQ+ welcoming community, was designed by local resident Paul Kokesh and supported by a grant from Visit Bucks County.
“Mechanic Street was chosen as it’s in the center of town and it’s where our annual High Heel Drag Race is held,” explains Melissa Patterson, former president of New Hope Celebrates, the organization that championed the project.
Scheduled this year for October 25, the High Heel Drag Race, in which contestants sprint in three-inch heels up and down West Mechanic Street—decorating a pumpkin at the halfway point—typically draws more than 1,500 spectators.
Capital Ideas
Snowbirds Rejoice!
A third commercial airline makes itself at home this fall at Trenton-Mercer Airport in Ewing. Breeze Airways, known for its “Seriously Nice” motto, provides more options for snowbirds as it joins Frontier and Allegiant airlines with flights to Charleston, South Carolina, and Fort Lauderdale and Vero Beach, in Florida, beginning in September and to Fort Myers starting in January.
Travel & Leisure has named Breeze, which has only been around since 2021, one of the best domestic airlines for four straight years. The airline’s Trenton-Mercer schedule is somewhat limited, but rates are low—summer fares started at $59 one way—and you can’t beat the commute if you live in the River Towns.
Pro Hockey Returns to Trenton
River Towns hockey fans have a new professional team to root for this winter. The Trenton Ironhawks, formerly the Utah Grizzlies, will take up where the Trenton Titans left off thirteen years ago, playing at the CURE Insurance Arena in Trenton. The Ironhawks, affiliated with the New York Islanders, will be led by head coach Chuck Weber, who won league championships in 2008 and 2010 with the Cincinnati Cyclones. The first puck drops October 24.
Restaurant Row A New Neighborhood Butcher
Once upon a time, every small town had a grocer, a general store, and a butcher. Supermarkets pretty much put an end to all that, but not in Milford, New Jersey, where Little York Country Butcher recently opened on Bridge Street.
“The location we’re in provides really stellar ingredients from local farms,” says Carly Schonheiter, who owns the shop with her husband, Bryan. (They also own The Little York restaurant in Holland Township.) “We really wanted to showcase that and give people an option to have it at home.”
The butcher shop is run by a third partner, Brandon Schonheiter, Bryan’s brother. Their father, Mark Schonheiter, who was Milford Market’s butcher when they were kids, also helps out. Carly’s family owns the nearby Stirberg Family Farms, which provides Black Angus beef to Little York Country Butcher.
Restaurateurs Return to Stockton
Thirteen years ago, Yardley residents Massimiliano and Christin Migliore worked together at Via Ponte Restaurant in Stockton. They fell in love and married, and now they’ve returned to start their own Italian restaurant: Terra Mare Ristorante Italiano opened August 26. “We always loved the town of Stockton and the people in it,” Christin says. “When we were finally ready to open a restaurant, the building was available. It was all meant to be.”
Just steps from the Center Bridge-Stockton Bridge and the D&R Canal towpath, Terra Mare offers traditional recipes from all over Italy. The menu is varied, with offerings of meat, fish, local produce, vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options. “There is something for everyone,” says Massimiliano, who grew up in Carini, on the northern coast of Sicily.
In Memoriam
The River Towns recently lost three stalwart members of its cultural and philanthropic communities. We remember them here.
Marvin “Marv” Woodall (1937-2026)
A leader in the field of medical device innovation and a prominent philanthropist in the River Towns, Woodall died July 30 after a short illness.
A resident of Doylestown Township, Woodall spent thirty-seven years at Johnson & Johnson, eventually becoming president of Interventional Systems. In 1994 he helped develop the world’s first coronary stent, a breakthrough technology that benefitted millions of people worldwide.
After retiring from Johnson & Johnson in 2000, Woodall became the first CEO of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation. He also served as CEO of Thrombolex, a company he co-founded in 2016 to develop the Bashir endovascular catheter, which treats blood clots in the lungs and blood vessels. Upon his death, Dr. Juan F. Granada, the president and current CEO of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, wrote on Facebook: “Marv was an extraordinary leader whose vision helped shape CRF and whose influence reached far beyond our organization. [H]e inspired all of us through his wisdom, generosity, and unwavering commitment to advancing cardiovascular medicine.”
Woodall and his late wife, Dee Ann, to whom he was married more than sixty years, were generous supporters of many River Towns organizations. In 2019 they gave $2.5 million to the Doylestown Health Foundation to establish the Woodall Center for Heart and Vascular Care at Doylestown Hospital. Marv Woodall served as founding chair of the Bucks County Playhouse Artists Board, and the couple were honored for their leadership at the Playhouse’s 2023 gala.
In June, Woodall donated $100,000 to the Herald Foundation, the fundraising arm of the nonprofit Bucks County Herald, the Doylestown-based weekly newspaper and a sister publication to River Towns. A founding member of the foundation’s board of directors, Woodall was also its largest donor. “He really helped us stabilize the Herald,” says Bridget Wingert, the chair of the foundation’s board. “His recent donation was very important to us and certainly appreciated.”
Wingert recalls the pictures of hearts the Woodalls displayed throughout their home. “The heart was a symbol that was very important to Marv all his life,” she says. “It was a symbol of his kindness, of his thinking of other people.”
Rick Epstein (1951–2026)
Epstein came to Frenchtown when he became editor of the Delaware Valley News in 1977, and in his books he shared his fascination with the River Town he called home for half a century. His two most recent books, Frenchtown and More Frenchtown (Palmetto, 2023 and 2025), were compilations of stories spanning the borough’s history. Over the past decade, Epstein, the official borough historian, led a variety of memorable ninety-minute walking tours of his adopted hometown, including one he called the Bad Luck & Poor Choices Tour. In vintage Epstein fashion, he wove historical fact with popular lore, always with a dash of funny.
Epstein was feted in June at a dinner in his honor at the Frenchtown American Legion hall. Earlier that month, Delaware Valley Regional High School announced that its annual journalism award will be named after Epstein.
Bill Jersey (1927–2026)
“Today is a sad day,” Stockton sculptor Ray King wrote on Facebook in late July upon Jersey’s death, at age 99.
A filmmaker-turned-landscape artist, Jersey was known for his color-drenched, light-infused canvases, the fruits of his second career after moving to Lambertville from California. Retired from a long and successful run as a documentary filmmaker, the winner of multiple Emmy and Peabody awards, Jersey continued his visual storytelling with brush, palette, and paint, winning accolades and exhibitions in River Towns galleries. “Painting is what I love,” Jersey told River Towns in a 2022 profile. “It keeps me going.”
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